Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

You know its not often on my blog I get to talk about GOOD stuff, seeing as most of my blog can be neatly and accurately pigeon-holed into 4 distinct idiosyncrasies, those being:

1. Writing about getting punched in the cock.

2. Writing about eating disgusting food.

3. Writing in a manner that allows me to work in references to the monster from The Thing.

4. Writing exclamatory sentences with a small cluster of 1s after them, ala “He-man was gay!!!!111″

BUT this entry is different, for something magical has happened in the world of yongfook.com, that being I have bought a NEW computer. And yes, it’s a mac. I had lusted over a Powerbook G4 to replace my aging iBook G3 for an extraordinarily long time and finally managed to both save enough money AND overcome the crushing guilt associated with buying any kind of electronic hardware instead of saving money for when I return to England and find that the whole country has been taken over by zombies. I figured that a new computer is something I would eventually have to buy anyway, and compared to England, Japan is much cheaper when it comes to macs for some reason. Plus I really, really, really REALLY wanted it.

It’s definitely nice being able to run all the brilliant iApps so swiftly now, especially Garageband (midi/sound recording and arrangement for song creation) which ran a bit craply on my iBook. OS X at a higher resolution has made me fall in love with it all over again. And GAMES, oh god games. I can run games once again. Halo, Command & Conquer: Generals. Did I ever tell you how much I love macs? No? Well I do. And if there is one thing that really pisses me off more than anything in the entire world - more than insidiously happy male piccolo players or characters in movies whose sole reason for existing is to recap the entire plot of the movie starting from the line “so let me get this straight” just before the end so all the stupid people in the audience have a second chance to know what the frick is going on - its family members who ask what computer they should buy and end up having a conversation with me like this:

Family member: So Jon (read: hi geek) I was thinking of buying a new computer. Me: Buy a mac FM: Yeah I saw this one computer made by (insert name of OEM-laden suspicious brand that nobody has ever heard of, like INTERTRONRON) in a magazine the other day. Looked like a pretty good deal. Me: Buy a mac. FM: DVD, LCD panel, Pentium 20000000DX HYPER chip- Me: Yeah buy a mac. FM: Macs are expensive though - look at this Intertronron computer, its under £500! Me: Macs are a little more expensive, yes. But you get what you pay for. How many minor problems have you had with your computer in just this last year, like hardware conflicts, missing dll files, crashes and stupid little things clogging up your system like spyware? None of that happens on a mac. Does windows XP have good solutions out-of-the-box (as in free) for digital photo cataloguing, digital video editing, music creation and video conferencing - all that work WITH each other as well as independently? FM: Who where what now? So anyway have you heard of Intertronron? Are they are good company? Me: Are you even listening to me? Am I just white noise? FM: I saw another computer by Globalscapetronron - it was £100 cheaper than the other one but I need to pay £50 for a pro software package. Oh they also recommend I take out an extended warranty for another £100. Have you heard of Globalscapetronron? Me: Don’t ever call me about computers again, dad.

Anyway I digress - the point is I have a NEW MAC and it is great. Cheryl, in a surprisingly non-violent conclusion to months and months of dialogue similar to the above, has also bought herself a mac. She is now the proud owner of a brand new iBook G4. And her life is better for it.

Buy a mac.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 15th, 2004 at 8:28 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.