Someone said Apple is planning to open a retail store in my mid-sized city soon. I couldn’t find the news report to confirm this, so I spent probably an hour (spread out over a couple of days) looking for other verification. I never did confirm it. I know my friend didn’t make it up; he read it in our local newspaper, which is very reliable. But I was frustrated not to be able to find quick confirmation on the Web.

Finally, I stopped looking and thought, “So what? I’ve survived all this time without an Apple store here. Why do I need one anyway?” I really don’t need one; I’m content to make purchases via catalog or online. If there were a store here in town, I’d just go in and buy a bunch of stuff I don’t need anyway.

This investigation began when I asked a friend if he wanted me to get him an iPod when I visit the Apple store in Orlando next month. That’s when he said, “Oh, that reminds me. There’s going to be one of those stores here soon.” But if we just got the news, it’s probably some months away, so I guess I’ll go ahead and get him that iPod now.

So now I’m thinking, what would I buy if I could get my hands on the stuff and see it in a store right down the street? One of those 20-inch monitors, for sure. Yummy. Probably some iPod accessories: a leather case, the wired remote. Yeah.

But to think about new software or even hardware, I’d have to make The Leap. You know the leap I’m talking about. The leap to OS X. Every time I reach this point in my head, I run away screaming.

I actually tried OS X for a few months, on an early-generation iBook. It was cute and fun to play with. Since it was a machine new to me, I didn’t have to reconfigure anything or reallocate anything or do anything complicated that I didn’t understand. See, I’m not what I think of as a power user. I use hot keys and keep my files and folders pretty well organized, and I use a Mac a lot at work. I’m not ignorant about stuff, but I’m limited to only understanding things that I use in real life. I can sometimes help out other folks if their questions are no harder than a three on the one to ten scale, but beyond that I make way for the real power users. I keep meaning to learn AppleScript, and there’s tons of stuff I wish I understood better.

I ended up only keeping that iBook a short time before passing it along to a friend who needed one. My experience with OS X was short and sweet. If I had to make The Leap now, I’d need to allocate a couple of days just for the psychological preparation for making such a big change. Then half a day for the switch itself (this presumes I’ve purchased a new machine and have to transfer files), and then a couple of weeks of getting used to the interface and monkeying with it to get it the way I want it.

But it just seems like the long-term adjustment would take a really long time. I’d compare it to breaking up with someone in a romantic relationship: the longer it lasted, the longer it takes to get over it. Gosh, at this point I’ve been using this OS, or one like it, for so long that I might need therapy to help get me over the loss.

Change is often good. If we never changed we’d never grow. But sometimes it really is tough to make ourselves do it.

I think right now I’m gonna stay safely on my side of the OS fence, with 9.1 chugging along happily. It ain’t broke; I ain’t gonna try to fix it. Since I’m standing still, I can’t really say Onward. But I will anyway.

Onward.

Copyright © 2003 Ellyn Ritterskamp, eritterskamp@atpm.com.