For all my life I’ve been loyal to PC. It’s been a pretty good relationship, certainly with its ups and downs like in any relationship. It started back in 1992 with my dad’s i486-based computer, and after that there was no stopping us. Fast forward to today, and I’ve been through more than a dozen machines and numerous rebuilds. I’ve even built a couple of water cooled rigs just for the hell of it.

I’ve been a steadfast supporter of the PC platform and what it stands for. I’ve regularly argued against Apple whenever they’ve done bad things, such as locking down pretty much everything they make to suit their business models, or enforcing unfair censorship of publishers’ content – all the while pointing fingers at other. So, I hope my point is made clear: understand that it would take a lot to make me buy an Apple product.

Just a few days ago in July of 2011, however, I decided to do just that.

I’ve finally fallen victim to the Apple propaganda machine. Just got to have it, ‘cause it’s got a glowing bright Apple logo on it, right?

No, I’ll tell you why: the hardware. I’m first and foremost a hardware enthusiast. I’m not like the fanboy that stays loyal to any single platform just because he can’t afford to buy them all. There are a couple of very logical reasons why I decided to upgrade to the new mid-2011 Macbook Air 13”.

I bought the laptop I’m typing this on back in 2009. This Asus 13” laptop is almost perfection in all ways to me. I upgraded it with an SSD and it’s been running Windows 7 like clockwork ever since I got it. Note the “almost” – I demand perfection!

Ever since the invention of the term “High Definition”, PC manufacturers apparently decided to stop – no reverse – the direction of development for PC screens in terms of resolution and aspect ratio. Wherever you look, it’s near impossible to find any laptop that doesn’t sport an “HD LED 16:9” screen, whether it’s 11” or 15”. The fancy term “HD” in numbers is actually 1366×768 pixels, and you have to go up to 16” or more to transition to the even fancier “Full HD”. And since when was 16:9 better than 16:10?

I have an old Asus 15” laptop from 2006 that sports a 1680×1050 16:10 screen, so why on earth can’t I get something like that on a 13”, now five years later?

The new Macbook Air 13”, with its 1440×900 resolution screen, is the first slim laptop with a higher resolution than 1366×768 that I’ve seen, period. It doesn’t really take much, does it? Why aren’t PC manufacturers even trying to advance in the same way? Why don’t we have 1920×1080 screens on 13” laptops in 2011? We should have been there years ago.

Rant over, those are the two main reasons for me buying a Macbook Air: it’s slim and has a higher resolution screen than any comparable PC laptop. There’re more personal reasons why I am going for a mac: they have lower latencies in audio applications, which is a big point for me as a digital composer and remixer. There’s got to be a reason most DJs and producers are happy with their Macs. The Macbook Air also comes with an SSD pre-installed, so no need to open it up and reinstall the OS as soon as I get it. You need SSD these days, trust me. You also get a special connection option called Thunderbolt. What is this Asgard tech you speak of? It’s better than USB 3.0, can be converted to Firewire, and even supports daisy-chaining! Now that’s what I call development.

I’m looking forward to receiving my Macbook Air 13” soon. I will probably be installing Windows 7 on it,  alongside the included OS X Lion. Old habits die hard, right? We’ll see … Word 2010 just crashed on me as I was typing this very paragraph.