Columnist’s corner: This week, Tom Yager revisits an earlier episode about a friend who switched the “OS for her entire computer-using life” from, you guessed it, a PC to a Mac. “Wild horses driven by a grinning Steve Ballmer carrying $100,000 couldn’t drag her back into Windows,” he writes in More Mac sense and nonsense. “She knows that I’m an Apple Developer Connection Premiere member and that I have Leopard, and she thinks I’m a jerk for not letting her use it.” What’s more, she’s eagerly anticipating Leopard so much that its October release cannot come fast enough. As for Yager himself, though, “I can’t pretend that Vista doesn’t exist.” Platforms: What does Halo 3, Microsoft’s entertainment software, have to do with the enterprise? Plenty. “The xBox and Halo are examples for what Microsoft’s strengths and weaknesses are, and reveal a lot about with Microsoft is capable of: creating an application that allows real-time collaboration in virtual world by teams of people who’ve never met, over a heterogeneous network — all without so much as an ipconfig/renew,” Sean Gallagher explains in Microsoft’s Halo effect. True, Microsoft might not even realize it that way, particularly since it has hardware troubles with xBox. “So, maybe we’re lucky that Microsoft can’t provide the same end-to-end experience with Windows in the enterprise that it can with xBox in the living room.”Careers: A visionary twice-over writes into Bob Lewis wondering where to find a great second-in-command. “Having a partner is tough. Making a partnership work requires two rare circumstances,” Lewis starts. “As to where you find them … as with all recruiting, it’s a matter of building your personal network and beating the bushes.” No easy answers here, folks. SOA: The notion that you can continue doing things the same way and, ultimately, address architecture at some point in the future equates to “saying there’s no time or money to do things right now, but there’s time to do it over and over again,” asserts Dave Linthicum in this Real World SOA post. Clearly, that approach is senseless, even if it is a quick and easy fix. But, and this is an important “but,” delaying actually costs more, and not just money, either. “I’m constantly surprised how much is wasted around ineffective and static architectures that are not able meet the needs of business.” Technology Industry