Goodbye PC. Hello MacBook Pro.
After two decades of wandering around in the shadows of the Dark Side, I have had it.
I’m sick of all the BS PC issues that keep cropping up.
This latest round of Politically Crappy inanity / stupidity / rigidity, the phalanx of computer gremlins torching my every effort to… you know… GET MY FREAKING COMPUTER TO ACTUALLY WORK LIKE IT SHOULD… has sent me over the edge.
So I’m buying a MacBook Pro.
That’s right, I’ve turned to the Light Side.
Cupertino, baby.
I’m taking a plunge into Mr. Jobs’ hot tub.
This is a massive paradigm shift.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know writers are supposed to be in touch with their Right Brain.
And Apple is all that.
But I always thought Macs were about being cute and fun, light and lively.
PCs were about work and… well… work… and more work… and even more work.
With a PC, a writer writes.
With a Mac, a writer basically fucks around.
So all you Macolytes…
Tell me I’m wrong.
Assure me when I walk into the Apple Store, they’re not going to ask to see my Dali Lama tattoos (which I don’t have), my extra hot, non-fat, butterscotch mocha latté with extra whipped cream (which I don’t drink), and my hybrid (which I don’t drive).
Will they and this voodoo machine I’m buying respect the fact that I, a screenwriter…
Am attached to story structure?
I believe in things like page counts and plot points, three acts and beginnings, middles, and ends?
Please convince me my writing won’t get lost in the abyss of cool-ness and I won’t suddenly find myself plunked down for endless hours at the local Caribou Coffee, with Final Draft open, FADE IN typed, cursor blinking… and I’m busy trying to download a bootleg copy of a Czech band’s rendition of Arcade Fire’s “Keep the Car Running.”
Tell me I won’t lose my edge.
Let me know you can still suffer what a writer ought to suffer in the pursuit of their craft.
And yet maybe… just maybe…
My computer will work…
And I will be able to take the tiniest shred of pleasure out of my daily interface with…
Fingers on keyboard?
Tell me…
It’s okay to take a bite of the apple.
UPDATE: Thanks for all the advice. I will do my best to limp along until March when the new MacBook Pro drops. Funny thing about all this, it got me to thinking: How did I end up using PCs all these years anyhow? The very first computer my wife and I owned (technically hers) was an Apple IIc. I wrote the spec script K-9 on it, complete with the five-and-a-quarter inch floppy discs. Dot matrix printer that took a half-hour to print out a 112 page script. But when Universal Studios bought K-9 and we got offices on the lot, we were given a PC to work on. Then an overall deal with Warner Bros for 3 years — same thing. I was an early adopter of what became Movie Magic Screenwriter which at the time only worked on PCs. So I guess that’s how I became ‘hooked’ on the PC side of things.
Anyway it’s time for a change. Mac World, here we come!