Sunday, June 12, 2011

Being Non Partisan (Short Take)

An Amiga 500, with 1084S RGB monitor and A1010...
I'm not completely nonpartisan when it comes to technologies and technology companies but I try to be as neutral and even handed as I can be. I've learned along the way that getting too fond of a particular company is going to end in disappointment eventually.

My first love was Commodore. The C64 is still a legend having sold more units than any other computer model and the Amiga was a great followup. In the end though Commodore went broke and while I wish the recently resurrected company the best I'm not holding my breath for them to make a serious run at Apple or any of the other big players.

My second love was Sun Microsystems. I spent ridiculous amounts of money relative to my wages at the time to acquire used sun workstations for use at home. This wasn't a bad investment from a career perspective but I eventually became disillusioned with their inability to effectively monetize all the great products they kept coming up with and with their managements many other short comings.

On the flip side there was a time when I was anything but a fan of Microsoft and IBM. I viewed IBM as big and clueless and arguably they were at the time. They've become a much leaner and smarter company over the past fifteen years or so.  Microsoft is no longer the evil empire in my mind because Apple is increasingly dominant and Microsoft is finally doing a credible job of not trying to unfairly leverage their OS dominance to conquer the world. Also for the first time in the history of the company they are starting to put out some products that I consider to be innovative.

My point? The technology world is constantly changing place and getting too emotional about any particular company is bound to lead to disappointment eventually and that disappointment is going to take place sooner rather than later if you make even a minimal attempt to be objective.

I'm not saying that I don't get enthusiastic about companies and technologies, but I do work hard to do so in as nonpartisan a way as possible.

Image via Wikipedia
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