Considering a Mac
I’ve preferred Windows machines over Macs basically since my first chance to play with Microsoft Windows 3.0. A decade ago it was easy for me to say that because of ideas like multitasking—Windows couldn’t do it very well, but the Mac was just downright poor. Apple has made a lot of changes with it’s OS X platform, however, and it’s always been something I’ve kept my eye on.
Over the last several years Apple has been releasing some great stuff—I use the iPod and iTunes every day. For the last two years at my day job I’ve been using a 20” iMac running Tiger. I mostly like it; I guess my chief complaints are mostly simple fixes with other software (Quicksilver looks great) but installing applications is greatly frowned upon. The Dock is a much nicer tool than the Windows taskbar is for keeping things at your fingertips and still being manageable. As far as my day-to-day experience, that’s about all I can say.
Looking ahead to how I would like to use it, though, I see a few advantages that become more clear all the time. Primarily, in relation to web development, having a local unix-like system to test my latest plugin on—similar to a typical real-world web server—along with a nice graphic interface, and clear support and documentation, would be a real advantage. Similarly, being able to run Windows alongside (via Boot Camp or Parallels) could also be a substantial advantage.
Apple’s soon-to-be-released Leopard is really the thing that fuels the desire further: Time Machine seems like just the sort of simple backup/versioning tools I’ve wanted; Spotlight has some great refinement—in addition to search it’s a calculator, dictionary, and links to Wikipedia; Stacks would be a great way to semi-organize the day’s project; there’s a system-wide grammar checker that I haven’t seen touted much, but sounds useful.
So what Mac would I get? The 24” iMac would be a good fit, especially since it looks like it could also extend my desktop onto my other 24” screen! Portability and other future needs makes me look at a MacBook Pro, however. I do find the prices a little hard to swallow, though, given that I’ve always purchased low- to mid-end computers. I’m not saying I think they’re overpriced—I don’t—just that they’re expensive.
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