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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?

#131

Post by ghshephard »

It's really difficult to tell in advance whether a Mac or Windows System will serve you better, though your list of software is a good start - no AutoCad, Visio, Outlook or other platforms lockins.

There are three software tools that have kept me chained to Windows XP:

o Visio (Yes, I know OmniGraffle, but it's a Visio world where I work. I have a reasonably recent MacBook Pro with Maxed out RAM - but it still is a little laggy - and the controls just don't work the way my finger memory expects them to on a Mac) - Which is pretty mandatory if you do a lot of network diagrams.

o Outlook Calendar - Entourage / booking resources - just didn't have it nailed last time I checked it out.

o Lookout - Spotlight/Mail search isn't horrible - but when I need to search for a keyword or two in 145,000 email and get an answer back in 1/10th of a second - Nothing beats Lookout. I use it 20 times a day. It truly is the google of mail searching (Ironically Google's Outlook index isn't that impressive)

With that said, I absolutely love the MacBookPro - best laptop I've ever owned. And, I spend my entire day in a terminal - and, you may mock me for saying this, but I personally have decided the cost of OS X and a good portion of the Macbook is justified by the terminal client alone. It puts Putty/SecureCRT to shame.

So - my solution has been to do both - I have the two keyboards (probably ergonomic nightmare) - one in front of the other, and do all my visio/lookout/outlook calendar on my five year old Precision 650 (Rock Solid workstation BTW), while Everything else is done on the MacBook Pro. Two monitors - a cheap 20" LCD for the Precision 650 and a 30" Dell for the MBPro.

I have zero issue switching back and forth - when I'm on the mac, Command-Space comes as natural to me as Ctrl-Escape does when I switch back to the windows system.

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

#134

Post by davo11 »

creativeembassy wrote: post #74
davo11 wrote: post #32

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 usin…

Let's be honest, you will NOT want to run CS3 in a VM. Image processing requires full use of your RAM and CPU.

That was probably my point moving to a Mac from a PC is a large investment, you'd need to have very good reasons to do so. Personally I spend so much time in applications/ide's that the OS really doesn't matter much.

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

#135

Post by ibsulon »

donw wrote: post #84
ibsulon wrote: post #67

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…

A quick googling turns up: 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.

The frustration is all of the chording for things that seem to merit their own key in my world. Fn-up, down, left, right could better handle screen and keyboard lighting, and put page up/down/left/right up there instead. I mean, the freaking computer controls the brightness anyway, why even bother with single touch? And play/pause and fast forward/reverse?

Home and end don't bother me as much as page up/down, really. I hate finding my place again after scrolling up and down, and option-up/down is annoying to me.

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

#137

Post by pg »

mickt wrote: post #133

Hey PG, on Firefox on Ubuntu Linux all the text on this page scrolls about 2 page to the left. First time I've this on YC. Obligatory screenshot: http://timony.com/mickzblog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/yc.jp...

A couple people tried to make bulleted lists (maybe a Windows user thing), which News interpreted as code.

http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

I should figure out how to catch these.

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

#138

Post by timtrueman »

drwh0 wrote: post #130
mattmaroon wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just looked on Apple.com, that was the starting rate for a Mac Pro. It was a beast though, with 2 Quad Cores. The rest of the specs were woefully unimpressive, but I guess it's like a Lexus where they know that if you're spending that much money, you'll have no problem ordering the upgrades, and they just put the base price there to lure you in.

you can buy an i7-based desktop from dell for $1300, WITH A 24 INCH MONITOR. the i7 is at a minimum more than 200% faster than the mac pro's processors. don't believe me, read tomshardware or anandtech for $2800 you can get one of the dell gaming i7 boxes that is tricked out far beyond anything apple offers hardware wise, once again, a minimum of 200% performance improvement the mac math once again does not hold up.…

Clearly either Moore's Law has been broken or you're mistaken.

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

#139

Post by beta »

jodrellblank wrote: post #120
jgranby wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good deal of OS X is open source, but that's beside the point. I don't really care that XNU, etc, are open source, because I don't want to develop an OS -- I want to develop for that OS. If you're so bothered about everything being open, then I suppose you are using OpenBSD, not Linux or anything else, because it doesn't contain binary blobs? Seriously, I don't understand why you're so bothered about things being o…

I'm bothered about things being open because I prefer the idea of a future where improvements can be built upon all previous knowledge, rather than a future where everybody has to start from scratch implementing their own basic proprietary versions of everything.

I prefer the idea of a future where improvements can be built upon all previous knowledge

pretty much nailed it on the head there. A lot of developers really miss the point while getting sucked into these flamewars..

almost as annoying as the vim vs emacs bickering.

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

#140

Post by drwh0 »

jgranby wrote: post #90
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…

A good deal of OS X is open source, but that's beside the point. I don't really care that XNU, etc, are open source, because I don't want to develop an OS -- I want to develop for that OS. If you're so bothered about everything being open, then I suppose you are using OpenBSD, not Linux or anything else, because it doesn't contain binary blobs? Seriously, I don't understand why you're so bothered about things being o…

I don't understand why you're so bothered about things being open that you'd never change anyway.

you completely misunderstand open source. go back to watching tv

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