Switch to Mac ? How would you rate the benefits ?

Most OSX applications are installed by:
1.) double click the .dmg file
2.) click and drag the .app file to where you want it within your HD directory hierarchy
3.) double click on the .app that is now on your HD

Major applications that are pretty huge in size tend to come with installers. Normally during the install routine you are give the choice where to install. Most tend to be the applications folde however you can install most applications in other locations.

*CAREFUL*
Do not move Apple grown software out of the application folder. I’ve heard that this might frig up updates and such.

Useful sites:
http://www.macosxhints.com/ -- from basic trouble shooting to advanced OS hacking
http://www.macsurfer.com/ -- your basic LA TIMES of the mac world, links to most interesting Apple related information

Most other sites can be found one or the other through macsurfer.

Other Points that pepople tend to forget:

* Don’t forget to enjoy having, MySQL, Apache, PHP, Perl, etc on your company with out the major headaches of the doing the same on your XP system.

* Fink and other package installers -- let’s you enjoy the linux app distros with out too much pain

* You do have a server running side-by-side with Adobe/Office

* true multi-user enviornment with all the protection a web server can offer you

- minus point -- OSX is a bit pokeier than a Linux distro due to several reasons. So, Let’s not go around saying that OSX is speedy GUIwise. However, the added workflow benenfit does make up for this a bit.

Cheers

Thanks Anselm and Carsten !!!

That’s pretty easy indeed
So much so that it IS confusing (lol)

I’ll get used to it !
Then my guess is I’ll never go back to Windows...

Quote from: Carsten at Jun 02, 2006, 11:34 AM

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.

I don’t dispute Macs have a better color representation than PCs, and that’s part of the reason why so many creative work with Macs (the 96 dpi is also a plus).
The thing is, it’s like color spaces in Digital Photography, some color render brighter on PCs (try one of my websites www.michelez-notaires.com -> much darker on Mac than on PC). Probably just a matter of me double checking color on several configs...

And of course, calibrate my screen yes...

Quote from: Carsten

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

I fail to see how this is a Mac thing, you can do the same with your PC, no ?

Quote from: Carsten

the 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,

That’s good news, like Linux no virus then cool

Quote from: Carsten

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

I have a router that does firewall too, no need for me of additionnal software in that department

Quote from: Carsten

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

Thanks, many mentionned cyberduck, I’ll get that !

You may be a bit puzzled by Cyberduck at first; it has no "local" pane. You use a Finder window, and drag-and-drop to and from Cyberduck as you would any Mac app.

Quote from: davidm at Jun 03, 2006, 02:56 AM

Then my guess is I’ll never go back to Windows...

Both have pro’s and con’s - I’ve used mac’s for 8 years and pc’s for as long and I’d never do one away over the other, if your a developer you got to be able to see what’s happening on both.

- Performance, the highest spec’d PC benchmarking photoshop will eat any Mac hands down

- Security, Mac’s don’t need a second thought you can browse and download to your hearts content - PC’s you need to wrap a big condom on before going anywhere.

- Mouse, CTRL+CLICK gets you "right click" - however the shipped mouse doesn’t handle coke spills well, neither do Mac keyboards, in fact they’re just darn ’precious’, so I’ve got a logitech wireless mouse and keyboard setup.

- Mail - I dislike Mac mail and would use IE’s except Mac’s got the bigger part of my workflow.

- FTP ... I’m stuck with Transmit (and Cyberduck) for the same reason.

Together they’re a powerful team, if I ever had only a mac or a pc I think I’d feel partially blind.

Thanks for the input, Susan, I’ll keep this in mind !

Starbuck, I do understand this, and getting a Mac Intel able to use BootCamp (And the future Leopard relase) is one key factor too, still being able to use windows for testing and some stuff... This being said, the 17" MacBook is VERY powerful (and, the lightest 17" laptop on the market for sure). Desktop aside, I am not sure any PC Laptop runs as fast, the centrino Duo T2500 is 2GHz, the 2,16GHz Mac Core Duo would be a T2600, which in France are not available... The X1600 256Mb ATI card is quite a nice beast too

Anyway, it’s powerful enough for me and I guess I won’t need an upgrade before 2 years or so...

About FTP, didn’t check but no FileZilla for Mac yet ?

I have an old copy of VirtualPC with Win2k on my old powerbook, and it works just fine, except for being rather sluggish on this 550Mhz with only 256Mb ram. I’ve also used Bochs, which works fine on the big dual-processor 500mhz with 2Gb ram, although with more effort, and the big Mac has graphics problems which make things awkward with it in general. So even with a PowerPC Mac, you can have your Mac and look at Windows too, without two machines or rebooting.

First thing I’m going to do with my new G4 iBook is install VirtualPc, although I may give Bochs another try. Heh! Bochs, running Linux and using Wine to check on IE! That will be fun! Performance won’t be a priority, as long as it’s not too bad, since I’ll only be using it to monitor IE behavior.

Yeah true emulators allow some testing, as you say for this kind of test speed is not a huge issue...

I have donwloaded BootCamp and will give a test run to a Windows install on my MacBook... I have heard there is no performance degradation with BootCamp, I’ll confirm that...

Quote from: davidm at Jun 03, 2006, 04:47 PM

About FTP, didn’t check but no FileZilla for Mac yet ?

http://www.fetchsoftworks.com/
ou
http://www.panic.com/transmit/
ou cyberduck oui.

Parallels is incredible for testing sites in IE. It just boots a native instance of XP while running inside OS X at near-native speed. Boot times are super fast too. No need to reboot!