Well, if you don’t ask, you don’t get….
But why I hear you cry (those of you who aren’t converts anyway) ? Well, I’ve been a windows user for some years now (although a lot less than most), having started my web development career on SunOS and Solaris. Since then Windows has grown and stuff has happened. Apple have brought out OSX and the Linux community has moved on leaps and bounds.
Currently I have Windows XP on my laptop and it does me fine (for the moment) but to be honest I am getting fed up with “Windows Rot” to the point where I have must have reinstalled Windows onto a clean disk over ten times in five years. Now, I’m not your average user – I try to keep things as tidy as possible, yet within a couple of months, the rot sets in.
So, upgrade to Vista I hear you cry. Well, no, never in a million years. I managed to get hold of a copy which I used for a couple of weeks and then promptly un-installed when I heard about the DRM “functionality” that Microsoft have included in it. If you even consider this practice to be a good thing, I really think you need to have a deep think about what you are letting happen. As far as I am concerned, the only person who should be telling my computer what to do, is me. Just Me. No-one else. Especially Microsoft.
So, this leaves me with Linux or Apple. I’ve taken a good look at Ubuntu of recent, as it’s really my only alternative considering I already have PC hardware (a HP ZD8000 laptop). Ubuntu (and Linux) promises the world in terms of stability, security and speed, but what I have found in practice to be a very different story. Now, Ubuntu (I can’t really comment on other distros – suggestions welcome) installs really nicely, it’s a really clean interface but is let down by silly things – mainly to do with hardware. Now, my laptops nothing out of the ordinary, but installing Ubuntu leaves me a wireless network card that requires wires, a video driver that works without any 3d and a mouse that randomly stops after around half an hour requiring a reboot to fix. For me, this is a killer. I’m sure I could fix this with some random config file tweaks and endless surfing of forums (as everything in Linux seems to be) but to be honest, I want stuff to just work and not take all my time just to keep stable. Another thing is software. I use a library of software that works on all three OS’s (Windows, OSX and Linux), but there is some software that I would find hard to live without and Linux doesn’t support: namely Photoshop (can’t stand Gimp) and iTunes to name two.
Which leads me onto OSX. Currently this platform is way ahead in my eyes in terms of ability and support. I can run all the software I want on it with no problems, and I can also even run my windows software on it via parallels. I get the stability and security of Unix via the FreeBSD underpinnings, but I also benefit from the intuitive clean UI’s that Apple are famous for. For me this is the perfect system.
Almost.
Remember, I mentioned I had an HP ZD8000?
Yup, around a year ago this cost me over a thousand pounds, I’m not really in the mood to spend the same again just to let me loose on OSX, which is why I am still a Windows user. There is no way I can justify spending out a grand for another OS, let alone being able to afford it. I often wonder what would happen if Apple were to open OSX to the masses, distributing it shrink-wrapped to everyone – regardless of the fact that they might not be using Apple hardware. Sure, in a couple of years when my current laptop dies a death I will inevitably replace it with a Mac, but for now I’m stuck in Windows with no way out along with potentially thousands of others. Which leads me to my original question…
Does anyone want to give me a Mac?
Long ago few could realistically imagine the future history of laptops that was to come.
