Well, it’s been a year of tech change for me. 2009 is the year I moved over to the dark side (PC to Mac) and became a console gamer. Something my PC-loving PC-gaming self would have frowned upon 12 months back.

Since getting my Macbook, I’ve not looked back. The PC has been turned on about four times since the macbook arrived back in April…and when it has been turned on it’s been to transfer some files from it to the Macbook! I think my love of all things Mac has stemmed from something I often heard other mac users say and generally scoffed at – things just work! I shut the macbook, it goes to sleep. I open it up, it wakes up within seconds. Simple things like that, but features that can’t always be taken for granted. I put Windows 7 on my Dad’s PC for him – put into hibernate mode. It didn’t like it and woke itself back up. I guess Apple having control over the hardware and OS gives them a significant advantage. I just love using the Macbook, and I’m now considering getting an iMac at some point in the future as a bigger desktop computer. The 27″ screens and breathtaking (when they are not suffering from flickering issues!). How things change!

One of the main things I thought I’d struggle to give up PC’s for was gaming. Browsing the web, watching movies, making music, photo editing are pefect on the Macbook. Gaming….not so good. Then along came my 360. I did buy one in early 2008 but sold it a few months later. For some reason, it didn’t work for me at the time. Partly because it was so bloody noisy when spinning up the DVD, partly because I was in the middle of some games on the PC so saw no point in also buiying them for the 360 and partly because I was all thumbs on the controller. A year went buy, and I began to use the 360 controller when playing PC games more, I got frustrated that I dropped a load of cash upgrading my PC to a high-spec and I still couldn’t play Crysis above Medium settings (considering most PC’s still can’t max that game out even now, says a lot about how demoralising trying to make it look good was!), games like FIFA came out on the PC as a console’s poor relation and then Microsoft let you install games on the 360 hard drive. The time came when I decided to go and get a 360 Elite and I’ve loved it ever since. That took PC-gaming out of the Mac vs PC conundrum.

One of the other reason I decided to give Mac’s a try (I’d always sort of wanted to at least try out OS X but had been put off by the prices before) was the iPhone. I got it back in 2008 and it made me realise that if the iPhone OS could be so good, maybe it was finally worth giving some other Apple products a shot. The iPhone still amazes me – I usually buy a gadget, get all excited about it beforehand, excited about it for the first few months and then get frustrated by its limitations or my eye gets drawn to something else. It’s been nearly 18 months since I got the iPhone and it still amazes me and is still a pleasure to use. The app store gives you a never ending supply of new toys and utilities. It’s the greatest gadget I’ve ever owned, and it will take some topping.

Anything else of tech note? Spotify has to be up there. I’ve only opened iTunes on the computer or the iPhone to listen to the odd track that I can’t get on Spotify (Beatles, AC/DC and Metallica are the few that come to mind). I’m a Spotify Premium member and I can’t get enough of the iPhone app. I can have an artists entire back catalogue on my iPhone all set up, synced locally before I go to work in the morning. I can listen to albums that I’d probably never have paid for, or even downloaded illegally to be honest. It’s just so easy to listen to new music. The playlists are a tad cumbersome and I hope they get improved, but as a core product it’s astounding and whether or not it lasts the distance I think streaming music is the way forward for me.

Those are the big 2009 changes for me. I’ll be posting some 2010 tech predictions and hopes for the year ahead soon…