It started in the Apple Boutique on Regent Street in London (let's not pretend the place is a mere shop) where I was greeted by an oily salesman who glided over to inquire how he could make my day special. I told him I planned to buy a Macbook and he showed me the three models. I had already decided on the middle of the range device since it was the cheapest aluminium model (and therefore looked good). The cost? Well over nine hundred quid. This isn't a major games machine, you understand, with oodles of RAM and a massive screen. No. This is a fairly standard spec (by today's standards) laptop that would cost less than half the price were it not made by Apple.

I was offered a ten pound discount if I bought Apple Office there and then. I declined saying I would download a version for free from the internet. When I was told by the salesman that "This is an Apple, sir. You can't download Windows software for it" I had to show him the Open Office website where I could, indeed, download a free version of Office for the Macbook that would do anything I needed (and much more). He humphed (what else could he do?).

I have now used the Macbook for a few months and have decided my most of my initial impressions about it were right. It is a beautiful piece of technology that is very well put together. A truly quality laptop, though Lenovo also make quality laptops that don't cost so much (though of course they don't really look as nice either). Here's the shocker though. The operating system (Mac OSX) does not look as good as Linux! Ubuntu to be precise.

Now most Mac fans would cough and splutter at that last statement but I genuinely feel it to be the case. I have a good friend in Australia who is very Mac centric and has been for years and when I mentioned this to him over a video call he coughed and spluttered with incredulity that I might even think such a thing. I think the problem is that Linux (and perhaps especially Ubuntu, with its default brown theme) is widely considered to be the ugly duckling of operating systems. Ubuntu users know, however, that their OS is massively configurable in so many ways (in my experience, many more than Windows and certainly OSX) and few leave it with the default theme for long. I have a dock similar to the OSX dock but a lot more configurable and useful (even many Mac owners complain that their doc doesn't behave the way they would like it to - Ubuntu users have the choice of several docks!). I used the Mac camera to show my friend my PC (running Ubuntu) and his incredulity that I might utter such a stupid statement that the Mac may look inferior to Linux changed to incredulity that I may actually be right.

In case he reads this, I hasten to add he still prefers the Mac :-)

So there it is. I have a beautiful Macbook that I love the look of and I do appreciate its build quality. Did I pay too much for it? Probably. Do I regret the decision (not that I had a choice)? Not really.