Parallel thinking
With the current round of notebooks for teaching staff, and after many years teaching VCE IT with Toshiba, ACER, IBM and then Levono laptops, I have finally decided to opt for the Apple notebook option. Last week I was really impressed with a colleague running Parallels on his iBook who was able to seamlessly switch between OSX to XP applications using a little used feature called Coherence. It makes for some interesting reading with this blog post.
It didn't really matter what operating system we use .. shift happens. I saw this myself at the VITTA conference last year after a day long session demonstrating programming with Python in the Apple lab. It didn't matter. A lighter weight and better design are also factors I am considering .. bluetooth, perhaps Apple iPhone integration??
With due dignity to all users and systems, I do not wish to turn this into a mac / windows flame or debate about incremental advantages. Jokes about one or two button mice mean nothing when both systems plug and play just about anything you throw at them.
Somebody once described this to me as how we learn to play chess. It doesn't matter if your pieces are made of finely crafted glass or bottle tops. It doesn't matter if the chess board is made of ivory or newspaper. What matters more is the game that you play.
Is anybody thinking along the same path?