Reluctant Blogger

Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.

Inigo Montoya: What’s that?

Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

###

So we seem to be tapped into the zeitgeist this week. Sorta.

Paul Graham has a post up titled perhaps even more provocatively than this one - Microsoft is Dead. (via Techmeme cluster.)

Blogosphere responses? “Please.” “Feh.” “Since When?“and “Kind of Like Paul McCartney in the 60s, I guess.” Hugh says it’s the culture, stupid. Even the Slashdotters seem to have RTFA.

Man, I love blogging. :-)

As for me, well - I tried linking my AYNTK roundup from the post I wrote earlier in the week, because I think it’s germane, and I’d rather have all the interesting links in one place for future reference, but that doesn’t seem to ping the discussion, so now I’m experimenting with a standalone post.

My contribution to the conversation from a little earlier in the week is here:

How Microsoft could crush Google in one easy step. Seriously.

I’ve also gotten some great feedback on the original post via email that I’ll post later in the weekend.

A few additional thoughts here, though, with regard to one particular part of Paul’s essay. Specifically:

All the computer people use Macs or Linux now… Windows is for grandmas… no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft’s anyway.

Well…. maybe. Except for gamers. Or anybody on a budget. In other words, every young, non-wealthy person in the world who isn’t starting a “Web 2.0 company.” (Admittedly this sometimes feels like everybody, but studies indicate that this may not actually be true.)

Personally, I’m ambidextrous. My first tech job, approximately 2 million years ago, was administering the Appletalk network at what was then called AIR at Stanford. When I joined the working world, though, I made the switch to Windows, and since then, like Danny of SearchEngineLand “Look, (Apple)-dude — I’ve built my own computers from the case up.”, I’ve earned my PC stripes. I continue using PCs right along side my Mac to this day because:

• They’re affordable
• I can mod them quickly and easily
• I can play games at decent FPS as well as any of the approximately 98% of software that’s written for Windows.
• I know how to run one safely and securely.
• I have to work with companies that exist in a world outside the Web 2.0 bubble. An awful lot of that world still runs on Windows, at least for the time being.

Sorry for the mini-rant - I think it’s residual annoyance from those “I’m a Mac” ads. Am I really the only person who’d rather hang out with John Hodgman than that annoying-as-hell, faux-hipster Mac dude? It reminds me a little too much of high school, and any argument that can be reasonably restated as “If you don’t have X, then you’re just not cool” still tends to get my prompt dismissal. If I didn’t have time for it in high school, I most definitely don’t have time for it now….

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 7th, 2007 at 7:57 pm and is filed under , , , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.