Hardware Arc

My personal computing hardware arc began with a delightful HP-41CV programmable then progressed to PCs and far too many years using Wintel junk, before settling in on Apple computers and mobile devices while running my own company, and then on into retirement.

I tinkered a bit with LINUX running on Intel hardware and liked it, but never carried on there.

The least enjoyable stretch of this arc spanned the early 90s through to the early 2010s as efforts putting Wintel products to efficient use on personal computing projects always turned out to be more struggle than pleasure, overall. Some time was spent using laptops, especially after moving off-grid, and they were useful, but when Apple had released a few versions of their new Macs running their thoughtfully customized flavor of UNIX, I eagerly dove in and outfitted myself with an iMac 27" sporting 16GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive and an iPad 2 to ramp up capabilities of my little business. That transition progressed nicely and without any regrets as those two devices significantly enhanced my productivity across the board throughout the remainder of my professional career. The Wintel junk all fell into disuse around 2010 and I have never looked back. Now enjoying Apple devices in retirement applied exclusively on personal projects, there's nothing better suited to my new purposes.

If I were still involved in engineering projects to any extent, I might consider using some of the high-end LINUX systems currently being offered on the market, but there's no need now. These Apple computing devices I'm leveraging today, even though they are beefed up low-end models, are the most powerful computing solutions I've ever put to good use anyways. And choices of peripherals for applications across countless disciplines are mind blowing.