One of my earliest programming memories was in a summer camp writing LOGO code on an Apple IIe. PENDN, FD 20 RT 20...it was an enlightening experience making that little turtle do my bidding. I was right around 10 or 11 years old.

Fast forward a couple of years later when my Mom was all excited about learning and using a "Macintosh". She took me in to work one day and I got to play with it. It was way cooler than the Desktop Publishing program I was using on my Commodore 128. Shufflepuck Cafe was amazing! It wasn't too long after that we had a 32MHz Performa 600 at the house. I got chills the first time I saw a 32-bit picture rendered and it seemed like magic the first time a Quicktime video played of a Space Shuttle launch. I was around for the big "System 7" debut and the fanfare of Mac OS 8. In 1992, I was an aspiring graphic designer and getting school credit doing typesetting for the school district during my Graphic Communications class. In 1995, I bought my first Mac of my own- a dismal Performa 6200CD at Sears at the Myrtle Square Mall on my first credit card. I remember how proud my Dad was that I had the cajones to just go out an buy one almost on a whim.

That turned out to be a sound investment.

It was on that little computer that I honed my design abilities and finally landed a job as a full time graphic designer at The Sun News. It was also the computer that spawned what eventually became 803 Productions. Next I upgraded to the super hot Blue & White G3. I learned HTML and mocked up the first Sun News website which indirectly got me into programming. As Online Director at The Sun News, I outfitted the sales staff with PowerBook 1400c's. I wrote my first Java and C code on that Performa at home. I was an avid BBEdit and CodeWarrior fan. I shelled out for the Macromedia Suite which is where I played with Xtreme3D and Director. All of which gave me a leg up at my first game industry job at Jellyvision, where Java and Director were heavily used. It was a magical time indeed.

But once I entered the world of full time software development, Windows was foisted upon me. I kept my Mac at home for a while. Despite spending countless hours playing Marathon and Myth back in the day, I was becoming a PC gamer and game developer... that meant getting a Windows 98 machine at home too. At that point, the B&W G3 was ebay'ed and I spent the next 7 years with Windows 98, Windows 2000, and eventually XP. I went from Cmd-C to Ctrl-C.

Fast forward to this year. I've had the same Dell Inspiron 9200 laptop for a few years. It's started to have some problems and dragging over the past few months. Most of which could honestly be fixed with a full wipe and reinstall of Windows. But like all of my previous computer purchases, I've definitely gotten my money's worth and then some from it. Blast Off has done OK for itself the past year and, besides my piddly salary, my computer is my only real overhead. Thus, I began devising my strategy for getting a new main rig.

Even though I work on a laptop, it's pretty tethered to my desk and kind of a pain to move. I don't really "compute on the go" or sit at my local Starbuck's to work. So I really could get by with a desktop PC. Plus I could build a pretty powerful one on the cheap. At one point, I even thought about just not even bothering with building one and just buying something already built. Honestly, what kept me from doing either was Vista... it's hard to get a new PC without Vista on it. It even costs more to buy XP than Vista! I thought I could probably also justify getting a Mac Mini because if I ever make an independent game or software product, I'd love to release it to Mac OS. But I was just undecided.

Then they announced the new Mac Book Pro.

It's not a major revision of the MacBook, really. But, in my experience, it's better to buy a model in its prime rather than jumping in on a major new product. (It's that same reasoning that makes me glad I have an 2nd Gen Pod Nano instead of any of the previous gen iPods.) I recalled that it was really nice going on business trips and having my primary workstation with me. I dug a little deeper and made sure that switching to the Mac wouldn't interfere with my current projects and that I could continue to do console game development. I also feel like I've entered another "magical" period in my life with all of the exciting things I'm involved in. It seemed appropriate that I use a Mac again. Once I was confident that I could still do my work either in Mac OS or Windows on the MacBook thanks to how powerful the hardware is and VMWare's Fusion, I decided to stew for a couple of days to make sure it's something I really wanted to do.

I'm proud to say that I just placed my order for my first Mac in nearly 10 years and blew a wad of cash today...
- 17" MacBook Pro with backlit keyboard and multi-touch trackpad
- LED backlit Hi-Res display (non-glossy)
- 2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- 300GB hard drive (I generally prefer RPM over capacity, but I figured I'd need it if I'm running Windows + OS X)
- VMWare Fusion
- OCW 4GB RAM kit
- BookEndz Docking Station (I'm really excited about this. I may even "compute on the go" more now)

Me and Apple are getting the band back together!