Why is this? It seems kind of asinine to me.
Each of us has our opinions, which is a good thing, because I sure as hell do not agree with Hadley Stern of Apple Matters and the statement of Take the No Windows-Booting Pledge.
The reason I don’t get it is that each of these operating systems has a purpose in life, for different people, and for different reasons. Hell, think of the different UNIX variants out there. Personally, I don’t want a *BSD or, god forbid, Linux system as my desktop. I want my OS X on my workstation. That is my choice, and I’ll make that choice for myself.
Do I use other operating systems regularly? Damn tootin’! I have a whole network of FreeBSD servers, Solaris servers, Windows 2K and 2K3 servers, and right now, I even have a Linux server (I can hear the whoosh of breath being taken in by many of my friends at this surprise). But I don’t use those operating systems on my workstation(s).
I was excited because so far I had not found a good virtualization system yet (do check out Parallels) that runs on my MacBook Pro.
Why do I need this? Ever have to work with VISIO documents? I do and while I think that OmniGraffle Pro does kick ass for most of my day to day needs, there are times when my customers end me VISIO documents – and they do not always import into OmniGraffle Pro. Do I give my customers the finger or do I work with what I have?
How about gaming? Sure, there are many games available for the Macintosh, and some of them are even now Universal Binaries. Awesome. But what about games like HalfLife 2, CounterStrike: Source, and many others. Even geeks and Mac lovers want time away from work and productivity, and many of the games available for OS X just do not cut it for fast action, full FPS experience.
Why might you need to use another operating system on your Macintosh? Who knows, and in reality, who cares? Make your own choices, use the right tool for the job at hand and don’t try to make one tool be the only tool.
Please, do not take the silly pledge, use your system as you want to and don’t take a stand like this. It isn’t good for you, it isn’t good for your Mac, and it isn’t good for computing in general. In fact, from my point of view, this is very childish.
Don’t be a hater. Don’t evangelize just because it is cool to do so. Don’t perpetuate computer OS bigotry.
Instead, advocate others to use what they feel comfortable with, on whatever platform they wish, even if you do not agree with it for your own needs or preferences.