Since I was 10, I remember building PCs with my dad, collecting miscellaneous parts like motherboards, video cards, hard drives to CD-ROMs, RAM and CPU (either Intel or AMD) and putting them together. Often times, we’d cut our fingers on the computer’s chassis, battle scars for the computer we’d enjoy when it was complete. We built these computers for friends, trying out new configurations and vendors, happy with the knowledge of building something that would help us work, learn and play.

Then we stopped building and started buying; HP, Compaq, Sony and Dell, they were welcomed along with the lack of injuries and the backing of warranty support.

I’ve been a PC kid for almost 17 years now, an Amiga kid before that, and I know the ins and outs of PCs. I can troubleshoot, replace and fix just about anything.

But now it was time to move on from all that, and with my tax refund, I purchased my first Mac this weekend, the new MacBook. I’d been waiting for my chance for a few years but they were always out of reach, both financially and logistically in migrating over to a vastly-different platform.

Many attribute my stubbornness to adopt the Mac platform earlier to an unfounded hate, but that’s simply not true. I’ve worked with them without any hesitation both in school and at work, I just decided that unless Apple significantly reduced the prices of their products, or unless I had enough money to justify the purchase, I wouldn’t buy anything from Apple.

Business-wise, it made sense to back PCs. You could do the same work and achieve the same results with a PC with a significant financial savings. Given the choice to outfit my company’s employees with computers and knowing the budget we’d need to have, PCs were the first option for quite a long time.

Last July, I sat in line to get my first iPhone, waiting for the 3G model I knew was coming out shortly after the first generation. It was my first bite of the Apple, so to speak, only having received iPods before as gifts. I was immediately appreciative of the effort that went into the product, and was impressed and smitten with the interface and overall functionality of the mesh of hardware and software.

So I did it, I got my MacBook, and not even 5 days into my experience, I couldn’t be happier with my choice. I could install Windows and run it without issue should I need to, and I’m actually intending on installing Windows 7 to try it out, and can finally start tinkering around with iPhone application development.

I still believe in Microsoft’s goal to get computers on every desk in every corner of the world, and they’ve done a great job so far, and I’m confident they’ll continue to push computers into areas not yet influenced by technology.

But I became frustrated with Microsoft’s apparently comfort in platform dominance, and when Vista was delayed time and time again with their lofty goals in features being slowly stripped out, all while Apple was pushing out new tools and software that are still easing into the daily computing tasks, I thought about switching platforms.

Windows wasn’t the only victim of scope creep, Internet Explorer lay dormant for years without any active development, forcing other developers to try to fix the problem. Only until Firefox began picking up a market share in internet browsing, there were no goals on Microsoft’s behalf to create a better tie between the operating system and the internet as we know it.

Does this mean I won’t go back to using a PC? Not at all. I’m currently on one at work for the foreseeable future, and will continue to use them wherever they are available.

But for now, my primary computer for home is my MacBook, and I couldn’t be happier.

Now, Mac users: If you use any programs or utilities that you think I’d benefit from, let me know in the comments and I’ll check them out! So far, I’m using Firefox w/ Google Gears, Growl, Versions, iChat, iTunes, Cover Sutra, Destroy Twitter, Coda and CSSEdit.