I’ve always been a diehard PC guy. And I swear, until recently, I’ve never touched a Mac in my life. But ever since this year’s MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, I’ve been feeling kind of funny inside. Different. To put it bluntly, I can’t stop thinking about getting my hands on a Mac. I have become…Mac-Curious.

I’ve tried chasing the feelings away by sticking a new hard drive in my big black Gateway box and giving it a RAM job, but when I was sliding in that glistening new SIMM stick, I realized, to my horror, I was thinking about a Mac.

Looking back, I guess I need to admit to myself that for a while now, when I’ve been sitting in coffee shops using my strong, HP Compaq Rugged Notebook, my eyes have wandered. One time, this dude drinking a latte caught me staring at his gorgeous, alabaster G4 PowerBook. He smiled at me and I freaked out. Flustered, I got up to leave without even powering down, the weight of my Big Blue machine hanging pendulously in my computer bag.

My girlfriend has a Mac, and she loves it. She’s always going on and on about its beautiful interface, ease of use, and how it takes her mere seconds to accomplish the task at hand. So last week, when she was sleeping, I snuck out of the bedroom, grabbed her PowerBook’s 12.1-inch screen and flipped it up. I experimented with it for hours, feeling a sense of excitement I had never known, until I heard my girlfriend wake up. Terrified, I tried to finish before she caught me but couldn’t figure out how to get the thing to log me off! “God,” I said under my breath. “I wish I knew how to quit you!”

In the end I was forced to do it manually, a hard reboot. I quickly wiped the machine down with an iKlear Apple Polish cloth to clear any smudges I’d left behind, threw the used wipe under the sofa, and went to join my girlfriend in bed, confused.

But I can’t keep living this lie. I need to come out of the server closet. And why should I be embarrassed to do so? Macs aren’t looked down upon anymore, the way they were during the days of the Lisa, or the reckless tenure of CEO John Scully. Everybody’s using them. And furthermore, if Intel, my processor of preference for years, can announce to the whole planet at MacWorld that they’re going inside Macs, why shouldn’t I make a similar announcement?

Well, that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m Mac-Curious, and proud! Get used to it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m heading down to the Apple Store to drop a wad on one of those new Macs. If I can just figure out how to tell my dad…