I’ve been thinking of buying a new mac this week. I’m tired of the quagmire of costly Windows applications. They’re overloaded with useless features, thrown together in the most inelegant ways. The Linux world is tiring too, with a lack of completed, functional applications, and an almost non-existent commercial market. Don’t get me wrong, I respect the Windows and Linux worlds, but they both lack balance.

At work we have several Macs. I’m always impressed when I get to use them, and the Mac guys really dig them too. It seems that Mac-heads aren’t pathetic followers like Windows-fanboys, blissfully ignorant of computing history and zen. And they’re not in denial like the Gnu/Linux zealots, who ignore the time they have to spend to make their machines work. These Mac lovers are motivated to create things - beautiful things. There is just something about a Mac that inspires.

And of course Apple builds beautiful looking hardware too, with well-polished tools and interfaces. So there is that draw of technolust. PCs, on the other hand, are a repulsive pile of components, in complete absence of attractive abstraction. While it is possible to build a powerful PC for less than a Mac, they’re damned ugly in every way.

I bought my first PC under duress. I knew it could be better, and I could never understand those people who thought that their PCs were so cool. Hadn’t anyone seen the Macs, Amigas, and Ataris of the mid 80s? It was painful to get increased complexity for a reduced featue set and increased cost. An Atari 1040 STe, for example, with 1 meg of ram and a monitor was about $1000. A similar PC was over $3000, with crappy CGA graphics. Worse, programming the PC was a mess, compared with the Ataris, Macs, and Amigas. I knew it could be so much better.

I still know it can be better, which is why I’m tired of PCs, Windows and Linux. Or maybe it’s the lust for shiny, new hardware. Or maybe it’s a desire for inspiration. Or maybe I just think a change would be for the better. Whatever it is, anyone who develops for Windows or Linux should look to the Mac for an example of balance and completeness, proof that it can be done.