I'm Nick, and I used to be a Mac

Even today, I still kind of see this as our greatest technological discovery.

Today’s blog posting comes to you courtesy of a Frankenstein PC with about two components of the computer I bought a month before I started college in 2005.

I’m often surprised I use a PC considering how much 7-year-old me loved the Mac II that spent a few summers at my parent’s house.

As mentioned previously (and again before that) my video game history goes back a number of years to my family’s Super Nintendo, but that’s not entirely true. For a number of years we played the Nintendo on a little computer screen, part of an IBM that my dad had from work (or so I believe). From what I am told, a very young me had destroyed that computer (unintentionally), but we were never long without a computer in the house.

At the point that I can actually remember us having a computer it was a Apple Macintosh II that my mom had brought home from her work as a Catholic school teacher. My mother is not the most tech savvy. Really, she’s not far from the least tech savvy, but you have to give her credit for trying, and I’m sure that’s why we played host family to the computer for so long. It wasn’t her trying to figure it out that interested me about it -- it was a little game called Monkey Math. And for the longest time, playing a missing numbers game in a factory run by monkeys was the reason I thought I would always be a Mac person.

Yes, my loyalty to Macintosh was through games. And not even particularly good games, but nonetheless, a more youthful myself felt that with choices like Cannon Fodder and Kids Pix were enough for me to pledge my aligence. Later that was accompanied by other classics such as Lemonade Stand and a game were you played as a helicopter and saved hostages. Even the terribly frustrating Meavis Beacon was a reason to declare the Mac my computer of choice.

I don’t know how long the obsession lasted. As I grew older my family computers continued to be IBM and HP machines running Windows. Although there were still times when a Power Mac would show up at the house for an extended stay, most of my exposure to Macs were at school. And by the time I had reached junior high school, it didn’t matter how many times I played Nanosaur or Squirrel Kombat (yes, these were games we played at Catholic school), I was pretty much hooked on Bill Gate’s company rather than Steve Jobs.

My rebranding has lead to some odd choices in my life. Although I owned an iPod shuffle for a long period of time during college, my primary MP3 player has been a Zune (yes, I know), and I have never regretted that. And with the exception of X-Box, I have always preferred Microsoft products since those early years. And because of this, I should apologize to 7-year-old me for moving away from the system you so preferred. Who knows, maybe in the future I’ll be more inclined to try a Mac, that is if they ever produce a decent sequel to Monkey Math.