I have been a trainer and consultant for many years in the business community. Because I worked with many business clients and needed programs compatible with them, I used Windows.

I did do some contract work with a client on a Mac 20 years ago and really enjoyed it but every time I considered a Mac, there were a lot of programs I ran for Internet marketing, etc that just didn't exist for Mac.

Recently I purchased a higher end computer (Windows again) and started to set it up. Usually it takes me 2-3 days to install all the programs I need to really get productive again. But this time, I hadn't realized how many of my programs were now on the cloud.

My CRM, my project management software, my email, and most of my software are now on the cloud. I was up and running in a few hours.

It made me realize that, for the first time, I could probably seriously consider a Mac instead of a Windows computer. Wow!

My CRM, my project management software, my email, and most of my software are now on the cloud.

That's what I would call scary :-)

Gosh, your entire concept is pretty scary. First the Mac, then the cloud. What next? Evernote? I lof off.

Garland Coulson wrote:

But this time, I hadn't realized how many of my programs were now on the cloud.
My CRM, my project management software, my email, and most of my
software are now on the cloud. I was up and running in a few hours.

Do you mean that the specific desktop programs you had been using are now available as cloud services, or that in recent years you gradually switched to cloud services replacing your desktop software?

"Posted by Hillman
Dec 15, 2013 at 03:21 AM
Gosh, your entire concept is pretty scary. First the Mac, then the cloud. What next? Evernote? I lof off."

OMG. But let's get serious here. In the Eighties, I didn't have the money to buy a Mac: It was 10,000 deutschmarks, and it wasn't even a Lisa!

Somebody remember Silicon Graphics? About 30,000 deutschmarks, and more, but the absolute dream, these days 30 years ago. Btw it was Silicon Graphics that reminded me, then, that Apple, after all, was NOT as high-brow as they pretend to be...

Today, I'm not young anymore, and all I ever did - even in graphics, FreeHand, Illustrator, dtp, has been done within the Win world - what a preposterous abbreviation that is, "Windows" of course NOT being in any relationship with "winning", all to the contrary, Windows is crap.

Franz is so right, I should learn programming - problem is, I have to make a living, too, and so I have to minimize "further efforts", considering mon age - many of here are in their 50s, Cassius being our doyen, Dr Andus - will you get your PhD in 2014 at least: I very much wish so!!! - being our "pet-of-the-family" - that's an awful demination, but that's what "Langenscheidt's Handwörterbuch" gives me for "Nesthäkchen", "junior" would probably be the more precise term.

Let's put it bluntly: I'm too learn to "learn Mac". About 70,000 lines of code of my "Manuscript" sw 15 years ago (and no, "Lotus Manuscript" had been buried more than 10 years ago then, me not making a "criminal" or such) are in a (defunct) Windows programming/scripting language, my about 5,000 or more lines of AHK code are Windows-only, so I'm stuck, literally.

But then, we all know that ace programmers, or more precisely, ace sw architects, always did their programming work for the Mac. It's much less so, but for for the uniq

That would have been "denomination" - I pressed some key combination, and my post was gone; it's now that I realize it was gone to be publicized; all the better.

And then, it would have been, "I'm too OLD to "learn the Mac".

And I continue:

But then, we all know that ace programmers, or more precisely, ace sw architects, always did their programming work for the Mac. It’s much less so, but for for the unique reason that many excellent Mac programs - but not all - have been "translated" to Windows. (FreeHand, and then Illustrator, were made available for the pc later on, as well as, nowadays, the complete offerings of Adobe, e.g.) As we all know (not implying here that we all acknowledge), Bill Gates is a one-hit wonder, his only smart doing in his entire life being that he did made IBM to accept that he HELD all the rights to his (bought-in!!!) DOS os when he agreed, with IBM, DOS becoming the os for the pc; anything else has been just Machiavellian routine work, his "one hit" being sufficient to make him the richest (and one of the most preposterous men) man in the world.

We all know that ace programmers always looked to the Mac in order to develop outstanding applications; in the outliner / IMS world, that (today "defunct", not continued at least", "justanothermacoutliner.com" blog being definite proof for this; I don't have to remind you of DEVONthink, and all the DEVON range of outstanding sw (and then, Circus Ponies), and I don't have to remember you of me saying that I consider (and continue to do so) Storyist the most beautiful software available today.

Also, and I said this months ago, from what we hear from the press, the majoriy of today's university students get Mac's to bring with to their lectures, and I feel I'd be a damned liar and a real asshole to pretend they're wrong (the NSA is within all of what you ever produce digitally, independently of your platform).

Thus, the fact that's withholding me from switching: The SOME knowledge of programming and scripting, I got it within the "Win" framework; I'm always hoping that one day I'll get to the point of designing the "perfect outliner" (which will be necessarily in Windows since I don't really know anything else, and very probably within a MS framework and then Python to put it together); and that neither AHK nor AI are available for the Mac - and yes, I bought lots of legitimate sw during those years that will make that switching to Mac would cost me about 5,000 $ or more, and what about all my macros then by which I "spiced" up all these various applications?

I know very well that for one reason or another, most people out there are stuck with this Gates/Ballmer crap (just have a look at them taking away ADS file metadata from us, after XP, isn't that perfectly a**h****? (don't bother with their "explanations", they should have introduced a replacement, and THEN their move would have been ok), and for which the "getting out of it" would be too expensive, as it is, for me, in "life time" I cannot spare anymore to make the move (not speaking of dollars).

Let's speak plain English again: Jobs was a genius... but he was an asshole, too, and, worse, he was proud of being one: His priority was money (of which he didn't took any into his premature grave; and then, look at his treating of his "natural" daughter; btw, people being interested in moral considerations should google for "Yves Montand" and then for pictures of his natural daughter (= which so much "clone" her to her father that it renders her almost ugly, as a woman), and the fact that she was rebuffed, by French courts, being an alleged con woman)), NOT the excellence of his os, and that's why IOS, the core Apple system, has never taker over, and MS ruling ever.

This being said, whenever you have the chance to switch over to Mac, from Windows, DO IT.

And believe an old man who'll never have that chance, but who'll envy you any day of his existence.

And yes, I consider Mr. Ballmer what the Nazis called a "Volksschädling", but on a world-wide level.