Get an Apple Mac

Posted on December 10th, 2008

That is what you want to hear right? Why else would you be reading a blog posting about switching to Macs. Like me you’re probably a hardcore, long time windows user and developer and you’re sick to death of the crap that comes out of Microsoft these days.

So again, let me keep it simple. Go get a Macbook Pro and see what that world is like. No point playing with one in a store, to really get into it you need to commit so you need to buy one. I really didn’t think I’d like OS X and would just end up installing Vista on their nice hardware but it turns out that OS X is really great – not just super stable but feature rich and far more intuitive than any Windows OS you’ve ever used.

After a day or so I maxing out my new baby I wasn’t just happy but pissed at how crappy all my machines up to this point had been. How crappy Microsoft products really are. Why can’t Microsoft make some of these really simple things work? I mean, Apple have really nailed the “it just works”.

I’m not sure what has gone wrong at Microsoft. Everything coming out of Redmond is just crap – and Vista … let’s not put lipstick on that pig. It is crap, it is built on crap and mark my words – it will probably go down in history as their biggest failure. Sure it has a couple things better than XP … wow, that really isn’t very hard. Want a concrete example of something that should just work properly? How about file copy – identical hardware – 30-45 minutes to copy 20 Gigs yet on my Mac, just 9 minutes. Basically 3x-5x faster. Everything on this machine is just better. I think Microsoft has become too big, trying to do everything and nothing well. They need to go back to basics, a few core – good products.

So you’re probably asking … but I have all these programs that run on Windows … quit ya crying, there is a program either identical and just compiled for the Mac or something, usually better that what you’ve used before. Get this, even MSN Messenger is better, from Microsoft … on a Mac. Go Figure. Everything I do development wise for .NET I use under VMWare Fusion which is fantastic, it actually integrates the guest XP into OS X and with Unity you can’t go wrong.

My next purchase is going to be a 8 Core G5 with 24″ Cinema display … I’m comitted to Apple hardware and software now for at least 5 years. We’ll see how the playing field looks after that. I do know this much. Every student I know or talk to or see or hear from these days has a Mac, more and more home users have Macs and when people like me start switching, you’ve got a land slide coming. I’ll convince a ton of people to switch :) Including you …

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Could there be a MAC revolution?

Posted on July 15th, 2008

With all the hype these days you have to start to ask yourself, maybe there is some merit is having at least one Mac around to see how they work. I do a lot of .NET development and research and even though I use VMWare a lot I’m not sure I want my host being non-windows, anyway –

A little while ago I purchased an AppleTV and was very impressed by the quality of the product but more importantly how stable and easy to use the software was. Now I have another Apple product, my iPhone and I’m just as impressed. By the way if you have kids you need the Apple TV – rip all your kid’s DVDs to it and it makes being a parent that much easier.

Now we all know that Vista isn’t perfect but if I’m starting to seriously look at a Mac then there must be a lot of developers like me who have already started using one. It would be great to get your views on what this transition looked like for you. So why do I call this post a potential “revolution” ? The current market share is roughly 8% vs 90% for MacOS to Windows.

I think because the adoption is reaching critical mass, meaning that there are now enough people using them who love them that they persuade others around them to get one too and so on. After this last week and probably due to the hype around the iPhone, I was bombarded by people asking if I was switching over or trying to get me to at least get one. If I do start using one then I can guarantee I will convince a bunch of people to follow my lead and so at some point it just cascades … however PCs in the enterprise is still a big hurdle for Apple.

Right now I’d say the only thing stopping this from exploding into a buy frenzy is the price barrier. You can build a really great machine for $1.5k-$2k (PC that is) but if you want a meaty dev machine such as the G5 you’re closer to $5k. In most cases it appears that the costs are around 2.5-3x that of normal PCs and for me, right now – that is a little too high. This isn’t proprietary hardware anymore, I’m sure it is good but I don’t think its that good.

What I’ll probably end up doing is getting a regular Macbook for general home use just to see how it works out. If things go well maybe a Macbook Pro but nothing on the G series for some time yet. Still … 8 cores and it looks good too :)

A question for Mac developers out there – how do you find the keyboard? or do you just use a regular PC keyboard (via USB)?

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My first “Apple” purchase

Posted on February 10th, 2008

Yes it’s hard to believe I know and would you believe I love gadgets but I guess since I haven’t been living in the US for that long I wasn’t exposed to much Apple goodness. So what did I get? An Apple TV – yeah it’s pretty great alright. Everything is different with their products even the power cable has a good feel … it definately inspires one to deliver better products.

I wish Microsoft could figure out what is wrong with their shop and start delivering products as slick as these. I don’t care what they copy or what they invent, right now they’re really dropping the ball on everything released and it is time for some changes … at the top I reckon :)

-c

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