Mac lovers aren’t that difficult to find, but a Mac loving Monk, well those are a bit more obscure. Sean Patrick is just that. He’s a formerly ordained Theravadin Monk and the owner of Boulder Mac Repair in Boulder, Colorado. He has been using Macs since 1985, starting with a friend’s dad’s 512K.
“I would go to his house and play with it everyday. I just fell in love with it,” Patrick said. “Throughout school I always had the ability to work with them, I just couldn’t afford one,” he said.
Patrick later developed an interest in graphic design, an industry that has virtually always been dominated by Macs.
Eventually, he purchased his first computer and now, “I probably have about 60 or so in here. It’s like a small museum,” he said about all of the Macs in his shop.
Patrick’s love affair with Macs continues today. As the solo owner of Boulder Mac Repair, he spends his days tooling around on the computers he loves while dreaming of returning to the place he loves, Cambodia, in the near future. His love affair with South Asia developed after he went there to study Muay Thai, a martial art practiced in several South Asian countries. He left the country for a new start after losing his job as a web programmer during the dot com bust.
“I lost my job with everyone else, I was a web programmer,” Patrick said. “What am I going to do?”
“So I left the country.”
And on every trip he’s made to Asia, his Macs made the trip with him. When traveling he uses them to send emails, write, manage photos and videos.
“When I went to Asia the first time I had a clamshell iBook, the graphite edition,” he said.
Traversing another continent with his Mac has reinforced why he loves them so much. Patrick said, “Most of the time they haven’t even heard of it. A lot of the countries I go to like India, Cambodia, Burma, they haven’t even seen the Apple logo. I travel kind of shoe string style, so it’s not something I really flash.”
Traveling can really put a computer to the test.
“I love having my Mac, because even in Thailand and Burma, I was able to keep that computer running for 90 days straight,” he said of their stability. “I didn’t have to restart it once.”
“This is traveling hard, in the back of pick up trucks and staying in $2 hotels.”
Stability can also be proven closer to home.
“There’s a computer at my house, my Mac Mini that’s been on for 7 months without a restart,” Patrick declares. “That’s not unusual. You couldn’t do that with Mac OS 9. You’d be restarting everyday,” which is why he likes many of the changes introduced with OSX.
“I know that I can get on there and it’s stable. I can keep programs (running) for 15 days,” he said.
But stability isn’t the only thing he likes about Macs.
“Personally, what I like is the combination of high design, the aesthetics of the cases,” Patrick said. “Macs aren’t just pretty on the outside, they’re also pretty on the inside.”
Patrick also said he loves, “Just how elegant the user interface is. It’s very intuitive for new users.”
“For Unix users it’s very powerful,” as well. Macs have a broad reach and are powerful tools for users ranging from beginners to experts.
An expert himself Patrick has been repairing Macs in some way or another for the last 12 years. Professionally, for the last 3 years.
“I was pretty much that guy that people would call to get free repair work done,” he said, which prompted him to start Boulder Mac Repair when he returned from his most recent trip to Asia.
“I’ve had the shop open on Broadway for a year now. Each month my work has nearly doubled exponentially,” Patrick said of the success of his business. Part of that success may be accredited to support of his business by the local college students and the Boulder community as a whole. At times, he has as many as 20 or 30 iPods in a week in his shop for repair. Fortunately, he has a full time iPod repairman on his staff to handle that aspect of the business. But his success may also be accredited to his strong sense of the impact of money and greed on people, gained from living in a Monastery during part of the time he spent in Asia.
As his website states, “I’m not trying to get rich off of this gig, and the discount rates I charge reflect that. I’m just trying to live a simple, joyful life.”
It seems that is what Sean Patrick has been able to do.
In addition to all of the repair work he does, he mostly uses his Macs for media and communications. He listens to music, watches movies, sends emails and browses the internet, among other tasks.
