Monthly Archives: August 2004

Building a Misunderstanding

Jennifer and I have begun the search for a house, so as I was skimming over the latest University of Michigan Alumni Association newsletter, this blurb about housing developments caught my eye:

Homebuyers prefer a view of the woods to a manicured lawn, according to U-M researchers. Researchers found that misuse and misunderstanding of the term “open space” fuel the myth that people prefer big lots. Developers and homebuyers use open space to mean acres of open space like lawns instead of preserved natural features. Researchers suggest planners use the term “conservation ordinance” rather than “open space ordinance” for areas marked for preservation from development.

If true, it’s a shame that so much natural woodland habitat has been torn down based on a misunderstanding. I wonder just how much this study will affect future developments around Michigan as well as the rest of the nation. With Michigan’s current governor Jennifer Granholm promoting Smart Growth within the state, hopefully it will have an impact sooner rather than later.

Transcending the Windows Experience

Arguments between Mac users and Windows users usually bore me. I’ve heard the claims hundreds of times before. PC user: PC’s are cheaper/Macs are too expensive. Mac user: Macs have lower Total Cost of Ownership. PC user: PC’s have more applications available. Mac user: Macs have many of the same worthwhile applications and much fewer of the junk applications. PC user: PC’s are used more in business. Mac user: Many executives actually have and prefer Macs and are much more prevalent in the “creative” industries. And so on and so on…I use both systems on a daily basis and I can easily say I prefer the Mac (which I started using back around 1985). While not completely free of headaches, the overall experience has always been orders of magnitude better than my Windows using experience.Despite this fact, I’ve never really been an advocate for the platform. It’s just not my style to try to influence others based on my own beliefs. Okay, maybe I did take a stab at getting my wife’s sister to consider one when she was in the market for a new computer… she bought a PC which, of course, she ended up having problems with later on. But other than that, I’ve pretty much just kept to myself.That said, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that many, if not most, of my techie friends have purchased Macs in the past year or two. In the past, my computer engineering friends were more PC centric, I think mainly because they were cheaper and thought to more more of a software developer’s platform of choice. So it came as a surpise when friend after friend started purchasing a Mac as his or her personal computer. I’m not sure how to explain it. Is it that the new(est) incarnation of the Mac operating system (Mac OS X) has Unix underpinnings (meeting the techie’s needs)? That the interface is just elegant and just works (i.e. the last thing I want to do after a day of fighting with my PC at work is come home and fight with my computer at home)? That Macs are, for all intents and purposes, devoid of the “joys” of spyware and virii (I don’t even bother to run anti-virii software on my Macs at home)?I don’t know, but I came across this editorial written by someone that switched from Windows to Mac and has reflected on the psychology of the change (rather than the technical differences).