The Dirty Word: ***intosh

I'm headed up to Washington on Monday, to be with Nic and Noah. But I have a lot of work to do while I'm up there. And with the SMtv show starting in August, I needed a laptop.

So, I finally did it. I bought a Mac. Yes. The world is ending. Here come the four horsemen.

I've been a notorious Mac poo-pooer for years now. I was raised on PCs. There are pictures of me at 7 years old, playing around in DOS. Yes, that was the kind of fun I had. So, anyone who knows me is probably either fainting, or laughing a hyena (or coyote) laugh of "I knew you'd come around eventually."

Every experience I've had with Macs in school were terrible. They were always crashing and freezing, and also...WHERE IS THE RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON? Okay so I still don't understand that. Why is there only one mouse button? This is stupid. And the keyboard layout felt totally weird and wrong to me...

Anyway, I got over it and decided to throw myself into the unknown.

It wasn't just a whim either. This was premeditated. The recent release of Windows Vista means that much of my software actually won't work until each one is updated, which could be a while. Also, I need to be able to run many tracks of audio live for this show, without any hiccups, or "oops, you need to update your drivers," etc. So it finally happened.

So far, I'm definitey impressed. Other than the fact that hardly any of my VST plugins are being seen by Ableton Live (which is weird, annoying, and absolutely making me want to toss this laptop through a plate-glass window), it's mostly very smooth. Not one error message, freeze-up, or even minor slowdown yet. And the on-board camera and microphone are a nice touch. Here's what it saw when I first got my hands on my Macbook.