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Now that I've flushed out to Microsoft fanboys by complaining about Vista's interface and anti-open-source tricks, I'll irritate the Mac fanboys just to make things even.

I have a dual-core Intel MacBook Pro, a slick silver $2,000-plus laptop with 2 gigabytes of RAM. So, tell me:

Why am I seeing the beachball when trying to open mail, view a photo, whatever?

Why does it take so long to launch a program? Comparable applications launch in half the time on a three-year-old $600 desktop PC.

Why does it take Spotlight 15 or 20 seconds to search the directory I'm looking at? I can scroll and find filenames manually faster than that.

Why am I running out of memory/file handles/whatever? I have Linux systems that run for years without needing a reboot, but my Mac needs one daily.

The Mac is supposed to be the epitome of user interface engineering, yet I'm constantly tripping over little bits of UI ugliness. Dashboard is pathetic, and Apple should be embarrassed to include it. iTunes is a mess. When you try to save a file, some apps will pop up a minimalistic file selector with no clear way to change directories. If you mix in X11 applications the whole place turns into a zoo. (I suppose I'm supposed to lick Steve Jobs' shoes for his allowing me to run X11 at all.)

Mac zealots generally drool over iPhoto, but it's lame when compared with Picasa, which runs on Linux and Windows but not OS X. Apple Mail has a host of technical issues when used in an IMAP setting, and the system has no way of letting me replace Apple Mail. (I can run Thunderbird, but other apps that want mail services, such as iCalendar, insist on launching Apple Mail.)

And don't get me started on that 1985 "menu bar belongs to the screen, not the window" mistake. Or the poor support for multiple mouse buttons.

Have I offended the Mac crowd yet?

For the record, here's what I touch daily: MacBook Pro at work. HP desktop running XP at home. Sony Vaio dual-core laptop running XP at home. Ancient 300-megahertz Pentium running Ubuntu Linux, Gnome and KDE at home. (The family complains about the speed but loves the built-in games.) And a series of web servers running various Linux versions that never, never need rebooting.

For about a dozen years now I've dragged around a Windows laptop, starting with a '486 Thinkpad running Windows 3.1. I'm switching to a MacBook Pro as soon as the new hardware arrives.

Don't get all heated up, Mac users; I am not joining the Church of Jobs. But I need to replace my laptop, and I see no point in continuing with the same set of irritations. It's time for a new set.

Yesterday I was at the American Press Institute, where I led a session in API's "Mediapreneurship" seminar. I thought I'd put some final polish on my Powerpoint slides and tried to fire up my aging Compaq. That led to a series of crashes and eventually to total system stupidity -- it won't even spin up the hard drive or display the ROM self-test.

Fortunately I was at API a few weeks ago and left behind an earlier presentation that was close enough I could make-do, and the session came off pretty well.

Afterward, I limped off to Dulles carrying my useless boat anchor in its shoulder bag, only to find my United flight back to South Carolina postponed, then unceremoniously canceled due to "weather." (No one could explain where this alleged weather was taking place. Not in DC or SC.) By then it was after 10 p.m. I was stranded for the night, which just topped everything off perfectly.

Anyway, the paperwork is in process for the Mac. When it arrives I expect to lose about a week's worth of productivity as I undo various levels of MacGoofiness, symlink the filesystem into a sane Unix-like state, and install the software tools I need.

And I suppose I'll need a dozen turtleneck shirts and some new jeans.