MAC or PC

MacBook Pro. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

“Online poll: which computer do you prefer, MAC or PC?” said a small header on my former employer’s front-page, the Daily Messenger newspaper in nearby Canandaigua.
It was referring to a poll on the newspaper’s web-site I used to do years ago.
I won’t respond, but anyone who reads this here blog knows I’ve been driving Apple Macintosh computers at least the last 15 years.
Our first computer was a Windows PC about 18 years ago, a 386/40 (remember them?).
But I switched to Macintosh when my employer computerized.
Actually, that’s not precise.
The Messenger was computerized before that, but it wasn’t individual computers on each person’s desk.
It was so-called “dumb terminals,” keyboards on each person’s desk linked to a giant mainframe computer in a cramped air-conditioned room.
There might also have been sub-computers on each person’s desk — I remember having to feed it a five-inch floppy (remember five-inch floppies?) to get it to work, after which a reporter could key in a story to the mainframe, which sent to typesetters that produced galleys.
The galleys were long strips of photographic paper on which lettering had been projected by light.
The galleys had to be developed, and then cut and pasted to cardboard page-dummies.
The completed full-size page-dummies then got photographed to produce a negative from which a printing-plate could get burned.
“Computerization” (so-called) dispensed with the mainframe, typesetters, and paste-up and camera.
A reporter could now key her story into her desktop computer, it got filed to servers, and a paginator (or page-editor) could draw that story onto his desktop computer-display to create the page.
Right about then Apple introduced the iMac, a desktop computer with display all in one box.
It wasn’t much compared to nowadays. All I remember is four megs of RAM — the laptop I’m using now (above) has four gigs; that’s 1,000 times as much.
Messenger powers-that-be were tilting toward MACs, even though they cost more, because our image-setter was MAC-based.
An image-setter produced negatives directly for plate-burning. It circumvented the mainframe and camera/page dummies.
The image-setter was driven by a Rastorized-Image-Processor (“RIP”), but it was a PC.
That PC had to translate everything into MAC instructions for the image-setter to work.
The RIP often hung, and could thus delay the newspaper.
MACs would take out translation.
But MACs were more costly, until Apple marketed the iMac.
So iMac it would be, with individual towers for page-creation.
A coworker convinced me I should switch to MAC, that MACs were superior.
(I don’t know as they are any more.)
Added was the factor my employer was switching to MAC.
My siblings are all born-again Christians, and they loudly tell me anything Apple is stupid and of-the-Devil.
This is despite their all having iPhones and iPods and iPads, and my non-Apple DroidX Smartphone is stupid and of-the-Devil.
Meanwhile my sister’s DroidX is blessed.
Jesus would have used a PC, I was told. Or was it Jesus used a PC?
This reminds of the sonorous blasts I get about which motorcycle I ride.
Jesus rides a Harley-Davidson, or is it he would ride a Harley-Davidson?
Whatever, He sure wouldn’t ride no Honda like I do, nor would He use a MAC!
What this comes from is I had the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to suggest that MAC was superior.
And it was, years ago.
The MAC was elegant Porsche engineering to PC’s musclecar overkill.
I attended a Photoshop® school that couldn’t afford MACs. It was Photoshop on a PC, and “please wait.”
My MAC at home was much faster.
Far be it I point this out to my all-knowing siblings. I a Democrat. (Gasp!)
I also was told Apple was toast, the equivalent of Sony’s Betamax.
Yet Apple survives despite the passing of various PC manufacturers.
A while ago it was Gateway with their placid Holsteins.
Now it’s Dell.
Who’s next?
And then there are all the horror stories I hear from PC users. Slow performance, dumping everything, and starting over.
Yet my MACs go on-and-on.
The motherboard quit on my first MAC, but my G4 tower still gets occasional use.
My laptop is MAC number-three.
Often I think failing PC performance is the operator.
My wife drives a PC, and they’ve lasted eons.
Ya don’t open every e-mail ya get. —It protects against virus infiltration.
I’ve driven both PC and MAC, and in my opinion they’re now pretty much equal.
I stick with MAC because that’s what I’m familiar with.
I also am not doing computer-aided-design (CAD), a Windows PC application.
A PC user I know is thinking of changing to MAC.
I advised against it.
Switch to MAC and ya gotta learn all the MAC idiosyncrasies, like it doesn’t give the memory-path without arduous looking.
“Stick with PC,” I told him. “PC is what ya know.”

• My desktop picture is Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 number 4896, scrapped. 4896 is the only GG1 I ever went through, and this is the only photograph of 4896 I ever got. The GG1 was the greatest railroad locomotive ever made. —I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two (I’m 67).
• “Canandaigua” (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 15 miles away. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.
• I worked at the Messenger almost 10 years. It was the best job I ever had.