I grew up on Apple products, I went to art school, I make design and build furniture in my garage, my notebook is a sketchpad. I would consider myself a design person.

I left my last Mac in 1996, it was a Quadra 800 AV. I have been working in Windows since then. Tightrope starting developing it’s products in Windows because at the time it was the best available tool. Nowadays it’s not, but we have been stuck. I went from Win NT to 2000 to XP to Vista. I got my job done, but it didn’t have any soul. I was so excited to get Vista, I though *finally* a Windows OS that is visually appealing. *I understand I am an unreasonable geek* but Vista is a piece of crap. I don’t want to be hard on Microsoft because they have a lot of really smart people and some very innovative products. Vista has more graphics but it is overkill, it went too far. Furthermore, it has some technical issues which I will forgive MS for because it is a new product. They were pressured to make Vista prettier, while dealing with security problems, legacy software, and ridiculous business requirements.

I am back in the Apple family. I recently bought a Mac Pro desktop and a Macbook Air. I have been thinking about why I decided that a Mac was the way to go… The biggest reason is OSX. You can only run OSX on Apple hardware. Apple hardware is top quality, but there is a price premium for it all. So, why OSX? Mostly because I felt out of touch with the design world, and the Mac will run all my Windows stuff in virtual machines so I could have both worlds, you can’t get that on a PC.

Why Vista is floundering and Mac is thriving?

- Vista is design by compromise
- Apple is design by an opinionated guy

So, Microsoft needs to please OEMs, VARs, ISVs, ITs, and tons of other acronyms. Apple needs to please Steve Jobs. What means that without compromise, Apple can design a very purposeful machine. For instance, my Dell allows me to adjust the trackpad sensitivity, my Mac does not. Why?

- Windows thinking: "All users are different and they might want different settings, it is a feature that we can adjust the sensitivity."
- Apple thinking: "Our trackpad is innovative."

Hey Steve, it’s a ‘fricking trackpad! *oh wait*, it is innovative with it’s oversized-ness, multi-touch. I thought I wanted to adjust the sensitivity but instead I adjusted how I touch it.

Everything surrounding Apple has an opinion, even the little helper apps written for it. If you are in the exclusive Mac club you appreciate the design and limitations and thrive on them. If you are outside, like I was, you might think that Apple is not that great and all Mac people are snobs.

Well it’s good to have an opinion, I am fearful for Apple when Steve Jobs leaves. I hope as Apple gains market share they don’t loose their opinion, I don’t want them to start making compromises. In the mean time I am going to use my Mac with no touchpad sensitivity adjustment and love it.