How I Became an Apple Fanboy
I know what you are probably thinking — Apple fanboys get a bad rep, and usually for good reason too. To a lot of people, especially users of other products, the image that comes up when envisioning one is probably a nerdy male with an ugly Steve Jobs tattoo and a hand band that says, “Windows Bad”.
I’m pretty sure I don’t fit that description. A typical fanboy will likely disregard reasonable criticism of Apple products and fall for whatever images Tim Cook and the marketing team paints. I don’t think Apple devices are perfect; I just know they are darn good.
I did not always think so, mind. Kick back and relax as I detail my journey into the fandom.
Baby Steps
I got my first ever Apple device — the iPhone 4S — way back in 2012. A decade ago, the iPhone held a much smaller smartphone market share in my part of the world. BlackBerry, now long forgotten, still dominated the landscape, with Android phones coming in second place.
But what Apple lacked in numbers, it made up for in prestige. Owning an iPhone back then put you in the upper echelon of smartphone users. And the iPhone 4S was no mean device; it topped many rankings of the best smartphones released in 2011. 16GB of internal storage, 512MB of RAM, a speedy processor, and a camera that blew most other phones out of the water. What was there not to love?
And yet, somehow, I did not love it. Up until then, I had only used BlackBerry and Android phones. Switching over to iOS brought a truckload of confusion with it.
I missed a lot of things I took for granted. Memory cards, for instance. What kind of a smartphone did not offer a physical means for storing songs, videos, and other files when internal memory ran out? Remember, this was long before cloud storage, streaming, and fast internet speeds became commonplace here. I soon found that the space was not nearly enough.
So, I made an easy decision to dump my iPhone and jump right back to using an Android smartphone.
Jumping back in with the MacBook Pro
That brief foray with the iPhone 4S was my first and last with an Apple device for several years. From late 2012, I stayed loyal to the platforms I was familiar with, alternating between Android and Blackberry phones until the latter slowly phased out. And for computers, I only ever used Windows-based laptops.
By 2018, Apple devices had become way more prevalent in my ecosystem. Many more people owned an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook computer. I began reading about how these devices were considerably better than the alternative.
My mentor at the time was relentless. I got buffeted constantly with claims of how powerful MacBook laptops were and how far ahead they were of Windows in terms of performance. My mentor was the first Apple fanboy I knew, although it would be more accurate to call him a MacBook fanboy.
At first, I was unconvinced. I mean, at that time, I used a Windows laptop with pretty decent specifications. It had a top-of-the-line Core i7 processor with 16GB RAM. I did not see how a Mac would offer a vastly superior experience to what I got from my HP.
That said, I finally caved in and got myself a 2018 MacBook Pro in 2019. And boy, could I tell the difference! It felt like an entirely different level of experience, and nothing illustrated that better to me than the time it took to start up.
I could go from shutdown to ready-for-work mode on my new MacBook Pro in less than 8 seconds. Mind-blowing! As I mentioned earlier, I had only ever used Windows laptops up until that point, so you can imagine how that felt.
In stark contrast, on average, my Windows laptop took about 60seconds to boot.
Mind, my new Mac had 8GB of RAM — only half what my previous laptop offered. And yet it was way faster.
OK, so maybe the difference was the SSD?
SSD stands for Solid State Drive. On the face of it, it does the same job as the regular hard disk drive (HDD) — it stores the files you have on your laptop. But SSD has significant advantages over standard hard drives — they are faster, smaller, more durable, and more reliable.
That speed difference is easy to see when starting a laptop with an SSD memory. They boot up much faster and will load your laptop’s programs in seconds.
My new laptop had an SSD, but the former only featured an HDD memory. So that explained why it performed much better than the Windows laptop, right? Well, to an extent. But that was not the whole story.
Mostly to convince myself, I got a Windows laptop that came with SSD storage as a backup laptop. You’ve likely guessed it — even though it also came with decent specs, it did not hold a candle to the MacBook Pro in terms of speed and performance. While it was clearly faster than my last HP, it took more time to boot up and process tasks than the MacBook.
And so I said my final goodbye through the Window(s). I knew there was no going back for me from that point.
I had several other reasons to stay Mac
Statistics show almost all Mac users buy another when they decide to upgrade.
Performance aside, there are several other pros to owning a MacBook. Security and privacy, for instance. Ask any expert — Macs are significantly safer from cyberattacks than Windows laptops. So, chances are that my files are safer from hackers on my MacBook than they were on a Windows laptop.
Don’t get me started on the ecosystem advantage. Apple designs its products to work together, so it is much easier to seamlessly connect and use my iPhone, AirPods, and other gadgets with my MacBook Pro. Think about starting a movie on the Mac and continuing it while commuting on my iPhone. You don’t know what you’re missing if you still use a PC.
That being said, it is not all rosy. Gamers will find it much harder to enjoy their favorite titles on an Apple laptop than on Windows. Ditto for “torrenters”. Luckily, neither of these is an issue for me — I am not big on video games, and I cannot remember the last time I had to use a Torrent client.
Many years later, a new iPhone
I loved my MacBook, but I had only taken a step into the Apple fandom at that point. I was still stuck on my Android phone.
It wasn’t until over a year later that I got my second iPhone. In December 2020, I managed to find a Dual SIM iPhone 11. I’m sure that discovering that phone made the switch easier for me. Over here, most Android phones offer spaces to insert two SIM cards. Most people prefer to own an alternative, and carrying around two phones can be tasking.
Here’s the kicker — I wouldn’t say that I enjoy my iPhone quite as much as I do my Mac. I’m sure this is blasphemy in Apple fanboy circles, but it is my reality, nonetheless. As much as I enjoy the ecosystem, blazing-fast processor, and eye-pleasing, easy user interface, the iPhone still has its limitations.
One of the major issues I had a decade ago persists, even though it is not nearly as big a problem right now. Most Android phones allow you to pop in a memory card to support the phone’s storage capacity. Those cards are pretty cheap these days and can add up to 1 TB of extra space on your phone.
Gone are the days when I only had 8GB on my iPhone. These days, they provide much larger internal storage capacities. And yet, after using a 256GB iPhone for months, you soon realize that the capacity is not nearly as expansive as you once thought.
To put this in perspective, a 4K resolution video recording at 30fps will take up 375MB of space after a single minute!
Yes, I know, Apple offers a convenient solution with iCloud. Still, it is far from being a perfect solution. I automatically got 5GB of free cloud storage when I signed up for iCloud. But here’s some quick maths — that space only translates to just over 13 minutes of 4K video recording. When I run out of memory, I have no choice but to pay for premium iCloud. If you attempt to sync all your media, then you’d end up spending on iCloud storage.
Other gadgets?
A MacBook and an iPhone do not make an Apple fanboy — I’m pretty sure that’s somewhere in the rules.
I also own the AirPods Pro, and I think Apple struck gold with these buds. They sound way better than the original, fit in the ear better, and have decent battery lives. To top it off, the noise cancellation feature on the microphone and speaker is so good. Definitely a worthy buy, the AirPods Pro.
Unfortunately, I am not a huge fan of the Apple Watch (even though I have a series 7 model). At the risk of echoing the haters, I think it is overpriced and that you can find alternatives that are just as good for much cheaper.
Wrapping up
There you have it — my journey to becoming an Apple fanboy. If you have read up to this point, you have likely picked up that I am closest to the MacBook and I am on my 3rd MacBook Pro as I have gone through the 2018 to 2020 to 2022 model.
I’m also considering the iPad Pro but I’m not yet convinced that I need it — unless I cave in to peer pressure like I did on the Apple Watch.
It is a wonderful device, and I am glad I made that switch.
So yes, I may be an Apple fanboy, but I am swimming in fanatic territory when it comes to the Macbook.
If you have questions about making a switch to an Apple device, I’d be happy to address your concerns!
