Tuesday, January 09, 2007

My Next Computer

One of these days I'm going to get a laptop. I don't when that will be yet but I know what I'm going to get.

I never thought I'd find myself in this position but I am going to buy myself a Mac Book Pro. Hopefully I'll be able to max it out on memory and hard drive space but that remains to be seen.

Why, after all this time am I will to convert from a PC to a Mac? Because I will still be able to run Windows from a Mac. Apple recently converted their hardware platform to Intel chips. I think this was a good move for Apple.

Thanks to a program called Parallels, I will be able to install Windows XP and/or Vista on a Mac. There is still some Windows only software I run and so I'll probably have to contend with widows for a long time to come but that remains to be seen.

For now, what I see is a product that make the operating system fairly irrelevant. Different operating systems that serve different purposes all running concurrently on the same hardware. I'm sure Microsoft doesn't like it, the Mac purists would rather not have their beloved hardware polluted with an inferior product like Windows and the Linux enthusiasts are more than happy to have Linux in a position to be run easily in another environment.

This is an incredible example of the market at work. Different companies providing different products to meet the demands of paying customers.

If computers were highly regulated items, things would be very different. New hardware would take forever to get approved. New software would only come from very well funded companies that could stand up to the long, difficult, and inefficient process of government testing. This would of course mean that computers were very expensive and not likely to be affordable for the average person. Government stifles innovation, impedes progress and is generally a nuisance when they stick their nose in to the market.

Rather than companies and investors taking risks on products that may or may not produce a sold return, the government only seeks it's own benefit; what is safe for itself. This doesn't translate well to consumer demand.

Thank you Apple for making a superior product and thank you to all the other people out there who put take chances for the opportunity to make a profit and participate in this system of commerce.