Multicultural OS family

[Jeff]

So I’ve been a PC guy since forever. I actually started out learning how to program on Apple II computers back in high school when I was 13, but I’ve been exclusively working on PCs ever since then (over 20 years). Well, except for a stint when I graduated from university where I was coding for SunOS - but we’ll skip that part of the story. Oh yeah, there was also that university work semester where I was coding RPG III for an IBM AS-400, but again I digress.

Anyhoo, even though Mac computers are considered the de-facto standard in the design and photography industry, we’ve remained 100% PC. Photoshop is our bread-and-butter software and it’s identical on both platforms. In fact there are only a couple of useful applications that are Mac-only, whereas there are tons of PC-only programs - with the biggest one for us being Outlook.
Yes, there are Mac equivalents to Outlook (Entourage, Mail, iCal) but boy do they suck compared to Outlook 2007.

I also build our PCs, partially because its cheaper that way, but mostly because it allows me to get the exact components I want and because I take perverse pleasure in torturing myself at 3am when I discover that I’ve hooked up the audio outputs on the front of the case incorrectly to the motherboard (sigh).

So here Tanya and I sat, in a homogeneous environment of all PC computers and laptops, happy as a dog with two tails. Everything is tickety boo….

Then it’s time for us to head off to Vegas.

Except a couple of days before we left - Tanya’s laptop screen went blank. Essentially the light burnt out. Everything worked, but you couldn’t see anything.

And it was too late to get it fixed before we went down for the photography conference.

So what to do…

What to do….

What we dooed was to buy a shiny new MacBook Pro laptop.

What finally convinced me to go multi-cultural? To introduce diversity into our wonderbread home?
Well, it was the fact that the new Macs are also using the same Intel processors that PCs use. This means that they also have the capability to run Windows XP. So by running a special piece of software called Parallels, we can have the best of both worlds - a MAC and it’s simple-to-use interface, but with the ability to run programs like Outlook on top of it.
I’m hard to impress in the software world, but this had me impressed - and convinced!

Having a mixture of PCs and a single MAC does make the networking a bit more complex and there are other oddities to deal with - but being ultimately a tech-geek, I’ve always wanted the expertise of being fluent in both PC and MAC worlds and on the vagaries of getting them to co-exist.
When the fancy strikes me I may post more on my adventures of how to get a MAC to live in a PC family without always getting picked on. You know what its like when someone in the family is a little bit different and stands out - other PCs can be so cruel sometimes.

So during our adjustment period Tanya finds herself moving from feeling happy and oh so hip and styling, to frustrated that the shortcut keys are different. But she’s a trooper and has picked up on it quickly.

So whatever happened to our poor PC laptop with the broken screen?
It just arrived back by courier this morning - with a fresh new screen replaced under warranty. Haven’t figured out what it’s new role in the household is yet.

P.S. Best thing about the MacBook pro is the built in webcam and the PhotoBooth product that distorts your face. If you know someone that has a MacBook Pro, ask them to bring it to your next party for endless PhotoBooth fun.

Add comment April 29th, 2007