What in Hell is a MacTexan?

Joe Kelley

In 2006 I crossed over from the “dark side” and become a full-blown Mac enthusiast. After administering, managing and developing on the Windows platform for over twenty years I switched to a Mac and haven’t looked back. I immediately fell in love with my newly discovered platform and to this day I regret not having made the jump sooner. Although I’d never owned a Mac and had very limited exposure to the platform, my move to OS X was a homecoming of sorts. In the early 80s, one of my first programming jobs was coding COBOL and FORTRAN projects on a AIX (IBM’s UNIX implementation) mainframe. Yep. I’m that old. When I opened Terminal on my first Mac I was pleasantly surprised by how much of the CLI I remembered and how quickly it all came back to me. I guess it’s sort of like riding a bicycle. I feel like a real hammerhead for not realizing earlier what a wonderful operating system OS X is. I let five years lapse after Apple originally released OS X in 2001 before I finally woke up. Water under the bridge.

I’m an independent IT consultant and software developer and I work on all platforms, but OS X is by far my favorite. I’m told my once mostly Windows prowess now extends to iOS and OS X. I’ll leave that judgement to others. Commercially, I still do more work with Windows, but that’s because I focus on business clients.  (They’re the ones with the money.) I am seeing more and more Macs and iOS devices in business environments though and I’m thinking that trend will continue. I just prefer working with Macs. They don't suck.

I’ve spent countless hours learning and practicing with OS X by listening to podcasts, watching instructional video, reading and participating in multiple blogs and forums and I’ve even bought (and read) a few books on the subject. I attended the last eight Macworld Expos and WWDC and plan to continue WWDC (if I can get tickets before they sell out). Logically, the center of the Mac universe is northern California and most media coverage of Apple originates in Silicon Valley. The rest comes from more traditional sources, mainly on the east coast. I’ve spent plenty of time in both places and, quite frankly, don’t appreciate my fair state being referred to as “fly over” country. Others have told me that I’m loud enough to be heard by someone flying over, so I’m going to put that to the test. I know there are lots of smart people in the media business, but sometimes I think they’re all reading from the same playbook when it comes to analyzing Apple. I often disagree with their assessments and find I’m often correct. We’ll see.

When I first started my consulting business, I didn’t offer any Mac services, but I feel perfectly comfortable doing so now and I see the demand growing rapidly. Industry numbers suggest iOS and OS X penetration of the business market should continue to be strong. If the iPhone and iPad continue making inroads into the enterprise environment, the much ballyhooed “halo effect” could convince more businesses to consider other Apple offerings. If all goes as I’m hoping, being both an enterprise and Apple expert could be a gold mine. Again, we’ll see.

MacTexan.com is all about looking at Apple through un-jaded eyes. I won’t be unduly influenced by the popular west and east coast Technorati and I absolutely have no agenda that might bias my opinions. I get no access favors from Apple or anyone else and I’ve never been offered “loaner” evaluation hardware or software of any kind. Every review you read on MacTexan.com is a result of me spending my (rather limited) hard-earned money on the product in question. I am a proud geek of the first order who likes to share his opinion with others with no expectation of reward other than the satisfaction of doing so. I simply love my Macs and want to put in my two cents. Besides, this is still a semi-free country and we can say most anything we want to anyone except a TSA agent.