To the 'dark side' ...
I guess I got hooked on computers back around 1998, when I got my first PC. Since then, I've had a number of PC's - and upgraded almost all of them along the way (faster processors, HDD's, optical drives, etc). I've had friends who worked for Apple preach the benefits of them to me - but I wouldn't even consider an Apple product. I thought they were overpriced, technologically inferior computers aimed at people who don't know how to use a "real" computer. Then, last year I got an iPod video (60gb). I was really impressed with it's ease of use, quality and dependability. About 5 months later, I made the jump to the dark side. I bought a brand new MacBook (2.0 ghz, 2gb ram, 80gb hard drive). I was almost embarassed to tell my friends .. those who had been preaching the virtues of Apple products would give me the "I told you so" look, and my PC friends would laugh at me for getting a 'wannabe' computer. What to do???
I can say that I love this thing. Apple knows how to really integrate hardware and software into a stable, fast, reliable product. Sure, there are some things that it can't do as well as my PC, but the things it does better definitely outweigh the things it can't. With photography being a hobby of mine, the Mac was a natural choice. Sure, I can't play video games on the Mac like I could on my PC (Battlefield 2, anyone?), but I still have the PC... although I barely use it any more!
Web design
I don't know if I can really call this "web design", but oh well. I started playing around with website design and HTML while I was laid up from a bad mountain biking accident in '99. After that, I took a few courses through Prosoft, an accredited web design certification program. For a short time, I thought about getting into web design as a career, but I found that it required a LOT of experience, coding skills (besides just HTML) and more training than I had. So now, I just do this stuff for fun. I change up my website every now and then for kicks. I used to use Microsoft FrontPage for my websites, but now that I'm on the Mac, I'm in the process of transitioning to Adobe Dreamweaver. It took a little bit of adjustment, but I'm finding that Dreamweaver is a much more powerful tool with a lot more advanced features (javascript, xhtml, asp, etc). I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface, but that's the fun part of learning a new program!
Music
I'm finding that iTunes works MUCH better on the Mac than it does on a Windoze machine (no big shock), and organizing my music is a lot easier now. Since the hard drive on the Mac is only 80gb, I'm taking advantage of my wireless network at home and storing all my music on a NAS that I connect to from any of the computers in the house.
