OK – so I ordered my 1st Mac in some… maybe 12 years?!?
MacBook Air. I figured a few things:

1. It is a 1st generation evolutionary (not revolutionary) bit of hardware. It is very sexy There may be issues with v1 hardware, but on par – it will be a Mac either way – and there is a good shot it will suit my needs well.
2. It is a Mac with just about the same specs as my ThinkPad X60 tablet. I really like my tablet. I really like small and light – a lot.
3. It is Unix   (I have had Linux machines @ home and work for at least the past 5 years).
4. I will re-learn the mac thing and see what all the current hype IN THE DEVELOPER COMMUNITY is about.
5. I will get to see more good UI design standards in practice.

Although I can program java – I am still largely “long Microsoft” personally. Any C\C++ I have done has been on Windows. Lets see what else we have as programming models for desktop applications. (I have done years of web stuff – I am still interested in desktop apps these days). The ‘architecture’ stuff, the people stuff, the agile stuff, etc – these are (thankfully) OS agnostic.

Check it out – it really looks lovely, small, lightweight, flat as can be, cool – really. I am NOT the uber-gadget-geek I once was. I am (trying hard) to generally be frugal. I have a lovely family that I would generally rather invest in – as opposed to my geek gadgets. This is really cool geekery – but it does have a purpose for me. So – kill me for getting a Mac as I have been talking about for a few months now – AND for it being cool, geeky, etc.

There are a TON of folks buying Macs these days. I am on an interesting mailing list with lots of experienced programmers/ agile folks. There are chains going on about whole dev teams ‘going mac’. It would be silly to ignore this. It would sort of be like ignoring the dynamic languages – there are reasons people are changing to Mac. On the server – Linux is there – big time – but it has been so many years and it is still not really on the desktop – except for dopes like me willing to spend hours on end getting drivers running, recompiling stuff you would never really care about as an ‘end user’ of a desktop OS.

Enough blabber. I will check in as my Mac experience begins in a few weeks.

-Chris

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