Making a life decision about Apples and oranges.

October 25th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in General |

I never expected I’d be making this “life” decision, but after having been exposed to it, I felt it was the right time to come out and say it.

I’m buying an Apple Computer.

There I said it. It’s done. I’ve made my decision. Time to move on and move on I must, but there’s a problem. A life decision? Well for a programmer it can be, and I’ve been using Windows for the past 12 or 13 years!

Apple is to, well apples and Windows is to oranges. One is nice and sweet, sometimes. While the other is tangy and hard to get to. The apple you can just bite into and get started. The orange, well you first have to peel it, separate the slices, yada yada yada. Enough with the cliché, you get the idea.

The first week of September I attended a training course for Flex Programming and to my surprise we were seated at Apple workstations that were running Windows XP. I had heard of Parallels and Boot Camp prior to this, but had never seen either of them in action. At first, it was strange looking at an Apple iMac that had Windows XP nicely displayed on the screen. Then the strange feeling went away and a sense of comfort set in. Other than the keyboard and mouse, everything was the same. We went through the 3 day course with no issues. These Apple Computers were running Boot Camp which is what allowed us to use Windows XP. That’s not all though, if you want, you could also install Vista using Boot Camp.

This experience left a huge impression on me. Not because it’s an Apple computer and they “should”. Instead, it was because of the power of having one computer, out of the box, with the ability to dual, even triple boot. Some of you may say that’s been around for years with Linux and Windows, but it’s not the same. It doesn’t take a scientist to know that Windows and OSX are the dominating operating systems on the market. Having both of those on one machine, running the native hardware, NOT emulated, is a gift.

I love it for a lot of reasons, but the main reasons are:

1. Some programs only work with OSX, others only Windows. Now I’m not stuck with that prerequisite. Woo-Hoo!
2. The MacBook Pro supports my 30″ Dell LCD which none of the other current laptops on the market can. What that means is I no longer need a separate desktop and laptop. I can use the laptop at home connected to my large display and take it on the road too. Brilliant!
3. As much as I bash Windows and OSX, both have their strengths, both have their weaknesses. Now I can enjoy both of their strengths, errr and their weaknesses (uh-oh).

So when Apple begins selling MacBook Pro’s configured with Leopard, which is being released tomorrow, I’ll be diving into the Apple culture, but at the same time enjoying my oranges, errr I mean Windows. :)