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.
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