Switching Costs

I have made the decision to go the darkside and am switching to the Mac. I am excited about it? No. Are there legitimate business reasons for making the move? Yes. But I have to keep telling myself it will all be worth it in the end! I am quite sure that this is true but currently I am frustrated that things don't quite work the way they use to.

Parallels is making the transition easier since I can still run XP and it appears to work just fine (so far). But, even so, it is just amazing how attached we become to our devices. Now I don't really consider myself a luddite altogether; I mean, I made my living in the tech sector for quite awhile and did more than my fair share of hacking, and yet,  as we speak, I am having to use the arrow keys to go back and forth to the end of the line because I can't figure out (yet) where the frickin' "end" key is on the Mac.

I downloaded Firefox for the Mac because Safari is painfully slow and now I can't find the app. I mean how hard is that? But it is no longer on the "dock" (I guess that is what that damn thing at the bottom of the screen is called, it is not the "taskbar" as in Windows, so I have to learn some new jargon as well) and it is too late to call my buddy that convinced me that indeed this was the way to go. :) You can be damn sure I will be calling in the morning though!

Ok, but there is more to this post than some personal griping, despite the fact that I could go on and on. Most of my "stuff" is now on the "cloud" and that was another reason that I thought it was a good time to make the move. I mean, all I need is a browser right? Wrong! The access device itself is a tool that I became quite attached to. I was comfortable with it. It was my onramp to the online world. Yeah, I can still get online but I did not really expect to be this frustrated. There I go bitching again.

Here's the point (finally), while Apple and Google are going to continue to make inroads into Microsoft's monopoly, there is NOT going to be a major shift from Windows anytime soon. Can you imagine the pain that an organization with 1000 people would go through if you suddenly switched the onramp. The CIO better have his resume updated and be headed for a startup, because brother there would be a mutiny to end all mutinies. It is not like moving from the mainframe to the PC. Why? Because think about it, how many executives and marketing and sales people actually used 3270 screens? Yeah that it was I thought. Now you have all the prima donnas that will be impacted and it ain't going to happen. Not in my lifetime.

Comments

[Salvatore Purpura Jr]

I can understand and appreciate your pain but you will find in the long run that the transition will become complete and you will begin to question why you did not make this change sooner.

As far as companies switching that is far more difficult because of the cost to switch and the resources required. Most corporation that all that IT talent that are Microsoft trained and to switch it would require not only money but a shift in resources.

As far as the nay sayers well remember all the Executives that said they would never change from a mainframe to client server and now try to find a corporation that is only mainframe. They do not exist! So everything takes time and just one person to show the way.

Remember just keep bitting the Apple and everything will fall into place and you never know you just might cause the next paradigm shift in computing.