At the risk of wresting King OT's title away from him, here's an off topic question:
I am at a point where most of my graphics software is old and I'm about to do a major upgrade of my Macromedia and Adobe products (pray for my wallet!). All my old, outdated software is PC, but I have been thinking about switching over to a Mac. Since I'm about to do an overhaul of all my software, if I'm going to switch OS, now is the perfect time to do it.
I had a Mac laptop about 4 years ago and I loved it for its dependability. I want that same dependability, reliability and processing speed for my work computer. Should I switch to Mac or should I stay faithful to PCs? I know I'm about to start a serious war, but I would like to hear from the Mac Faithful (and you opinionated PCers) about which you would recommend.
Will,
I'm in your boat. Running PC's for my development machine and server, but lusting after OSX. If I had the bucks necessary, I'd be running Mac as my primary OS in a heart beat.
This is the way the cookie crumbles for me:
- OSX is based on Unix, so you've got command line *POWER*. - OSX has hands down the most intuitive UI in the land. - Since OSX has a Unix backend, all the Open Source software plays Real Nice Like(tm) - OSX has one of the niftier (hand) code editors around[1] - OSX hardware is *not* hard to replace, their new philosophy is to put as much of the hardware replacement in the hands of the user as possible. - OSX is easily as stable as Windows XP - Every developer needs a PC test on. period. doesn't mean I want it as my main machine. - OSX is purty. But it's also got Unix muscle. - PHP development is a snap to set up in that environment - Ruby on Rails[2] development is also a snap to set up (as opposed to the EVIL that is attempting to get it running on PC)
Wow, those are some random, scattered thoughts that don't really sum up all of why I'd like to switch, but I'd do it in a heartbeat if I were a young buck with only myself to fret for money over. I'd eat ramen and peanut butter and jelly for 6 months. I'd sell my damnable TV altogether. I'd ride my bike to work to save on gas. And like Ethan Marcotte I'd be able to say "iBroke. (but iHappy)"[3]. Oooh!!! Plus, when I went to SXSW[4] I wouldn't feel like an outcast toating around my Vaio in a sea of PowerBooks...
Yes, the masses dictate that as a developer, you must have a PC, to make sure you can see what they see. But you've got one. Let your software get old and older, just keep your browser and OS up to date.
If you're not entirely sure if you'd like to do it, you can even get a G3 Pismo PowerBook for around $300 on ebay[5]. That's not too expensive for a test bed... in fact it's prolly the route I'll go in the short term.
hth, Stephen
[1] http://macromates.com/ [2] http://rubyonrails.org/show/HomePage [3] http://sidesh0w.com/weblog/2003/09/22/iswitched/ [4] http://2005.sxsw.com/interactive/ [5] http://tinyurl.com/4s2l7
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