Old Neverhome Week

I spent most of this week back down at Apple Computer, at a Workshop (nee "Kitchen") for Cocoa software development. (I've been a Macintosh software developer for over 16 years). Now, a big part of the time spent in one of these things is working on your own code while having bonafide Apple engineers stopping by, on-demand, to help you with whatever problems you might be having. It's pretty damned cool, and it's free. Apple completely rocks when it comes to personal interaction with its engineers. And Apple employees, in the main, are a pretty spectacular bunch of people. They're smart as hell, they all seem to absolutely love being where they are. And, I should also add, there are a TON of hot minnnnnssss who work there (like my buddy, Frank and like this guy).

I vacillate on wanting to work there, going back and forth between the above plusses and the one large minus of having to schlep 50 miles each way, each day. Also, I rather enjoy being a contractor.

But I've been to Apple Campus (1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA) a bazillion times for personal reasons, professional reasons, and for odd, in-between reasons, and so the place is utterly familar to me. It's also, after so much time spent being the odd-man-out Macintosh developer in companies that purported to be Mac-friendly (more often, they hired me to try to make themselves Mac-friendly), a frictionless place where everyone uses a Mac. The odd-persons-out are the random PC folks (like the great engineers of the iTunes for Windows team and the WebObjects support folks). It's a place where I don't get strange looks for preferring a Macintosh or for hating the stupid UI of Windows and baffling inconsistencies of PC hardware.

You know, the way the world should work.

Anyhow, it adds up to this workplace that I'm eminently familiar with, in which I have never been employed. Strange.

I think I'd like to change that. I think. Except when I don't think so. Go figger.