Well this time a year ago I was working furiously without sleep (well it felt like it) to make sure that NZMac.com launched spot on midnight of the New Year. My head was swimming with thoughts of "this has to work", which weren't only about technical issues with the site, but a hope that the Mac users of New Zealand would hook into the site and start making use of it. I needn't have worried!

I'm no Lawyer, but I do think that the "man in the street" has it over the lawyer in one respect. He or she has not had to study law and therefore some things are still "Common Sense" to him or her. What I hope to do in this "article" is demonstrate how fancy lawyers now claim to own the rights to some things that they patently (sic) do not own the rights to.

Firstly, The Open Group, a San Francisco company that claims ownership of the Unix trademark, is suing Apple Computer. They have a beef with Apple for using the term Unix in conjunction with its Mac OS X operating system and want to license it to them.

Some say that is was Apple who started the trend when they tried unsuccessfully to sue Microsoft for stealing the "Look and Feel" of the Macintosh Operating System. Apple had in fact been invited to the Palo Alto Research Center to see what Xerox had come up with after Xerox had paid several scientists to sit around to research new way of doing things. Xerox invited the boys from Apple over to "have a look" in return for some cheap stock options. Apple scooped up the ideas they saw on that day and ran with them, first utilizing them in a computer called Lisa, then later on in the Macintosh.

I had no intention of writing a piece about the Apple Roadshow, other than the report that you see on elsewhere. But having taken a days leave from work to travel down to Wellington and having had the opportunity to meet a lot of great people that knew about the site, the two questions I seem to have been asked the most have been "What did you think?" and "Was the trip worth it?". So here goes...

A show of hands near the beginning of the Wellington presentation revealed that there were very few people in the audience who weren't using Macs. While it was great to see those few hands go up (and I welcome PC and other users to the presentations) it meant that in many respects, it was a case of preaching to the converted. In that respect, I'd suggest the presentations need a bit of tweaking.

So what can be done? Well, there's two approaches, which I guess again look at what and who Apple are trying to cater for. I think their response to that would be that they are trying to cater for everyone. In many respects, PC users weren't there because although I saw an ad for the Roadshow in the Dominion the day before (did it appear any other time?) the ad didn't really do enough to let PC users into what they might see and why we wanted them there. And did the presentation really provide enough encouragement for them to Switch? I'm not sure. It certainly touched on some areas (the number of apps available under OSX, the fact that you can connect via SMB to a PC) but was that enough?

How did I get into Macs? Well let me tell you a little story...

Way back, my brother and I (mostly me) finally got Ma and Pa to agree to sell the old Amiga (500+ with two disk drives) and get a new computer. Now at this time my brother and I were going all out for them to get a brand spanking new Wintel machine but as fate would have it Ma was working on Apple Computers at the University of Waikato, so we went Apple shopping.... Now you must understand that at this point in time Apple computer was going down the toilet and there were very, very, very few games that ran on them. So my brother and I didn't like the idea of getting a Mac...but then Bungie arrived on the scen

There running on one of the Macs at the store (the now long dead Feedback computers) was Marathon a first person shooter, and not only a first person shooter but a first person shooter with depth and storyline! Bungie had got me and there was no escape...since then I have purchased everything they have brought out and will probably continue to do so even after the shocking purchase of the company by the evil Microsoft (*STILL* waiting for Halo).

Back in 1987, my typewriter broke. A friend who worked in one of the new desktop publishing companies told me to not even think about getting another one. They had been rendered redundant and ridiculous. I hardly felt in a financial position to agree, but he cunningly brought home a Macintosh from his work, which was closed down for the Christmas break, and said "Use this for two weeks before you make up your mind".

I was absolutely hooked. Line and sinker. When the chance came to work from home I took redundancy from the prepress company I worked at, and spent all my money on a Mac Plus. I spent the next few months teaching myself all I could, and soon I had launched a free Auckland what's-on and opinion magazine (called Stamp) and I was doing desktop publishing privately, plus writing about music and wine.

I soon met Greg Vincent who had just started Parkside Publishing, and the rest is history - Greg launched NZ Classic Car magazine (which I designed for two years in my garden shed) and now the company is a major independent publisher with the titles NZ Performance Car magazine, Tone and NZ Macguide magazine also in the stable.

As the owner of a site dedicated to Mac users, you'd think that I spend all my time convincing friends to buy Mac. Well, I'd love to say that that's true, but more often than not, I end up helping them choose the right PC for their needs.

"Traitor!" I hear you scream? Well, it's never a pleasant experience, but for friends that are first-time purchasers, trying to explain the difference between what we all see as the "Mac experience" and using a PC just doesn't work. Believe it or not, people sometimes aren't even familiar with what an operating system is and that there is in fact more than one. Unfortunately instead, it often boils down to cost. And despite the heated arguments over Return on Investment, resale value and more, it finally comes to the point where I either help them with a PC purchase or don't help them at all.

They see that for a lot less dollars and daily adverts in the national papers, they can get a get a great PC with a lot of extra equipment bundled with it. Despite pleas, despite sobbing and despite the "you'll live to regret it" comments coming from me incessantly, a purchase is made. So what pleasure do I derive from helping these friends? Well, there's a time factor involved. You have to be patient, but pay-off comes in the smug look you can give them 12 to 24 months down the track when you say "I did try to warn you".