I've been in the Apple Ecosystem for about 15 years, you could say I was the definition of fan, I had the MacBook Pro, Watch, iMac, iPhone, iPad Pro, if it had the Apple logo on it, I had it and each release, I'd upgrade and each OS release I'd be up to date with the latest changes. I even have previous generations of MacBooks and iPhones scattered in my office draws. Ultimately I was Apple, and it was great, it's hardware was incredible in design, quality and speed. So how did we get here? Back in 2012, it was all Windows, I had a great gaming style laptop, plenty of power and capabilities, focusing on the .Net stack it was a natural choice, but MacOS was the only operating system that I could develop for any platform and with the rise in Mobile Apps and new frameworks (Node was arriving as a serious player around here the Mac had a strong appeal. I could run Windows on a virtual machine (thanks Parallels) and it was a sweet setup, add to that that all the new tools worked out of the box (early days of Node / NPM on windows - painful) and I was onto a winner, the hardware was well designed, ergonomic and it felt like luxury coming from the bulky Windows Laptops. It worked well and within a few months the whole team I was leading, were on the Apple eco system and we standardised the hardware and tooling to match. Then in 2017 Microsoft released DotNet core, I could drop the virtual machine for running Windows and run everything natively on the Mac, it was a game changer. As time went on, the Mac hardware got better, we got incredibly fast chips, great graphics, long battery life and tooling that worked. But things started to bother me, the iPhone became a re-release each time, a slightly better camera was the usual sell, along with improved battery life, and with the Macbook Pro the keyboard became a failure point, Apple flip flopped between usb-c and standard ports and the MagSafe came and went and came back again, the adapters I'd need and then not need. It was all a bit disjointed. Along side this, more and more companies were having issues with Apple and it's App Store, it was something I'd experienced historically on a smaller scale but if big companies can have their app pulled or rejected from the only distribution platform available for the IPhone, how would I do? Then came the announcements about AI being at the heart of the next OS release and it made me uncomfortable, I didn't want any of this, I wanted a fast computer that put me in control and allowed me to build and ship products as fast as possible. It got me thinking about what else was out there, but I was stuck, right? All my services, apps, photos etc, I'd become tied to Apple and the more I realised it, the more I wanted out. After some digging around it hit me, all of the production code I had in the wild (Almost all) was running on Ubuntu Linux, why couldn't I use that on my desktop? And I wasn't the only one thinking this. My previous experience with Ubuntu on the desktop was basic, I remember in around 2008 installing it on my grandparents computer to save them the licence cost of Windows, it worked for internet browsing but could it work now, 12 years later for software development? Just like most things in life, the reality was lots easier than the imagination, I'm sat writing this on a beautiful bit of hardware provided by Framework, a re-imagination of what the laptop should be, it's modular, has a great keyboard and could buy nearly 3 of them for the same price as the Macbook pro. Alongside this, I've moved my phone from the iPhone to the Pixel and while I'm not convinced this is where I'll land long term, but it's been a great introduction to Android and just like Linux it's come on leaps and bounds since my last look. It's been a lot of fun, most of what I used before is available on Linux and the things that are not, I've found better ways to work, ways that put me back in control. I'm not convinced Linux is for everyone (yet), but it's certainly within reach of developers and after all if we are running Linux on the server where our product live, why wouldn't we be running it on our desktops. Let's see where this journey takes me

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