Osler's Razor

I'm writing this on an Apple MacBook Air.
Downstairs is my old MacBook and a Mac desktop.
In my pocket is an iPhone.
On the bureau to my left is an iPod shuffle that I use when I run.

I bought each one for the same reason: They took something complex and made it simple. That is the essence of genius. As a teacher, that is what I so halting try to achieve.

Many years ago, I gave up on almost everything touched by Microsoft. I could give a thousand reasons, but the core of it all was about arrogance.

In the same way that genius is taking something simple and making it complex, arrogance is often in the form of creating needless complexity.

Why would anyone create needless complexity? The answer is simple-- it gives you power. If we can learn or create a language others don't know, for example, and sell an essential service as dependent on understanding that language, we have created a profession. The needless use of Latin phrases in law is one manifestation of this.

Microsoft created a language, or rather a series of them-- each of which made us count on Microsoft rather than ourselves. When people complained enough about the complexity in one of the Microsoft programs, the company gave us Clippy. There was no discernable way to turn Clippy off, so I turned on to Apple.

When I bought this computer, a thin, light wedge, I opened it and it began to work. That is as good as it gets, and the product of true vision.