Thanks for commenting, Alex.

I think the main issue is apple promotes and nurtures the flame war, especially with their advertising and general image. If they didn’t have the smug factor things would probably be a lot less heated on both camps.

On the server side, if I were running an Oracle or MySQL RDBMS I would definitely opt for a Redhat Enterprise, Solaris, HPUX or AIX over Windows. In my previous job I have had customers who discovered they had to perform a reinstall when migrating from one level of Windows Server to the next. Of course, if one is wedded to SQL Server then there isn’t much of a choice. I found that many of our newer clients opted for RedHat over Windows, perhaps out of cost considerations as much as anything else.

For large corporations, running enterprise apps such as SAP or Oracle Apps pretty much dictates running Windows if one is to avoid the problem of being able to ensure that your desktops are certified for the release of ERP software you are running. It can be a bit of a maintenance nightmare if you have a mix of Macs and Windows clients when it comes time to upgrade your ERP software. It can take a while for software vendors to certify newer OS releases.

Not really: Solaris make a darn nice operating system on the desktop.

I have been a Wintel user since, well, before the days of Wintel — my first PC was an IBM PC with 64K of RAM and a slow-decay green monochrome text-only monitor. Some things are bred in the bone; I started out with DOS version 2.x, and upgraded steadily from there to the early Windows versions, to Windows 3.1, to Windows for Workgroups, to Windows 95, 98, Millennium Editi#%$@$%&NO CARRIER, 2000, XP, Vista, and 7.

Yes, it’s a pain in the ass sometimes. But so are all software packages. So are all computers. So is life. I ran and administered Debian GNU/Linux servers around ten years ago, and that distro was alternately a scary fire-breathing monster, and a beautiful sight to behold. But Windows is the preferred platform for industrial apps now, so that’s what I run.

To the people who would prefer I use a Mac or Linux or DIE!!!!!!!!111111, I say: Get over it. No OS is perfect. Some are better for certain tasks than others. Windows, for better or worse, is the most widely used operating system in the world, and the majority of office applications are written to run on it. So many of us use it, just like we use the imperfect, imbalanced QWERTY keyboard; the imperfect, lossy 100V AC electric current; and the often catastrophically imperfect magnetic-head hard disks.

People who attach elitist value to such things are simply looking for something on which to project feelings of solidarity. Insecure people wishing to seek out like-minded souls, and make themselves feel superior to someone else. I have no need for such things. I don’t belittle people because of their preferences, unless those preferences are for white supremacist child snuff porn or something. If you want to shoot Canon and not Nikon, wonderful. If you want to sip a grande latte at Starbucks with your iPod and iPhone and iMac, go right ahead. It has nothing to do with me.

If you don’t like the Dragons, however, well then you just suck.

So you’ve never actually tried to live with and work with OS X yourself? (For any length of time – I’m not talking about a few minutes of playing around.) Instead it’s “colleagues and friends”. Oh dear, that’s not a good start really.

As somebody who’s spent 6 or so years with Windows (until 2001), 2 years with desktop linux (until 2003) and 6 years with OS X, I think I can give a pretty balanced account without referring to random “colleagues and friends” for stories and here-say. After that many years with all three, I can say that *I* prefer OS X and *for me* it’s been much less hassle and required much less maintenance than the other two. In October 2005 I even cheaped out and bought an Acer laptop for my wife in Japan for 6 man, which ran Vista. And that confirmed my choice was still the right one *for me*.

That’s the problem though. Rather than TRY the alternatives and THEN make informed decisions, far too many people go on words of “colleagues and friends” etc, a certain proportion of whom will have stories embellished or end up being Chinese-rumour type affairs.

In six years I’ve NEVER lost any data on OS X. And I use it for work and personal stuff every single day. That said I don’t use the professional Adobe software, only Elements. I use Time Machine but have yet (touch wood) had to activate it other than to try it out.

My experience is that so many people out there think there is only one choice when they buy a new computer. Especially in Japan where most peoples’ experience is with Windows; they can’t even conceive that there is another “operating system” available. I had that just on Monday night in fact, when one of my wife’s uncles came over, looked at my Macs and said “ah everybody is using Vista these days, but we’re still on XP at home”. I pointed out that they’re Macs and don’t run Windows, and he didn’t even know what they were. I think you might find that THAT is one reason Apple people are so vocal; they WANT people to know that there is a choice, that people don’t HAVE to use Windows a lot of the time – mostly I find that for business, a lot of the time Windows is a requirement, but for home use the choice becomes easier. Especially now that Macs can run both OS X *and* Windows side-by-side.

Back in 2003 though, I dismissed Macs when my friend suggested I should look at them as an alternative to always tweaking my Linux desktop installs. He went with the whole “it just worked” line and I dismissed it as rubbish. I believed that they were “playthings” and “for arty people”, because I’d heard something like that, and because the Macs I’d used back in my school days (for scanning etc) were rubbish and crashed all the time. Little did I know they bear absolutely no relation to the Macs of those days. Finally he lent me his iBook for the weekend. And at the end of that weekend I gave it back and ordered my own.

This has become a bit of a long post I guess, apologies about that. I’m no ranting Mac fanatic, I’m just somebody who has extensively used all three and who has made a decision. If ever I hear of somebody considering their next computer, I will offer to bring one of my Macs along and show it to them. Nothing more than that. But it’s funny, I never had that feeling of *wanting* to do that with Windows or Linux back in the day.