I’ve been a PC guy since, well, not the beginning, but since I had hacked my Amiga 500 into unworkability. Then a friend built me a pc from spare parts he had lying around, and I was up and running with PCDOS and Windows 3.0!
For the next many years I built or re-built every pc I owned. Up until the end of 2004, I always existed on a single desktop. Then I decided I laptop would be useful for conferences, so I bought a cheap Toshiba and fell in love. Even though it has about half the power of my desktop, it soon became my main machine.
Then, earlier this year, I got a free Mac Mini (yes, those sites really work). I’d used a Mac briefly at work before, but was never comfortable with it. So, for a while, the Mini mostly just sat there. Then I decided to move all my music over to it, and reformatted my iPod to Mac format. As the months go by, I find myself doing more and more on the Mac, and less and less on the pc desktop.
Part of the reason is that the pc has some kind of hardware problem that causes it to freeze up all too often. Normally, at this point, I’d buy a new motherboard or something. But I think I’m just going to let it go. I just got a case that will convert my DVD-RW drive to an external drive. Gonna hook that up to the Mini. At that point, I will have no use for the pc. I think I’ll let my daughter use it.
Of course, I still do development on the pc laptop. Actually I have two laptops, one for my day job, and one personal. But beyond development, I’d say the Mac gets equal or better attention from me now. Wow.
Glad to hear it 🙂
I only use a PC for some coding-specific apps (and content versioning stuff) that are better on a PC than Mac right now, but the rest of the time I live the Apple smile.
omg… we’ve lost him. He is going to be singing the praises of F11 soon.
WeakSauce.
Hey Keith
As someone who uses and appreciates both platforms(but prefers OSX) I look forward to the day when new software releases are available simultaneously on BOTH platforms. Am I dreaming here?
I was a Primalscript disciple, probably THE application I miss the most for coding and development. Tried implementing Xcode for AS development(which is amazing but simply lacks a lot of advanced features).
Also recently installed Eclipse, but there’s an issue I think with an older version of Java which the latest Flashout doesn’t support. Any insight you might have in these areas (and your own personal preferences) would be greatly appreciated.
All the best
I’ve always admired the look and feel of OS X. Just took some time to get my Mac legs. I still consider Windows more of a serious platform. All my work and anything administrative stays on the pc. But the Mini makes an excellent entertainment center, file backup, etc.
Jim, as I said, I haven’t even attempted any development on the Mac, so I have no idea about Eclipse, Java or anything else on the Mac. I do have a book on Cocoa though, so I might eventually get around to doing something with that.
Apple keeps your Java up to date – if you’re having trouble with flashout, try a Software Update and see if it finds a new Java for you. Eclipse on the Mac rocks plenty – just no FlexBuilder2 for it (yet).
XCode2 and Interface Builder paired with Cocoa is saweet… however I hate all those [brackets] everywhere
hehe, another one steps out from the dark side, nice!
Hi Keith, your reference to the old Amiga 500 makes me remember those magical years (late 80′). I was an Amiga guy too for almost five years. It was a pitty that Amiga get lost through the years…
Being in San Francisco, I’m constantly surrounded by Apple…their adds are everywhere, and some days it seems like everyone I know is working for Apple. Wven my intern was offered a job at Apple. They all seem pretty happy. But the only Apple product I have is my ipod–which I love. I have a nifty cable that connects it to my stereo.
I’m locked into the PC, but not too upset about it. Still I’d be cross-platform if I could afford to be.
i hate the way you can’t dock anything and all your panels float around on a mac, but my biggest gripe has to be the location of the apple key. Due to its position you have to use your thumb which puts you have in a very awkward positon twisting back and forth. The CTRL key is in a much better location for use with the little finger.
Sayin that, im workin on a mac at the mo 🙂 and am looking to get a 12″ powerbook.
Funny to read this. I just got a Mac Mini for cross platform testing and find myself playing with it all the time. I wouldn’t say I’ve “switched,” but I’ve sipped the Kool-Aid.
Welcome to the fold, brother. 😉
Like Eric, there are few things that I still use a PC for. Mainly for testing sites and for tracking my finances. (Quicken for Mac sucks). Other than that, I’ve been using my Mac happily since I switched over a year ago.
(And forget F11, map that Expose stuff to your middle mouse click!)
Keith
Think I’ve stumbled upon the most elegant coding tool for AS development on the Mac. Textmate along with Mike Chambers flashcomand.
Code folding, drag and drop, intelligent project views, and since its cocoa, not java based, its very responsive. Not sure about MTASC integration for code checking. Not quite PrimalScript but so far, seems like the best OSX solution I’ve come across yet
Give it a try.
http://www.macromates.com/
http://www.partlyhuman.com/wordpress/archives/2005/02/07/building-flash-in-textmate/