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Ask HN: Is it worth switching to a Mac?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it worth switching to a Mac?

#31

Post by flashgordon »

flashgordon wrote: post #30

actually if you are not doing any iphone development (or mac development) i dont see the point. i am on a dell inspiron (bought early last year) and is very solid. running fedora 9, only log in to XP if i have to (around once a month).. cost of hardware is lower (id say atleast 10%-20%) and you have a lot more freedom with what you can do without running into the JobsWall! plus for webapps i can get it to mimic the p…

or should that be "if i wanted my machine to look COOL".. but you get the point..

Re: Ask HN: Is it worth switching to a Mac?

#32

Post by davo11 »

Think about the software too. I see you use Adobe CS3 and MS Office, so you'll have to buy new licenses of each of these, unless you're running them in a VM.

I looked at moving to a Mac just like you are and after looking at the hardware and software costs, I could by myself a separate linux server as well as a new PC for about the same price as a Mac. You're also limiting yourself in the hardware you can buy by using a mac, no more upgrading the video card if you feel like it, or getting a $40 digital TV receiver, no more plugging in a RAID array on the weekend, the number of third party accessories is smaller and there a lot more expensive. Also the amount of free utilities for the Mac is a lot less (I use a bunch of little free PC utilities, that have seeped in over time, and would take a lot of time to replace). I have 2 monitors at the moment and thinking of getting a third - can the Mac support a third? not sure. There's a lot you take for granted in the PC world that you give up if you move to the Mac world. The Mac hardware is a closed proprietry system and all the negatives that come with that are there, but I do agree it's nice and shiny and I just want to touch them :-).

So I'm buying a little Mac laptop to play with (officially for the kids) and keeping my development on PC's. If you want to dip your toes (to see what all the hoo ha is about) the Mac mini could be an option too. hth.

Re: Ask HN: Is it worth switching to a Mac?

#33

Post by neovive »

thomasswift wrote: post #3

I am a long time mac user, not a new switcher, but I am a web developer on a mac. If you are going to heavily rely on VMware to run all of you windows apps you might want to grab a pro or the top of the line macbook, the bare minimum is to juice up the RAM. I have an older white macbook and I love VMWare, but just for running on operating system at once, I usually have a ubuntu server going and when I try using a win…

I would definitely like to avoid using the VM wherever possible. Just need to keep it around for website testing in IE 6/7.

Re: Ask HN: Is it worth switching to a Mac?

#34

Post by fuzzy-waffle »

Having all the power of unix and a nice interface is great. Its slightly harder to sell if you are not a command line addict but if you are developer though you should be one.

My experience has been pretty positive. I can focus on coding and not have to spend all my time holding my OS's hand or hunting for settings buried in some maze of dialogs or some undocumented config file.

Re: Ask HN: Is it worth switching to a Mac?

#35

Post by Poleris »

I was in your position recently and decided to switch. 3 months later and I'm back with Windows - it is simply more efficient for me. I'm really big on productivity, so I really tried to customize every tool I've listed below. To give some background, the main programs I use are:

1. (http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/04/09/launchers.h... "Launchers - SlickRun vs QuickSilver + Butler/Launchbar")

a) Ported all current bangs from SlickRun to QuickSilver.

b) Tried Butler, Launchbar to quickly launch artists, songs. Ended up sticking with Launchbar.

* SlickRun is marginally faster, minimalistic. Support different use cases.

* Felt frustrated in QuickSilver's scripting language trying to do simple stuff like "Open new Window (not tab), ssh to this hostname."

* Tie as I'm prejudiced.

2. Terminals - PuTTy + cygwin vs Visor + Terminal, iTerm, x11... + Gnu-darwin, fink

* I heavily abuse remote (Ubuntu) session screens to do all my work. (I'm usually a Rails dev using VIM.)

* Needed 256 colors, package manager, bright (as opposed to bold) colors. Prefer no tabs.

* I have no idea why the native Terminal program doesn't support 256 colors. Entirely silly.

* Package management is a pain. Ended up doing all my work on my remote Linux box.

* I really prefer PuTTy. Every single terminal program I used on OSX either didn't fit in visually or were missing some feature that was provided in PuTTy.

* Spent way too much time frustrated while trying out everything. At then end, still frustrated.

* I understand this might just be due to my prejudices, so tie.

3. Virtual desktops - VirtuaWin vs Spaces, Witch

* Spaces has huge numbers of problems. Especially when combined with CMD-TAB. Spent way too much time frustrated. Gonna give this one to Windows.

4. Browsers - Firefox vs Firefox.

* Lack of right click drag mouse gestures. Large drop in productivity I never managed to replace. Windows wins.

5. Music - Winamp vs iTunes.

* I really learned to hate iTunes. A lot. Ended up bugging out on my giant music library and crashing a ton for no reason. ... Spent even more time debugging/Googling. Frustrating.

* Tie, lots of people like iTunes. I prefer my Winamp + Python script to update m3us.

Every other program had a relatively easy replacement. Here are my other gripes:

6. Hardware - Right click.

* 'nuff said. Everyone trying to justify this design decision is probably a fanboy.

7. Keyboard shortcuts.

* Three months later, I'm completely used to the keyboard shortcuts and hate them passionately. Does anyone honestly like the Apple bindings better?

* They lie! Changing bindings for applications like Firefox in the "control panel" does not work at all. Another frustrated day.

Conclusion:

* If you spent a lot of time becoming proficient on your platform of choice, you probably can only lose on OS X.

* It is incredibly frustrating trying to make "minor" tweaks. They turn into massive battles that remind me of my days trying to tweak my Linux desktop box.

* If you aren't an efficiency freak like me, you might gain by switching.

Re: Ask HN: Is it worth switching to a Mac?

#36

Post by drhowarddrfine »

cjoh wrote: post #4

For me, I made the switch because I think Macs are cheaper after about one year of use. If my time equals money, and I value my time at $50/hr (which, yes, is a bit arbitrary), and I assume that I will spend less time configuring, defragging, cleaning, or anti-virusing my Mac than my PC, then it gets to be a real simple equation. I took a look and just sort of estimated how much maintenance time I put into my PC over…

I had read a similar story elsewhere on the 'net.

Re: Ask HN: Is it worth switching to a Mac?

#37

Post by drwh0 »

jimbokun wrote: post #26
drwh0 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Any mention of Apple sure gets your dander up, doesn't it?

yes, i get particularly pissed by so-called counter-culture hipsters pissing all over the unwashed masses yet slavishly dedicated to the hypocrisy of crass consumerism when they think its "cool". the appletards go miles beyond any shopping-zombie i can think of in their pursuit of buying shit. and yes, it is shit. its stunning that there are morons buying the new macbooks for $2k!!!...i mean, you have to be braindead.

but the icing on the cake was when i bought the 3rd gen ipod nano. previous ipods were recognized by linux and various tools. but oh no, steve had to encrypt the firmware, thus pointlessly complicating what should be a trivial task - mounting a usb device. WHY???? what do you FUCKING CARE steve that i am trying to plug this into a linux box??? is it a problem that i don't buy into your end-end slavery? i replaced it with a cowon...at least they aren't going out of their way to fuck over users who don't goose-step a certain way

Re: Ask HN: Is it worth switching to a Mac?

#38

Post by catone »

As someone who recently switched from Windows to Mac, the only software I really miss on my Mac are Word and Excel -- the Mac Office 08 versions are vastly inferior to the Window Office 07 versions, imho.

I had thought I would miss a lot more, though. So when I first switched I bought Parallels and installed XP. For awhile I was running XP with FeedDemon (NetNewsWire has some annoying features I couldn't figure out how to turn off), Digsby, and a few other Windows-only apps I thought I couldn't find Mac replacements for. Eventually, though, I found replacements for everything (save Word and Excel).

Plus, I can now use TextMate, which has made my like a lot easier.

I still own XP and Vista machines and use them fairly regularly as well. But my main computer has become by MacBook.

I made out a list last month of all the things I love and hate about the Mac after a couple of months using it. It might be helpful for you: http://mockriot.com/post/58997722/my-mac

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