In the fourth episode of the first season in The West Wing, President Jed Bartlet is talking from a podium to a wealthy looking crowd. Behind him, in very big letters, there is a poster with PRACTICAL IDEALISM on it.

That fits right into me buying a Macbook Pro (the small one).

Yes, you know me as a big critic of Apple. The most read blog post in this blog is on Apple being very closed (and Google being open) and if you follow me on twitter, you will get a healthy amount of links about Apple going all crazy on us. While my criticism is always about centralization and whatever future Apple is seeing with the iPhone / iPad, the often overseen fact is that Apple is earning its money with hardware and not with software or iTunes sales. Bluntly said: while I’m not using their environment, I still supported Apple’s vision for the future by buying this notebook.

So, why did I?

First of, while I’m not going to delete OS X from the HDD, I fully intend to be using Fedora with KDE as my primary OS again. Buying the Macbook Pro was about choosing the best possible hardware and price combination as well as having, on a secondary level, access to OS X.

(This is important, because in my future I will work with people who are using OS X as their primary OS. While it’s true that at my current job I’m already using Fedora 13 as my primary OS, I also tend to use from time to time a free workstation that has Windows XP on it, because there are compatibility issues that I can’t overcome even with Wine.)

Buying a notebook, as I blogged before, isn’t easy. Thing is, we tend to spend a lot of time with those devices. Especially, if we use them during working hours and whatever free time we have. Right now, I’m spending about 10 days (!) per month (about 10hours per day, do the math …) with my notebook. It’s natural to want the best possible hardware for that kind of a relationship and whether I like it or not: Apple is building the best hardware out there.

I’ve considered buying a different notebook. Hell, I’ve actually ordered one already and I would be probably writing a different blog post right now, if Dell hadn’t screwed it up. I also would’ve wanted to buy a Thinkpad X301, but while the hardware is great as well, it does come with a hefty price tag. One that Apple beats easily and that was very astounding to me.

While I really do like idealism and more often then not I’m acting according to what I believe, I couldn’t overcome the advantages of this hardware in particular. I do know the implications of that, I fully expect a lot of ridicule for giving money to Apple.