Now Tom is going to buy an apple product or two. Other products have been considered, but some sort of iThingy looks like the new addition to our digital household. Through this process I have decided that digital gadget monopolies - I mean, brands - are a sort of geek culture war. There is often little room for compromise and we may view those who hold different opinions as being responsible for the current destruction of society. Here are my sides in this battle:
1. "PC vs Mac" is utter crap
PC stands for "personal computer". As in, not a server, I suppose. A personal computer made by Apple is still a personal computer! Yes, that computer will run MacOS. But a personal computer can also be an Lenovo or a dell or something beautiful that you created yourself. And it may run Ubuntu or Windows or a few different things. I hate that "PC"="Windows" to many people - there is a wide variety of hardware and software out there, and little of it is absolutely correlated.
2. A terminal doesn't equal linux
Yes, I know that Mac runs on a unix backbone. It is possible to pull up a terminal. And I appreciate that! Whenever I sit down at a computer running Windows my wrist gets tired and I wonder why I can't just type what I want it to do. Much like Scotty in Star Trek IV, I don't know what to do with a mouse. But a terminal isn't enough... Part of the beauty of linux is FREE SOFTWARE. Sure, it is free software that sometimes sucks. But usually you can fix it. I like fixing crappy software! I like being able to go to the Ubuntu Software Center and downloading something to try it out and not wondering if it will be worth the $30 or $40 (or more...).
3. Dual Booting is a nice thought, but painful as a practice
My desktop was dual boot for a while, sort of. At first it was because I was just "trying out" Ubuntu, Wubi-style. Then it was because I didn't want to loose access to Photoshop and wanted to use Netflix's streaming capabilities. But then I had a hard time managing my grub list and MBR and every time there was a new Ubuntu upgrade I would have to fight with it all again... But truly, that wasn't the worst part. It was really all Window's fault. You see, once I had Photoshop running on Wine, I only went into to Windows when I felt like watching a movie on Netflix. Which was rare - every 2 or 3 months. Once I logged in, the security updates would start. Not only would they destroy my bandwidth, but they would also try to force me to restart. Ugh! Sometimes I would need to download, install, and restart multiple times to just try to watch a movie. Not worth it!
So I think it is hard to really do dual-boot. I can't deal with my desktop and laptop and netbook not all having the same keyboard shortcuts and emacs configurations - I certainly can't deal with switching between OS's and not having the same software and filesystem available. Yes, I know virtualbox fixes some of this. That isn't what this rant was about.
4. Computers are supposed to be tools
I say this as a scientist and not as a gamer. Sure, I watch movies and TV programs on my computer because I don't own a TV. Yes, I listen to music on it. But I think about electronic gadgets in terms of what I 'need'. My needs are not the same as everyone else. I need a workhorse that I can run simulations on, a multimedia station at home (that can also build my latex documents), and something portable for taking notes, checking e-mail, travel, and to be used when my work computer is otherwise busy. It boggles my mind when websites max out the resources on my work computer - there is no reason they need all of that javascript and sound and video...
It seems like laptops have a lifetime of about 4 years due to physical failure. I forgive their hinges and cables for failing after 4 years or transportation and use. But desktops? My desktop is 6 years old. I've had to replace the screen and the case fan. And recently I upgrades the RAM from 1 to 3 GB. But with a 3 GHz CPU, it should still be fine! The video card is truly the weakest component. But it should be fine as long as I don't want to play games on it! Why do the hardware requirements just for operating systems keep getting worse? I can't run Unity on my desktop, so this isn't just a Windows problem. Have my needs for bells and whistles and desktop special effects increased that much in 6 years? No.
So there you go. I'm some sort of old computer curmudgeon who believes that websites should obey HTML standards but not be overloaded with Flash and other crap, that terminal is the best way to get things done, and that fancy effects should be left to those gamer kids.
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