Software Operation

What does today's big announcement by Apple of software that will dual boot an Intel Macintosh mean? After all if I buy a Mac I want to run Mac OS X all the time. I regularly use Windows XP from my Macintosh and I do it using a program from Microsoft called Remote Desktop Connection. About the only thing I might prefer over having the ability to remotely access a Windows XP machine and its screen, would be to run Windows virtually. By Virtually I mean to run Windows software from within Mac OS X. Nonetheless this announcement is important for two big reasons.

Does Microsoft Deliberately Crash On Macs?

I remember back in the days of the Mac Plus. It was during a snack break at one of the very first MacApp courses offered by Apple. An Apple engineer (who I won't name here) explained something to us then that has always stuck in my mind. Before the days of protected memory ordinary users (not us tech types) saw crashes as a problem with "the computer". Most people don't know where to assign the blame when things go wrong. So the blame would lie with Apple.

I finally got a Mighty Mouse today. That alone would not be a good enough reason to blog a review since I'm sure there are plenty of people writing about it already. But it happened to coincide with my purchase of a MiniView™ Micro USB PLUS KVM Switch by IOGEAR.

I have been programming for over 20 years now. The year I learned to program (in Fortran) was the last year the university had punch cards. By the next semester I was using a line printer and the next year a CRT. Only two years later I had purchased an Apple ][, although I was mainly working on minicomputers. (If you are too young to remember, they actually used to break things down as micro, mini and mainframe. There were never any maxi-computers, just super ones.)

Throughout my career I have loved making things work the way they should and have absolutely abhorred it when the tools stopped me from getting the results I wanted or making the tools work was the largest part of my job.