I'd originally contemplated calling this area "PC/Mac", but I changed my mind and worked relentlessly with the interface to make sure I got the word "Computers" in. Why? Why in this world of Windows and Macintosh did I decide to expand the horizon beyond? Well to me the computer is a means, and I chose my platform of choice not based on some trivial religion or cult, but because I prefer it from an interface, design, and productivity standpoint. Yet make no mistake, I love computers almost as in a second love.

It all started back in grammar school, when my first computer experiences were spent on Apple II's, and my fondest memories of friends with their Commodore 64's and tape drives. My aunt's Tandy (Radio Shack) TRS-80 that my pal Mark and I refer commonly to as the "Trash 80". I remember coding in BASIC to produce mundane blocks of color, and how much I loathed it.

My how the computer has changed...

In 1984, Apple released the "Macintosh", and as the ads went, "It was why 1984 wouldn't be like 1984", in reference to Orwell's book entitled 1984. Irony would have it that it was a pop-shot taken at IBM, the current king of the heap, who was percieved as a monopolistic giant wielding it's forces unduly. The reality is, it wasn't IBM who would fit this bill at all. It was a different Bill to tell the truth, and he would reside in Redmond and tout Windows as his weapon of choice.

In 1985 however, came my first computer platform of choice's dawning. Probably the second GUI to hit the mainstream (not counting Xerox PARC's SmallTalk GUI that inspired the rest but never sold well in the Alto and Star models), and arguably far more successful than the third-place "Windows" juggernaut, my Commodore Amiga 500 could do things that Macs and PC's of the time couldn't do. It could boot in full-color from a floppy. While Macs rendered in black and white monochrome and PC's were affluent to the tune of a whopping "16" colors, my Amiga could do 4.096 and didn't even come standard with a hard disk.

Yet, as the old saying goes. What is best doesn't truly always win. So Commodore lumbering in it's own petty ignorances of how the industry was changing, spent too much time focused on the C64/128 and let the Amiga which it battled Atari so vehemently over, to basically plummeted into a state of stagnancy. True to the platform though, the fanbase "STILL" is there, keeping the dream and the hopes of a resurgence alive. Yet for me, I moved on.

My biggest fanhood for a platform came through my experiences in two platforms. I used DOS/Windows for some time in doing Computer Aided Drafting work (AutoCAD releases 10-14 and 2000), and the Mac for many graphic-arts related tasks. In using the two, the matter of preference was an easy one. The Mac was hand's down better, and in many ways, that transition has been unfailing. The Mac "STILL" is the best platform out there.

Yet through Microsoft's well-documented bullying tactics, dating back long ago to before their slaughtering of Netscape, back prior to even their constant bickering with Apple. Going back as far as the Caldera Dr-DOS cases... Microsoft found a way to weasel their way up the ladder into producing a pile of crap and feeding it to people for umpteen years, over and over and over, until... it's pile of crap sustained itself into something more palatable. More like a McDonald's Cheeseburger dropped in a fryer, Windows is now much more elegant than before, but probably just as healthy to it's users as it was eon's ago in the frustrations and problems it caused. The more things change...

So, that said, it's obvious my fanhood of the Mac is still there, largely because BeOS never found a way to trump Apple at their own game. Largely because Commodore was naive and the Amiga Inc. people still in a lot of ways retain that similar obfuscation in brain process that resonates throughout the Amiga community. Largely because NeXT, the one-time Sun Microsystem's competitor spearheaded by Steven Paul Jobs (co-founder of Apple) never found a way to beat Apple, much less Sun at their own games. Considering that Sun doesn't build a decent desktop computer, nor does SGI, the obvious choice is Apple, especially now that NeXT is now a part of Apple, and is the underlying foundations of the most incredible OS in history in my honest opinion. For what Apple has achieved in a matter of a few years (taken the lead in skyrocketing fashion in the OS world yet again), took Microsoft over 15 with it's NT foundations. In 15 years, can Microsoft find a way to keep pace?

Even moreso... do they have to? That's a question that we'll all have to seek out well into the future.