What do all of the following people have in common?

Greg Storey, Andy Budd, D. Kieth Robinson, Cameron Moll, Andrei Herasimchuk, Jon Hicks, Jason Santa Maria, Garrett Murray, Eric Meyer, Dave Shea, Mike Davidson, Shaun Inman, Dan Cederholm, Douglas Bowman, Jeffrey Veen, Sean Voisen, Jeffrey Zeldman

  1. They all have amazing websites with blogs that I read on a regular basis.
  2. They’re all people who have made great contributions to the web and standards-based design.
  3. Every single one of them uses a Mac.
    Even if they don’t like to admit it.

My first computer was an Apple IIe that my cousin passed onto me when he moved to New Mexico to work for Intel. Although I really loved that machine, I’ve never felt the need to buy an Apple computer. I made it all the way through Graphic Design school with a PC that I built myself. I used Macs in the labs when I had to and know my way around OS 9 and OS X as a result. When the graphic design school at UCF started to require us to bring our own computers however, my buddy Jeremy Darty and I would always get a lot of flack from our professor and classmates for our Dell laptops. To me, the whole thing was a joke. Even if it was a little uncool, I was convinced that I could do anything with my PCs that the Mac addicts could do with their shiny Apples.

I currently have a PC laptop, desktop, and file server at home and do my design work at Acceleration on a blazing fast dual-monitor machine with a gig of ram. So why am I thinking so much about making the switch now? Well, it’s simple really… My wife wants one. She really wanted a 2nd generation iMac, and now she wants the new 20-inch G5 model even more. We spent the morning before we left for school/work customizing them online. This is it. My chance to be the man, bare the financial responsibility, and give the final word on this major decision. And I say we should go for it. It would be a personal computer that she would love for daily use, and a tool for myself that would grant me a little more diversity with my skills and software knowledge. It may mean we have to take out a student loan to make it happen, but Ames will be working on her phD for the next 5 years so what do we have to lose?