It was time to upgrade. The home PC is 5 years old. Truthfully, it probably will still serve for Quickbooks and other household tasks for another 3 years, so ok, the geek in me wanted a new PC. I had filled every PCI slot in the PC, and besides, a new computer is so shiny and cool. Now, this is where the story turns strange. For the fist time in over 20 years, the new PC I bought is a Mac.

For a little background, a few months ago I got a new laptop at work. Now, I know better, but I ordered it with Vista because the new laptop was a tablet and Vista has great new features for tablets. Folks, this is the worst operating system I have used ever. Sure, the new transparent windows are neat and the new explorer windows are definitely an improvement, but I’ve never been more frustrated. Vista is a classic story of attempting to solve a problem by accretion. OS insecure, add another layer of firewall, user annoyance, and make many device drivers incompatible. Really, I could write a dissertation on why Vista is a POS, but that’s not the point.

The point is that there is a powerful lesson here for all of us software professionals. It is a lesson I have been thinking long and hard about. The lesson is that building ever more complex solutions via accretion while delivering more problems and obstacles to users is a good way to lose customers.

Apple did something incredibly daring by
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