I owned both a Commodore VIC-20 and C-64, worked in a computer store selling C-64s, C-128s, and Amigas. I lusted after the PET and the Amiga. And I made my first consulting fee writing software for the C-64. Even then I was starting my path in the cult of Pascal. First there was VAX-11 Pascal, then Kyan Pascal, MS QuickPascal, Turbo Pascal, and finally I entered the temple of Delphi. I’ve owned 5 different Palm handhelds. And, I just bought a new Ruby IDE (Ruby Mine) to go with that addiction. I also belong to the Linux, Mac, and Android cults.

Outside of IT, I’ve owned pretty much nothing but Canon cameras since my FTb-QL in 1977.

I think it is similar to the car guy who will own nothing but a Chevy or Ford. We all want to be right, and we hang out with those who agree.

So, what cults do you belong to?

As i’ve written before, I’ve run Linux (SUSE) on my personal desktop and home servers for several years prior to moving to the Mac. I still run Linux for my home server. The only Windows computer I have running at home is my kid’s computer. They have games that won’t run elsewhere.

I installed Ubuntu 8.10 on my office desktop in a dual boot configuration. It handled my dual monitors, quad core CPU, 4Gb of RAM without a hitch. But what it couldn’t handle was working in my office. Now, I had no problem administering our dozen or so Linux servers, reading/writing Word, Excel, Powerpoint documents. I had no problems dealing with our various Java applications, or accessing data on our office network. But, two things have made a permanent conversion difficult, at best. Number one is Exchange/Outlook. I wrote about this earlier. Interacting with Exchange via Linux is painful if you use Exchange calendaring, contacts, or anything other than mail. There is no good way to interact with Exchange calendaring in Linux. Number two is somewhat surprising. As part of a server upgrade project we have adopted Citrix XenServer to handle server virtualization. This is based on the Linux-based Xen project. You would expect it to be very cross platform. You would be wrong. The management tools are Windows only. So, it uses a Windows only management console to manage Linux based hypervisors with Linux guest virtual machines.

Interestingly, both of these observations have been commented on in the last few days:

Where are the Enterprise Management Tools for Linux on the Desktop? by David Lane

What would you exchange Exchange for? by Doc Searls

So, I’m not alone.

I think as desktop virtualization matures, it will be easier to run the desktop of your choice. I use VMWare Fusion on my Mac to run Linux, Windows, and even Haiku. The downside for Linux is there will be less of an incentive to develop the replacements for Outlook and the enterprise management tools. There will also be fewer requests for those applications from corporate users. Why wait for the open source equivalent when I can run the Windows version in a virtual machine.

In the meantime, it’s back to XP. I’ve got work to do.

I’ve been carrying a T-Mobile Dash smartphone for two years. It has been functional, but that’s about it. The hardware is decent enough, but the OS is atrocious. It has all of the worst of the desktop version crammed into a handheld. I still find it difficult to believe that I have to reboot my phone periodically (every few days) to reclaim the memory lost to memory leaks. It wouldn’t be so bad, except to get it to reboot in one try I have to remove the microSD card until it is up and running. Apparently, the 6.0 version of Windows Mobile for Smartphones has a buggy DLL that handles memory cards. So, the phone will go into a reboot loop until the memory card is removed. Nice. Enough about the past.

So, why a G1 and not an iPhone? As an Apple user (a Macbook Pro, and a Mac Mini), I am naturally drawn to the iPhone. It looks nice, the UI is nice, and it just works. But, I didn’t want to change carriers. I’ve been a T-Mobile customer for a long time and the service has been good and the prices are better than the competition. Also, one of the things like I liked about the Dash is the real qwerty keyboard. I just don’t like the touch screen keyboard on the iPhone. It’s too slow to use, and error prone. I guess the last downside of the iPhone for me is that it is an appliance. It’s a closed ecosystem. You must use it as it was intended. Sure, you can jail break it and load apps on it. But, it’s a running battle with Apple over control of your phone.

The G1 and it’s OS, Android, are a wide open frontier. At least compared to the iPhone. And, it has a real keyboard. I’m not crazy about sliders, but it’s an acceptable compromise. I’ve already downloaded the SDK and wrote the ‘Hello, World‘ for Android. It may rekindle my desire to write Java code again. I played around with J2ME in the past, but the phones were too limited and the development environment too compromised to be interesting to me. The G1 is neither.

My friend Kelly has been writing apps for his G1 for a month or two. So, I will have a local support group (of one) to fall back on when I get stuck. I can let him blaze the trail and clear out the brush ahead of me.

It’s all up to the UPS man now.

About a year and a half ago I traded my Palm Tungsten C PDA, and Motorola V600 phone for a T-Mobile Dash smartphone. I had been a long time Palm user, and T-Mobile customer. The Dash was the closest thing I found to replace my two devices with one. Since that switch I’ve had a lot of time to reconsider my choice, and how well it has worked for me. Let me dispense with the suspense: Windows Mobile 6.0 for Smartphones sucks. The Dash hardware has been a resounding “meh”.

The Windows Mobile experience starts with the interminable wait for the phone to boot up. There is no good reason for a phone to take this long from power up to the time it is able function as phone.  Mine has the extra bonus of now repeatedly rebooting for a random period of time. I’ve let it reboot itself for over an hour to see if it ever was able to boot. Now, I just keep it on all the time. At night, I put it on the charger and turn off the ringer.

Unfortunately, the fail just keeps on coming after it boots. One of the reasons I choose the Dash was the WiFi capability. When it works, it works okay. Not great, not good, but okay.  To turn it on means pressing the ‘Start’ button (modeled after everyone’s favorite Windows feature) and scrolling to find the comm manager application, turning on the WiFi radio. Then ‘Settings’ , ‘Wi-fi’, ‘Wi-fi Networks’, and either pick one that displays or press ‘new’, etc, etc. I don’t like doing that much work to use WiFi on a desktop or laptop, with a decent UI and pointing device. It really sucks to do it on a handheld device with a compromised UI and 4-way controller.

This points out the main flaw with Windows Mobile 6.0 for Smartphones. It is like it’s name, too much button pushing for the benefit. Everything takes too much UI interaction, too much typing on a compromised keyboard, too much scrolling on a compromised screen.

I’ve added a number of 3rd party applications (at considerable cost) to try and make the phone more usable. It has helped, but some of the apps, Pocket Explorer and Pocket Outlook come to mind are just beyond salvage. I’ve been waiting for one of the several Explorer replacements to arive, but none are stable enough to rely on. I’ve tried several replacement mail clients. While some were improvements in basic functioning, they all try to pile on too many other marginal features that get in the way of basic function.

I won’t go into the entire debacle of trying to sync my Dash with my Apple MacBook Pro.

So, why an iPhone? I’ve played with the iPhone several times. I’ve spent time performing the types of operations I (try to) use my Dash for. And, it works. It works well. Apple continues to show us what a good UI looks like, and how it works.

And why haven’t I bought one yet? I’m not ready to pony up the considerable sum for an iPhone, and until AT&T and Apple have a 3G iPhone to offer, I’ll wait.