The alternative is that people who have the most computers in their house - computer experts - are more likely to have at least one Mac. There's probably some truth to both perspectives.
Anyway, at my house right now I have:
1 sub-$1000 PC Laptap (wife's work machine)
1 $1500 PC gameing machine
1 15 inch Macbook Pro
The MacBook is work machine and I love it. My slightly newer gaming rig is barely used (whoops). Now, for work I need to run Windows and a Unix type system and travel. The Macbook Pro is perfect for travel - thin, light, and powerful enough to be an everyday PC replacement. Also, if you're going to run VMs, do you want to simulate Unix while using Windows memory management or the reverse? Right, you're running linux or a Mac. And let's face it, the Mac UI experience blows away anything out there.
My Mac has had it's share of problems, but the new sub $1k laptop has shown signs of crappy hard-drive its first three months, and the gaming machine is currently out of service. Every machine I bring into my house has a purpose, but trust me, when it's my money on the line, I'm going to give the Macs serious consideration. Particularly for machines that are used most every day for a couple years? Any extra couple hundred bucks is worth a slightly less frustrating, more pleasant experience. It's like spending money on a chair for a home office, yes you can get an OK one for $125 at Staples, but your ass is going to be in that thing 8 hours a day - it's worth getting one that's very comfy even for a bit more dough.
I see a lot of Macs in the hands of nerds these days - at software conferences, work environments, etc. Programmers who have their choice of machines seem to be getting Macs and displaying them like a status symbol. If I was buying a replacement single machine for my parents? Probably a PC because that's what they know. My mom has just become comfortable with right-clicking. The Mac would be better for her, but she'd never expend the effort to learn it. My Dad doesn't have a ton of time either, and knows Windows well enough that I'm not sure where he'd benifit. So yeah, for them their single machine should be a PC but more because their existing machine is a PC than anything particularly good about them.
Time Traveler's was very much an emotion driven movie (ie chick flick). It was a study on inter-personal relationships, free will, and destiny given a scenario where someone occasionally blinks out of existence and materializes at some significant place in the past or future. In that it used an element of fantasy to explore the human condition, I think it deserves sci-fi / fantasy respect. But it will do less than nothing to satisfy the teen-age boy in us that wants to see mechs blow shit up.
They're used to it, because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them
Yep. I'm a sales engineer these days after about four years in development.
It's helping people out and putting your tech skills to work. Take a big, complicated piece of software and get it up, running, and customized for potentional customer over the course of a few days (or weeks).
Most of the time, they're smart people with tough problems and you get to help them fix them. If you do a good job, your employer can win the deal.
There's a bit of sales in the job (more or less depending on who you do it for) but at the end of the day it's more technical than anything else.
I now have two business cards, one says "consultant" on it and the other says, "sales" on it. If I'd have known that would be my future when I was in college reading slashdot everyday, I probably would have cried. But I'm having way more fun doing this than slinging code, and frankly, it's harder.
Oh, so there you are!
