Would love to know your thoughts on it fundraisey-types x

Last November, I switched from PC to Mac.

Violent MSFT dissent. XP no more. So long, spyware. Etcetera.

Best. Day. Ever.

Launch Day

After a few months of consistent and dedicated whinging, I’d managed to persuade my tech lead that I needed a MacBook Pro to edit video on (and you can see the eventual results). We had plans to make videos to help explain concepts that had thus far been explained by unfriendly, bank statement-esque tables. This is how it turned out:

Justgiving Fees – Explained in Video! from Justgiving on Vimeo.

A month previously we’d been at FOWA ’07, and I remember a different tech lead remarking at just how many Mac laptops were on such wanton display. I think his words were something along the lines of:

Why are there so many fucking macs in here? They’re shit!

Now at this point, it would be dishonest of me to not mention I really wished I had one. Kai and I were idly sipping (Adobe) beer and had a chat with a guy from the Czech Republic who was an agency CEO. I don’t recall the name of the company but he was suitably clad in black and denim. He was speedily tippy-tapping away on a pristine white MacBook. So we asked him why he had a Mac over a PC. He said:

Well. It just works, you know? I open it. It turns on. I can do my work. I send email. I know the battery won’t run out after thirty minutes. I know where everything is. It just feels right, man.

This was the discussion that tipped me over the edge. I had to procure one. It would be life-changing. My workflow would be transformed. I was a Pre-Hardware Fanboy.

So a few weeks later, freshly hungover on a crisp Friday morning, ignoring the behest of the current sysadmin (dude, if you get a Mac, I’m not letting you on the network) we bundled into a black cab and went to the Regent Street Apple Store. The house where dreams come true. The cathedral of chrome. The creative’s temple.

I scampered throughout the store like an over-caffeinated child in a Toys’R'Us. I chose my MBP, I rifled through the accessories, grabbed iWork AND MSOffice, bought a ridiculous bag to put it in, and had the whole lot walloped onto somebody else’s credit card. To those of you who have shared that experience, it’s a special one isn’t it?

We then quickly caught a cab back to base so I could start tinkering.

And this is how it is meant to be. The pure Apple retail experience. I know it sounds weird and simperingly geeky but I’ve since shared other people’s Mac-buying experience and it was perfect. The Apple dude was nice. The shop wasn’t too crazy. The smiles of the store rep, knowing they’ve got another convert.

Now at this juncture, it’s worth making a quick cultural point.

I work for an extremely Microsoft-biased organisation. MSFT is legend around here. We are Windows. I have colleagues who own Microsoft watches, and who think Vista is actually good, and that Windows Media Player is great and Sharepoint is usable and all kinds of other Redmond-related insanity.

Me, I’m an Xbox 360 fan and that’s about as far as it goes.

So the arrival of an Apple computer into such a hostile environment was marked by a combination of apathy, mild derision and claims that it would ‘never be able to get on the network’. Which it did. Really easily.

‘Atheist Bus’ has dominated my working day since launch on tuesday morning. We’re in the enviable hotseat where we can see where all the traffic is coming from, with our all our awesome dashboards of win. Here’s a couple of interesting tidbits I thought were worth sharing:

• BBC News is still the biggest referrer. Although they’ve now taken down the original link, since according to their jolly editorial team, it’s an advert. Yeah. OK.
• Google is next. Big G. No surprise there.
• Facebook is third. Also, not surprising. Facebook generates a huge percentage of mainstream social media, despite the cool kids trying to hate on it.
• A couple of blogs have produced quite an insane amount of traffic. We’ll cover those in more detail on the JG blog tomorrow.
• Quite a number of people have donated more than once.
• The helpdesk dudes have had to edit offensive comments all day, which is rare for our site.
• Nobody has fire-bombed the office yet.
• The new shiny expensive servers haven’t croaked.

I’m most looking forward to seeing what the digg effect looks like tomorrow.

More to come folks. I’m off to do a Quarry show in Kingston.

Glossy screen or not.

My current machine is 11 months old now. It’s kind of upsetting just how much the basic spec has moved on in that time.

Why can’t I trade in my not-that-old-MBP for a new shiny one, and just pay a few hundred quid to deal with the depreciation and upgrade kerfuffle?

I can understand the economics behind Apple wanting everyone to just buy a new machine (at least once a year, looking at the release intervals), but it’s not a great end-user experience.

Of course I only whinge now because I know there’s more chance of me building my own laptop than convincing the aforementioned sysadmin to buy me a new shiny ’08 MBP.

Sigh.

Millions of words have already been written this week about the Lloyd’s / HBOS thing and thousands of jobs are disappearing, probably today.

It was fascinating to hear firsthand from pretty senior HBOS folk (who were mostly sales guys since it’s a clienty PR do) what it’s been like in the office this week. I think some of those who were there last night might be getting their P45s as I write this. They have no idea what’s happening whatsoever, and then when you contrast that with my own working environment, it’s about as far away as you can get.

I think the best quote came from the client manager chap who said:

What, you can actually wear shorts to work? Are you guys hiring?

The other highlight was the venue. I’ve not been to the Imperial War Museum since I was a kid, and eating dinner next to a Polaris missile is, frankly, epic.

Everyone was expecting the Gü Chocolate Puds guy to win. Some recruitment bunch won it in the end.

My takeaway was those of us who work in web, helping people do stuff better and solving problems, have it pretty good really.

Then we went home.

We’d just discovered Ryan Carson’s (of Carsonified and FOWA and wearing-hats fame) fundraising page on Justgiving.

The following exchange happened:

From: Simon Doggett

Sent: 11 August 2008 15:30

To: Sophie De Albuquerque
Shall we make a fuss over Ryan carsons pfp? Could make for some good pr!

On 11 Aug 2008, at 15:54, “Sophie De Albuquerque” wrote:

Good idea.
Very happy to write a blog post this avo…

From: Simon Doggett
Sent: 11 August 2008 16:23
To: Sophie De Albuquerque
Subject: Re: RE:

Tell you what, I can write one today and then you do another one on
Thursday? When he does his headshave?
On 11/08/2008 16:42, “Sophie De Albuquerque”
wrote:

Plan. Do your blogging worst.

Or even (love this)… Blog it, Doggett.
From: Simon Doggett
Sent: 11 August 2008 16:25
To: Sophie De Albuquerque
Subject: Re: RE: RE:

Done. And my retort is:

Well you are over thirty, de Albuquerque.

And that’s where bloggett came from. In contrast, I doubt Sophie is considering blogging at overthirty.com but I guess we shouldn’t rule anything out should we?