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chris howard wrote an opinion article on apple matters called “apple is killing linux on the desktop”. in the article, chris talks about how the number of apple macs running os x used to access the web has been consistently increasing over the last few years while linux has seen only minimal growth.

as a long-time linux user and recent mac convert, i can’t help but feel that i’m helping this along. i began using linux sometime in 1997. since then, i’ve never been able to use linux exclusively. in other words, i’ve always had to keep around at least one windows box in order to do certain tasks. that may just be changing, however.

less than two weeks ago, i got my first mac. i say “first mac” because, even this early in the game, i’m fairly confident it won’t be my last. i’ve even went so far as to tell myself that i’ll never buy another windows pc again. that may seem a bit premature, but i’m pretty convinced.

i work in information technology. there aren’t many days that go by that i’m not either sitting in front of a computer or have one on my lap for at least 12 hours. i am, by all accounts, a “power user”. by day, i manage computer networks. my group runs the servers that keeps our organization going. if i didn’t require outlook, i could use a linux pc 90% of the time and be just fine. in fact, i have both windows xp and linux pc’s under my desk. until two weeks ago, however, i worked almost exclusively on the xp box.

i write a fair amount of code. it’s not my official job but if there’s applications that we can create or scripts we can write to make our jobs easier, that task usually falls to me. i primarily use perl for unattended scripts and php for our web-based apps (cakephp rocks, by the way). i also tend to carry a laptop back and forth to work with me. after a certain point, it became a huge pain in the ass to use my laptop to write code but have that code actually reside on another server. if i’m at work, it meant ssh’ing to the box my code was on (i use vi for 90% of my code development). if i’m at home (or somewhere else), it meant bringing up the vpn link and then doing the same thing.

i was able to avoid that by running linux on my laptop and just developing all my code there. then, however, i was missing out on tools that i use quite often (e.g. ms word, ms outlook, etc.) so if i needed to use them, i still had to connect to a windows box to use them.

i managed to convince my $boss to buy me a mac. one of my selling points was that it would make writing code easier — and, as an extension, faster — because all the development tools are right there. as i write this on my new macbook, i can quickly open up a terminal and i have instant access to both perl and php. in addition, i’ve got apache and mysql running. that’s everything i need to write and test my code locally. i can do it anywhere, with or without a network connection. that’s nice too, since we travel a lot and it means i can write code while riding down the highway (i’ve already done it).

anyways, i’m getting a little sidetracked. my point is that i can agree with chris. previously, if you were looking for an alternative to windows, you went with linux. now more and more people are switching to apple and os x instead. i’ve been telling everyone that i get the best of both worlds (windows and linux) on this mac. i haven’t been able to find one single thing that i can do on either windows or linux that i can’t do on this mac. this macbook does everything, and does it quite well.

i’ve still got my windows xp and linux boxes, both at work and at home. that may very well change in the future.