Ever since Apple came out with a way to boot Windows XP on a Macintosh, I’ve had my eye on those nifty-neato iMacs with the whole computer contained in the screen. I kept resisting, kept telling myself that my current computer still had plenty of life left in it, but then, one day, when I wasn’t even paying attention, my hand wandered away and ordered one without my permission. My anger was tempered when I discovered that it had ordered the machine with extra memory.

This is my Macintosh experience.

The package arrived Wednesday afternoon, a magnificent, brown rectangular prism housing a 20″ Apple iMac upgraded from the standard 512 megabytes to 2 gigabytes of memory. From the moment I removed the white iMac box from the FedEx box, I knew that Apple had taken great pains to be as thoughtful as possible in their presentation, because you see, the iMac box had a handle on it.

I lifted the computer out of the packaging and set it on my desk, taking some time to admire how simple and sleek it was. Everything was so shiny. I felt bad touching it without washing my hands first. I went ahead and licked it, figuring if I could dirty it that much, I’d stop caring about finger prints. It’s like how you always park your new car at the very back of the parking lot until it finally gets that first ding. After that, you don’t care anymore. Anyway, it tasted just a little bit like maple syrup. Incredible.

I plugged everything in - power, keyboard, mouse - and pressed the power button on the back. The screen lit up bright and friendly, greeting me in multifarious tongues. It took my picture. I blushed a little bit out of bashfulness.

It walked me through setting up my wireless network, which worked perfectly for a little bit, but then stopped, because hardly anything works with my Netgear wireless access point. I have no idea why. I plugged in an Ethernet cable and immediately ordered an Apple Airport Express from Amazon on my Windows laptop.

I paused for a few seconds to mull how deathly quiet the computer was. The hard drive didn’t even make any noise. Several hundred goosebumps sprouted on my skin.

I started clicking around. The interface was actually fun to play with. The pretty little effects, though useless when all things are considered, made everything feel more pleasant to use. It took me a long time to get accustomed to using the Apple key for shortcuts, because that key is in the same place as the Alt key in Windows, where most shortcuts use the Ctrl key. Apart from that, all was glory.

Installing programs was freakishly simple to do. Insert a CD or double-click a downloaded .dmg file, and then drag the program’s icon into the Applications folder. That’s it. To remove it, drag the icon into the Trash. The process of copying files into directories was made completely transparent. For all I knew, the icon was the program. This made me feel loved.

I went in to change the screensaver, but then, the System Preferences program crashed. OS X gave me no more information other than that the program had quit unexpectedly. Huh, I thought, Odd. I started it back up and carried on as if nothing had happened.

I installed a few more programs, and then realized that it was getting late, and I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to use my iMac to do this week’s comic, so I got to work installing Boot Camp and Windows XP. This, also, was smooth and silky simple. In half-an-hour, Windows was up and running. It felt oddly savage, moving from the sleek, considerate interface of OS X back into the utilitarian Windows environment. And yet, the sensation of returning to Normandy sixty years after the invasion gave me an odd sense of calm.

I shook off the eerie feeling, installed Photoshop and my scanner, and began inking a comic. The power of the Intel Core Duo processor was immediately apparent. Inking isn’t very demanding of the system, but even doing that, Photoshop was noticeably more responsive than it was on my 3GHz Pentium 4.

I quickly inked two panels and then decided to go play with OS X some more. I shut down Windows XP, which caused a Blue Screen of Death. Strange, I thought, wondering briefly if I was in trouble. I absentmindedly brushed that concern aside.

OS X came back up, and everything was fine.

Several days passed. The iMac became my joy of joys to which I returned home every evening. I wrote off the occassional crash as being my fault for carelessly installing and removing so many programs in such a short time. But then, Sunday morning, as I was surfing the web in Firefox, something strange and frightening happened: a shroud of translucent gray slowly washed over the screen like a curtain. A small, darker-gray box appeared on the screen, informing me, in one language that I could read and four that I could not, that I needed to restart my computer. It did not tell me why, nor did it give me a choice, just that I had to do it, and that I had to use the power button. Was this the OS X version of the Blue Screen of Death?

I did as it said, feeling slightly confused. Wasn’t this a Macintosh? Aren’t they supposed to just work? Do they not run on fairy dust and children’s laughter?

The Apple logo reappeared. The little gear graphic below spun around. The Gray Screen of Death came back. Uh oh. I restarted again.

The Apple logo reappeared. The little gear graphic below spun around. The computer turned off. Crap.

Thinking quickly, I tried booting into Windows, which worked, and the system stayed running long enough for me to back up some important files onto a thumb drive before I got a Blue Screen of Death. Oh boy, not good. I deduced that I may have a piece of bad hardware, probably either the hard disk or the memory.

It was time for a call to Apple technical support, which I found to be surprisingly satisfying. The first operator I spoke to was a little bit surly about having to work on Sunday, but was otherwise very helpful. She told me that Boot Camp may have corrupted my hard disk somehow, and that I should wipe the drive out and reinstall OS X. She gave me a case number to write down, and I hung up while the operating system installed.

Success. The familiar blue background returned, along with my guarded optimism. I ran the software updates, but halfway through the download, the Gray Screen of Death presented itself once again, like a cancer once thought to be in remission. A small tear formed in the corner of my right eye, which quickly evaporated after I blinked several times. This was no time for weeping. I would save my new baby, at the expense of my own body if need be.

I called technical support again, and was told to run the Apple diagnostics program. I hung up again while that ran. The result: no issues found. None. No bad hard drive, nor faulty memory. Medically, it was in perfect health, and yet, as if cursed by some arcane magick, it was slipping away from me, guided to the light by the siren’s song of Paradise. I knew I was running out of time.

I made a final call to technical support. “Save her,” I beseeched them, as if bestowing gender upon inanimate objects was a natural thing to do in Germanic languages. In a surprising, no, baffling move, the new operator asked me for the brand of my router. My ire was triggered. Here lay a dying child, and he wanted to know what year my Volkswagen was. I accosted him verbally, claiming expertise in his very field, showing him in no uncertain terms that I was now in charge of determining what was wrong with what, and I said that something vile and unearthly was defeating the spirit of my iMac, and I decided that it shall be repaired under warranty.

Shortly thereafter, the operator surrendered to me, relenting his obsession with my networking hardware, and agreeing, at long last, that I would exchange my computer for a new one. Exchange? I thought as my heart dropped out of my chest and tumbled over my organs like a Plinko chip. “But she will have never even known me, her adopted father, who would see her raised with care and love.” I felt the words leave my mouth as if spoken by someone else. “What of her soul? Who will repair her soul?” The operator, his thickly accented voice offering no consolation apart from the reassurance that I would have absolution from any monetary burden, told me simply that a shipping label would arrive in my email, and that a new computer would be shipped out to me once it was confirmed with FedEx that I had dropped off mine.

The color drained from my face. I would never see her again. She would be taken from me. I would never see her start kindergarten; I would never teach her to drive; I would never give her hand to the young lad who would win her heart. Would she ever even experience those things with another father, in another life? This, also, I would never know. She was gone, and no sacrifice would bring her back to me. The promise of another’s arrival gave me little sanctuary from my grief.

And so, I unplugged everything from the back of my brand new iMac, and gently, neatly, gingerly placed the broken machine back into its box, with the care given to a fallen loved one as he is committed to the ground. Forgetting my athiesm, I said a short prayer, that the spirit of the deceased would rest peacefully. Somewhere far away, a baby cried.

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