The first step to getting help is admitting you have a problem. I’ve been an Apple fanboy for most of my life, and I don’t consider that a problem. Therefore, I guess I don’t need your help. I’ve been using Apple products since I was 5 and sure, not everything they do is perfect, but for the most part, I always enjoyed the user experience of owning an Apple far more than the alternatives.

My fanboyism all started in 1985 when I spent a day visiting my Uncle Philip at his college. He had just bought a Macintosh 512k to do his work for school, and I spent most of the day doodling with Paint and Write. In elementary school I’d rush through my work so I could be the first to jump on the newly acquired Macintosh II’s to play Oregon Trail. Apparently that was an educational game? The only think it taught me, was that when you to finish your work, you should always reward yourself by playing video games. By 5th grade I was staying after school to hang with the computer club. My full-blown Apple nerdiness was starting to show.

After elementary school, my Uncle purchased a Macintosh Classic, and I spent most of my summer weekends down the Cape in my Uncle’s room. Doodling with Paint, playing Monopoly with my cousins, and teaching myself to Battle Chess. Full color screens with animation and computer games. Could it get any better I would ask? Well it did… In High School I thought I wanted to be an architect. After a year of old fashioned drafting class, we got to use the Apple II’s to do 2d and 3d CAD. I used to make some really cool stuff on those old computers. 3d kitchens with dynamic lighting and textures in 1995 was a big deal. I pushed those little computers to their limits and I was never able to break them.

Clearly there was no hiding the fact that I was a computer graphics geek, because my Grandmother bragged to her hair dresser about how talented a computer artist her grandson had become. Wouldn’t you know that hair dresser’s salon was below the largest and best graphic design studio on the South Shore. So, I knocked on the door, got hired as an intern and walked into the world of high-end Macs and Adobe products. In the mid-90′s Shields Design Group was cutting edge. They had everything from Quatras to 9500′s and they even had a few PowerCenter 240′s and 210′s which were the coolest and most powerful mac clones of the time. They had a network and multiple servers, they always bought the latest and greatest software, and we had 10 people who would stay after work to play networked games of Marathon. I was in fanboy heaven.

Off to college I went and with my experience at Shields got hired the first week to do design on campus. The school provided me with my an office and an Apple 7600 my first year. They upgraded me to G3 for the rest of my time there. Shields Design continues to upgrade too, and worked there through college. Even my parents got in on the Apple bandwagon in 1999, when my dad brought home a graphite iMac.

A few years later I purchase my first computer on my own. It was a 15″ titanium powerbook g4. This thing was sexy and slim and most importantly it ran OSX. It was portable and fast and did everything I needed. Sure, it didn’t play ALL the cool computer games or even have wifi at the time, but it ran multiple programs without slowing down and never got a virus. I could surf the internet or do my freelance work from my couch. By the early 2001 Apple started making iPods and once they announced a color iPod, I had to have one. I would rock that iPod until the second generation iPhone came out.

At this point in my life, I had just purchased my next Mac. It just so happens to be the computer i’m using today. It’s a little 2ghz, Intel Mac Mini with 2gb or RAM, and it’s my work horse. I beat on this little computer day in and day out. I open 1gb photoshop docs, and run 10 programs at once, and it never complains. I also have a 20″ cinema display and a 500gb timecapsule, and my company owns a 17″ Macbook Pro with 24″ LED monitor that my partner uses as her daily machine.

I’m not interested in hacking around doing stuff that PC fanboys do. I want a machine that runs like it did on day one. A computer that doesn’t get bogged down with spyware, malware, adware, bloatware, trialware, antivirus programs, anti-antivirus programs and all that crap you deal with on PCs. I don’t want to have to worry about deleting startup items and messing with files to make my machine run like it should. I want to be able to hook my computer to my time capsule and not spend all day fighting to turn the security and putting passwords on. I want a convergence device that syncs my entire life seamlessly between my phone and my computer. I want a machine I can trust to beat on every day and rarely give me a problem. I want a computer that just works. And that is why I’m an unapologetic Apple Fanboy.