In part, it’s just politics in play, but the eternal rivalry between Mac and PC users sometimes gets just a little too extreme. I mean, in a world where Bill Gates and Steve Jobs can get along, you’d expect that Microsoft and Apple will, at times, play nicely together too. Indeed, Time magazine refers to Gates and Jobs as “frenemies,†a newly-coined term that describes the situation, where the pair seems to have a close personal relationship, yet head companies that are, at times, fierce competitors.
I try not to have a knee-jerk reaction to the Mac versus PC argument. While I have criticized Microsoft quite often for the things I think they do wrong, I actually regard computers as just tools to get the job done. Most times, this means that I’ll use my Mac. But there are times where Windows is surely up to the task, even if it’s only because there’s no Mac version of a specific application. Of course, then there’s always Parallels Desktop to the rescue.
So I’m going to talk about Microsoft in a positive way this time, so let the chips fall where they may.
One of the best things Microsoft has going for it is their line of input devices. I have used my trusty Microsoft Comfort keyboard — kind of a half-way approach between traditional and ergonomic designs — religiously for well over a year now. My aging fingers took to it as a duck to water, and I can type rapidly and long and not feel the strain. Yes, the dark grays used for its exterior seem drab and dull, but I don’t like at my keyboards much anyway, so I don’t concern myself about such matters.
Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter. [1]