On several levels, my hobby is quite stressful. I often find myself coding for hours on end, just to be disappointed at the end result and pretty much toss it away into the abyss of the ‘old’ folder in my htdocs directory. What is even more stressful is the fact that while I may not be paid for what I do on most occasions, I generally love to sit down and whip up some code for some site that is never going to ever make it off of my local web server. But, you see, all of this happens on Windows. Trust me, it isn’t the OS that distracts or pulls me down, because I am a Windows guy, tried and true. But, the issue is this: When Windows decides not to work (which happens from time to time) I can’t sit around for days wait for it to fix its problems. I need to have a system that I can sit down and code on at any time, day or night. And while I have a netbook, trying to do any task beyond small emails and IM’s is quite a challenge. Yes, I could unplug my monitor and keyboard from my desktop and hook it up to the Mini, but it’s a waste of time, to be quite frank.

So, let me tell you the story of a certain Connor Wilkins. Connor, a web developer, was thrilled when he installed Windows 7 into a dual boot environment, side by side with its older sibling Windows Vista. Unfortunately, Windows 7 decided to mess with Vista (as younger relatives tend to do to older ones), and eventually drove Vista to the breaking point. As such, Vista was crapping out on me every day. I couldn’t deal with it, so I backed up all of my important data to my external hard drive, bid adieu to Vista, and moved to Windows 7 Beta 1 full time. Oh boy, what a mistake. Basically Windows 7 decided to be even more of a problem then Vista. You see, when I reviewed Windows 7, it was great. But, when I actually sat down to use it full time, it was one of the worst tech experiences of my life. And no, I am not exaggerating. Basically, Windows Explorer (the file browser and general UI wrapper for the OS) crapped out every couple of minutes. You knew when it was coming: drive names no longer were shown (Instead of saying ‘Windows’ or ‘Backup’, it simply read ‘C:’ and ‘F:’), and then when the thing decided to end its life, the contents of the current Explorer window turned white, and that was that. You had to manually end the task via the Task Manager and start it back up again. After a few hours of this bull shit, I gave up. I deleted the Windows 7 install from the Windows Vista boot DVD, and proceeded to install Vista with the same DVD I’ve been using for a year now. Well, until it wouldn’t let me install it.
After I wiped the hard drive with a number of tools (Vista DVD hard disk tool, Disk Utility from my Kalyway Mac OS X Leopard DVD) a number of times, Vista still refused to install! I gave up. I had been trying to get my system back in a working order for over twenty-four hours at that point, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. So, I popped in the Kalyway Leopard DVD, installed Leopard, upgraded to 10.5.5, and that was that.

But unfortunately, it isn’t “just that”. You see, I’m not running on a Mac if you haven’t garnered that already. While running OS X on a PC is definitely a hell of a lot easier than it was a few years ago, it still is a risky business to deal with. Every time you update the OS (which is about every month and a half), you need to make sure you have a backup of your system because anything can go wrong. Sometimes it is as easy as downloading the update from Apple Software Update and pressing Install, but most of the time it isn’t. You constantly worry about losing your graphics card support, or losing wireless Internet or sound. It isn’t an easy process, but for the temporary peace of mind I have, it is, in a way, worth it. Right now I am in the process of stripping a 7GB Leopard install disk (Retail) down to a 4.2GB disk image, so I can burn it on a single layer DVD. Once I have that, I think I can actually install OS X from the retail DVD (albeit a stripped version) and run OS X as it was meant to be run: worry free of breaking anything. Trust me, I am no fan boy of OS X, very far from it in fact. OS X has some serious problems in terms of window and process management, visual effects (such as the super shitty font smoothing found throughout the system), and other things that peeve me out at time (such as having ten different styles of buttons).

But, as much as OS X pisses me off, I do, at the end of the day, have a much nicer experience on OS X than I do on Windows. When the stupid Windows update icon pops up, saying I need to restart, I usually pres postpone so I can finish what I am doing. Until I forget about it and it restarts while I am away from the computer. Trust me, I have lost work because of it. OS X has the applications that I need and use, such as Firefox, Thunderbird, iTunes, and Microsoft Office. Once I get around to installing the Adobe CS4 Master Collection, I will get Fireworks, Photoshop, and all of my other creative applications that I make use of on an occasional basis. I think I may skip Dreamweaver, though. I have been trying out Coda, a web development application for OS X, and I have to say, I generally like it.
Windows, I am not leaving you, trust me. I am just taking a break; a temporary separation.

I’m concerned. As a former Apple stockholder, as a tech industry observer, and as a fan of Steve Jobs’ style, things aren’t looking good. In case you haven’t heard, el Jobso announced today that he needs to take a leave of absence from his position as CEO of Apple to put more attention on his recent health problems. What health problems? Just over a week ago (Monday, January 5th, the day before the MacWorld 2009 keynote), Steve announced that after a year of weight loss, he decided to put his health first and figure out what was going on. The result: comprehensive blood tests showed that he was suffering from a ‘hormone imbalance’, as Steve put it. He decided not to partake in the MacWorld keynote to spend more time with his family, and to begin treatment (simple, according to the man) to help turn this weight thing around.

Then today Steve dropped a bombshell: He would be taking a leave of absence from his position as CEO at Apple. This happened back in 2004, when Steve had an operation to presumably remove a cancerous portion of his pancreas. But, even though he had major surgery and all, he only left the company from August thru October, all in all less than three months in total. He is doubling that now. In his memo sent out to employees today, Jobs said that his health problems were more complex than he originally thought. To be honest, this is quite shocking, since only a week ago he said it was all caused by a hormone imbalance. So, I think that there can only be a few possible scenarios that are going on right now.

Too Weak To Continue – Quite possibly, while the hormone imbalance may be more of a substantial issue that Jobs originally thought, he may just be too weak to continue work over the next few months. To be frank, he’s been going at his job for the past 11 years now, and when you have already had a bout of cancer, you can’t blame the man for wanting to take it easy.

More Serious Health Problem – Another possible scenario is that Jobs actually has a much more severe health problem then he thought, or than what he revealed. I’m not going to sit here and speculate on what he may or may not have, but this is quite possibly one of the biggest possibilities in terms of his current situation.

Beginning of the End – Maybe Jobs is just tired in general. While some sites have been saying that his resignation/transition of power may be coming soon, this may be the beginning of the end of the Jobs era at Apple.

But in the end, who really knows? I do hope he is doing well, though.