Remember back in high school, or in middle school or junior high, you found yourself in a class where the other students were so far below your level that you suffered through the painful, slow way of teaching that the teacher had to adopt to keep those kids from failing?

If you were really unfortunate, that class also had a bully in it who was not only dumb, but also influenced the other kids to pretend that dumb was cool, and smart was… something to attack?

That dumb bully is Windows, and the IT people who advise their companies to use Windows are the other kids in the class who follow the bully.

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There are many ways to make a profit. Some people believe that it’s perfectly acceptable to sell a product or service by increasing customers’ fear and then charging a fee to reduce that fear.

I don’t.

Let’s take “security experts” and “malware protection companies” for example. This past week, the latest in continuing string of “security warnings” for Mac OS X was issued by these people. <http://www.macworld.com/2007/10/firstlooks/trojanhorse/index.php> And of course it put the uninformed into a tizzy about the safety of their beloved Mac OS X operating system. It also inched many of them That Much Closer to buying an “anti-virus” software program from Intego, Symantec, or another company.

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This is the beginning of a series of stories that may destroy my career — a career that I’ve worked hard to build over the past 20 years.

The thing is, I’ve come to the realization that life is too short and the world is in too dire a place to pull punches or be diplomatic when it comes to issues that affect the way we spend the majority of our days.

After 20 years of observing the direction of the graphic arts software industry, there are a few things I want to bring to everyone’s attention. This is a blog, so I’m not going to edit too much (contrary to my psychological nature and engrained writing habits).

I’m going to begin with Microsoft and their Windows “operating systems”, then take on Adobe, Quark, Fonts, color management, Apple, printing companies, printer manufacturers, Pantone, mercenary journalists, grandstanders, Web geeks, young designers, and plenty more, in no particular order.

I may even invite other writers to contribute their own stories, anonymously or not.

I’ll also be using some “bad” words along the way, so be prepared for that. The fun begins with my next installment: Windows.