During the period I was using Sei, I was reading up on Mac, and more and more was kind of liking it. Thanks to a friend who already had a Macbook, I got really into it. And because my dad was looking for a computer (laptop or otherwise), it would be nice to get a Mac.
At first, I wasn't sure whether I would get an iMac, Mac-mini or a Macbook (laptop), because it wasn't really necessary for it to be mobile. A second thought did change my mind though: a laptop can always be stationary and hooked up to an external monitor keyboard and mouse, and be mobile at the same time.

So, I went to a nearby Apple Store to see what they had in store. I was going for small and compact, which limited my choice between a Macbook and a Macbook Air. The first one eventually made it: the Air missed out on a few features, and was just too damn expensive. So a Macbook it became. I liked the black one a bit more so that was that. As a bonus, there was currently a special discount option on Macbooks, where you'd get double RAM for only a bit extra; I now had 4 GB instead of two, joy! Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard was installed by default. I noticed a few differences between Tiger, but with huge consequences (concerning support for some third party apps, like NTFS support).

One of the things I've noticed is that free third party applications are somewhat scarce. Not that I really mind though. The one's that aren't free are usually good, and are worth what little money they do cost: TextMate (for web development) and Transmit (FTP/SFTP client) are really worth paying for.
But there are also some nice freeware applications as well. The true must-have is Quicksilver, a multi-purpose quick-launcher with some various extra perks (a similar application for Windows is Colibri). For IM, Adium is a very good choice. While Quicktime is a fair player (in particular with Perian), more common audio and video formats are better supported in VLC Player.

When Snow Leopard (Mac OSX 10.6) was released, I purchased an upgrade of it through the online Apple Store.
I also purchased a wireless (via Bluetooth) keyboard and mouse from Apple, so whenever I was working on an external monitor, I could dig them up to work more comfortably.