Old developer, new to apple

Well, how about XCode? Gotta have the compilers! You looking to learn Obj-C/Cocoa? It can be a lot of fun. Something new to try!

 

I tried VirtualBox. Had several instances where my OS image got mangled to the point it was unrecoverable. They have had some new releases since then, so maybe it's gotten better.

Also tried Parallels - works pretty good for a windoze VM, but not so good with Linux. The file system sharing with linux had a lot of problems.

Using VMWare Fusion now. Works well with both windoze and linux.

 

I agree about virtualization, such as Linux servers for work inside a VM. In theory, Java programs should run on ANY platform with no fuss, but in practice, the less variables you have w/r/t intended environment, the easier it will be to solve problems.

Fun new thing about Fusion licensing is, you can purchase it once, and run it on as many computers as you want for personal purposes.

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I tried macports, fink, even pkgsrc (netbsd) a few years ago when I first started using macs, and macports has the best selection, it's pretty easy to use and manage, stuff usually gets updated quickly and regularly (moreso than the others), and I like it the best.