Anyone who hasn’t visited an Apple Computer retailer lately is in for a pleasant surprise if they drop by Calgary’s MyMacDealer.

It’s like wandering through a trade show sparkling with new, innovative products.

Thin, crystal-clear, wide-screen monitors are showcased alongside 17-inch PowerBooks designed with flair and style. There’s also the iSight video conferencing system that can yield big savings for clients who do a lot of long-distance phone meetings. Just plug it in and you have two-way videoconferencing with any other Mac user who has the same equipment.

Most impressive is the Power Mac G5, the world’s first 64-bit personal computer. A glance reveals its graceful lines, but not its incredible, raw power.

Curtis Joynt, front, and his team at MyMacDealer will make your experience as seamless as possible.

For that, you have to take it for a test drive – something that a growing number of customers are doing.

The G5 springs from a tight partnership between – are you ready for this? – Apple and IBM. The two companies designed the chips together, and IBM builds them.

“The G5 is a new foundation for the future,” says MyMacDealer owner J. Curtis Joynt, “as opposed to building on 20-year-old legacy. It’s brand new.”

And the G5 is based on math that’s alien to most users, but amazing in its execution.

“A lot of people won’t grasp the concept of 64-bit computing,” Joynt says, “but basically it allows one to deal with massive numbers.

“It’s an exponential growth over 32-bit. It’s 2 to the power of 64, versus 2 to the power of 32 – a huge difference.”

The phrase “huge difference” is just right for Apple Computers in general. Their product line is the alternative to PCs, and MyMacDealer is the only Calgary retailer selling strictly Apple products.

More than ever before, Joynt and his employees are seeing a broad cross-section of customers switching to Macs after using PCs for many years. That’s largely thanks to Mac’s fundamental ease-of-use, acknowledged high quality, relentless innovation, and compatibility with PCs for communication purposes.

And when compared with brand-name PCs upgraded to match the Mac’s features, the Apple product is competitively priced.

For years, Apple had to fight the perception that its devotees were die-hards defying the tide of a “PC world” or just specialists, such as publishers or graphic designers, hooked on the Mac’s acknowledged supremacy in those areas. Not anymore.

“Outside the Mac community, there’s greater awareness of the Mac than ever before,” Joynt says.

“From a major company that’s known for being proprietary, they’ve embraced open standards unlike most companies. USB comes to mind,” he notes, referring to the Universal Serial Bus plug-and-play interface between a computer and add-on devices.

It’s not Apple’s technology, but it was the first company to put it on every machine.

Joynt has been in the business for seventeen years and running his own Mac dealership for seven years.

“We’ve gone from supporting mostly designers and printers to a broad array, whether they’re lawyers, engineers, geologists or writers. There’s a lot of creative types still, but it’s much more than that. People running businesses are using the Mac as a point-of-sale system.

Former PC users who’ve switched to Macs often tell him, “Why didn’t I do this earlier?”

The benefits start as soon as the customer opens the box. It takes only about 15 minutes on average to set up the computer.

An especially important advantage these days is the Mac’s resistance to viruses.

Joynt points out that there are fewer than 50 known viruses targeting the Mac, but more than 70,000 known viruses targeting the PC. His personal Macs have been hit by only two mild viruses in 17 years, merely minor inconveniences.

“We get people now who are starting to look at us specifically because of that, because they’re sick and tired of having to worry about viruses constantly. There are a lot of malicious viruses out there.”

In listing the reasons for customer satisfaction, Joynt is especially proud of the way MyMacDealer rejects the hard-sell approach. He and his staff want their customers to buy only what they genuinely need, not what’s priciest.

He has always done business that way.

“Everybody wants to measure their success by the bottom line instead of measuring their success in a multitude of ways: Are your staff growing as individuals? Are they learning? Are your customers happy? Are they getting the product that meets their needs?

“Those are the intangible, non-taxable benefits that far too many people ignore.”

MyMacDealer is at 1115 1st St. S.E.; the website is www.mymacdealer.com.

Curtis Joynt’s e-mail is jcurtis@mymacdealer.com; or phone 403.543.6227.