When I first bought my iBook, on 15th September 2001, I was completely new to Apple. For seven years I had used nothing but Intel based PCs, running Windows 3.1 through 95, 98 SE and NT. The only Macs I had seen in real life were the old, unused machines, that sat collecting dust around the room in which I had lessons for my Computing A Level. I'd switched one on occasionally, and they seemed funny, with the smiley face and the bong, but I'd never actually used one.
     When the iMacs came out in 1998, they disgusted me, with their rank colours and near-total un-upgradeability. But, in January 2001, when the new Titanium PowerBook was released, I knew I had to have one. Unfortunately, they cost nearly £3,000. So that was the end of that.
     Except... in August of 2001, I knew I was going to university. My PII 300MHz was three years old and I was planning on buying a new computer, probably a laptop. I went to the Apple website to see if the TiBook had come down in price enough for me to afford one. It hadn't... but what was this thing they called iBook? I remembered the huge, colourful, childlike ones from earlier in the year, when I'd walked into a shop in London and laughed at one. But this new beast was white and sleek and not at all ugly. Reasonable specs too; a G3 500MHz processor, 10GB hard drive, 128MB RAM, DVD drive. The price wasn't too bad either; I could afford one!
     And thus all my hard-scrounged savings were sunk into a slab of hardware no larger than an encyclopaedia.

Mac OS 9 was strange. It was usable, but I didn't like that running more than one application at a time was so unstable, nor the seeming lack of customisation options. I was used to Windows, knew how to make it do what I wanted. Had I wasted £1,300? I didn't even have any DVDs to play on the thing...
     Then came Mac OS X. The iBook had come with 10.0.4, but on a G3 500MHz, with only 128MB of RAM, it was far too slow to be usable. When 10.1 was released, I picked up my free update CD and also 256MB extra RAM. 10.1 was beautiful under 384MB and I played with it for a week.
     Then badness came, though it was to have a happy ending; the latch on my iBook died. This was not good, my brand new machine breaking so soon (I'd had it only three weeks), but Apple were very good about it and offered to send me a replacement. Two weeks later, I received my new iBook; a G3 600MHz, with a 100MHz system bus (the old one had been 66MHz) and a 15GB hard drive. Moo hoo ha ha. Coupled with the 256MB extra RAM, OS X was now much more than just usable; it was preferable to both OS 9 and Windows. Everything was fast and gorgeous and stable. I'd been without a Mac for two weeks and so had got back in the habit of Windows NT on the university network. However, whereas OS 9 had seemed like a step back, or if not back at least sideways, OS X felt like the future.
     I've been using OS X ever since and have learnt a lot about it. No meaningful UNIX stuff just yet, XFree86 and Fink being the closest I've gotten before deciding I really can't be arsed... But lots of tweaks and modifications that make my machine stand out from the crowd. That make it iBook Swan.

The following pages are a comprehensive guide to what I have done. Take from them what you will.