I’m just beginning a short little contract here in China for a month or so to pay some bills and help a friend out. Part of doing work in the computer industry in China is that 1000$ USD for a computer is an outrageous sum of money. Those of us with Apples are either reckless spendthrifts or simply lucky beyond belief (Mac OS X itself is simply not understood … is that a program that runs on top of Windows?). So, this morning, when one of my coworker’s computer broke, I groaned. Not only was it likely to be a huge hassle, but the likelihood of having spare parts or another working computer were quite remote.

In short, he had no network. The cable lights simply did not come on. We switched cables. We unplugged and re-plugged in everything in the office. We uninstalled and re-installed drivers. We fiddled and diddled with Windows ad nauseum. We stole other departments’ switches. No joy.

Finally, in an act of desperation, I opened the computer up, tapped the network port aluminum housing a few times, looked sagely at at the current state of affordable PC hardware (it is pretty cool looking inside those things), and then tried again …. it works fine now.

What the—???

Today I had a glimpse into the future of Apple’s Mac OS X, and I was more than a little frightened.

When I think about why I use my Powerbook so much and shun Windows whenever possible, the reasons are not what most people might think. I don’t care about the cost (okay, 200$ USD for Windows is a bit much, but I happily paid 130$ USD for the 10.4 “Tiger” Upgrade to OS X on our 12” Powerbook), and while I’m more than a little alarmed by the security problems endemic in Windows, I can avoid many of them by using Firefox, and Microsoft is slowly learning how to do the automated patching game.