Note: This embarassingly self-absorbed message is a parody of this other embarassingly self-absorbed message from 7+ years ago:

http://www.scottkleper.com/crossplatform.txt

Local Geek Becomes Local Mac Geek (Again)

06/07/05 San Francisco, CA — Scott J. Kleper, reluctant security architect and PADI-certified scuba diver, announced today his intention to return to the Macintosh community. The announcement comes nearly eight years after a Error of Type -1 and a bizarre desire to play Test Drive 5 prompted Kleper to move to the Windows platform for day to day computing.

Kleper, who authored several award-winning Macintosh shareware programs in the mid 1990’s, says that he has carefully watched the Mac landscape for the right time to jump back in. “Clearly,” acknowledges Kleper, “that time has not come. They’re changing architectures just when I finally understood the difference between little-endian and big-endian. And what good will a computer do after the specter of Peak Oil breaks the world into chaos and turns the suburbs into ghost towns? But the idea of having a portable machine with linux-like tools and a great development environment is too tempting to resist anymore.”

Reactions to today’s announcement varied greatly. Michael Kleper, editor of the ironically named Kleper Report, remarked, “That’s great. I will send him lots of software and peripherals for his birthday. To his office because he doesn’t want to have to go wait in line at UPS.” Mrs. Marni Kleper, who is platform-agnostic to say the least, bemoaned, “He has been talking about this for years. Just get a damn PowerBook already!” John Lilly, friend and trusted advisor, inquired, “When can I get me some NetBots X?” Adam Nash, long-time Apple devotee was quoted as saying, “I told you he was just bitter. Man, 8 years. Remind me never to piss him off.”

A representative from CalTrain addressed the rumor that Kleper would be purchasing a PowerBook. “He showed up at the 22nd Street station with an iPod not so long ago, which we thought might have just been an attempt to blend in with the other white-earplugged commuters. However, today’s news, in our minds, confirms the intended purchase of a laptop.”

In a statement following the announcement, Kleper expanded on his Mac plans. “I keep reading about all this great stuff coming out on the Mac first. QuickSilver, GarageBand, those widgets that make the screen ripple… My PC rarely, if ever, ripples. And I have to buy one now because if I wait much longer, I might as well wait for the Intel PowerBooks. And if I wait until then, I might as well wait for the second-gen ones that fix the first-gen problems.”

Postscript:

Hey, can some of you people who *didn’t* abandon the platform in 1997 answer some questions for me?

• What’s the consensus on PowerBooks? Are there rumors of upcoming revs or are we stuck with current models until the Intel ones in a year? I’m looking at the 12″ one.
• So the Intel thing… Think I should wait? Could be a while, no? And there will be few apps at first. But the expectation is that the portables will be much faster, right?
• Other than being ugly, why wouldn’t I just save $500 by getting an iBook? I intend to do development, word processing, etc. and I want the widget ripples to show up real nice. And I meant that the iBook is ugly, not that I am.
• Is this fancy Apple development environment included with the OS? Do I still need to code in Objective-C?
• I was planning on saving some $$ by *not* getting a SuperDrive. I still want to do video, but I figure I’ll burn to an image and transfer to a PC for actual burning. Doable?
• Any good deals out there? I’m not above getting a refurb or a slightly older model, though the current 12″ PowerBook really seems like the one for me.
• Has anyone updated Talking Moose for OS X?