One of the reasons for the lack of postings on this site was also the switch from Windows to Mac OS X.
Back in November, as soon as the Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros came out, I decided it was time for an early Christmas present.
It was a decision taken with a lot of consideration, since I work mostly on Windows-based projects.
I took a long time deciding to be sure that I can recreate the various development environments, move all my contact and email data and generally migrate with the minimum of fuss and loss of functionality. And then I went and bought a 15’’ 2.33GHz MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM and a 160GB hard disk.
It proved better than I expected. Painless and troublefree. I kept my Toshiba laptop on standby prepared to use it as my work machine in parallel to the Mac, but I only had to use it the one time I transfered all my data over to the Mac. From unpacking to using it took all of 5 minutes.
It then took exactly 1 week to reach the level of productivity I had with Windows…and then I discovered that I can do a lot more.
But first a few details to clarify why it was so easy to dump Windows:
Most of the applications I use are OSS, but I am especially stubborn when it comes to email. Outlook is, by my standards, one of the worst coded applications…ever. Word and Co are also in my do-not-use list. Now, everything not-Microsoft usually has a Mac OS X version alongside a Linux version. It is just a matter of finding the right port.
Workwise, Visual Studio and Eclipse are unfortunate evils in .NET/Java projects, but I tend to do most of my development work with a simple editor. All the code-completion gimmicks cannot beat the startup time of a good editor.
For those pesky compilers that only work on Windows though, BootCamp is one solution, Parallels another (some thoughts on virtualization and development environments here).
Having a proper build server or better yet a CI1 system helps even more.
I only miss 2 applications on MacOS X:
- A svn client that can compete with TortoiseSVN in ease of use.
- Google’s Picassa for photo management – iPhoto is just not up to the task.
The main applications that I keep using are:
- Firefox – using a macOS theme lets it blend nicely and the speed difference with Safari is just negligible
- Thunderbird – mail and RSS seamlesly migrated
- OpenOffice – That is a bit of a bother as it uses X Windows but the Mac port NeoOffice does the job equally well.
- KeePassX – I have been using KeePass for a long time to keep control over my passwords, and this port was a most pleasant surprise
- iTunes – I was using it on the PC anyway.
- VLC – the best media player available
- Skype – a couple of versions behind the PC version, but more than adequate
- BitTorrent – always usefull, especially for those large Ubuntu images
Keeping the same applications was very convenient, flattening my learning curve significantly. But if it was only for that, then the move (and the expenditure) wouldn’t have made much sense. It’s the new possibilities that open up with Mac OS X that really make this move worthwhile.
In order of personal preference, the things that will keep me in the Mac world are:
- Less than a second from standby to fully functional.
- 6 reboots in 4 months (instead of at least daily)
- Spotlight and Quicksilver for single-keystroke, fast and meaningful searches
- bash instead of cmd.exe
Since I didn’t use Outlook, I used the Windows Address Book for synchronisation adn backup of my mobile’s contacts. WAB sucks, there is no other way to say it. The Mac AddressBook on the other hand is not perfect, but it’s a lot better, not to mention that it is searchable without opening it. iCal the same. The only thing missing are some addons for Thunderbird to allow integration (an addon that takes Outlook calendar messages and enters them in iCal and one to synchronize the address book)
Omnigraffle Pro does a very good job replacing Visio.
WebDAV, OpenVPN, ssh, python, perl and ruby out of the box (not to mention bash, sed, awk and friends) make OS X a dream development environment.
I guess I am now a full Mac OS X convert. The Mac wins hands down against any Windows PC. Definitely worth it’s money.
[1] Continuous Integration