I remember a few years ago I learned that it felt so good giving someone else something instead of receiving something!
Yesteryday, I bought my mom a:
- 15″ 2.66 GHz Apple MacBook Pro
- 4 GB of RAM
- 128 GB SSD (I’m jealous – I don’t even have a Solid State Drive Yet – waiting on Intel X25-M 160GB Gen 2)
It was so awesome to tell her! One of the most fulfilling moments of my life (in one respect). She actually asked what she could do for me? She raised me – I think I owe her a lifetime and still could never repay what she gave me – LIFE! And she told me to “Follow My Dreams” everyday of my life – how many kids got that? I’m learning not as many as I thought!
My mother, who turned sixty-five yesterday, is more computer savvy that most teenagers I know. That is why I have no problem saying her age – she is truly 65 going on 25. She uses MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, MSN Chat, Google Docs, and uploads Photos, and plays Bedazzle likes it’s going out of style! She taught me to follow my dreams and I think I was the one that taught her that you CANNOT break a computer or mess up a computer where it can’t be fixed – well except the time I opened up my PC Jr and tried to re-solder the chips – opps! My dad was an electrical engineer and scientific glassblower – I figured he could fix anything – especially a computer – he worked at IBM!
On December 7th, 2007, I abandon Windows Operating Systems for a MacBook Pro. I’ve always been bleeding edge and used betas in production before releases – so I expect creating a lot of hassles for myself – but “stable releases” acting like alphas is not acceptable!
In the beginning, I started with my TRS-80, Tape Drive (yes, like the old school tape recorders in elementary school – that acted like a hard drive). I used MS-DOS 2.01 thru Windows Vista SP1 (Release Candidate). I helped convert parts of Alta Vista, Experian, and MySpace to .NET, and a project at TRW to COM/DCOM, etc. I was using FreeBSD too, but loved how “Right Brain” Windows was versus how “Left Brain” command shell was. I always wanted an AMIGA got that purpose – but my Dad was pure IBM!
You would think after two decades of Windows I would never move away from that Brand!
I KNOW LOVE APPLE PRODUCTS – I know I’m now wayyyyy under their spell! My roommate said it best “If you try to open Apple Product Box or figure something out with the devices themselves and it seems to hard you assume your doing something wrong not Apple”. They are so intuitive! The level of cognitive science is unmatched! It feels good to use an Apple Product! It’s an “emotional design”
And I have to say – Three things happened in the last year that made it so I can 100% shed Windows – not even a VM Fusion of Windows 7! Omniture opens/edits Visio Files and Edits them, Google Docs converts Microsoft Office Products to Google Docs, and last week Quicken bought Mint (so I don’t need to boot up a Windows VM to manage money – cause honestly the desktop versions for Quicken on Mac – sucks).
Had Microsoft built equal quality products for Mac (which was started actually in 1984) including Microsoft Outlook for Mac, made Microsoft Passport/LiveID open an protocol and gave it away, shortened their product cycles, openly contributed to standards and protocols, and the worst thing of all – if they didn’t rebrand MSN to Live! I didn’t care, but man – My Mom consdiers MSN Browser (remember that) is a different non-browser command center – a jump off point for the online experience. It’s really just an add-on that shows local weather, hotmail, etc – kinda like Flock but Microsoft didn’t share that source to partners (well not freely or easily). I mean I was soooo confused with Live, but so was the Microsoft Evangelists. It’s not like going from Coke to New Coke – it’s like changing “Walt Disney” to “Acme”! And what’s funny – they lost my Mom in the process!
Now, don’t get me wrong, Some of the smartest people I know work there! My former employees would get a weekly blast of http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/ (Scott Gu is one of their pioneers and as a Corporate VP – still codes and blogs). When you get past the 7 people on the phone (have you ever had one person on a Microsoft phone call) BUT when you get around the product teams – it feels real and awesome! From 13 to 28 I wanted to work for Microsoft soooo bad – I actually didn’t think I was smart enough so I didn’t apply!
I won’t spend too much time on this, but while at MySpace we were pushing the limits of 32-Bit computing. We were putting such a large load on their software we were finding bugs/flaws that you only see at our scale. One day we found a bad garbage collection ratio where it did a full gen collection from scratch – and we were building a caching tier – not good! They took our memory dumps, coded us a fix in two days, and we put it in production! The week we started using .NET 2.0 and Later SQL 2005 – we helped them see issues more clients wouldn’t see till way later in the product cycle! So – when you get past the bullshit – it’s like Google – where the passion to solve complex problems is alive and well!
I MAJORLY DIGRESS … but I obviously needed to get that off my chest!
So, I’m excited to see my Mom now make the transition to Mac! I bought her the one year “One-on-One” so she can get everything moved over and go back for personal training and group sessions! Trust me, it will take her some getting use to – right click, maximizing windows, no MSN Browser, no Microsoft Office – but right after that first month she will intuitively love it! She will feel so empowered and I’m sure she will learn Google Video Chat or IChat so she can see her son – which is awesome!
My nieces and sister live with my Mom and Dad – which means they are about to convert by default too! My 13 year-old niece, her younger sister, my sister, my mom will all start helping each other learn new things firing new synapses
In conclusion, I didn’t mean to write this blog – I meant to just say I converted my Mom to Apple. I guess I’m really disappointed that Microsoft didn’t transcend and evolve! I really had hoped Ray Ozzie was going to put a Windows Web OS out there a few years ago – but instead they are still doing things like trying to asking Dell and HP to rename “NetBooks” to “Small Form Factor PCs” before the holiday season so it falls in the Windows License Models – When I read about NCR, IBM, old AT&T, etc – they were large sales forces that wielded their power in the market place and Microsoft could have started that way and transitioned the world – instead Netscape and Google and many others did! I would have helped them! So many people would have helped them! I like new things like Photosynth, Surface, XBOX Live, Robotics SDK, etc – so it’s not like the innovation isn’t there! I guess this got so long because I don’t understand how a company/brand that I was loyal to from the early 1980’s thru 2007 AND converted three large companies to their products AND made MySpace scale their products AND evangelized their greatness often better than they did – they LOST ME – HOW? I was soooo easy to keep – I even offered when I was the SVP of MySpace to present a deck to Microsoft Execs on how to position themselves in the Web 2.0 world from my over 20 years of experience with their products – just one perspective of someone on the front lines – it either never made it to the right people or there just weren’t interested!
So, Now I’m Mac OSX, Ubuntu, Django, Amazon, Google Clouds, and anything that is open and/or innovative!
HAPPY BITHDAY MOM!
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