Individual Entry: The end of an Era
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August 10, 2005

Life : The end of an Era

I purchased my first Macintosh computer – one of the original 128K models - in March of 1984, only a couple of months after they came out. I had played with a Xerox Alto and had used an Apple Lisa at work, so I had some sense of how revolutionary the Mac was going to be. Shortly thereafter I was programming the Mac professionally, a career that continued for many years until I was hired by Apple itself. I worked at Apple for 7 years, eventually serving as one of the architects for the Mac operating system.

Around the time I left Apple, I purchased my first Windows PC. My reason was simple: I was an avid game player, and while there were a few companies developing interesting games for the Mac first, too many games I wanted to play were only available for Windows. I those days I would accurately (if a bit smugly) tell people that I did "all of my serious work on the Mac" and that my Windows PC was "only to play games".

After I left Apple I started to do different kinds of software engineering professionally – not Windows; but also not Mac – but at home I continued to do all of my personal programming projects (assorted simulations, parts of games, etc.) on the Mac.

Things however started changing around the time Mac OS X came out. For myself, I was faced with the prospect of learning how to program a whole new system if I wanted to continue to do my personal development on the Mac (for as different as OS X was from OS 9 for the end user, they were completely different beasts for the programmer). So the question became: If I was going to learn to program a new OS, which OS should I learn? The choice was clear – knowing Windows would open far more doors for me professionally than knowing OS X. So I took a few courses at a local university extension, bought a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio, and started doing my personal projects on Windows.

I was not the only person faces with this decision. While most of the "big" developers made the switch from OS 9 to OS X, a lot of the small companies – those who created the cool little programs that made using my Mac so comfortable for me personally – didn't. I knew a few of the developers personally and was able to confirm their decision was the same as mine – they switched to making cool stuff for Windows rather than learn OS X.

So at this point I was now doing "serious work" (programming) on my Windows PC, and starting to buy other productivity software for Windows as well. This trend continued for a few years as more and more of my "serious work" was getting done on Windows and less and less on the Mac until, about 3 years ago I reached a point that the only thing I was still doing on the Mac was reading Email. One reason I stayed in that state for so long as that people don't bother to write viruses for the Mac, so I felt safer using my Mac as a "firewall" to protect my windows machine.

The last straw appeared as I set up this blog. LivingDot (which hosts this site) is a very nice and very flexible web hosting service. I can do just about everything through a convenient web interface. Most of the interface is OS-neutral; but there was one small advantage for Windows – when you created a new Email address, it was able to automatically configure Outlook to use it. So, as I created the various Email addresses for this and other blogs, it was easier to set them up on Windows than Mac, and since I had a lot else to worry about, I took advantage of that.

The result was I was reading all of my "stevenanne.net" Email addresses on Windows, and only my old Email addresses on Mac. Since all of the important action was on these new addresses, I found myself getting lazier and lazier about reading the Email on the Mac – often going days at a time before I bothered to boot my Mac and check mail.

Well, I finally gave up.

Tonight I transferred over my 120 Megabytes of archived Email from Mac to Windows, and shut down my Mac, perhaps for the last time. After 21 enjoyable years, there will soon no longer be a Mac computer on my desk at home. It's been fun; but while I don't believe ALL good things come to an end, this one certainly has.

Farewell Macintosh, you've been a good friend.

Posted by Steven at August 10, 2005 09:41 PM

Comments

So, think we can get a couple hundred for it? Anyone want a nice, white doorstop?

It is a rather sad day, but Apple is rapidly becoming the dark force in the computer world. Too isolated, too narrow in apps and options. Cool is nice, but in this case the cost is too high. With the upcoming change over in chips, I'm going to be out soon, too.

Posted by: Anne at August 10, 2005 11:25 PM

I went through the same thing, both with Macs and with Sun/Solaris. I liked the openness of Unix and the vitality of Macs. Windows 95 was truly all the best features of Mac 84.

But I went on vacation. When I returned, my desk had a PC on it and the Mac was gone. My sun station was replaced around the same time (1996?). I had to PC at work... and at the next job... and at the next.

It became easier to PC both at work and at home. The PC bacame my work machine and the Mac my game machine and, well, I stopped playing computer games because I don't have the time. The mac was let go.

There was one more reason for the transition you didn't touch on - price. I got to the point I didn't want to spend the money to buy both the mac and the PC versions of things. And the PC version was almost always cheaper. The PC hardware was cheaper too (in both senses). But that also made it easier to walk away from purchasing mistakes.

I miss my mac. But that era ended years ago for me.

Posted by: Roland at August 22, 2005 03:15 PM