My first OS X Experience

With Apple's OS X turning 10 today, I though I'd share to my first experiences with it.

For me, it was back in 2002. I was living and working in Tokyo, Japan, creating interactive Web applications. I had an old Dell laptop that I'd used for about 5 years and it was on its last legs. Every few months or so, I'd reformat the hard disk on it, install some random distribution of linux on it, try to get some work done, get mad, and restore my old Windows 2000. I wanted off Windows, I wanted in on this cool Open Source caper, I wanted back to my happy place in UNIX, the OS I grew up with. But no matter how bad Windows 2000 was, the UNIX variants at the time were worse. I just could not be productive. And I could not work with the corporate file formats my company used.

We'd invited a quant in one day to show us some C++ code he had written under contract for us. He brought in a Titanium Powerbook to show us his work. There was much 'oohing' and 'aahing' at the laptop itself, but it was nothing that compared to what happened next. I knew all about OS 9, having used Macintoshes in the 90's, and expected to see OS 9's classic look when he booted up the screen.

Instead, after the obligatory awesome chime, up came this beautiful, shiny, bright interface. Jaws dropped, silence ensued, the dock popped up, and we marveled at the bright icons, clean lines and smooth fonts. Work stopped. A crowd formed. Questions were asked and answered. My first impression was that they had taken OS 9 and made it pretty. It was better than that.

I dispersed the crowd, and asked him to show me his work. And he did the most astounding thing. He opened a bash shell window and started typing in UNIX commands. UNIX! Yes, real UNIX. I was verklempt. This was the operating system I was hoping Linux would be. UNIX, with an easy to use UI. And it had Excel on it.  Real Excel.  I was sold.

That weekend, I went to Akihabara, spent 2 hours tracking down the top of the range Titanium Powerbook (1Ghz, 1GB RAM), and bought it. It had a weird Japanese keyboard, so they sold me a US keyboard replacement part. I went home, peeled the old keyboard off, installed the new keyboard, and first booted to OS X 10.1.

I never used the Dell after that. I still have that PowerBook, and it still works.

I have been an OS X user ever since.