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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Peter Coffee looks beyond monoculture

eWeek's Peter Coffee is a guy I really respect. He had the following to say recently about moving away from monoculture (for example, he'll be using a Mac OS X system as a fallback if his Windows system goes south): "My more forward-looking diversity strategy, therefore, relies on Apple's Mac OS X ... I'm not going to urge people to leave Windows completely behind. There are those who argue that 98 percent of what people do on Windows they can do at least as well or better on OS X or Linux, but I could just as well point out that the universe is 98 percent hydrogen and helium—and I'm rather fond of the other 2 percent ... Having an OS X system close at hand, and on any given day as likely as not to be my primary workstation, gives me an alternate universe to which I can escape if the other one implodes. If something takes down Windows, there's OS X; if something threatens Mozilla, there's Opera; if my laptop's hard disk crashes, the really important stuff is on my mail server, where I mailed myself a backup copy, and also on an external FireWire hard drive where my backups are equally accessible to both Windows and Mac OS machines. My work product files are invariably produced and stored in formats that I can use with either system." It's always interesting when guys like Coffee start looking at alternatives--I started my own move away from the Windows monoculture almost as soon as I started using Windows, have been running Linux since 1994, and have been running Mac OS X daily for well over two years now--but it will be more interesting to see whether the broader public follows suit. As I've often said of Apple's failed "Switch" campaign, few people are going to completely give up Windows for Mac OS X, but there's a huge market out there of people looking for second (and even third) PCs.

[ Posted at 3:06 PM | Permalink ]