Eating the Apple

Today is the keynote at Apples WWDC 2014 conference, and I am full of anticipation. Over the years Apple events have become my major motion picture events, my midnight releases, my car show (people get excited about car shows right?). 

Getting excited about events like this may seem strange to you. Thinking about it, it seems a little strange to me. It comes down to the fact that I use the computers that Apple makes every day, and so the things that are announced at these events will have a direct impact on my life. As long as they don't mess things up in a major way I don't see this changing any time soon.

Being an Apple fanboy, something I have come to terms with being labeled as, has not been a constant in my life. I grew up on their computers. My family had an Apple IIc in the early 80s, followed by a Macintosh Classic and a steady stream of other computers through the later 90s. I remember the year that both my brother and I received Macintosh Performas for christmas. Lets just say I did not practice my violin much the following week.

During this period I was an adamant Apple fan, getting into arguments with the other nerds at school over our preferred operating systems. But with the decline of Apple in the 90s also came the decline of my enthusiasm with their beige boxes. That's when I started building my own PCs. 

During the entire time I have had machines running Windows operating systems I never purchased a preassembled desktop. My wife did have an eMachine, but that was after a crazy run of 5 laptop returns to Best Buy that ended in the manager allowing her to use her replacement policy on a computer where the screen was not attached. Best money every spent on a protection plan. 

I returned back to the Apple fold after they left their Power PC CPUs behind for the much faster Intel cores. With the change in hardware came the ability to run Windows on a Mac, the best of both worlds, sort of. While you can definitely run Windows on a MacBook or iMac, the hardware is not the best at running games, the only reason I run Windows at all.

For just about everything else I can think that I want to do on a computer, photo editing, video editing, word processing, I just prefer the design of Apple software and hardware. CAD and 3D solid modeling are still more powerful on a Microsoft platform, which is why we run Windows 7 machines at work. Since I run those programs less and less these days I have a small amount of hope that whenever we get around to upgrading our hardware my new desktop will either be built into the display or, even better, a small cylinder.

So it is with the excitement of a kid on christmas morning that I wait for the keynote where Tim, Phil, and Jonny to tell me about Yosemite.