Aug
22
Mac’n it in a Windows World
August 22, 2006 |
Back in 1986, when I traded up from my old Kaypro II, I made a decision that continues to affect me on a daily basis. When I fired up my first Macintosh computer I had no intention of making a social or political statement. In fact, I can’t even remember why I chose a Mac over an IBM PC. The bottom line is that I became a loyal Mac user. I enjoyed the operating system and the nifty, intuitive icons and eventually enjoyed the David and Goliath implications of “sticking with” Mac as the mighty “Windows” machine kept rolling inexorably forward.
Years later coworkers would make snide comments about my Titanium Powerbook but I found it easy to ignore them. I used the Windows machines in the office when I needed to, but continued to use Macs on the road and at home. In the work world I was living in at the time computers were a necessary part of accomplishing the work but they were not integral to anyone’s identity. It was simply word processing, spreadsheets, and email. The guy upstairs in advertising used a Mac. That was different.
Recently things have changed quite a bit for me. In the worlds of computer science, academics, blogging, web design, and e-commerce, people take their tools (read computers) much more seriously. This has led to some interesting revelations and confrontations. Eventually it tied nicely into my dissertation topic. I will endeavour to explain in subsequent posts.
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