It's time, and past time.

I was watching the "State of Origin" at a "football party" this week, it's the biggest football competition in Australia, and I guess reasonably similar to football anywhere else. Except that our guys play without any form of protective padding, or indeed any apparent common sense.

Not my type of scene really, but I'm sure I can work in an analogy later to justify writing about it. I was getting a bit bored when I noticed our host typing away on a new laptop. Its solid-looking design almost made me think it was a PB3400, but as I took a closer look the logo was not the old 6-colour apple, but said "Compaq Presario". Our host was playing away on a computer game during the football. When he put it away, I picked it up to check it out.

Now I'm going to preface what I'll be saying by mentioning that I've been a Mac fanatic for about 4 years now - before that I was a Windows guy, happily bagging the Mac at any opportunity. In my work I deal with both platforms, and Windows drives me nuts to this day, whereas the Mac causes me very little grief. In short, I love my Mac.

But this machine was stunning.

Big, clear monitor; large fully featured keyboard; JBL speakers built-in and nice form. It also had a host of odd silver buttons on either side of the trackpad that looked really sexy. Powered by a Pentium II 333, with 64 MB RAM, 6GB HD and 56k modem. The entire package? $AUS4000, significantly less than the PBG3, which in Australia retails at around $AUS4995.

But I never knew Windows could look like this thing made it look.

One glance and I was hooked!! Sure, anybody can make a funky background texture and download it from the net, but this was a gorgeous example of the genre. Very "groovy nineties cafe". But even better was the Windows theme. It matched the background texture amazingly; the folders were both recognisable and not even remotely irritating. It went right through the whole system, down to the Start menu, changing icons, fonts, the works. It looked great and it felt great to use.

Already I can hear every man and his dog shouting "Kaleidoscope!" in an enraged voice. Well, to be honest, I've never seen a Kaleidoscope theme that I could stand as a general work environment.

The Kaleidoscope "Boilerplate" theme. Looks sensational, but could you seriously work with it?

The whole ethos seems to be one of "Let's make this as wacky as we can," rather than making a cool, chic theme that enhances the work experiences without detracting from it. Currently I'm using the new OS 8.5 theme, "paper," but it doesn't go nearly far enough, just some changes to the general look of the windows and buttons, and that's about it.

Now we all know that the PBG3 will scorch the Compaq in performance testing, and of course, the PowerBook has more features, but now I worry for Apple again. Why?

The machine's owner is a Mac user. And I was tempted too.

Apple has always been notorious for being both expensive and slightly behind the times. We Mac fanatics know that perception is false. Apple has always been an industry leader when it comes to developing new industry hardware. Unfortunately some other industry player usually takes one look at Apple's new gear, then markets the hell out of it, with everyone thinking it was the third party's idea in the first place. As to expense, Macs are more costly, if you look at up front price and Mhz for Mhz. We know that the Return on Investment and Total Cost of Ownership is better, and that a G3 Mhz cycle counts for more than a Pentiums'. Sadly, once again no one is interested in catch phrases like ROI and TCO. To the Wintel crowd they seem like desperate justifications for an over-priced, under-powered anachronism. Nobody outside the Mac universe cares that Mhz for Mhz, we have the fastest consumer processors around. Again, it just seems like we'd try anything to justify our choice of machine. And let's face it, it's not as if we haven't given them plenty of ammunition for that charge.

Apple will always be walking that fine edge of market perception, and needs to be more aware than ever of the trends that are taking place today. Windows people have the ability to make their interfaces look both funky and functional. Their machines are cheaper up-front, and appear to have better processors for the buck than Powerbooks.

We know this isn't the case, but it's not up to us; we're preaching to the converted. It's time for Apple to recognise that to boost their market perception they need more than the iMac. It's time to take the bull by the horns and release a fully fledged series of consumer machines that are cheaper up front than any competing product in the same power range, and make it an incontrovertible fact that the Mac is faster, cheaper, better and funkier than any other machine on the planet.

And our themes are cool too.

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Kelsey Brookes works at the Computer Graphics College as a lecturer in sound and introductory computing for the net. He is also a trained opera singer, writes contempory music and performs as a singer and keyboard player in a cover band called Drill. Kelsey is 24, lives in Sydney, Australia and has moved far too many times to be considered even remotely grounded in the real world.

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February 09, 2010