Prior to moving full time this year to an office in midtown Manhattan I had been a dedicated PC platform guy.  I always have used and liked (and still do) Microsoft Outlook. Word, PowerPoint and Excel.    Sure we had Macs in my prior company for the artists but I was never even tempted to leave the PC platform for Mac.

In moving to my new office everyone – I mean EVERYONE, used a Mac.  It seemed silly to hold out based on some sort of principle.   Three months ago I got my first Mac.   It’s a good platform.   But my world has decidedly not been rocked.     This is despite the constant drumbeat from my colleagues on how much better the Mac platform is than PC, elegant, simple, non-crashing, secure (no viruses), etc.   The Apple acolytes at times can be Hari-Krishna-like.  I’ve used an iPod and IPad for quite a while and without a doubt the iPad has been the standard bearer for the best tablet since its inception.

News flash for non-Mac users, sometimes Macs do crash.   Safari is s decent web browser but I still prefer and use Chrome.    The Mac interface is intuitive although I am still struggling at times with things that disappear into the background and cannot always easily find things that I have saved.  That’s more of a function of my inexperience with the Mac platform than any issue with the platform itself.

The Mac platform continues to be the best and (nearly only) option for the art and design community.  Since we have so many people creating content and integrating video the Mac platform is the right choice for our team and having one single platform as opposed to mixture of Mac and PC made no business sense at all.

As any Mac champion will tell you, the Microsoft Office Suite of services works very well on the platform.  There are still issues with some software programs that claim to work on both platforms but actually function better on PC than they do on Mac (Quickbooks are you listening?).   But even those issues are being addressed and sooner than later all software will integrate seamlessly independent of platform.   Did I mention that Macs are always more expensive?    That’s a given and Mac (and all Apple) users proudly wear that as a badge of honor.   If that is not great branding I don’t what is.

The debate on Mac versus PC is not nearly as heated as it was when Justin Long and John Hodgman starred in the memorable Mac ads of several years ago.   The depiction was stark and there was evidence that in feeling sorry for ‘PC Guy’ Microsoft actually received some positives from an Apple campaign.    It was a snarky and smug campaign – the hill that Steve Jobs and Apple wished to preach from – and it was very effective.    I like my Mac.  I also like my PC laptop that I still use AND which works just fine after 6 years.

Is there any reason why I can’t like both?