There are several like me at Microsoft. Some more extreme, some less, and there are also those there that would like to hang me for my transgressions. (right Scott?) The truth remains that I work at as an Engineer at Microsoft and most of my home computing is done on a Mac.
Of course I am not all Mac. I have two Vista PCs that I use regularly and I have no dislike or hard feelings towards them at all. The reality is that several of my personal hobbies happen to lend themselves to the Mac easily. Of course they can be done on the PC, but I prefer to do them on the Mac.
Now let me be clear on one point, Video, Audio and Photography can be done and done quite well on the PC, often with the same software from the same companies (Protools, Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, etc) But I have just gotten used to doing them on Mac, and long before I ever came to Microsoft.
That being said, there are some things I just don’t do on a Mac. Application and Web Development are two things I have yet to get comfortable with on my Macs.
So what is it exactly that brought me to the Mac and what has kept me there? Protools is the software that led me there. Digidesign’s digital audio application is dual platform, and when I finally dropped the cash for the audio interface and software, Windows 98 is what I was running it on. I purchased a Dell Precision workstation around the year 2000 with dual monitors and as much ram as I could get at the time, about 1GB I think, and about 40GB of hard drive space. It was a beast of a machine and it was optimized and dedicated to running Protools..
The problem was that the computer just didn’t run it very well. I had issues with pops and clicks, sometimes tracks stuttered while recording and it just wasn’t stable. After a few months of toiling away, getting more and more frustrated with it, I decided to give Mac a shot and got what I think was around an 866Mhz G4 PowerMac.
Protools installed quickly and I was up and recording flawlessly from the start. Now this isn’t always the most practical approach both economically and realistically. Most people use their computers for more than one thing.
It’s interesting how much an impression like that lasts on you. It’s really still there, although intelligently I realize that Windows runs some very stable recording systems on Protools, Sonar, Cubase and the like.. I just had a bad experience, switched and never had a reason to switch back.
These days I am still running my studio on a Mac, and it has crept into other parts of my world as well. When the intel switch came I decided it would be a great thing to get the Macbook Pro as my laptop and be able to run both Windows and OS X on it. I have been on the Apple laptop for over a year now and wouldn’t switch back to a PC only for anything. I have Vista installed into Bootcamp and available through VMWare Fusion, and 90% of the time I run it in OS X. Before I switched to the Mac Pro for my studio, it was based on a 24” iMac which I just couldn’t bear to sell, so I kept it. Now that it’s not my audio computer anymore, I use it more than ever.
There are things that I still use PCs for daily. I have a 64-bit Vista Media Center machine that is our iTunes server, storage server and gaming computer. I have a 32-bit Vista computer that I use for work email, work IM, VPN, web design, software development and managing our network and other computers via Windows Live OneCare.
At work I use Vista machines for my desktop and laptop and I don’t find myself “missing” my Macs at all (except maybe Quicksilver) so I don’t want anyone to think that my point is that I love Macs more than PCs, after all “I am a PC” ☺ But what I am saying is my home has room for both.
So what does this all mean? What is the point? The point is that there is room for both for anyone, even someone who works for Microsoft. The computer I use is suited to the task I choose, so to speak.
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Thanks for the public post. I too work at Microsoft, but have Macs at home.
I wouldn’t hang you. That’s far too quick
I just think it’s great to have a discussion about both with out the “you’re an ass because you use XYZ” rants from the extremists on both sides of the platform “wars”.
I’m a long time Mac person – and I don’t know why I can’t get more comfortable on a Windows box. I’ve tried, but I just feel like the proverbial fish out of water. Just the user conventions, dialog boxes, etc., frustrate me. It’s not that I’m trying to change systems. My company makes/sells a windows tool that I need to be more literate on. But I’m allowing my lack of familiarity to get in my way. NOT good.
Have to keep trying.
My wife, a doctor and a researcher, uses Macs for writing her papers and grant applications since creating and formating complex documents on a Mac using Apple’s iWork is simple and straight forward. However, she has to use Microsoft Office on Mac for Round tripping the documents from Macs to PCs to Macs to collaborate with her PC using colleagues. This round-tripping creates havoc, since the Microsoft Office applications on Macs and PCs are not consistent and create havoc with fonts, graphics and formating. This is where I come in to fix the mess. It takes hours to fix this mess for 25 page document. It would be nice if Microsoft paid attention to its applications from a user’s point of view, rather than trying to perpetuate its monopoly!!!
I use PCs at work and Macs at home, and I find that I *do* miss the Macs while I’m at work. Granted, our company uses XP (and not Vista), so I can’t say that it wouldn’t solve all of these problems (or create more, for that matter), but I sorely miss Spotlight in Mail. I can’t say enough about how bad it is trying to find anything in Outlook as opposed to Mail. Then there’s the taskbar. Love it or hate the dock, but at least I can optimize it for how *I* want to work – I can reorder the apps to *my* liking, instead of whatever order they start up in. And yes, I start them up in the order I want. But every single day, one of them disappears and shows up *at the end* of the taskbar when I finally switch back to it. I miss Expose – yes, Win-D is similar, but it never seems to put my windows back *in the same order* as where I left them. And I truly miss the stability. At least once a week I have to re-enter my proxy settings in IE. Not because I use IE often, but because those are the same proxy settings that Outlook uses to download images in HTML mail. There are probably a couple dozen little things like that in Windows that are annoying and that I don’t have to deal with on my Macs.
As for the other way around – I think the only thing I miss from the Windows side is CodeWright. Though that’s now defunct (thanks, Borland), and I haven’t found a suitable replacement on any platform. It’s just so flexible.
Jason, why the note of apology in your post?
If you enjoy using a Mac, just do so. You don’t need to rationalize or make excuses for it.
In any case, next year, when Snow Leopard (OSX10.6) comes out, the gap is going to really widen.
You might find yourself apologizing for using a pc!
Don’t take it too seriously!
Yours sincerely,
John Davis
I also have room for both Mac and PC. I prefer using PC though for things like development and work. Mac is just for internet surfing and as a media player.
. Everything a computer can do i do it in PC