Richard's Story: Vagabond with a Macbook

The rationale was this: if I was going to be homeless, I needed a laptop. I needed a laptop that would work better and harder than my Ubuntu-run Compaq and if it had a camera built in, well, hell, that's one less thing for me to carry.

It was one of my first days of self-employment and I decided a new computer was necessary. Not only was it needed, it was needed immediately, before I spent my limited budget on non-business-related frivolities, like food.

When you're in business for yourself, more than for someone else, you realize this platitude is gospel: time is money. By that time, I had been using Linux long enough to know it wouldn't allow me to do everything I wanted without a substantial investment of time – and I was running with a budget thinner than shoestrings. Yes, I've heard of the glory days gone by when men were men and wrote their own device drivers. But that was then, as we say. And I've never been accused of being overly macho.

Vista wasn't even considered.

But I had some experience with Unix – my former employer, the IEEE Computer Society, paid for a work-unrelated night class at UCLA. So I knew Solaris. And I knew that Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD. Also, I knew a few people that didn't know diddly jack about computers and absolutely adored their Macs.

So one afternoon, on impulse, I hopped on my Vino and headed south with the intention of buying an up-model white MacBook at the only Apple store I knew of – in South Coast Plaza. No, I didn't check Apple's site for store locations. Yes, I should have.

The drive from downtown Long Beach to Costa Mesa on a 49cc motor scooter is, yes, a substantial investment of time. It's a three-hour tour (one way). The Pacific Coast Highway, though, with the sunshine and the wind and ocean and all those legs to admire while you're waiting in traffic in Huntington Beach, has a way of making that investment seem justified.

On my way down, I passed a few signs indicating Fashion Island. I had never heard of Fashion Island. I assumed it was some kind of textile lab/glamwalk/live-work commune for UC Irvine design students. I kept going.

I got lost. I got very lost and somehow got on the wrong freeway a couple of times and eventually (sunset) I gave up. That night, having returned chilly and burned and empty-handed, I checked the store locations. There's one in Fashion Island.

A friend drove me there that weekend. Excited, I knew exactly what I wanted and rather gleefuly demanded they bring it to me. And I waited to open the box until we got home. Barely.

Everybody says this, but I didn't believe them until I experienced it: Macs are ready to go right out of the box. The friend that drove me to Fashion Island was moving that weekend so, 20 minutes after I turned it on for the first time, I was connected to the internet and able to shanghai somebody's iTunes playlist from the cafe below us -- we were able to listen to Mitch Hedburg's best-of while we packed boxes. Try doing that with a new Windows machine.

Another thing that everybody says about Macs is that they're better for doing fun, creative things – making music and editing videos and things like that – and Windows machines are better for doing boring things -- like keeping your virus files up to date and playing games. I don't know if that's true or not, as I use mine primarily to write and design books and websites. But the thing that struck me most about the Mac experience is the culture.

Some call it a cult. Some Mac wacks belong in that cult. But, in general, it's less a cult than a culture, and that culture, it seems, is one of people that express themselves through their machines. This holds for end users and programmers alike. As such, it's a culture that blends the best aspects of Windows and Unix. Windows people will try to wow you with various impressive numbers. Unix people will try to impress you with how low they can go. They'll do this while flexing. And Mac people will try to make you envious by showing off all the pretty things they've made.

One of the unexpected powers Macs give you is the ability to entertain old men and crying babies. Even foreign babies.

Not long after I bought my Mac I hit the road. For a month, I used it for absolutely everything – to keep up with correspondence and the news, to work on a web project for the city of Santa Ana, to trade music with new friends, to translate useful (naughty) phrases (from and into French), to map the route, to write what will soon become a travel book. And, on the train from Nice to Milan, I kept a crying boy happy by taking something like 97 pictures of him with PhotoBooth.

When traveling abroad, always, always, always pack plenty of socks and a power adapter.

And I'm still on the road, sleeping on couches and working my way across the USA. A majority of my day is spent on my MacBook and, with it, I'm able to spend more time actually being productive than worrying about the upkeep of the machine. Time is money and, being homeless and self-employed, both are pretty important to me.

Richard is the designer and editor of acycle.org is ready for more work.

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