The X Factor

In the late 1990s, I had been following Apple only a little because there was talk of them shopping around for some operating system technology. Be, Inc. was the favorite. This was understandable since it was run by an ex-Apple guy and was very new, so it was in the computer press a lot at the time. My Spock ears really pricked up when I heard that they were considering Next as well. Later, when it was announced that they were not only going with Next, but that they were buying the whole operation and getting Steve Jobs as CEO, then my Spock eyebrow went up with the requisite uttering of "fascinating". This really changed the game. I knew Apple was serious since they had chosen the more mature system over the clearly incomplete BeOS. Or maybe Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field had just hypnotized the Apple people - it didn't really matter. Suddenly, I saw that Apple would have a huge leap in capability, and it could very well meet my high standards. The only problem was how long would it take. I had already decided to wait things out using Windows, and kept a watchful eye on Cupertino. After some initial hiccups, OS X was finally taking form. It was pretty rough in its "dot uh-oh" release, but I think getting something out the door was ultimately the right thing to do. Of course, it was still not for me. 10.1 was quite a bit better, and the trend of new releases getting faster had begun. I probably would have been able to use 10.1 knowing it was going to get better soon enough, but the jury was still out on the OS X applications. By 10.2 that was looking really good, but unfortunately there remained a problem with the hardware.

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