Ed Bilodeau

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This weblog had moved: http://www.coolweblog.com/bilodeau/

# Notice (Oct 19/05): So ends my stay here on Blogger. This morning Google implemented an anti-spam 'feature' that forces me to answer a challenge phrase when I want to post to my own blog. No notice of the change, nothing. Worse is that it doesn't even work! I type the phrase, submit, "An error occured", post deleted. Damn you, Google. Chances are I will revive my blog somewhere else, sometime soon. I'll post the new coordinates here as soon as they become available. (BTW, I'm unable to post anything to my RSS stream, so I'd appreciate it if readers could spread the word and ask people to take a look at this notice)

Update (Oct 19/05, ~noon): After a frustrating few hours (and not just trying out alternatives to Blogger), I've decided that this is a good time to take a break from all this. A day? A week? Who knows. But I need to step away from it before I pass a heavy magnet over the whole mess.

Update 2: According to this post, the reason I'm seeing the CAPTCHA (challenge phrase) is that Blogger has classified my blog as spam. Thanks. User for five years and now I'm spam. I searched the Blogger site, but there is no mention of how to get the spam flag turned off. There is also no way of contacting anyone at Blogger. Wow. Spam they say I am, so spam I must be. Maybe it is time to take a break.

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Jonathon Delacour: Ticket to Macland : I'm always interested in hearing stories from people who have made the switch, if only because I still see a Mac somewhere in my future. Jonathon covers all the major reasons I can think of, although the points relating to Windows XP's instability are, IMHO, off the mark.

We've all heard of nightmare situations people have run into with their computers, both Windows machines and Macs. For every Windows horror story, you can probably find an equivalent story for the Mac. However, since there are many, many, many more Windows users then there are Mac users, and Windows is running on all-sorts-of-only-god-knows-what machines, yeah, I would expect there to be more Windows people overall who have run into big problems. The Mac systems, built on a stack that is, for the most part, closed and proprietary, don't have that problem.

One thing that Jonathon doesn't mention is the influence the Apple brand had on his decision. Although he appears to have been the target of a fair amount of peer pressure, I don't know to what degree this affected Jonathon's decision. But when talking about the decision to switch platforms, to ignore the power of Apple's brand is a mistake. Apple's brand is incredibly powerful. It connects with people on a deep, emotional level. That had to affect their decision-making process, so that it is no longer a case of making a rational, business-case for buying a Mac. In my case, put be in front of two systems, one PC and one Mac, with approximately the same specs. Right away, I know I can easily live with the PC, but I want the Mac.

In any case, I'm looking forward to reading about Jonathon's transition to the new platform. Given the effort he has put into documenting his decision to switch, I know he will not disappoint!