Rab Boyce's Site

Last November my monstrous 17" Rock CTX Pro had some structural issues and it was time to get a new laptop.

I finally decided to make the switch to Mac, after struggling with Ubuntu for a year, trying Vista, going back to XP...

So, what did I do.

I purchased a shiny new 15" unibody macbook pro, 4GB of ram with a 2.53ghz CPU.

So now, 9 months in...was it a good decision.

Absolutley. I can't believe what a good machine it is, The build quality on the machine is excellent, and despite being the daily workhorse it still looks as good as new.

But the real question is, was the switch to Mac OS X a good one. Oh yes. Its very stable, responsive, has a wide variety of quality apps...and looks gorgeous.

It does take some getting used to however. I thought i'd list some hints and apps Ive come to rely on.

Hints

1. Where is the # key?

Now if there are any programmers out there, then you will now that the # key is a pretty useful one. So the first time you are up against the clock and need to edit that shell scrpt...its alt-3

2. Where is the Delete Key?

If you are used to Windows then you will undoubtedly be expecting a delete key...apple for some reason thing a backspace key is enough, but you can do a forward delete by using fn-backspace

3. Dont buy the mighty mouse

Its awful. Worst 49.99 I have ever spent. Really, what were they thinking?

4. Buy the wireless keyboard

Its just a beautiful piece of design, and is useful when gaming or loading data into an oracle database in a VM. Why? because the aluminium case can get quite hot!

5. Use Spotlight to launch apps.

I flirted with having apps in the dock, using finder...but now i have 'seen the light'

Applications

1. Buy MS-Office not iWork ( both paid )

iWork is lovely, ( think MS Word 2.0  for those will long memories ) but the compatibility just isn't there...and when you are up against a deadline and the customer/tutor wants a word doc, or you need to modify a document that someone has sent you for quick turnaround...you will appreciate the difference.

2. Use Adium ( free )

Adium is a mac osx version of the pidgin instant messaging tool. It works very well and is less er...crappy than the MS one.

3. VLC ( free )

The open source media player...its just as good on the mac as it is on linux and windows.

4. Perian ( free )

Allows Quicktime player ( and more usefully front row  ) to play the more common codecs out there

5. FileJuicer ( paid )

Rips out embedded content ( images etc ) from MS Office docs and PDFs..Useful indeed. NOTE: Does not work with embedded Visio.

6. TextWrangler ( free )

Nice text editor. Does what it says on the tin.

7. Caffeine ( free )

Wonderful little application. Puts a coffee cup in the menu bar. Click it, the coffee cup fills up. Now, that would be cool enough on its own, but it also stops the mac display dimming/sleeping. Which is great if you are reading, watching youtube videos or giving that all important presentation to the board.

8. istat menus ( free )

Adds network bandwidth monitors, temperature stats, CPU usage, fan speed, Memory usage ( amongst others ) to the menu bars. Really useful.

9. Evernote ( free or paid )

If you don't use Evernote then you should. Save Web Pages, snippets from emails, word docs, to one or more notebooks. Access notes on web, iphone, other computers..and now you can share books with selected friends or colleagues. wonderful application. ( not just Mac..but I found it after I got a Mac! )

10. VideoMonkey ( free )

handy little app to transcode videos. Easy to understand options. predefined targets for common devices ( including ipods and iphones )

11. VMWare Fusion ( paid )

Kind of a must have for people who need to work with Windows Software. Fast, elegant integration with Mac OS X...although the interface seems a little dumbed down compared to VMWare Workstation on a PC or Linux.

In summary, was it the right thing to do? Oh Yes... Would I go back to using Linux/Windows as my main machine.. Not even If you paid me.