As graphically depicted on Breederboy’s Blog, I have a new MacBook. I doubt I could sufficiently explain my excitement when I found out I wouldn’t have to settle for a Windows laptop. In an SMS, I asked my investor and friend what the budget was and he said: No budget.

I then paced the floor for 10 minutes asking myself if I had the balls to ask for what I wanted, a Macintosh laptop. I decided that the worst he could say was No, so I went for it. Turned out to be no problem. I almost jumped for joy then remembered my age and what’s left of my dignity. As I told everyone later, however, this computer is far, far more important to me than any boy. It’s my future, if I have one at all.

Macs are already a bit more expensive than their Windows counterparts, in America as well. However, here in Europe there’s a 17% value-added tax plus the special Central European, no-one-really-has-much-money-here tax on electronics. Suffice to say that in the U.S. I could have had a larger, more powerful Mac laptop for less than what was paid for this smaller one. Nevertheless it’s quite tricked out. 120 GB hard drive, 1 GB RAM (the minimum for professional work, IMHO; don’t let anyone tell you different. Modern OSes need it and the amount of RAM is more important than processor speed in terms of getting things done efficiently.)

(Those who actually prefer going to the dentist to listening to some Mac fanatic ramble on like a deprived geek should tune out now.)

Initially I faced my forced use of Windows machines in Internet cafes with glum resignation; but I also thought, hey, I could get used to it. Two years later I still haven’t. Certain things about the operating system still consistently drive me crazy. I honestly don’t know how anyone manages open applications and windows without tearing one’s hair out. There are so many elegant ways of interacting with files, applications and tasks on a Mac that you can pick and choose and combine based on the way you work. Keyboard or menu-driven, mouse-assisted or whatever. It’s up to you. Windows approach is, typically, you must do it its way or fuck off.

Of course, if you’re used to doing it the hard way all your life – in other words, having a little workflow freedom – going to a Mac is bound to be disorienting. I’m shocked that you Windows people put up with the way shit is installed, not to mention uninstalled. I won’t even go into the whole virus/spyware/adware issues except to say in 20 years of Mac computing I’ve had to deal with exactly one virus and none of the latter two. There are no known viruses for OS X. None. Zero. And I have never had to reformat my hard drive because of some registry issue (whatever that is) or reinstall the OS because of a “corruption” of some kind. I want to work. I don’t want to fight with the OS and its vulnerabilities.

But really the main reason I chose a Mac was for practical and business reasons. Given my future plans of taking over the gay porn blog world, and another travel-related Web project, a Macintosh was the obvious choice. According to my statistics, between 7 and 16% of my visitors in any week are from Mac users. Mac users, according to recent studies, are better educated, more Internet savvy, spend more time on the Internet, are more likely to be loyal to Web sites that cater to them and, most relevantly, spend more money online than Windows users as a whole. So, if I want to attract and keep Mac users, my wealthiest visitors, I must make sure they have the same user experience as my Windows counterparts. Which means I must develop and test for multiple platforms.

So, do I buy two machines? One Windows and one Mac or do I just buy a Mac, which besides all the afore-mentioned attributes, also runs Windows natively. Any recent Intel Macintosh can run Mac OS X right alongside Windows. As a matter of fact, you can run dozens and dozens of operating systems on a Mac and your trusty little computer won’t complain about license violations or anti-trust court cases.

It seemed a no-brainer to me.