Posted on 08/16/2008 11:35:17 PM PDT by Swordmaker
I'm now just past the six month mark since tentatively purchasing my first Mac and beginning to switch away from Windows. At the time I bought my MacBook I had a number of machines in the house, all running either Windows or Ubuntu. What I've tried to do on this blog is provide a kind of running commentary on switching, hitting on some of the challenges I've encountered, the native Mac applications I've found and the general feelings I've had about making the switch.
What I find interesting after 6 months is the impact buying that little MacBook had not only on the way I handle my personal computing but to a large degree the influence it has had on the way I do my development work. You see after I bought the MacBook I found myself doing more and more with it. I had a Windows XP development / gaming rig parked directly in front of me but I was constantly sliding my hands over to the MacBook.
My entire development platform—at the time Visual Studio—was completely set up and I had my after-market libraries installed and was using it to build my next online service business. Even with all of my development experience being Windows based I constantly found myself pushing away from my XP system and over to the MacBook. This was not helping my productivity, at least on the development front.
I rationalized that if I bought a Mac Pro that I could install VMware Fusion on it and use that as my primary development platform. I was obviously hooked on OS X and the idea of having a machine with 8 cores and 12GB of RAM running it was pretty cool. I bought the Mac Pro, placed it in the position of being my primary workstation (pushing the Windows XP machine off to the side) and I was off and running.
I was quickly able to get the Mac Pro up and running with Windows XP and my development environment in a VMware Fusion instance. With a couple of minor exceptions it worked great, providing me with everything I needed to build my web based solutions just as I had been on my native Windows XP machine.
Not long after all this I started to look at Ruby on Rails as an option for development, something that would serve as a replacement for my Visual Studio environment. Why? Much like with Windows itself, I had been doing the same kind of development for a very long time. Given the recent sale of my last company I have the luxury of defining fully the tools I could use to build my next generation of products and I wanted to see if there was an easier way to build Web 2.0-like web applications.
Though it took me a month of getting up to speed on Ruby on Rails I found it to be a fantastic platform for building what I needed to create. With a very English-like language, an extensive library of free plugins, nice Ajax support built in and the ability to get a basic application framework up and running in a matter of hours, RoR was exactly what I was looking for. In two short months I've made far more progress than I did in the 4+ months I spent building my solution in VS .NET / C#.
On top of all that, it turns out most of the core Ruby on Rails guys are Mac people too. OS X already comes with RoR and the fact that I could use TextMate, easily one of the best programming editors I have ever experienced, was a huge plus.
I suddenly found myself using my Macs exclusively. I wasn't even firing up the Windows XP instance because I only needed it for Visual Studio. The Windows XP gaming rig was powered down and resting in the corner, serving mostly as a device to crack my knee on if I swiveled my chair too quickly. Fortunately I was able to find a buyer for it, leaving me without any native Windows hardware (well, my wife and son are still using XP).
Selling the XP rig gave me the money to purchase a MacBook Pro, giving the MacBook to my youngest daughter. She couldn't be happier ditching the Dell she had for it and is constantly using the machine. Photo Booth alone has provided her with endless amounts of fun and she's using the iSight camera to do video chats with her cousin in California.
Then, suddenly, the iPhone became part of our digital lives. When Sprint dropped the ball and our service failed miserably I bit the bullet and bought my wife and I both a couple of iPhones. It's been a fantastic device and my phone reception (contrary to many reports I've read) has been excellent. The best part of getting the iPhone though was watching my non-technical wife not only use it but embrace it completely. Between pulling down her e-mail and doing some web browsing while out shopping, I was shocked by how quickly she took to it. This from a woman that had up to this point in time never sent a single text message. She sends text messages regularly now with our daughters.
She now finally wants a Mac of her own and is going to get one for her birthday next month. I'll be writing about how she adapts to using it as well. Now that summer is winding down and our extended vacations are coming to an end I'll have a little more time to commit to blogging.
Nice article.I was in the Apple Store yesterday for a One to One session on iMovie/iDVD.
As expected he answered my questions politely and professionally, and in retrospect I should have already tried the things he taught me - but that's not the way life works, is it?
Anyway, my wife was along - and she was impressed with the comfortable experience, and wished she'd brought her iPod along. Maybe next time . . .
While I was chatting with the rep the subject of Snow Leopard came up, and he mentioned a time frame for its introduction which was earlier than what I had supposed - then said, "I shouldn't have said that." My wife asked if he had sold Snow Leopard to me, and I pointed out that I was already just about sold so he didn't have to. She answered, "Oh, that's right - they don't do that." Which is true - they don't actually sell there - they pay attention to you, and answer questions if you have them - then just let you buy if you're going to.
I knew I'd like the larger screen of my new Mac, and I could easily have been talked into getting the 24" model instead of the 20. But they didn't push, and I settled, saving a little money. And I have found that I have wanted to lug it around when I have visited relatives, so as to be able to show some things. Which wouldn't have worked out if it had been any heavier . . .
The store was the busiest I'd seen it, and the rep said it was actually relatively quiet at the moment - said the macs have been moving. Back-to-school time . . .
Thank you thank you. Downloaded and installed.
You are indeed ‘Da Man’.
Actually I lied. I paid 480, free shipping and 3 months no interest. It is a Pavilion s3400t and I bought it in April. Checking prices NOW for a sale made 4 months ago shows you are a couple of slices short of a loaf.
This unit was at the time sold in Radio Shack Stores where saw it. They wanted $$569.00 or there abouts and I went to HP direct, small business section and got exactly what I said for the price I said. If it makes you feel any better I did not get a monitor or speakers with it since I had them.
Frankly I couldn’t possibly care less what you think. You seem frosted because you obviously paid 3 times as much for an Apple and actually got less. LOL, life sucks then you die, eh dude?
My Stepmother’s only complaint since moving from a WinTel box running WinXP to an iMac is that she doesn’t care for the Spider Solitaire game that we downloaded, and she misses the one that was part of WinXP... Other than that, she loves it.
Mark
FWIW I could have bought 2 more of these systems for what it would have cost me to get an Apple to do what I needed. In fact, I didn't, but I bought a Toshiba Laptop for the kids around the house and still save about $300.
Wow! That’s some switch. It’s users like yourself that make me happy I own Apple stock. Only wish I had bet the farm on it when I first bought it.
Oh, I reckon he did. Ruby on Rails is probably not quite as bad as .NET, but it's probably close.
I was once duped into going down that road, so I know.
I know this is a bit off topic, but, IMO: There Are No Shortcuts.
The time you save in avoiding building an initial structure by using a development framework, is later lost in trying to track down obscure bugs/incompatibilities.
Again, IMO.
</rant>
These days? LOL, I’ve had both Intel and AMD probably on an equal basis and have had no problem ever with either of them.
I run this same configuration on my nuclear powered, non-liberal MacBook Pro, except that I use VMWare instead of Parallels to run Visual Studio. When I'm in my Windows image, all the Windows function key assignments apply; as soon as I click outside the image, I'm back in the OS X conventions. Works fine.
“I must be in the minority because I’m an ultra-conservative Freerepublic addict who has been using Macs for over 5 years. In fact, this post was written on a Mac Pro.”
I guess I’m part of that minority, as well. I’ve been a Mac user exclusively since 1987 (Apple // before that), and on FreeRepublic since 1998 (or even earlier, can’t remember).
I understand that the culture from which the Mac concept grew is on the liberal side out in Cupertino - makes no difference. It’s their PRODUCT which is outstanding.
It is those who seem so biased against the Mac OS “because it is a liberal toy” who seem illogical to me.
When I was younger, I was a working-class idiot who - if asked about computers - would have replied “what do I need one of THEM for?”
Now I’m much older, perhaps just a bit less dumb, but I realize that I never could have made “the computing journey” I’ve enjoyed in life on anything else.
The Mac just works.
- John
The one thing I’ve yet to deal with in my conversion is Quicken. The Mac version just isn’t the same as the Widows version, and I can’t seem to get my Windows Quicken accounts to convert to Mac.
I really don't care what people use I just prefer my Mac over PC
If you plug a set of earphones into the earphone jack, the "bong" comes out of the earphones. Much quieter.
If you cut the plug off your oldest, rattiest set of earphones, and plug that in, it tries to send the "bong" to the now nonexistent earphones and is completely silent.
Yeah, I’ve been on both sides and having seen Vista in ‘action’ if one can say that, well you go on and enjoy that crawl.
What a dog!
Moof, moof.
Ditto.
Could you please post a list of your conservative-approved software and hardware manufacturers so that I can have some direction for my next foray into the market. In my ignorance I have been shopping price, features, ease of use, and cost. But now that you have called me on my ignorance, I promise to do better, Gob forbid I’d by a liberal computer.
It is a problem that is inherent to the fact that you are running the app within a larger environment. F1 means something in Windows too, but in a Mac it is reserved for lowering the brightness of the monitor. But I notice you disregard the fact that there are both a setting and a function key that solve the problem.
Even Windows under Windows in a virtual machine creates a problem in that Ctrl-Alt-Delete is captured by the host operating system and won’t ever make it to the virtual one. This is why VM environments like VMWare and Virtual Server running Windows have a special command to send Ctrl-Alt-Delete to the virtual machine. Windows conflicts with itself.
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