The Fuqua Experience

With the purchase of an iPhone this morning, my hipster transition is complete.  Apple has gotten its tentacles into all facets of my life, one area at a time!  The funny thing is…how did I get to this point?

First, the iPod.  No surprise here, as the iPod is by far the dominant seller of mp3 players.  The iPod’s dominance is for good reason; the exterior design and the user interface are so perfect, there’s really no need to look elsewhere.  Certainly, other manufacturers have tried to compete on price per GB storage, or incremental features such as FM tuners or recording capabilities, but all have fallen short.  The iPod has become synonymous for ‘mp3 player’ the way “Kleenex” is synonymous for ’tissue’.

The purchase of the MacBook Pro was a little less obvious.  For the CCMBA program, a laptop running Windows Vista is required; however, this does not necessarily mean a PC is required. Given the dual-boot capabilities of the entire Mac line of computers, I decided to give Apple a shot when exploring my options.  While there are certainly better specs per dollar on PC laptops, form factor was very important in my search.  As a traveling computer, one thing I didn’t want was a “boat anchor” to carry around. However, once you start using low weight as a requirement, the “low-cost” feature of PC laptops quickly falls away.  So I ordered a 15″ MacBook Pro in March and promptly loaded Vista, to have the best of both worlds.

After giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, the ‘Leopard’ OS didn’t disappoint.  That said, I don’t feel that the MacBook Pro has really changed my life.  I’ve always been Windows proficient, so viruses and crashing and all that goodness has never really affected me.  The one thing I can say about Leopard (and now Snow Leopard) is that it is very stable, and approaching the user workflow as a series of problem-solving solutions rather than just providing tools is refreshing.

Which brings me to today, the iPhone.  One of the many things I didn’t know when I arrived in London was that my pre-paid cell phone wouldn’t work internationally.  Domestically, paying $5/month for my meager cell usage made sense, but by the time I got to London, I realized I needed a ’smartphone’ to organize my schedule and retrieve information expeditiously.  I opted to get an iPhone over a Blackberry, mostly because I associate Blackberry’s with the worst of corporate life.  An unfair comparison?  Yes.  But perception is reality!

In Part 2, I’ll flex my MBA muscles for a bit and talk about why this series of events is so interesting to me.

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