Mac OS X shame

A comment at Mac Pwned touched on something that's been nagging at me for some time now:

Sometimes I have a hard time with the fact that I use OS X, which although uses open source, it still uses a lot of closed source as well. My hats off to the 'pure' GNU Linux diehards. I tend to fall in the middle, a little closed, and a little open.

Mea culpa.

Of course I *do* use Linux too - I have a Linux server here, and I've put many a Linux box into service at customer sites. But every morning when I sit down at my desk, it's the MacBook Pro's keyboard my fingers first touch.

And like the person who left the comment above, I feel a little guilty about that. I love my Mac, I really, really do, but deep down I feel like I'm compromising my own principles, that I've sold out for convenience.. I should be waddling the waddle rather than drinking the Koolaid.

The other odd thing about that is that I suspect that someday I probably will. As I move into retirement, my income will naturally decline and I won't be able to afford two thousand dollar plus computers.. it seems inevitable that at some point I will be using Linux as my ordinary desktop machine.. so why not now?

Aaargh. Because.. because.. because.. all right, dammit I have no good reason. I could use Linux right now and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. I'd lose nothing, give up nothing. There's no denying it.

But here I am, still clicking away at the MacBook.. feeling guilty, but not quite guilty enough to reformat it with Linux.