Tuesday, January 15, 2002

Looks like David Coursey from ZDNet is going to try becoming a Mac user for one month. If he can go in with a truly open mind this could be interesting. My personal opinion though, is that if he's a "happy" Windows user then he's probably not going to make it. As much as I like to hype the Mac and say how great it is, there is definitely still a lot missing that exists in the Windows world. For me, I switched from using Linux most of the time and Windows when absolutely necessary to using Mac OS X full time. Going from Linux to Mac OS X, you don't lose much (in fact there isn't anything that I miss about linux for a desktop), but you gain to a huge degree. Going from Windows especially Windows XP to Mac is a more difficult proposition. There's still a ton of hardware and software that won't work. I've been looking at getting my girlfriend to switch from Windows 98 to a Mac and she's open to the idea, but she has a flat bed scanner and a photo scanner that won't work. We could easily replace the flat bed scanner because they're cheap, the photo scanner is another story. She also has a GPS that requires a serial connection to download maps. Fortunately her digital camera and printer do work. I of course own tons and I mean tons of hardware that won't work with the Mac, but that's because I'm a geek and collect all kinds of junk that I play with for a week and never use again. If I had all the money that I spent on computer crap, I could ... Ok, ok back to the point. Linux to Mac equals big gains with little loss, Windows to Mac equals nice gains but also significant losses. At this stage of the game, for home users who don't own a lot of peripherals, the Mac is a beautiful platform and over the next few years that will just increase as more hardware is supported and that hardware moves away from antiquated technologies like serial ports. Stepping into the business world is a different matter though, Apple isn't really targeting the space and there is a massive amount of enterprise software that just won't run on the Mac. 11:30:03 PM     A post on the AzTechList by Jiva DeVoe tonight contained this interesting observation. So surveying the landscape in Arizona, I see tons of my friends bailing out of Arizona because the tech job market is so bad. Rumors put us as the 3rd worst job market for tech people in the country. Even my family back east says "Come join us out here! The economy is great!" It seems like we once had a thriving technical community here. Does that still exist? This is frightening, Arizona has truly become a tech wasteland. Since the dbXML Group imploded several months ago I haven't seen a single company that I would want to work for in Arizona. It's turning out that if I want to really stay in tech and not work for something like a bank I need to move. I guess we relied too much on semiconductors and since that's in the tank right now it pulled everything else with it. I'm now looking at Seattle as a first choice, I've never been there but with the tech drought in Az. I'm actually interviewing with Microsoft in a week or so. We'll see what it's like, everybody I know says it's really nice. I'm a startup guy, but I'm not sure where the startups are now. I really hate the idea of moving to the bay area, and anywhere that it snows more then a little bit is out of the question. I do actually like Colorado though, even with the snow. Unfortunately, doesn't seem to be much happening there either. Oh well, I have more then enough projects to keep me busy and we can't really move until my girlfriend finishes her MBA in a couple months. Of course, she also works for a tech startup that's on the rocks. What a mess. If it wasn't for that raising money thing, I'd start my own company. Ideas are never a problem, I'm just sick to death of VCs and other business types who get rich while cutting your throat. Ugh, I love the energy and creativity of startups, I love the challenge of doing big things with few resources, but I'm tired of so called "business" people who don't know a damn thing about the tech industry and couldn't run a company anywhere, but into the ground. The one positive about this shakeout, hopefully, most of the greedy "business" types who don't know how to think to save their lives will go ruin some other industry. They sure did enough damage to this one. 12:16:49 AM

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