Switching to Macintosh – Its Easy

I started using a PC about 20 years ago when I was an executive director at a company that was starting up New Zealand’s first music television channel. As a willing participant I took to it like duck to water. Always having understood the value of computing I was a slow starter due to my lack of typing skills – I should never have let the girls laugh me out of the typing classes I tried to take in my seventh form year at high school.

Over the years I have continued to use a PC taking very little interest in Macintosh believing that Mac people were really not my scene. After all I am a serious business executive conducting serious business and perceived Mac users to be either computer enthusiasts or creative types who were not deal makers.

This was further enhanced during the nineties when I was sales manager of Computerworld at IDG Communications. A time when the industry became dominated by Microsoft and the development of business applications on the Windows platform.

At the same time, I saw the demise of Mac World the magazine and the Expo, and as the Internet was undergoing it meteoric rise Macintosh was nowhere to be seen. Even the production department at Computerworld switched to PCs and business enterprises were adopting large-scale software solutions and office automation products that were all largely PC based.

However, I have spent a large part of this decade engrossed in a software development project [Manabars] that has nothing to do with Microsoft or Macintosh technologies which are basically the same stuff. Manabars is a re-write of computer science which will result in interoperable software that is hardware independent and designed specifically for the Internet. Solving the complexity issues, security, accountability and compatibility problems (to name a few) that plague the industry today.

Manabars has been a mind opening experience to date. Studying the science and theories that form the principles of this new approach to computing has literally taken me to the edge of the universe and back. Although, I must confess I did get lost in space at times. Nonetheless, and importantly, it has eliminated any bias or misguided perceptions I had previously held about any of today’s computing platforms

So, when I started recently in my new role as business development manager at Marker I was asked if I wanted a PC or a Mac. Without hesitation I chose to use a Mac, only because I have been using PCs for the last 20 years, and I no longer have a preference. It has now been several weeks since I started using a Mac for the first time in a business environment and I have not experienced any more user problems than I would have using a PC on a network.

The Mac operation is really no different to a PC only that the terminology is different. Some of the operational buttons are located in different places but overall the operating system, the applications and files seem to behave the same way as they do on a PC. Further more by deploying virtualisation software [VMWare] on the Mac, which can emulate Windows, I have got a PC as well and I can toggle between the Mac and the PC.

Oh, and what happened to the Mac enthusiasts and  creative types – I guess they became deal makers too. Switching to a Mac – Its easy.