glenn mcdonald, the only music reviewer I’ve read who writes as much about the relevance of music to his life as he does about the music itself, has taken this week off to talk about his ongoing weight loss and his new computer, which happens to be a Macintosh running Mac OS X.

I switched to Mac in 1999. In 2001, I switched back to the PC. Mac OS X 10.0 (yes, ten-dot-zero) made me question the sanity of Apple for taking a perfectly good desktop OS (Mac OS 9) and screwing with it, sacrificing usability in order to make it cute and cuddly. Oh, it was more stable, but it was also big and slow, bringing my G4 to its knees.

That said, I’ve heard 10.2 has gone a long way to making strides in the performance category. I sometimes miss my G4, which is now serving time with a college student in Atlanta (or so it was about a year and a half ago — I have no way of checking). I’ve always wanted a decent laptop computer. Perhaps I should consider a Powerbook. It won’t be for awhile, anyways — this year’s spending plan does not include the line item “Buy a Powerbook, just for the hell of it”.

While I don’t feel that Windows is as disgusting as glenn does, I do harbor an ongoing, low-level sense of angst towards Microsoft, not just for having a monopoly, but for taking no real strides to make the computing experience any better. Starting with the iMac, and moving forward to the other i-devices (most notably the iPod) Apple has made machines that are as much of a joy to use as they are to look at. That can’t be said for most Windows-based PCs, which for some unknown reason are still encased in huge, hulking mid-tower enclosures so ugly that they have to be hidden under the desk, out of sight, like hired help.

So. In an ideal world, I’d have a Powerbook for doing most of my work, and a cheap-o mini-ITX form factor PC to do whatever the Mac can’t do (which, if you have a Powerbook, really isn’t all that much). Dream, dream, dream.