Okay, I admit it I’m a computer geek who stands firmly on the PC side of the world. Or at least I did. I’ve been playing with computers in their IBM clone form since about 1984 and, except for a way cool pinball game on the old Apple IIe system, I’ve never cared much for anything Apple ever produced. Years into my paying computer career, long about 1997 or so, I got my first real taste of the PowerMac systems and their quirky OS(operating system). It’s a fair guess to say that my initial foray into the Mac world did not go well, even left me wondering why in the world anyone would buy one most of the time, and it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth with the high priced software and hardware and limited abilities to do what I needed them to do.
In the years that have passed since then, Mac’s have evolved both in hardware and in OS reliability and features. I have changed jobs a few times and managed to get away from all things Apple related for a few years before coming to my current position where I am the sole supporter of our limited MAC supply. It is not a primary duty and in fact, was not even a duty of mine until we suffered a tech support head count reduction and I was the only one left who had ever worked on or with a Mac system for more than an hour of my life. That’s when my dislike for all things Apple related began to grow into a healthy hatred.
I have spent countless hours searching the Internet, banging my head against the wall, and on the phone researching solutions to annoying issues with our five, soon to be six, Mac systems over the last four years. In all that time I have gained a ton of new knowledge about the way they work, seen their OS evolve with each new release, and could, if I were forced to, spend and entire week doing most of my job duties on a Mac system rather than a PC. I say most because there are still some things Mac’s just can’t do and will never be able to. There are some Network Admin utilities I use to support our Microsoft and Linux based systems that, to be blunt don’t run, can’t run, will never run on a Mac and trying to use some sort of virtual PC emulator on the Mac just seems pointless, though admittedly it may work. In my continued work on the newer models and software versions, I have to admit that Apple has grown on me a bit and, should they ever stop pricing themselves out of the market I might consider owning one.
My last remaining stance against Apple is their iTunes/iPod phenomenon and deceptive licensing and pricing schemes to date. Most people I talk to can’t tell the difference between an MP3 player and an iPod and just assume that in order to get any digital music one must download it from iTunes. For those of us in the know, iPods were an expensive toy that must be cracked to be useful and while cool, were quickly tossed aside for other brand MP3 players with less hassle and strings. As players like the Zune, Zen, and Sansa began to gain market share their users quickly found out that all those iTunes songs they had paid for could not be loaded on their new players, because they were not iPods. Software was developed to resolve this and iTunes downloads were hacked and made available for free on the limewire and gnutella networks for the rest of us to share. So while Apple’s hardware, the MacBook and Mac Pro desktops were growing on me along with their OSX versions, their greedy iTunes and iPod debacle kept me firmly on the side of PC. Though I do side with Mac in every single commercial including the Mac vs PC duo, particularly when they slam Vista, Microsoft’s weak attempt at a new version of Windows. But now, after a lifetime firmly on the PC side of life, I find my reasons for hating, or even disliking Apple and all that they produce slipping away. Today they announced the end of their deceptive digital rights management in all iTunes downloads (what prevents them from being played on any device and for an unlimited amount of plays and copies). This means that Apple has torn down my last barrier, my last solid argument for why Mac, iTunes, and iPod’s are evil. I suppose in this New Year I should turn a new leaf and admit publicly that Apple isn’t all that bad. For those who prefer their toolbars with an apple instead of a Start Button, who like their shortcuts to be called an alias, who use force-Quit instead of Ctrl-alt-Del … I declare a truce!
Apple Press Release Here
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