from the Book of Jobs

For those of you that don't know me, I'm a Windows software developer by trade. At least I was for eight years, before getting laid off. Frankly, nowadays I'd be happy running my own .

I mention this, because it often surprises people, due to my love of Apple Macintosh computers.

I've always had a secret yearning for a Macintosh (insert raincoat joke here), ever since Apple brought out their first Macintosh in 1984. There was always something elegant and 'alternative' about them.

When I moved to the US, from the UK, in 1999, I bought an iMac DV Special Edition (which has now been souped up and acts as a household server), and never looked back. I now also have the new iBook.

I'll skip the rest of the story, as we'd be here all night if I didn't.

Mac OS X (pronounced '10') is the icing on the cake. In case you don't know, Mac OS X, is Unix. It's not a cut-down version. It's not Linux. It's full-on BSD Unix, with all the inherent stability that that entails. On top of that, is a GUI that is just beautiful.

Beyond all the technology, there's one big difference between the beige Wintel boxes, and Macintoshes. Macs seem to have soul.

Now, I know what some of you Wintel bigots will be thinking; "Oh no, he's started the tree-hugging hippy bullshit.", but hear me out.

I told you of my tech background, so that you'd appreciate, that I've come from a professional Windows environment, not the clichéd media background, that used to be typical of Mac users.

Someone once wrote, that Mac users are passionate about their computers. Passionate about both the hardware and the software. They said that you never hear of PC users being passionate about Windows.

Prior to my becoming a born-again Mac user, I'd probably have laughed at this too, but now I think I see what they're on about. There is something special about these machines.

Maybe it's exactly because they're the market share underdog, that makes people care about the platform? Maybe it's because they're just a whole lot more elegant than PCs?

Of course, by now the PC using, pickup truck driving jocks among you will be saying, "Man, who gives a shit about elegance? This isn't lingerie, it's a computer. I just want speed, power, and incredably bad gas-mileage."

Well, you can get a Mac with dual gigahertz processors. Bearing in mind that Macs don't need as many hertz as Wintel machines, that should be more than enough horsepower. Add to that the GeForce4 Titanium graphics card that comes with it, and you can shut the fuck up about it not being a good platform for gaming. Besides, if you're that into gaming, buy a Goddamn PlayStation (yes that's the model name of the new Sony product, aimed at the Atheist market sector).

Anyway, my months away from the world of IT have found me more and more immersed in my writing. Both for Englishman In Denver, and for other projects. One of those is a trans-Atlantic collaborative effort, that if it goes well, may end up being sent off to a number of TV companies!

My point being, I've been out of IT for a few months now, and I can do everything I need to do on my Macs, and right now, I see no need to go back to Windows.

And then there's PDAs. For years I'd had a Psion PDA. They're a British company who produced the world's first PDA, a whole year before Apple released the Newton.

The Psion Series 5mx was a reliable workhorse, that, in addition to a keyboard big enough to touch-type on, had a superb operating system. I was way more sophisticated than Palm (32-bit multi-threaded OS), more on a par with WinCE, but without the need for so much memory, or so much power. Sadly Psion have now pulled out of the consumer market, and are concentrating on the real money-earner for them - industrial handhelds.

So when my Psion was damaged beyond repair, I looked around at what was available, and it was basically the Palm or Windows CE platform. Being a power-user, I opted for CE, as Palm hadn't progressed much since its inception in 1996.

I bought the iPaq, and whilst the screen has been great, the battery life, expandability and software, have made a full-time occupation out of sucking.

Also, of course, I can't synch it with my Macintoshes. Oh sure, there's a project (now released) that attempts to provide this synchronisation of Pocket PC on the Mac platform, but it, apparently, also sucks, and costs $70.

Palm synchronisation is built-in OS X.

Sooo, I'm resigned to waiting for the next generation of Palms, running PalmOS 5 - which will provide a much richer, more powerful experience.

From the sound of it, it'll be like the Psion's EpocOS was... in 1995.