Why I'm Buying a Mac

As a huge Linux/open source supporter and enthusiast, it may surprise you that I will, indeed, be buying a Mac.

While I'm quite excited to play around with Leopard (as I was with Vista), I'd like to let you know that this doesn't exactly signal a change of heart. I still have a number of issues with Apple as a company - how they bundle software with hardware and all that software with the operating system, etc. that would get them in monumental trouble if they had larger market share. Look at Microsoft: they don't do this bundling to nearly the extent of Apple, yet for the past 8 years, they've been getting billion dollar fines left and right because of their dominant position in the market.

But, at this time, to sanely live in this world we call the Internet, it's necessary to be on one of the two larger, proprietary platforms -- although with this whole Web 2.0 bubble, that dependency has become less and less, but it's still there. I've extensively used and lived with every version of Windows since Windows 95, and even have a bit of experience with Windows 3.11. I don't think anyone can deny that XP SP2 is a half-decent, solid operating system. Vista? ...Not so much.

I do, indeed, (legally) virtualize XP SP2 using Sun's newly-acquired innotek's open source virtualization software innotek VirtualBox on top of Linux. It runs at near-native speeds, and the software is really a joy to work with. So, until the full Linux version of Adobe Flex Builder comes out, that's what I use to fire up Flex Builder for AIR/Flex development.

However, more recently, Ari and I have decided that it's necessary for some of our future projects that we be on the same platform, and naturally we decided on Mac OS X, since Ari already has numerous Apple products. Which meant I had to get a Mac.

So I will be getting one.

I have a number of commitments to the Linux community and to others that require me to use Linux, and honestly, I have never had the intention - nor will I - to "abandon" the Linux community. In fact, that's as far from the truth as possible. Linux will continue to run full-time on my laptop and this Mac will only run Mac OS X (though I do think at some point I will buy Parallels and virtualize Linux just for the heck of it).

And let's face it: if I have to use a proprietary operating system, I may as well use the better of the two. February 14th, 2008 / Tags: os x, xp, vista, linux / Trackback