Over the past 2 years, I have noticed an interesting trend among the Java developer community. The trend is to move to Apple PowerBook as the laptop of choice away from any Wintel or Lintel alternatives. Are the Mac’s better laptops or is this just a ‘follow the crowd’ mentality driving people to buy Mac’s? Is the move to Mac’s influenced by the UNIX OS under the covers or is this just a pure ‘I hate Microsoft’ sentiment?

I’ve been an proud iPod user for about 2 months now and so I am drinking a little of that Apple Kool-Aid, but I’m not sure I’m ready to give up totally on XP. I am a Linux user and run it on my other box that acts as my WebLogic, JBoss, mySQL and CVS server but I still running IDEA on XP over Linux. Maybe I just need to try out the new 17 inch PowerBook to see if I give into the allure of OS X and Apple.

The new PowerBooks are impressive. Why can’t DELL, Toshiba and Compaq take a page from Apple’s book and create some sleek looking, ergonomically usable laptops instead of the standard clunky old boxes? Oh well, I guess I’ll need to head down to the Apple store to see if I’m just missing something or this is the latest fad.