In this final part of our 2 part interview with Charles Edge, we find out one of the craziest things he’s seen a Mac used for, his thoughts on Mac VS PC and his favourite Apple product.
Read part 1 here >>
Amsys: In a recent blog we used an example of logging into the GUI as root as an example of something that you should never do. What’s the craziest thing you have seen an end user or client do?
Charles Edge: I got called out to a service call one time because a computer was freezing up randomly. It was a G4 tower pizza box in one of those old Marathon rack mounting kits. The system was freezing randomly because it was overheating. I pulled the pizza box out of the rack and opened it up, expecting to see a bunch of dust or something; instead I found a big bag of weed staring back at me. The client had been keeping his stash in his Mac!
Amsys:What features would you like to see incorporated into 10.9?
Charles Edge: Siri and an API so I can integrate Siri with my own apps?
Amsys: What’s your favourite use of a Mac or Apple product in a film?
Charles Edge: The PowerBook Ving Rhames used in a Mission Impossible. Mostly because the Apple was facing the wrong direction…
Amsys: As a consultant are you finding hosted cloud solutions a threat to the sort of services you supply?
Charles Edge: Absolutely not. I find they’re more stable and my customers are happier than many of the services that run in OS X Server. It’s different but in technology we’re used to reacting to different products, given something different seems to come along every day!
Amsys:What do you say to people that ask you why they should choose a Mac?
Charles Edge: I don’t. I’m not too keen on telling people to switch platforms. I usually just roll with whatever they want to do in that regard as it’s about as risky a thing that you can do with a customer!
Amsys:What do you think the new Ashton Kutcher movie ‘JOBS’ will do for the Apple brand, if anything?
Charles Edge: No clue. That’s above my pay grade!!!
Amsys: So far, what has been your favourite Apple product and why?
Charles Edge: The MacBook Air. Reason, I travel a lot and carrying two of them is still less than the ThinkPad I used to carry!
Amsys: You are stranded on a desert island (with electricity and 3G) and can take just ONE Apple product with you. What would it be and why?
Charles Edge: iPhone. Reason is that I can call and get someone to come get me off that island, use the WordPress app to write a blog post about it while I’m there, reply to some email, check in on Foursquare and then play a little Angry Birds while I’m waiting for the rescue!