Help!

Well, I’m well and truly converted: I’ve had a MacBook at home for over a year now, and just got a MacBook Pro for work.
Woo hoo!
I still do most of my day-to-day work on a PC – the Mac is more for meetings and escaping to the quiet of the library when it gets too loud on my floor – and constantly switching between the two platforms is more confusing than the initial switch to a Mac. For example, when using my PC keyboard I keep hitting what I think is Fn-Delete (which I use to get a proper delete rather than a backspace out of the MacBook keyboard), but which is actually Ctrl-Delete on a PC and deletes entire words at a time.
Things get even more confusing when I use VPN to get into my work PC from my home Mac, and have to use Crtl-C (or whatever) for keyboard shortcuts, rather than the Apple Key-C (or whatever) I have to use on the Mac at all other times.
Anyway. I can cope with all this. What I really need your help with is choosing a decal to make my two Macs even cooler.
This[=tags&includes[]=title is cute, but my home Mac already has real paw prints on it, so it’s a bit redundant.

I really like this[=tags&includes[]=title design, but it doesn’t have much emotional resonance for me.

Same with this[=tags&includes[]=title one – I never got into the original series, and prefer TNG. Awesome graphic though!

I do love Plants vs Zombies[=tags&includes[]=title, but I haven’t been into it for that long and I deleted it off my phone to save space once I’d finished all the levels.

On the other hand, I’ve always loved the Beatles[=tags&includes[]=title, and my phone is full of their music. But the graphic doesn’t truly grab me; John Lennon looks a bit too emo.

This[=tags&includes[]=title combines cool graphic and long-standing fandom… but I definitely wouldn’t use it for the work Mac!

This one’s[=tags&includes[]=title more suitable for work, but not quite as cool.

The coolness of this one[=tags&includes[]=title speaks for itself

And I have heard switching to a Mac described as “going to the dark side”.
By the way, although I’ve never seen anyone go to quite these lengths,
demotivational posters
see more
I was once in a meeting with a woman who’d put a Macintosh apple logo sticker on the back of her work-mandated Dell laptop.
There are more designs here=handmade&filter1=geekery&page=17 (unfortunately the “DON’T PANIC” ones only come in the iPad size), and this whole thing is Kimli’s fault.

About Cath@VWXYNot?

"one of the sillier science bloggers [...] I thought I should give a warning to the more staid members of the community." - Bob O'Hara, December 2010
This entry was posted in silliness, the wonders of technology. Bookmark the permalink.

26 Responses to Help!

  1. Elizabeth Moritz says:

    Ooooo! I just got a MacBook Pro too and did not realize the decorating possibilities until your post! Searching etsy is already a fun distraction for me, but the >1,700 search results for macbook stickers is incredible. Can’t wait to sift through it all tonight!

  2. Cath Ennis says:

    I know, isn’t it fun?!
    I know Eva has a set of cool Very Hungry Caterpillar stickers on her MacBook (I can’t find the photo), but they weren’t specially designed for that use.

  3. Alejandro Correa says:

    I’ve only been able to purchase a Toshiba notebook (PC) for some time back but I have the impression that the MACBOOK is better, the graphic is excellent!. Congratulation!

  4. Cath Ennis says:

    I had a Toshiba until last year and it was great, although it had a tendency to overheat. After we got the MacBook, we donated the Toshiba to a university in Cuba.

  5. Åsa Karlström says:

    oohhh… I see new thing coming to my old macbook soon 🙂 Thanks Cath. All new levels of geekyness.
    Personally, I’d want a biohazard symbol…. I wonder if they exist?! (And therfore I like the radioactivity thingy. Or what ever it is called, the one prior I am your Father )

  6. Cath Ennis says:

    Cool! Someone else commented on Twitter that she would want a biohazard symbol, so I’ve directed her to your comment!
    I’d just be worried about the potential consequences of mis-use of a biohazard sticker in a building with so many labs in it… I might get banned from the library! (I’m maybe a bit over-paranoid; at my PhD institute we were told that we must NEVER use hazard symbols for anything other than their intended purpose, after a prank the year before involving someone’s lunch that had been left in a fridge for too long)
    The wind turbines are really growing on me, actually. Maybe because last night I sat on my friends’ deck and watched a real one (at the top of Grouse Mountain) spinning in the glow of the sunset.

  7. Mike Fowler says:

    I was happily converted to Mac’s 7.5 years ago. My boss insisted on using them simply because they weren’t supported by the IT staff. That way, they didn’t screw everything up by putting netware with appalling installation restrictions and out of date security software on the machines. Rather than decorating his machines, the boss took to decorating other things with the Mac stickers though. Including our office espresso machine. Fruity caffeine fix!
    Åsa: If you want to embed links here, use html code, but make sure you start your very first paragraph with a tag, so that NN’s Incredibly Clunky PlatformTM starts off on the right foot.
    Like this
    Like this

  8. Alejandro Correa says:

    My boss insisted on using them simply because they weren’t supported by the IT staff
    Mike I think you’re lucky, is as the octopus Paul.

  9. Åsa Karlström says:

    Mike> ah… I should’ve thought of that. Silly me was trying to remember how it was done before ^^ Thanks!!
    Cath> Is this the time to talk about the reactions to my [temporary] Biohazard tattoo on my right forearm some years ago? 😉 (got some snickers and stares in the lifts but it was a dare and I do like the symbol.) I guess it was a good thing I didn’t work at your institute then? Well, maybe I would’ve gotten some vacation though…..

  10. Joanna Scott says:

    Brilliant, Cath – I only have the very basic black MacBook, but I think I might have to get some fluorescent pink paw prints for it.
    I laughed at the Pacman one as well, with the Apple waiting to eat the monsters.

  11. Ken Doyle says:

    What, you want to destroy the pristine Apple-ness with a cheesy decal?
    🙂
    BTW, you should seriously consider trashing the PC and running Windows on your Mac instead (if you must run Windows, that is). Why bother with two computers when one will do?

  12. Richard P. Grant says:

    That was more or less my reaction, Ken.

  13. Cath Ennis says:

    Mike: that’s (part of) the reason my entire department is switching to Macs!
    Åsa: cool! How real did it look? I never had too much luck with the temporary ones…
    Joanna, I think a few of them come in multiple colours. But I have to say I like the black on silver look!
    Ken and Richard: I see it as enhancing the Apple-ness with a cool decal 🙂
    I’m thinking the wind turbines for work (so I can make jokes about “powered by hot air” when I’m taking notes in meetings), and either Homer or Darth for home.
    Ken, I would ditch the PC if I could, but I do all my department’s grant submissions, and some funding agency’s websites are still not 100% compatible.

  14. Cath Ennis says:

    Also: pretty much everyone in my department has the same MacBook Pro that I have, and on a trip earlier this year, two people accidentally switched their laptops when they were putting them back in their bags after clearing airport security. So it would be nice to have something that stands out!

  15. Mike Fowler says:

    I’ve been considering this software for running windows stuff on a grown up machine…
    But I haven’t yet, so can’t vouch for it. And I don’t use windows only software, so may never have to bother.

  16. Richard Wintle says:

    I was once in a meeting with a woman who’d put a Macintosh apple logo sticker on the back of her work-mandated Dell laptop.
    I did the same thing, putting the sticker from one or other of my iPods on the bottom of a Sony Vaio. How clever I thought I was.
    The Vaio has since been replaced with… wait for it… a Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmnother Sony Vaio.

  17. Richard Wintle says:

    P.S. I vote for the Darth Vader one.

  18. Åsa Karlström says:

    Cath: I was looking for a photo but it’s somewhere not on my present computer 😉 It looked very good actually. I was pleasantly surprised. It was a “spray/paint” tattoo that turned out not to get off that easily. I could shower no problem and rub fairly hard on it with a towel… and it came off after a week when my novelty happiness had wore off.
    I was quite tempted to do it again if I were to find a place with that type of tattoo again.

  19. Ken Doyle says:

    @Cath:
    Ken, I would ditch the PC if I could, but I do all my department’s grant submissions, and some funding agency’s websites are still not 100% compatible.
    That’s my point exactly. You wouldn’t need a separate PC, because you’d be running Windows either in a virtual machine, using VMWare Fusion or Parallels) or natively (using Boot Camp) on the Mac.
    In fact, the fastest Windows Vista notebook a couple of years ago…was a Mac. That’s probably still true today with Windows 7, although I haven’t seen the data.

  20. Cath Ennis says:

    UPDATE: my boss wants me to be more assertive. So I’m going to get the Darth Vader one for work.
    I always think it’s hilarious when people put apple logo stickers on the windows of their car or house (I’ve seen a few examples of each). Why not add a sign saying “lots of high-tech valuable in here! Grab a brick and help yourself!”

  21. Elizabeth Moritz says:

    I’ve been wondering what to do with the apple sticker that came with my new macbook. Though I wasn’t planning on putting on my car or house… I’m guessing most people just throw the stickers out?

  22. Ken Doyle says:

    I’ve accumulated quite a collection of the stickers over the years. I can’t bring myself to throw a single one away.

  23. Cath Ennis says:

    How come I never got any stickers? I have an iPhone and two MacBooks, but no stickers – what the hell??!!

  24. Ken Doyle says:

    I don’t know if Apple still includes them (the last Mac I purchased was a refurb, so no stickers either way). You may have missed them, though. They’re carefully tucked away in the little box that contains the user manual (which some of us never open…)

  25. Cath Ennis says:

    Hang on, I’ve got the box for the MacBook Pro under my desk somewhere.

    nope, no stickers. I’ll check the box I have at home though, in case our IT guys took the sticker from the box I have at work to throw darts at or something.

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