October 17, 2006 by Keith Kastorff.

This showed up in my RSS reader this morning via Digg:
Why are Macs Becoming More Popular?

It got me to thinking…why do I use a Mac?

Well, for starters, I don’t use only Macs, and I’m not hung up on the “open source” religion. I use what I like, and if it’s Open Source, that’s good, but not essential. The operating systems I use are Linux (Gentoo, SUSE 10.1, SLED), Windows XP SP-2, and OS X 10.4.8. There was a time those items would fall neatly into hardware categories: OS X on a Macintosh computer, the rest on a PC. These days, with virtualization, it’s not so clear.

I used VMware Workstation in Linux to create and run a virtual machine for Windows XP for my basic “work” environment for the last couple of years. Today I use Parallels for the same thing. Not much difference…the host OS for my work environment isn’t Windows. Windows is Windows…VMware was running on a PC/Linux machine, and Parallels runs on a Macintosh/OS X machine. The Windows software I use is the same, Microsoft Office (Access & Excel mostly), OneNote, Notetab Pro, gVim, SnagIt, TimeSlice, and Microsoft SQL Server. There’s some difference there, but not what it used to be…Intel and Intel, UNIX and Linux.

The biggest difference is outside the VM of course. In Linux, I use Microsoft Office (CrossOver Office) or OpenOffice, Evolution, Gaim, X-Chat (or IRSSI), Firefox, Skype, VLC, Amarok (or Audacious), Liferea, gVim (or VIM in a console). On OS X, I use Microsoft Office or Open Office, Apple Mail, Address Book, iCal, Adium (based on the Gaim engine), Snak, Safari (and Camino…like a tweaked Mac-centric Firefox), Skype, VLC, iTunes, NetNewsWire, BBEdit (or VIM in a Terminal).

But why do I use a Mac? I think the real answer is two fold:
1) Macs now use Intel CPUs (I can run Windows…natively or virtualized, faster than I can on my Intel hardware since the Mac is faster than my old PCs)
2) OS X (UNIX with the slickest GUI ever, access to X11, and via Fink, damn near anything else that will run on UNIX…and hardware that just works, with a minimum of fuss)
So having Macintosh hardware is almost like having one’s cake and eating it too… And who’s gonna have Macintosh hardware and not run OS X too? Not me.

Does that mean I don’t use/love Linux anymore? Of course not…I spend time on my Linux machines every day. I love to tinker, and Linux lets/makes me do that…OS X doesn’t let me play like Linux does. Like everyone else, I boot to Windows to play most games. Does that make me OS agnostic? Perhaps…it feels like having three girlfriends sometimes…each wants/needs my attention/time, and I want to spend time with each, but end the end, one is gonna be “my everyday, where my email lives” environment. Today it’s OS X…tomorrow…who knows?

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October 17, 2006 by Keith Kastorff.

I got my new laptop a few days ago (thanks to my girlfriend), an Apple MacBook (black). My old laptop, an IBM Thinkpad T23, was beginning to break down…the webcam mounts and internal wireless were dead, and it was getting pretty long in the tooth…1.13 GHz Pentium III. I used Macs as my primary machines back in the pre-OS X days, and even have an old iMac G3 with 10.4 loaded today. It was just too slow for a main machine, but it kept me up to date with what was going on with the OS. I’ve been using Linux (Gentoo and SUSE) along with Windows XP for my primary OS the last couple of years, so I was excited to live with the BSD based OS X. It’s new enough I’m learning, and comfortable enough it’s like coming home.

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