grantmichaels'blog

In a few days my new iMac will arrive and I’ll be auditioning an Apple for the 2nd time in my 17 years of professional computing. Before it arrives though, I want to share how I came to this decision. Firstly, I’m angry w/ Microsoft for not putting considerably more money and effort into making IronRuby a contender amongst Ruby implemetations. This is *NOT* a reflection of John Lam or his efforts, but rather that IronRuby just isn’t a viable solution yet.

I can’t help but question why they didn’t rush to create a Windows environment that sat upon a Unix system like Apple did w/ OS X. It clearly worked out very well for Apple and Microsoft certainly has the resources to do something similar, and quickly. I can only deduce that they actually believe the Windows platform to be comparable if not superior, and for that reason, I think it’s probably the end of the line for me in regard to Windows.

To be clear, Vista didn’t have anything to do with my decision, and I actually quite like Vista. On the other hand, it took a couple of years for most everything to get straightened out in regard to 64-bit computing, and the process was arduous in the meantime. I fought a lot of drivers issues and conflicts, and there were plenty of BSOD’s along the way.

While I won’t hold it against Microsoft, the constant bombardment by malware was difficult to manage, even for a VERY competent Windows administrator. I mean, my heart practically beats in synchronization w/ clock cycles and I still got nailed a few months ago via an onHover … I passed my mouse over a vector and lost my MBR to something nasty from an onHover in the browser. As someone who tinkered w/ malicious code in days long past, I was shocked at the efficacy of that attack. Furthermore, the reality is that in order to keep a snappy PC, you end up reinstalling fresh copies of the OS far too frequently, each time wasting precious time.

While I’m sort of surprised it’s come to this, I think I’m going to be quite happy leaving Windows behind. I’m not sure that I’ll be raving about my Mac, nor that the grass will really be all that much greener after all, but regardless of whether I embrace Apple and/or OS X, I’m leaving Microsoft’s product regardless.

Yet another software developer is no longer focused on creating products for the Windows platform …

grantmichaels