I'm a Mac. And a PC. And a Kindle. And a Chromebook. And a...

I've used a PC since Windows 3.0, and up until 3 years ago, the only non-Windows computer I ever owned was a Commodore 64.  In the past 15 years, I've probably been through 15 PCs. From a Packard Bell 486DX250 (which I mistakenly put Windows 95 on) up to the Core i7 machines I have now, I've had plenty of PCs.

That being said, we live in a new world, and Microsoft doesn't dominate the industry like it once did. Over the past 10 years, they've pretty much missed the boat on home entertainment and other consumer devices.  For me, it all started with a long series of sub-par Windows Mobile devices, which were painful to use and which generally left me pretty frustrated.  

Enter the iPhone. After ridiculing this product for a year or two without understanding it, I decided to give it a try to see what the fuss was about.  Holy cow.  I could do things on this phone I never dreamed possible on a Windows Mobile Phone.  Then came the iPad.  Then the AppleTV2.  Then the Macbook Air. Let's face it.  Apple has been hitting these out of the park from a hardware and software perspective for the past five years in a way that Microsoft has not been able to do (partly because they don't control or ship the hardware, and partly because they've done a few resets in the past few years).

Fast forward to TechEd 2011.  I was previously using a 7 pound Dell Latitude when travelling.  The laptop is a solid laptop (in more ways than one), but after carrying it on your back for several days straight at a conference, you're left begging for mercy.  I decided to opt for the Macbook Air on this trip instead.  It weighs under 3 pounds and has all-day battery life.  In general, it's a better "conference laptop" all the way around.

Taking a Macbook to a Microsoft event generally causes grief.  People come up to you and and deride your decision to bring an Apple product to a Microsoft event.  Even though it can run Windows, and even though Microsoft doesn't make hardware, people still complain.  I think it's primarily a deep festering wound left over from all those years of the "I'm a Mac.  I'm a PC." commercials.  Those commercials always upset me when I saw them because they were very misleading, and often untrue.  In fact, it was probably those commercials that kept me from buying an iPhone for as long as I did.  

That being said, Apple realized at one point that there's a lot of uncharted territory in the devices market, and it's time was not best spent by fighting with Microsoft, but by innovating in totally different spaces.  They let the Windows bashing commercials cease, and they focused on shipping products that delight customers.  On that front, they've succeeded.

Technology is a very large space to play in, from the cloud, to business devices, to gaming, to phones, to tablets.  In this space, there are a lot of big players, from Google to Amazon to Sony to Apple.  I believe that Microsoft needs to work on how they can best integrate with *all* of these companies, and leave the partisan bickering of yesteryear behind.  To that end, they've made some strides.  One can now find Bing and Messenger on the iPhone, and Microsoft has publicly stated that there will be more on the way. All I can say is "bring on the cooperation".  

I use a lot of tech.  I use Macs, PCs, iPhones, iPads, Kindles, ChromeOS netbooks, and more.  All I generally  want is to get a job done (read an article, edit a video, play a game, listen to a song).  The more these companies can work together on open standards, cross-platform support, compatible media, et cetera, the more customers, and ultimately the companies themselves, will succeed.

Here's hoping that 2011 will see more Microsoft apps come to the iPhone, more Apple apps (Facetime?) come to Windows, and more cross-platform support of all software.  We're all growing up now.  Let's all leave the fanboy bickering behind and focus on shipping products that delight consumers.

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[james]

I've used a PC since Windows 3.0, and up until 3 years ago, the only non-Windows computer I ever owned was a Commodore 64. -Bvlgari B zero 1 watches Swiss