Jim Cross

I have worked on mainframes with UNIVAC and IBM operating systems (three different kinds); UNIX and Linux boxes; OS/2 boxes, DOS, and, of course, Windows going all the way back to Windows 3.1. Most of my daily and business work has been done on Windows in recent years even when deployments were going to UNIX boxes.

Naturally both of my daughters decided they wanted Apples, the one operating system I haven't worked on or know much about. The older one using a hand-me-down Windows box for many years made the jump when she went to college. The younger who spent her own money on Dell laptop a couple of years changed when the disk drive died. No doubt their years of exposure to the IPod biased them toward Apple.

Having seen the Apple now on two occasions (those brief moments when the daughters let me touch them after they first got them), I can see something enormously attractive about them. First, there is buying experience itself. Basically, pick the memory and speed your budget can afford and you're done. No complicated decisions about hardware features or about what software is needed. The boxes come mostly with everything you need or might need in hardware or software. True, they are more expensive then the off-the-shelf Wintel devices in upfront costs - meaning you can get by more cheaply to get something inferior to the Apple. But once you install everything needed to make the Wintel equivalent to the Apple, the costs start to get very competitive.

Then, of course, there is the ease of use. Plug them in, answer a few questions, and they are ready to go.

The only glitch my daughter and I had in my latest Apple adventure was getting her iTunes music, on the dead disk drive and iPod, back onto her machine. I searched the web and found a host of different ways of fixing this problem. I decided to go the easy route and we downloaded iPodRip. Immediately it started running and copying files from the iPod to the Mac. It gave us a certain number of files for free, then requested payment. The cost was a small fraction of the costs of the remaining songs, so we gladly paid and the copy continued without interruption until her entire library was restored.