January 19th, 2007
My MacBook Pro Experience - Day 9
I hadn't planned on a "My MacBook Pro Experience" post today but a question by ShadeTree in the TalkBack section of yesterday's post I think deserves a longer answer than I can give it as a reply in the TalkBack section.
ShadeTree asked: "Are you worried that if you converted to using the Mac your blog would lose its' relevance? I mean after all the Mac user is fairly well insulated from the hardware. Since you blog on hardware wouldn't using a Mac make you less knowledgeable?"
There have been a lot of good questions generated by this series of posts but this one is worthy of a longer answer.
The truth is that I'd never make a 100% switch to the Mac OS platform. No way. I'm not built like that and I don't look at things that way. Just like I never switched 100% to Windows XP and I'd never make a 100% switch to Vista. I still have machines here in the lab that run Windows 98 and ME. Why? Because I get questions about these platforms and issues crop up. Admittedly most of the work on older platforms is now done through VMware, but I still run multiple copies of these platforms and still have the disks at hand. I don't look at the Mac OS or Mac hardware as being a platform to make a leap to, but as tools that I can use and knowledge that I can leverage later on down the line.
In this blog and over on my PC Doctor blog I've talked a lot about Windows Vista because there's a lot of interest and buzz there. It's new and people are interested. I've also been working hard developing training materials and guides for corporate users and a lot of stuff that will be useful to the average home/small office user. There's going to be a lot of interest there and since I make a large amount of my income helping people get the most out of their PC and their investment in the the system, it's only logical that I concentrate a lot of effort there. That's not because I'm biased towards Microsoft. But I've also noticed that I'm getting more and more Mac and Linux related questions and enquiries. There's no doubt that there's a growing interest in these platforms. With that in mind, it makes sense (both business and personal) to keep an eye on what's going on and learn some new skills.
Every so often a post that I write here generates comments comments from people who think that I'm being biased. Really, I'm not. I'm a pretty open-minded guy. If I say that CPUs from one manufacturer is better than another, that's not based on a bias, it's based on the information and the current line-up. Same with hard drives, graphics cards and operating systems. Life's too short to get caught up in that way of thinking. Currently I think that Intel's Core 2 Duo are the best, a while back I was supporting AMD. In the future AMD could become my favorite again.
Coming back to the Mac, I feel that the experience has been a good one. Learning is never a bad thing. I'm hoping to repeat the same experiment with the Linux platform later on in the year.
Thoughts? I'm especially interested in hearing from people who work purely with one platform.
Previous installments:
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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| 01/19/07
