Burn After Reading

Believe it or not I recently bought a Mac. It’s not as surprising as it sounds. I’ve been a bigot towards Apple for many years for various reasons that I don’t need to elaborate on. Despite that I decided to give OS X a try again - and I have to say I’m impressed.

It’s been a few years since I gave OS X a chance and things have changed. There is far more native OS X software, a much wider user base and OS X itself has become quite gorgeous (I was never a fan of the original Aqua theming - hey I run Compiz on my other workstations. I like pretty things.) Combine that with Apple’s switch to Intel/x86 and the introduction of Parallels and VMware Fusion; it’s a potent mix.

As a Linux user tried and true (been using it for over eleven years) I have always been disappointed with Microsoft operating systems and their somewhat busy methodology (look at the registry - you’ve got to be kidding me.) At home as a user I don’t do much - email, web browsing and growing my own business with it’s supporting tools (the web, word processing, spreadsheets, diagrams, etc.) There was no real reason to not use Windows. I didn’t want to be bogged down with keeping my Linux system up to date and I didn’t want to deal with training my guests how to use my computers; besides I have my Sun system and ESX server running as my playground.

Maybe I’m getting older; maybe my views are maturing. Linux just has too many options these days to let me run it as my primary workstation operating system. Combine that with the fact that running some instance of Windows is required for various systems management tools, VMware VC Client, certain FC array tools, etc. Either way you end up running Windows inside of some sort of virtualization product.

I had to ask myself what was the greater of alternatives and OS X came to light. After spending three days with an old Powerbook G4 running the latest OS X Leopard release I was sold. I didn’t even power on my Windows or Linux machines. It was that good. A slow, three year old laptop was more enjoyable to use than my up to date desktop computer; all thanks to the operating system.

Apple’s greatest mistake has been pricing. It’s their barrier to entry. Their hardware is expensive. That’s not to say that it isn’t well built; it is. Or that it isn’t well designed; it is. Just deep down there isn’t anything special about it. I’ve tried the various OSX86 released and they’ve advanced greatly (Google Leo4All for the best.) There’s just something to be said for a supported platform; one that automatic updates doesn’t break.

This post was made on a MacBook Pro