About Us

Why am I the MacNative? Let me tell you the story.

I grew up a windows fan, probably the way most of you did. It was what mom and dad brought home on that first PC. Through years of usage I became numb to life. Just living within that box from the heyday of DOS through the emergence of Windows XP. I grew up as a NERD. That’s right, hard to believe isn’t it. Constantly being called upon to perform technical tasks of one level of difficulty or another.

Through time I found myself working as a computer technician for Utah State University’s Housing Department. There being a defacto Windows fanatic, I found myself engaged in a fierce debate with one of my co-workers(who also happened to be the president of the local Linux Users Group) about Linux and its eventual take over of the earth as we know it. I still remember very vividly my endorsement of the Microsoft Monopoly and its infinite continuation because of their market share and money. I secretly began playing with Linux at home.

A couple of years later I found myself at Dixie State College in St. George, Utah managing their Student Computer Technician’s team. I did not realize the internal mental pain that I was experiencing in running and supporting Windows on desktops throughout campus. I remember being emotionally moved to tears at

seeing the beautiful widgets that KDE 2.0 was being released with. That grey bar had been taking its toll. By this time I had increased my knowledge and aptitude with Linux and employed it on all of the servers that we had. But then came the fateful day that I was frustrated with my Windows2k computer giving me that same Blue Screen of Death, with a cryptic error code that didn’t seem to lead to any sort of a resolution. And I did the unthinkable (especially in my department and much to my supervisors chagrin). I loaded Debian Linux. I had been set free. So free in fact that I was able to easily cope with the pain of loading Debian Linux on my computer at home through a 56K modem (It took me about a week to download the packages).

So I was using Linux most of the time that I was using a computer. Then it happened, I saw the beautiful tapestry that was weaved between Unix and Great looking GUI in Mac OSX 10.2. It inspired me to purchase my first Mac, an ibook. It gave me a perfect platform to run Unix utilities and administer my Linux servers, without compromising any usability in the GUI or end user applications. It was the nail in the coffin to my personal windows usage.

Since that time I have been a convert. I still run Linux as my server OS of choice, and Windows whenever I cannot creatively think of a way to avoid it. But otherwise I live happily coexisting in a PC dominated world, without the PC problems, with my Mac.

So there you have it, a brief explanation of my background and conversion to using and extolling the Mac Platform.

(Last updated in 2011)

 

 

Update:

Since launching this site many years ago I have posted helpful information about useful Mac apps, tips and tricks. I have also posted information about development projects and wordpress plugins that I have created. I am still an avid Mac user, but have not posted much recently, I have shifted my focus from development to server administration and hosting. But I didn’t feel like I had a great platform to post elements that I found useful in the hosting area. So we will be making a few changes to Macnative.com allowing for more content and giving me an arena to share things that are more relevant to what I do every day.