Full disclosure: I'm probably an Apple fan-man but I come by that honestly. Having learned machine language on a Data General Nova (see: http://www.simulogics.com/ ), I learned early in my computing odyssey that the best computer for programming was the one in front of you. I had no end of problems compiling Fortran programs on my punch cards for the unseen HAL in the CS building. The sheer satisfaction of flipping the switches on the Nova and understanding what every bit did was illuminating. That was my first "magical and revolutionary" experience. There was always the programming though. Computers never had a complete applications set for me. Over the years I have programmed in Basic, Pascal, C, Forth, Actor, VB, PHP, Javascript and probably a bunch of others I have forgotten about.(Oh yeah, how about "Knowledge Man"? It was a pretty cool integrated DB back when DbaseII was the standard). All that and I am neither a programmer nor a developer.
My first personally owned microcomputer was a 6502-based Acorn. From there I moved to PC clones; a Corona, a Heath-Zenith luggable, a bunch of white boxers and then into laptops by the mid '90's -- a couple of Toshiba's, a Dell and an IBM. In 2006, after important personal and career transitions, I re-examined my workflow and made two key hardware-centric changes; I purchased my first Apple MacBook (the 13" Black one) for personal use and an HP TC4400 Tablet for career use.
I have sinced revved the MacBook to a 13" aluminum model 'cause we needed more CPU's at home. The HP Tablet is still doing its thing largely due to the resuscitation that a Windows 7 upgrade provided.
It has taken 3 years of day dreaming, ignorance and occasionally deliberate change to get to the stage where I am today in terms of my daily workflow using the machines I have now. Prior to that was decades of "more of the usual". The jump from the command line to GUI was about as exciting as getting my first hard drive -- special -- but strangely incremental and clearly inevitable. The jump to the iPad should be far more interesting -- like those first few magical days working with the Nova.
(coming next... Part 2 - The Professional's Dilemma)
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