By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, Lux Worldwide
While visiting a friend in London recently, I went to his computer to check mail. Nothing odd about that - the familiar Windows interface, Internet Explorer, the usual. I was several minutes into reading, when it suddenly dawned on me that I was using a Macintosh.
A Macintosh!
How had it come to this? I was brought up on old Apple IIe's, but of course they ran MS-DOS 3.0 and pre-dated the Mac GUI by several years.
For virtually all of my professional life, first at Microsoft (the center of the DOS and Windows universe, and then at Saltmine and Lux) I had openly mocked the Mac. I used to call it the Fisher-Price computer, likening it to an automatic transmission car when we all know it's much cooler to drive a manual. Like Steve McQueen in Bullitt. You wouldn't catch this guy using a Mac.
Steve McQueen: the ultimate PC Man?
Macs were good for graphics and audio. They were designed to appeal to kids. They were cute.
I knew that the old PowerPC approach had allowed Macs to emulate the Windows OS several years ago to what were at best mixed results. I had also heard that Apple had recently struck a deal with Intel to create dual core processors that would allow the Mac to run both the Mac OS and Windows. But I was struck all unaware that afternoon in London. It worked beautifully.
To my thinking at least, the PC/Mac holy wars are over. In the last couple of months I acquired two computers, one of each for my home. And here's the kicker: I'm using the Mac OS on the Mac and not Windows. What would Steve McQueen think?
