Some of the places that I work in are Windows places and some of the places that I work in are Apple. Some of the people that I work with are Windows people and some are Apple people. I get a bit of flack from the Apple people about my decision to mostly use the Windows platform.
I used to be a Commodore 64 user. In 1992 my Dad gave me a 286 computer to play with. Quite quickly, I managed to upgrade through the 386 years and onto a 486. I vividly remember upgrading my 486SX23 from 4MB ram to 8MB. I put in a Soundblaster 16 and a double speed CDrom drive. I had a CGA video card and a brand spanking new 14inch monitor. My children were very excited to be able ‘play’ with Encarta and to be able to watch movies and listen to audio. They used to love a piece from AA Milne about Pooh (Bear) and the Living Books software – ‘Just Grandma and Me’ and Athur’s Teacher Troubles’!
After a few years of upgrading desktop machines I moved into the world of laptops. Last year I got a 15 inch Apple Powerbook so that I could support teachers who were using Apples. The Powerbook is a beautiful machine. It runs Tiger (OSX) and has a range of good software on it. It’s a light machine and it’s damn sexy to look at.
But it’s not my machine of choice. I’m a PC user from way back. I’m not dogmatic about using the PC, it’s just what I am used to using and what I am most comfortable using. For me it’s about getting the job done. I’m not able to get the work that I do as comfortably on the Mac. If I had ‘grown up’ using a Mac it might be quite different.
So when I was in the market for a new laptop a couple of months ago, I took a look at the new MacBooks. They are very nice machines with some cool features. Bootcamp and Parallels desktop could have given me the best of both worlds, PC and Mac.
In the end I decided to stay inside the PC world a bit longer. I’d been thinking about pen computing and how a tablet pc might be an interesting computer. I was really interested in the convertable tablet and decided that it was time to go to the smaller form factor offered by the Toshiba M400. And if Apple had a tablet on offer? I would have been interested. Maybe next time?
I was interested to see what Apple’s Steve Jobs had to say at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). He talked about some of the exciting new features of Leopard (the next version of OSX) due out sometime early next year. Then he rubbished MS Windows and accused the developers of Vista of stealing everything except his last billion dollars. Apple even made one of their funny little commercials about the conference.
Does Microsoft do this? Do either of these companies need to do this? People use the technologies that they want (and can afford) to accomplish the tasks that they need to accomplish.
Frankly I am tired of the one-eyed illogical ranting of the Mac fan-boys. Macs, Pcs, Linux boxen, iPods, Palms, Smartphones, PocketPCs, iPhones, Zen and Zunes … who cares? It’s about getting your stuff done in a way that you are comfortable with.
Links:
Steve Jobs at WWDC
Lifehacker puts Vista and Leopard side by side
Paul Thurrot’s take on Jobs’ keynote
Related posts:
Find Me!