Exactly 10 years ago, on August 15, 1998 Apple released their first iMac. A beautiful all-in-one green Mac. It didn’t have a floppy drive, which was shocking at that time and it had 2 USB ports. Many people knew that this was a big step forward and that Apple was moving in the right direction with Steve Jobs on board. How many of us thought about buying Apple stocks then?

Watch a video of this defining moment in tech history when Steve showed an iMac to the world - the most important Apple presentation since releasing the first Mac in 1984.

There is also an amazing iMac advert called “3 steps” and a photo gallery prepared by Wired called ‘10 Years of Cuddly, Friendly iMacs‘.

BTW which iMac is your favourite? Let me know in comments below.

My first impression with the new browser from Mozilla was very positive. I am wondering how many people will switch from Internet Explorer 7 to Firefox 3.

Try it yourself and help to set a record: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html

Checkout great articles about Fireox 3 on Computerworld:
- Hands-On: Firefox 3 fixes what’s broke and keeps what’s right
- Image Gallery: Firefox 3 fixes what’s broke and keeps what’s right
- Timeline: Firefox vs. IE over the years

Switch Stories on Firefox 3

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WWDC 2007
This conference last year was an amazing event where we could see an OS X Leopard in action and learn more about developing apps for an iPhone. There are some amazing photos on Engadet and in the meantime you can watch a hilarious introduction by a PC guy - WWDC 2007 Opening - PC Guy is Steve Jobs and a Demo of Core Animation in OS X.

WWDC 2006
Engadget has another fantastic photo cover from the conference that took place in 2008. Similar to 2007, there was a funny message from a PC guy in the first minutes. The event gathered 4200 people.

WWDC 2005
It was a defining moment in Apple’s history when Steve Jobs announced a switch from IBM PowerPC processors to Intel CPUs. Because of this strategic decision, today we can run Windows on Macs using Bootcamp and MacBook Pro is claimed to be one of the fastest notebooks running Windows Vista.

As I mentioned in the beginning - no rumours and predictions here. It is like opening presents before Christmas. Similar happened before the last keynote in Jan 2008 when we already knew about MacBook Air. What a shame!

Enjoy WWDC08!

I spent 17 years using Windows, a couple more if you count the experiments with the dreadful Windows/286 & Windows/386. Man real mode sucked. I was a heavy DOS user before that. On Windows I went through 3.0, 3.1, Workgroups, NT 4.0, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003 Server and Vista. I had spent countless hours honing my skills with the platform, both as a power user and professional software developer. How would it be possible for someone with my background to switch to a completely new platform and walk away from all of that history?

David was very surprised when his daughter, who was accepted to go to Virigina Tech was required to buy a Macintosh. It came out as a great occasion for him to play around with the new technology.

“I was just tired of Windows. There was nothing about it that really excited me. I waited 5 years for Vista to come around and when it did I was unimpressed. There was nothing that really stood out.”

Enjoy reading David’s exciting story on his blog:
- A hardcore Windows guy gets a Mac
- Mac: After two months of Mac, here’s why I switched
- Why switching to Mac was the right move for me

Stay tunned to read about another celebrity switchers by subscribing to Switch Stories Blog RSS.

And remember to tell your friends to join!

David is passionate about technology and working as a Software Test Engineer makes him look deeper into the hearts of computers and operating systems.

David, it looks like that after many years you had a big come back to Mac platform as your computer journey began with Apple ][ and the first Macintosh. How was it like, from today's perspective to work on these machines?

It's actually amusing to think that an Apple ][ running at 1MHz with 48KB or RAM could be considered a "fast" computer. However, the Apple ][ was a darn fast computer and very efficient with it's clock cycles. When you consider the first IBM computers were running at 4MHz and when compared side by side, the two computers pretty much ran at the same speed.

The 8086 processor and the design of the computer dictated that the system clock had to run 4 times the speed of the 6502. The 8086 had to be

What really kicked it for me was having to “prove” that the Dell Re-install version of Windows was a Genuine copy of Windows. To be told I was a pirate just because I was re-installing Windows due to the lack of security that Microsoft has in Windows was pretty much the final straw.

There is always some story behind each switch and Dave Metzener was happy to share his experience and reasons for choosing a Mac. Checkout his story and find out what happened in 1979: Vista was the last straw!.

Reason #2

One of my friends couldn’t understand why I didn’t just buy a cheaper HP. I tried to explain that it was not about cost, but rather about what I wanted in a machine. I didn’t want to buy a laptop that I could just afford, I wanted to buy one that I “wanted”.

I am a big fan of SEOMoz.org, a Search Engine Optimization community where I learnt a lot about SEO from great content they publish at the website. When I found out that one of the SEOMoz staff members switched to a Mac, I got in touch with him to ask about his story. What is interesting, Mel Gray has not switched from Windows. Here is what happened: Switching from Linux to OS X.

But what is really interesting came with the end of the week. According to Alex Curylo, we are going to have an enterprise switcher soon:

Salesforce.com is giving Macs to all employees. Yup, all 4000 of us; we are going to be one of the largest enterprise software Mac shops around. As the leases come up for the Dells, IT is replacing with Macs.

And why, you ask, Security! The resources it takes to defend against all the stuff the baddies throw at a PC, it

]]> http://switchstories.com/blog/2008/04/25/is-salesforce-switching-to-macs/feed/ http://switchstories.com/blog/2008/04/22/the-first-switch-story-my-mac-so-far-a-diary/ http://switchstories.com/blog/2008/04/22/the-first-switch-story-my-mac-so-far-a-diary/#comments Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:49:11 +0000 Paul Montwill http://switchstories.com/blog/?p=6 I am proud to announce that the first switch story has been published on SwitchStories.com. It is great news as finally we can present the content this website was created for. Lee wrote a fantastic piece about his experience when switching from Windows to MacOS X. It is quite detailed and it covers a few months of the time he spent with his new operating system and machine. The story is very nice to read and I am sure you will enjoy it as I did:

I have been a PC user all my life. I have known Mac users and for as long as I can remember have been taking the p*ss out of them for one reason or another. In fact, I can’t actually think of a day that went by when I had nothing to say that was derogatory to my colleague with the Mac.

Lee’s story was very helpful for me when I was considering my switch and his enthusiastic

]]> http://switchstories.com/blog/2008/04/22/the-first-switch-story-my-mac-so-far-a-diary/feed/ http://switchstories.com/blog/2008/04/08/are-you-confident-enough-to-switch/ http://switchstories.com/blog/2008/04/08/are-you-confident-enough-to-switch/#comments Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:37:59 +0000 Paul Montwill http://switchstories.com/blog/?p=5 If you have switched to a different internet browser does it mean you are an advanced web user? Do you need to be open-minded to go beyond your “default” option when it comes to surfing on the Internet? And finally, what is the difference between people sticking to Internet Explorer and those who choose an alternative option, like Firefox?

Seth Godin, in his latest blog post “Why downloading Firefox is like getting into college” presents some interesting facts that will help us to answer the above questions:

25% of the visitors we track at Squidoo use Firefox, which is not surprising. But 50% of the people who actually build pages on the site are Firefox users. Twice as many.

As he founded Squidoo he is the best guy to present these stats. He continues with a few conclusions:

This is true of bloggers, of Twitter users, of Flickr users… everywhere you look, if someone is using Firefox, they’re way more likely to be using other power tools online. The reasoning: In order to use Firefox, you need to be confident enough to download and use a browser that wasn’t the default when you first turned on your computer.

Switchers are usually demanding people who don’t just accept an average solution. They go out and look for different options as they believe in the power of choice. Once they find it, they will tell everybody around about their discovery. They can get excited about an Add-on to Firefox that made their life easier and will be happy to spread the news so other can benefit from it as well.

If I ran Firefox, I’d be hard at work promoting extensions and power tools (I love the search add-ons) and all manner of online interactions.

Seth very often talks about sneezers, people who are far more likely to spread an ideavirus than others. Most switchers are like that. Hungry to share the news. Seth is my marketing guru so if you haven’t read any of his books, I recommend you started with his best selling Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable.

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