I’m a techie sort of guy. I used to be a programmer, web designer, etc. I’ve integrated computers into everyday life, like so many other Americans. But, I give regular thought to canceling my facebook account and unplugging everything. I’ve considered being a lumberjack. It has its perks. Like plenty of sawdust and flannel shirts.

This past week in my music technology class, I introduced a lesson on video editing. One of the students- an older student- does all her work on her own computer, keeps up, asks questions, and gets everything done on time. She wasn’t born to technology like all the younger students in the room, but she is old enough to know how to get things done, regardless of the medium. So, despite her lack of technical skills, she does good work.

However, because she does everything on her own computer, there is a new layer of complication added to the mix. She uses Windows, and the lab computers are Mac.

I’m operating system agnostic; if you want my opinion I’ll tell you why they both suck. And this is a story illustrating my point, now that I think about it. But it shouldn’t be a story illustrating why they suck. I thought they had this crap figured out years ago.

Operating system manufacturers: the moral of the story is PLAY NICE.

Mac/Quicktime/iMovie won’t export a movie format that can be read by Windows/Media Center/Movie Maker. Any codecs that facilitated such cross-platform interoperability are no longer supported. We’ve managed to crash her computer a few times just trying to make it do what my computer at home does. Which is to say, do what you expect.

But I’m not sure why my computer at home opens those files. According to the Intarwebz, Media Player and Quicktime used to play along nicer than they do now. And that makes me think that these problems are on purpose. Someone somewhere actually decided that not playing nice is ok.

I’m going to have to re-make all my resources for the project now that I know you cannot use a windows machine to do the assignment as it is written. Keep in mind I’m not changing my materials just for the student, but on principle as well. The class I teach is an entry-level technology class, and there are so many good tools to help the students be productive. Why should I force them to use one they don’t have when they could just as easily (in theory) use one they do?

But that gets me back to my hatred of computers. Computers are dumb. I mean that in the nicest possible way. They do exactly what we tell them to do. I stopped helping people out with their computers years ago not because I don’t enjoy the challenge of figuring out the puzzle, but because most often the user did it to themselves, and by fixing the computer I’m not really fixing the problem. The problem is that computer operating manufacturers sell operating systems, not usability. We as a buying public have gotten used to modifying ourselves to meet our computers’ needs. So how much are we willing to change for a dumb and inanimate object?

Extend that idea a little bit more, and you have to ask why someone would buy [brand X] word processor when [brand Y] word processor does everything they need and seems to play nice. The answer is that things change and the tools we have sometimes just don’t play nice with the changed world. So we have to change to make the tool work. Why do we spend and change to accommodate technology? We shouldn’t, but we do.

So, to wrap up my rant, I have to ask a semi-rhetorical question; how many of you felt after purchasing the latest wonder-gizmo that it had changed your life? How many asked the follow-up; how?