mac envy

I have Mac envy. Badly. A month or so ago, I had a hard drive crash that lost lots of important data. I’ve since gotten all the missing data back, but during the last month if Windows being unwilling to read the crashed drive, the time spent trying to get my PC to recognize a new drive, and then the time during which Windows wouldn’t let me slave the old drive to the new drive, I’ve had many thoughts. My most tempting thought has been, “Dude, I should just start over! I should get a Mac! It’s a perfect time, since I don’t have any data or programs.” At this point, I didn’t think it would be possible to affordably retrieve my data. By data, I mean, among other things:

• every website I’ve done, since the Geocities days (I admit, I did get rid of most of those years ago)
• the papers, notes, essays, thoughts, projects, source files, source code, planning documentation, and any number of other things from two college degrees (enough said)
• financial data (also enough said)
• approximately 5 gigs of music, some having been ripped from CDs that I own, but are so skipped that they will not play
• and other things

The reality check is that I can’t afford a new computer of any kind at the moment, but it was so tempting to think about. Today, I was reading one of the .NET blogs I’ve recently come across, and found that this guy’s a Mac user.

So overall, I’m really happy living in a Mac world. I have beautiful hardware running uncluttered UI, and I can still do the Windows stuff when I need to. I’m a happy camper.

So obviously, he’s a happy Mac user. I like reading this. There are parts of the .NET world that I really enjoy, and indeed some things about Microsoft that I really enjoy. I’m at the point in my career where, in the near future, I will be required to make some choices about where, as a web professional, I will go. I’ve considered PHP, as I know it fairly well and enjoy it; I’ve considered Ruby/ROR, and I do intend to learn this in the near future; I’ve considered Flash/Flex, JAVA, ColdFusion, Photoshop, and just being a web standards/XHTML/CSS guy. And, I’ve considered .NET. Microsoft is one of those companies that I don’t always know how I feel about.

But in any case, I really want whatever choice I make to be compatible with my Mac envy. I’ve decided that my next computer purchase will be an Apple. If Visual Studio runs part or most of my livelihood, I can run Windows on that Mac and have my Visual Studio, and that makes me happy. If I don’t go the .NET route, there doesn’t appear to be anything that I can’t do on the Apple OS, and that also makes me happy.

So, thanks Jeff, for increasing my Mac envy. But also, thanks for the sight of a .NET person who uses and enjoys using a Mac.

• 28 Feb 2007
• Comments 0
• Posted In apple, life