A Confession

Sorry for yet another extended period of silence on my blog. I know that I have at least two(!) readers and I should try to stick to my new year’s resolution and write more.

Anyway, one of the reasons I’ve not been posting is a sense of shame, mostly caused by the shiny new Macbook Pro laptop that I’m typing this on.

Now for most people, this is no big deal, but I am someone who has been banging on about Free Software for at least the last ten years. The last Apple product I bought was a Powerbook back in the year 2000, and I’ve been using GNU/Linux in one form or another ever since.

So what the hell happened?

Well, the first thing is, I’m still a Debian head. I still have my trusty thinkpad running Debian, and Debian will remain as the rock solid foundation of my business and all of my servers.

I also still love Android, but that isn’t really considered to be Free Software anyway.

But all that is beside the point. What really happened is that I was compelled to ‘get with the program’ and to stop putting philosophy before practical concerns. In plain and simple terms, I had a client complain that I was unable to edit his Microsoft Word .docx files without losing the formatting. I also had cause to use a clever drawing application for doing some sitemaps at work that was only available for OSX. In the end, I just couldn’t argue with a paying client and my direct needs related to running a small business.

The upside to this situation is that I’m actually feeling slightly liberated. Before the new mac came along I was starting to resemble the software equivalent of a religious fundamentalist. My hair shirt was comprised of my inability to run certain software applications without feeling like some kind of blasphemer. Now I have my mac, I can sample whatever I like, although I doubt I will ever be able to bring myself to sign up to iTunes.

It’s quite a strange feeling to come back to OSX after all these years. When I left, OSX was an infant operating system that was extremely rough around the edges. Now it’s sleak and fast and mature. The worst thing about it that I’ve experienced is a nagging feeling that I’m no longer in control of my computer – a feeling that dark forces might be peeking over my shoulder without me knowing.

Of course, it is this loss of control that makes Free Software so important. I suspect that for most people, the slick design of the mac and the OSX software more than make up for it, but really, I don’t think that I can ever stop worrying and learn to love big brother.

So, do not fear, I’m not lost, I just broadened my horizons slightly!

But the truth remains, I am a terrible hypocrite and I apologise to all my mac using friends who I have been slagging off for the past decade.