Switchers

So I've recently broken down and bought a mac.

Before anyone gets excited, I'll point out that I bought a mac because it's unix. Behind that shiny GUI is a real *nix box, with all of the stuff we've come to know and love, like sed, awk, and the like. Pop open a terminal and BANG you're at the bash command prompt. You can even set it up so that you can build most of the free linux-based programs, including X based apps, and use them on OSX.

But you also get this awesome GUI. It's not just another pretty face. There is a lot of horsepower under the hood, behind those little jewel-like and oft copied buttons. A million keyboard shortcuts - just learn the ones you like. Spotlight? Awesome. I can't figure out how I ever lived without it. Crazy.

And a lot of the must-have windows software is here. And better. Acrobat, Photoshop, etc... those are all here. Lightwave,check. Ableton Live and Tracktion? Check. Microsoft Office? Check, and funny you should mention it; MS Office 2004 on mac kicks the living daylights out of Office on XP.

And when you can't find the windows program you gotta have, the chances are when you look into the Mac alternative, you'll like it better, anyway. Amazing stuff.

In the end, I now use machines for which there are no viruses or spyware ( in the sense of spyware on Windows ) or Sony Rootkits, I use the software I've always used in many cases, I have unix at my beck and call... well, you know what? I spend a lot more time USING my workstation/laptop/etc, and a whole lot less time 'fixing' it.