I want to make this clear right off the bat. This is not a story of someone who loved Apple computers, saw the error of his ways and became a PC guy. To this day I consider myself an Apple fanboy and my main devices are all Apple products. This is the story of how gaming got me obsessed with the components and performance of the build-it-yourself gaming PC world. And it’s only just beginning. Speaking of which, let’s start at my beginning.
I’ve been a Mac user and Apple fan for as long as I can remember. My father was drawn to the Mac in the late eighties because of its simplicity and ease of use. He often described how he could never get used to the function command structure of PCs at the time and how the graphical user interface of the Macs worked so much better for him. So my love for Mac stems from the computers we had in the home when I was growing up. The first computer I remember using was my father’s Macintosh SE. It was no longer regularly used but I recall banging on the keys while it sat collecting dust in our attic.
The next Mac we owned was the Macintosh Performa, and here is where my memories are more clear. This was the first computer I played games on like SimCity and Marathon. I made Christmas lists on the Netscape Internet browser. Wrote things up for school projects. My family ran their business off of this Mac. It was so beloved that we still have it to this day. Sadly, its hard drive crashed some years ago and I haven’t had the energy to figure out how to get it back up and running.
When the coloured iMac came out in 1998 we, like a lot of Mac fans, were super excited by the bold, fresh design. It felt like a new era and a rebirth for the company we all loved. We bought a red and blue one. One for my sister and one for me. We did so much with these computers. I created home movies, which included Lego stop-motion with music I downloaded from Limewire. Listened to music. I played games like Nanosaur (a personal favourite of mine when I was young). I remember being a Mac gamer was hard, particularly in the late 90s and early 2000s. Games today hardly come to Mac and are usually sloppy ports and not well optimized so you can only imagine how poor the selection was back then.
In elementary school, we would get these scholastic catalogues that showed mostly books you could order, but it also included a video game section for computers. I would look at every game very carefully and read the requirements; Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows… Mac! Finally, a game I can play. And this is how things went for a very long time. The only other place to reliably find Mac games was at the Apple retail stores themselves.
My love for Apple goes beyond just owning their products. I was the kid at school known for being the Mac guy. I obsessed over every product. I watched every Keynote Steve Jobs gave and would watch them over and over again in the days that followed. I worked at a local Apple reseller for ten years. I was an Apple fan who despised PCs and Microsoft.
PC gaming really started taking off to the point where average consumers were building their own from hand-picked parts from different manufacturers and assembling them at home. PC gaming is viewed by some as the pinnacle of gaming. Highest frame rates. Best resolution. Greatest visuals. So to me, a man who loves the quality of Apple products, was somehow naturally gravitated toward this promised increased quality.
I started researching PC parts and how to build them sometime in 2018. This mainly consisted of watching build guides on YouTube from the likes of Linus Tech Tips, Bitwit, JayzTwoCents, and Paul’s Hardware, among others. You suddenly realize that there aren’t that many components to a gaming PC. And when you watch enough, you start picking up the nomenclature and part names. You learn the different brands and where their strengths are. These YouTube channels were invaluable in helping me get up to speed with PC gaming.
Enter my first PC:
- CPU: Ryzen 7 2700 with stock cooler
- GPU: Asus RTX 2080
- RAM: 16 GB Corsair Vengeance
- Case: Corsair
- MB: Asus Tif-Gaming B450-Plus
- PSU: EVGA 750W
- Storage: WD 1TB NVMe SSD
I thought I did a good job my first time around. I picked a budget I was comfortable with. I used PC Part Picker to help get a general idea of what components I wanted and headed to the store. I bought the parts from a local Canada Computers and with the help of my friend Matt, we went home and put it all together.
No real hiccups during the build but once we tried booting it up we ran into our first issue. I had plugged the HDMI cable into the motherboard and we weren’t receiving a picture. The reason why is my processor didn’t have integrated graphics and therefore could not be used to send a picture to the display. The second issue we had was with the graphics card fan. We were unfamiliar with graphics card fans not spinning until they were needed so we thought I had a defective card. Alas, a quick Google search got us up to date with how these fancy new graphics card work.
I was very happy with my original build, which was definitely above average for a first-time builder. But there was this nagging feeling of how it could be better. I also discovered a PC part maker called NZXT. Their clean design reminded me of Apple and I instantly became a fan. I ended up replacing every part of my PC, minus the GPU, with NZXT parts if I could get them.
Now I find myself watching PC creators on YouTube constantly, looking up new and interesting parts that I might want, and I’m already planning my next build. Getting into PC building created a new hobby for me and I totally understand why people fall in love with it. I liken it to fixing up a car. Lots of cool parts to choose from and replace to get better performance or better aesthetics. Coming from Apple, it’s very freeing to be able to choose different components based on what I personally value. But that walled Apple garden has a calling of its own. But I think I like this new ground I discovered. Where both can exist and can bring joy in their own ways.
Ryan Johnson is an Apple, and Microsoft Shareholder.