Switch to Mac ? How would you rate the benefits ?

Thanks for the DEL key pointer !

Yeah well, I made this choice since I am doing lots of hours working on laptop for my job now (I don’t have a desktop anymore, thus the need for powerful laptop), it partly justifies the price of the beast (2650 € !!! Luckily I can deduct the 450 € of VAT ! which bring it down to 2200 €) and seing the way Windows is (un)evolving and Linux Distros geek coefficient still too high even for me (though SuSE 10.0 was pretty impressive, I still can’t fathom the whole Linux Logic), I could only go the OS X way The fact that the hardware is so well built doesn’t hurt either... and the MacIntel platform with Bootcamp allows for Website testing in a PC environment which is great !

My discovery of the Mac World taught me something I knew but which strikes me a lot : colors are not at all the same ! My websites are much darker on a Mac... color are not as bright too

Anyway, lots of small stuff I am discovering are helping productivity, I love DashBoard and the Widgets ! iCal is nice too...

While I am here, what’s your must-have / Shortlist of apps for Mac :
- TextMate, I gather, is a great TextEditor
- FireFox : already installed
- Xampp : On its way to being installed

- what about iWork : can it replace the whole MS Office suite ? I didn’t check if OpenOffice exist for Mac... lots of newbie questions !

Anyway, thanks all for advices and input

Something a Mac friend passed on to me that you might find helpful--

When in doubt click the apple.

I’ll try to remember that

Thanks !

Congratz on new MAC

Enjoy

zi

hmmm, I notice that my websites are brighter on my mac than on the company DIY wintel machine and other XP boxes I’ve been on.

You can though recalibrate your monitor to your choice however as a friend here in Japan said was that mac harder has a better coloring system since Apple controls the colors you see on the monitor throughout all of their hardware products making design production that much better. (this guy is a Pro photographer making 100k a year goofing off with his ipod, camera and iBook.

hmmm, nobody mentioned the ability to connect to most internet networks and just enjoy the fact that you’re already getting your mail.

they only virus that I had was about .... 9-10 years ago and it was just more of a practical joke ... dam space key would beep everytime you pressed it. hmmm, that’s not a virus though

I have never used virus detection software this is considering that I started in 84/85 with a semi portable Apple IIc,
However, I do today sit behind a router with it’s built-in something or other (never have bothered to set it up outside of the factory default) and that I do have my firewall always turned on in OSX. Why? hmmm, thought it would be neat to say I have a firewall

Yes, I have had my share of bad luck with my current PowerBook 1.25 GHz and will tend to agree that Apple support is lacking but once you get a machine that is stable hardwarewise you end up not up grading for a rather long time ... which is
Also something seldom mentioned.

I had a G4 (yikes version) tower, I actually washed the keyboard in kitchen sink under FULL running water 3 times! My dam cat kept pissing on it! Dam that would piss me off, having keys that stick and smelled too! ughhhhh


FTP software :: cyberduck -- freeware ... not bad but I love the price and it works!

@ memro
It seems that the Mac Pro Tower is going to get the core 2 duo in late August/September according to the rumor mill which seems to be based on Intels roadmap. Which means Pro Books will be late fall? I’m waiting till then hehe, bank book considerations and more importantly the wife’s OK.

Quote from: kickass at Jun 01, 2006, 06:04 PM

...the person who was complaining about the fifty buck mouse? Any usb optical mouse will work with a mac...

That’s true. That’s why every one of our lab Macs has Micro$oft scrolling optical mouse. My point is merely that I don’t want to buy something just to replace it... which happens all too often... don’t even get me going about Adobe software

Ah well, the IBook I bought only came with that touchpad, which isn’t bad but still awkward for those used to a real mouse . . . I already had an optical USB mouse I used with the thinkpad (since both the touchpad AND that little red button are AWFUL!) and found out by serendipity that the mouse would work with both.

I agree that the mouse with one button is stupid, especially when all the third party software, which is for the most part written for both platforms, has three button & scroll mouse functionality built in. It’s one area where Mac hardware fails. So I’m glad I found out what I did.

About the optical mouse : mine is working fine everything is there -> scrolling, right click and all

So far, quite thrilled with the MacBook Pro !
Installed VLC for DiVX playback, smooth and clean

I was surprised to discover that my external HDD with NTFS partition was recognized and read/written with no setup at all ! Amazingly practical... The only thing I struggle is with installing software : it’s very easy to set up but I can’t seem to be able to choose where to install the thing, no matter where I put the .dmg installer (you would think it gets automatically installed in the applications/ folder, but it’s not... ) Once I install, a kind of "shortcut" appears on the desktop, but once I reboot, I have to click on the .dmg file again to launch the app...

Certainly something I didn’t yet grasp (I didn’t look at this yet...). I am sure Mac users will laugh their a*s off with this

you can find more info about mac on
http://www.macgeneration.com/mgnews/templates/index.shtml the forum specially
or
http://www.xrings.net/xrings/
or
http://www.osxfacile.com/
of course, all in french.
in anglosaxon, more website of course.
and to install your webserver on your mac
http://www.mamp.info/

Installing programs on a Mac is so much easier then on Windows that it is confusing to switchers. Like "Can it really be that easy?"

The .dmg file is just a disk image. Like a virtual disk. Double click on it and it opens like a drive or disk. Just grab the application’s icon and drag it to your Hard Drive, wherever you want the app installed (Like your Applications folder).

It will copy over and then you can "eject" the disk image and delete the .dmg file and the program is installed. It’s that easy.

Want to remove the program? Just drag it to your trash. That’s it.