81–90 of 183 posts
P.S. Anyone noticed the trend that apps developed on a Mac tends to be prettier and less clutter than those dev'ed on a Windows? I think OS X must be part of the reason for this ...
I still can't stop feeling that I'm wasting too much time yak-shaving with it though. And the fact that all of my programmer buddies have switched to MacBooks (and half of them own iPhones) that I'm missing out on something big.
Being a relatively young entrepreneur, money is still the deciding factor. It would take quite a bit to convince me to save above and beyond the price of a PC, and aim for a Mac.
I just bought one. The lack of home/pgdown/pgup/end is still frustrating. I must say, it's a great piece of hardware and the double tap/corner "right click" is a great addition. Frankly, the hardware is wonderful. The software? Frankly, I'd be happier on a "just works" linux, and I'm tempted to research reverse engineering the touchpad for linux - it's quite a nice addition and it would be a best of both worlds scena…
Also why does iPhoto open every time I connect my iPhone? That's pretty annoying.
I just bought one. The lack of home/pgdown/pgup/end is still frustrating. I must say, it's a great piece of hardware and the double tap/corner "right click" is a great addition. Frankly, the hardware is wonderful. The software? Frankly, I'd be happier on a "just works" linux, and I'm tempted to research reverse engineering the touchpad for linux - it's quite a nice addition and it would be a best of both worlds scena…
http://www.starryhope.com/tech/2006/mac-os-x-home-and-end-ke...
Yeah, something that should work by default, but it is at least fixable.
How about the linux to mac switch? Has anyone tried that before?
I do about 70% development on Linux and the rest on the Mac. I'm really happy with my Mac now, but it did take a long time to get used to it. Particularly getting the keyboard to work reasonably similar to Linux so I didn't have to totally retrain my fingers for Emacs, and getting GUI Emacs (Carbon) to use the same keymappings as Emacs in the terminal. (Doublekey helps with that.) Other things that are still irritating are the impossibility of focus-follows-mouse and the single menu bar at the top of the screen.
Anyway, I'm really happy with the Mac now and it's great how nice things like fonts, functioning accelerated video drivers, and general work-out-of-the-box-ness are. I'd definitely buy another.
If you want to go native, this list of Mac counterparts might help you: Eclipse - There is a Mac version. UltraEdit - Coda or Textmate. SQLYog - Sequel Pro. WinSCP - Cyberduck, YummyFTP. Tons of clients. Check out ExpanDrive for some real fun. TortoiseSVN - Syncro SVN. Adobe CS3 - There is a Mac version. Camtasia Studio - Screenflow. MS Office - There is a Mac version. WAMP - There is a similar MAMP. Then again, you…
Pros: - Can play well with both Windows and Linux/Unix. - Things like printing do 'just work'. - Ability to test my apps on all platforms via VMWare. - Cut and paste works. - Drag and drop works in a very intelligent fashion. - Multilingual interface is a snap. And it works. - MacPorts works well enough to not make me pine for apt-get. - Having a consistent interface is surprisingly neat. - Spotlight makes life much easier. - I have a real Bash shell, just like under Linux. - Lots of neat little shell bits are integrated into the OS; like ssh-agent knowing how to interact with the Keychain. - I can no longer live without Expose.
Cons: - The Finder needs improvement. - Much slower than Linux. - Not quite as stable as Linux. - Hardware is more expensive, with fewer choices. - FileVault and Time Machine don't really play well together.
I recently switched from linux to mac, and I would not pay the apple tax again. I force myself to use the fisher price os they call osx, to justify the apple tax i payed for the hardware. But being a windows to mac user may be a better transition. For those that say use Vmware.. why not just buy the cheaper hardware and run windows. The hardware is all commodity, and you are not getting any benefits from the hardware…
yeah its amazing that apple touts themselves as pro-user but their external keyboards are without a doubt the most craptastic worthless keyboards on the market. they look cool but are utterly useless for prolonged use and yes apple takes your freedom and will slowly turn you into an idiot. we're software developers damnit, we're supposed to be interested in how the computer works under the hood, not looking to put a…
On the other hand, Cocoa is a better API than anything available for Linux or Windows, and that does matter to me. So do the consistent and logical keyboard shortcuts across all apps, the high level of UI design absent on almost every other OS, how all my hardware just works without having to edit configuration files, and loads of other detail that Apple pays attention to. There's a lot more to good design than being grandma-friendly, and not many people except Apple get it right.