Filed under: Switchers, TUAW Business
Kevin Harter, Switcher
I'll bet you're just dying to know exactly who this "Kevin Harter" fella is that has tarnished the pages of your favorite blog lately. And just what in the heck does he know about Macs, anyway?! Well, let me fill you in.Hailing from Fort Madison, a town of about 10,000 in rural Southeast Iowa, I'm the father of two, the husband of one, and the owner of Backslash Technologies, a local computer sales and service center. The funny thing is, we don't do much with Macs at all; it's almost entirely Windows-based.
My love affair with all things Apple began with some flirting about 14 years ago. I was hired to develop the Windows side of a primarily-Mac store. I performed my duty and PC sales grew, but I was soon was sucked in by the relatively slick interface of System 7. So my first Apple purchase, ever, was a PowerMac 7300/180 that I used as a second computer.
When I left that job over 11½ years ago to start my own business, I used the Mac to develop our first logo, first web site, and a series of forms and flyers to run and promote the business. Soon after opening the doors, the Mac found its home on a shelf in the back of the store, where it still sits to this day. I concentrated on solving my customers' Windows problems. And there were lots of them.
Years went by and I read a bit about Macs here and there, always with a lot of curiosity but never with enough guts to buy another. I was the guy that said "because it's a Mac, dummy" when asked why something didn't work on an Apple computer. I made fun of Mac owners as being snobby and slow. I couldn't believe people would spend so much money on a computer that could run so little software.
I had firmly closed my mind.
Then, about a month after it was released, I won an iPhone in a drawing at a computer conference. Since we offered cell service from Nextel and i wireless, a GSM-based regional carrier, I couldn't very well sign up with AT&T. Besides, remember the "rural Iowa" part? Yeah, they still don't offer AT&T contracts in Fort Madison.
So the iPhone sat on my desk, in the original shrink wrap, for several agonizing weeks. Curious what all the buzz was about, I didn't open it because there was a good chance I was going to just dump the thing on eBay if I couldn't SIM unlock it to replace my Nextel Blackberry 7510 (a fine piece of tech... for 2003). The day the first unlock was offered by the sketchy folks at iPhone SIM Free, I gleefully passed them my credit card digits to the tune of $50. It was a bargain in my particular situation... and a rip-off for nearly everyone else, as a free solution appeared just a few days later.
I soon fell in love with the simple yet powerful interface of the iPhone OS and started a new hobby of checking out all of the cool, unauthorized apps. Seven months later, I bought a Mac Mini, which was supposed to take its legendary place as "secondary computer" on my office desk. Two months later, I ditched my Windows PC and the Mini became my primary machine. And four months after that, in October of last year, I moved that Mac home and bought the MacBook Pro that I'm using to write this article.
Keep in mind that the company I built from the ground up still does very little with Macs, but my love for the platform continues to grow. I simply can't get enough of using my MBP and can't imagine going back to using Windows PCs exclusively.
So, among my blog posts for TUAW, expect a few tips on living in both worlds. Every other computer in our business is a Windows box, yet I am able to run it all from my Mac laptop. Sure, I still face challenges, yet I'm convinced that OS X is fundamentally better operating system than anything Microsoft has yet released (although, at the risk of feeling the commenters' wrath, I'll admit that Windows 7 does look promising).
Also, I have made it a personal goal to find high-quality free or low-cost software for everything I need to do. I am pleased to announce that the OS X Open-Source World is alive and thriving, and I will be bringing to you my thoughts on the programs I use most.
But don't worry, even though I'm from Iowa, I won't bore you with a ton of agriculture apps.
One last thought: I want to use this space to say a sincere "thanks" to all of the fantastic people with which I now have the good fortune to work. The bloggers at TUAW have taught me a tremendous amount about my new tech loves over the past couple of years. I am honored to be part of the TUAW team and hope that I will be able to contribute to the education of future switchers.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Doug Adams said 2:47PM on 7-18-2009
Hooray!
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Bryan said 4:25PM on 7-18-2009
Welcome to TUAW! I grew up in Mt. Pleasant (just a few miles up Hwy 218 for you comment readers) but now live in Baltimore, MD. I look forward to reading your articles in the future.
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Kevin Harter said 4:10PM on 7-18-2009
Awesome! Are you coming back for the social media conference, IOWAtasmic 2009, in September? It's being held in Mt. Pleasant. Seriously.
Bryan said 6:30PM on 7-20-2009
I didn't know that was going on. Seems kind of odd to hold it in good ole MP. I don't plan on going back too soon. I was there for a wedding a few weeks ago and my parents are coming here for Christmas so I mostly likely be back there for some time.
Btw. I used my iPhone there and it was incredibly slow. But it was still convenient to have around.
Kevin Harter said 6:51PM on 7-20-2009
Unfortunately, we only have EDGE service in this area... no 3G at all!
David said 3:04PM on 7-18-2009
Ok I give up. Now that you are a Mac user did you become snobbish and slow, or did you change your opinion of Mac users. :)
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Kevin Harter said 4:08PM on 7-18-2009
I'm too poor and ugly to be snobbish, but I am a business owner... So I must be slow. (Nobody in their right mind would start a computer store these days. Ha!)
Lee McCartney said 3:04PM on 7-18-2009
Welcome to the TUAW team Kevin, I look forward to your articles :o)
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Kevin Harter said 4:15PM on 7-18-2009
Thanks, me too! =)
Graham said 8:17PM on 7-18-2009
Looking forward to some of your Mac/Windows interaction pieces here on tuaw. Like many people here (I suspect) I love my mac but have to use it in a mainly windows environment; Windows server 2003 network, windows print servers etc.. it will be great to see some posts from someone who is very familiar with the dark side..I mean Windows :-) as well as the Mac.
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caricaturesbydave said 3:16PM on 7-18-2009
Hey, I grew up on ranch a couple of lifetimes ago, but you can bore me with some wheat or corn apps - LOL
Seriously, welcome to the Mac world - I switched during system 6 with a black and white Classic but I still fix my friends' PC problems when I have to - luckily my mom switched about 10 years ago, so that simplified my life quite a bit (she has a tenth of the issues she used to, which, by the way, were NOT caused by her or by viruses, just typical Windows 98 bugs).
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YodaMac said 3:31PM on 7-18-2009
Is this Heaven?...
...No. It's a Mac.
:-)
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Dan said 4:24PM on 7-18-2009
Hi Kevin - welcome! Was fun reading about your Mac experience.
BTW, I lived in Fort Madison for about a year or two, over 30 years ago. Still remember the white picket fence on Sunset Lane. :-) Small town, but had its charms; the hospital and most anything else was only a few blocks away. All the trains rumbling through was fun, though the basement flooding every time it rained was a little less so. ;-)
Looking forward to seeing more TUAW posts.
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Kevin Harter said 4:46PM on 7-18-2009
Re: basement flooding... Yeah, we deal with that all the time. Having a "basement drainage system" installed this winter. It's going to take a lot of blog posts to pay for that sucker! hehe
Ben said 4:20PM on 7-18-2009
Hey Kevin. Welcome! I grew up in SE Iowa. Went to HS in Danville, church in Wever. Great place to grow up (live in Nashville, TN now....)
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Kevin Harter said 5:01PM on 7-19-2009
Yeah, I describe it as "a great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit."
Amerist said 6:02PM on 7-18-2009
Greetings from a fellow switcher. I was a 100% PC user, building my own systems and getting way too efficient at reloading the Windows operating system because something got corrupted.
In 2003 I bought my first Mac and since that time I have seldom turned to a PC for the solution to a problem. Now, I will admit that certain hardware vendors (Monsoon Multimedia I'm talking about you) still need to get their device drivers and software written for OS X, but as time passes, this is turning out to be the exception rather than the norm.
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Scott Khach said 8:10PM on 7-18-2009
Great article. I have been a mac convert for about 6 years. I am now an absolute Mac Freak!!!
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Swimatm said 8:48PM on 7-18-2009
Welcome Kevin! Glad to have you here.
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jdsilver said 9:39PM on 7-18-2009
Welcome to TUAW! I switched just last week. I've been programming Windows since '93, and Windows Mobile since the beginning. After switching from Windows Mobile to iPhone GS, I saw the light. My new 17" MacBook Pro is the best system I've ever owned. I still need Visual Studio 2008 running in a VM, but everything else is OS X. Although I teach Linux and Windows programming at a college, perhaps I can sneak in an iPhone programming course!
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