Ex-Microsoft Evangelist Goes Google And Mac

Last year, Microsoft laid off some 800 employees in November. Don Dodge, director of business development for Microsoft's emerging business team, was one of them.TechCrunch's Michael Arrington interviewed Dodge following the layoff and praised Dodge for his apparent lack of animosity toward his former employer. "[H]e didn't have a bad word to say about Microsoft," wrote Arrington. "He was more concerned that I not write anything negative about the company than anything else. Even after they turned their back on him, he was still on their side."

Dodge is now on Google's side, where he is employed as a developer advocate. And he has also discovered the joy of using a Mac.

He describes his transition to "Mac enthusiast" in a blog post. "Apple," he says, "is quite simply the best hardware / software design company in the world."

He praises the elegance of the Mac user experience and the niceties of his MacBook -- the backlit keyboard, the magnetically attached power cord, the gorgeous screen and the superior battery life.

His account of his switch to the Mac isn't exclusively gushing. He allows that troubleshooting isn't intuitive and that the experience is like learning how to drive on the other side of the road.

While Dodge says that his post "is all about the move to Mac," that's not entirely true. While he praises Mac hardware, he takes Google's party line on software. To Dodge, the browser is what matters.

"From my perspective the underlying OS doesn't matter much," he said. "All my applications run in the browser. Web browsing, e-mail, documents, spreadsheets, music, photos...everything is in the browser."

Dodge is a Mac enthusiast in name only. He's Google inside.