First of all, to Nathaniel: I love you. And during every single one of the ‘discussions’, I loved you. Thank you for everything, especially Amanya.
1994, high school
“Mac”
“PC”
“Mac”
“PC”
“Mac”
“Nathaniel, seriously, the business world will never accept Mac. PC wins.”
“But Angi, Macs are better, easier to use.”
“And waaaay more money. Even if they were really better, no business is ever going to shell out the cash for a machine so similar to a PC.”
“It isn’t even in the same class. It is so much nicer. Higher quality”
“Well, Beta tapes were higher quality, but VHS had better marketing. Guess who won? Same here. PC wins. Always.”
“Mac”
“PC”
“Mac”
“PC!”
“Oh, you are so stubborn!”
And so the ‘discussion’ has gone (mostly civilized), for nearly 15 years. Nathaniel and I have known each other since pre-school, when we ever so proudly attended Cotton-Tail College (yes, the ‘graduation’ involved caps and gowns). When we arrived at high school, he had a Mac, and I had a PC, and there the argument began.
Nathaniel was not wrong. I can be stubborn. When I decide I am right, I can be like a puppy with a chew toy. I am relentless. I research the heck out of my topic, and I make sure I am prepared for any argument. If nothing else, I will have a multitude of facts that I can spew out at will, and I can simply bury my opponent with the sheer volume. In this case, both Nathaniel and I were each educated about our chosen camps, and we knew which points we would concede to the other. He gave me Microsoft and the power of their programs, especially in the business world. I gave him the arts. Photo, music and movie editing software. It was a constant and amiable argument which always ended at a draw.
One night, when I was in college, I was in a friend’s dorm room and I was finally desperate enough to want to turn on the Mac. Nathaniel laughed when I had to call him because I couldn’t find the power switch. Eventually, Macs became more compatible with the PCs and it became easier to transfer files from one to the other and back again. Two years ago, I broke down and bought an iPod. My first Mac product. I called Nathaniel to let him gloat. And he did. But I swore I wasn’t a convert. I was just purchasing the best product on the market.
Now, I am about to go around the world and want to take a laptop with me. My laptop is almost 4 years old, and weighs enough to anchor a small watercraft. It has a battery life of approximately 43 minutes. I knew from the beginning that bringing it on the Race was not an option. I also knew that I really wanted to bring some sort of device with me – some way for me to type up my blogs, and some place to store my photos. I examined every option of which I could think, including the $100 laptop (designed for children in 3rd world countries). And I went outside my own comfort zone and looked at Macs. They looked good. The MacBook was petite. And powerful. And rumor has it that it is difficult to write viruses for a Mac (one of Nathaniel’s strongest arguments). I looked more, and researched more. I kept coming back to the Mac. I talked to more and more people who had them; people who had been die-hard PC fans, and once they switched, had sworn by their Macs. Apparently, once you go Mac, you never go back.
I talked to Nathaniel about it, about what I needed for the field, and why I was willing to switch to Mac for this. I wanted him to present his case as to why a Mac was the best choice. To his credit, he didn’t gloat right then. He just got down to the business of helping me figure out which computer would be the best for what I was about to do. We finally settled on the MacBook – it would be small enough, light enough, and have everything I needed. I felt this was the direction I needed to take, but I didn’t have a clue how it was going to happen, just that it would.
So I began to pray. I began to talk to the Lord, and tell him that if He wanted me to write and be able to blog for Him, I would trust Him to find a way for me to do this. I also like to take pictures, to capture what I see and try to tell a story with the images. Again, I trusted that God would provide if He wanted me to tell my stories this way. I just had to believe that I would have what I needed before I left on the Race.
