Why use a Mac?

[Winni]

This is the question I'm asking myself, as a mac user: Why Use A Mac?

This question and posting aren't meant to start a "rant" so please do not take this posting in that way.

I've been a MacBook Pro user for about a year now. While I like lots about the mac, there are lots of things I don't like. While these issues aren't exactly "show stoppers", they're close....

So, I'm on the fence right now about whether to go out and get a Windows 7 laptop (ugh!) and move back to Windows. My Windows XP Pro experience was nearly perfect, but Vista moved me to the mac.

Programs I use A LOT that don't work well on the mac or don't have true equivalents on the mac

Examples:

MyEclipse plug-in for Eclipse.

With Apple's mess up of the JVM 1.6 and "carbon issues", this mac plug-in really doesn't work well at all. Also, this company doesn't fully support the mac platform (missing features) due to issues. I'm therefore forced to use my VM Windows XP machine anytime I do software development.

WinZip.

Yes, I know "zip" is built in to the mac. But, what's on the Mac isn't even close to Winzip for Windows. There is no zip file viewing, no encryption, no interface, etc. No comparison.

Password manager.

Here the mac version of the password program I use isn't even close to the windows version.

Snagit.

Still not on the mac. (though supposedly a version is in the works.) No real equivalent. The screen capture on the mac is, again, very rudimentary - similar to Print Screen or Alt Print Screen in windows. Snagit is the real thing.

VM Fusion running windows sucks the life out of my 4 GB mac. I get lots of "color wheels". I've configured VM Fusion to run in 800 MB with only one virtual processor, but it's not fun.

There are other issues as well, but this is the gist of it.

-----

I find that I do all my productive work in Windows, not on the Mac.

Sadly, I'm now wondering if Windows 7 wouldn't make more sense -- IF, and it's a big "IF", it's truly better than vista.

Having the Registry, DLLs, backups, Anti-virus/spyware, and all those issues to worry about again is a major turn-off for any M$ platform.

Any suggestions or comments?

Thanks.

M

For some strange reason, I cannot take any of these reasons seriously. There are many good and serious reasons to move back to Windows, but yours are just looking like excuses.

WinZIP is a commercial program and not a part of Windows. It's not even remotely fair to compare this to the built-in functionality of any OS. If you want to compare WinZIP to something on the Mac, why don't you compare it with StuffIt Deluxe 2009 (or newer)?

I never needed a Password manager. But there are a bunch of Open Source solutions for people who need that for all platforms.

Eclipse - I don't know what MyEclipse does or what it is good for. And I'm glad that I haven't become a Java developer. But when I read the blogs on java.net, it seems that almost all Java developers have moved away from the Mac either back to Windows or they've moved on to Linux or Solaris. And a lot of them are now using Netbeans - which nowadays even runs very well and fast on OS X, by the way.

VMWare will also suck the life out of a Windows machine if you need to run another OS in a virtual machine. You cannot have enough RAM and CPU power for virtualization, it's a simple fact of life.

However, if you spend more time in the virtualized guest OS than in the host OS, then I strongly doubt that you need the host OS at all.

In my experience, Windows 7 64-Bit --is-- much better than Vista and XP and 2000 and NT, where better means stable, much faster and more fun to use. I think Windows 7 has turned out very well, and it's a serious competition to the other desktop platforms.

Anti-Virus & Spyware - well, when you exchange emails and Office documents with other people, you should have an anti-virus software on any platform, whether it is OS X, Linux or Windows. And may it only be to protect them from malware.

The registry: When I look at those millions of configuration files on an average Linux system, I think the registry actually was a great idea. At least you have the chaos in -ONE- place, and not clustered all over your system. I find the configuration and maintenance of Ubuntu Servers rather nightmarish. And OS X is just as bad when you look under the hood.

DLLs: I wonder where that cliche comes from. In more than 20 years in the Windows world, I never had problems with the mysterious "DLL-hell" every non-Windows user is talking about. But as with everything else in IT, it always helps when one knows how a certain technology works.

Backups: Ahem. So you don't backup OS X, no? Time Machine might have a nice GUI, but it certainly is not a competition to BackupExec or some other backup solution in that league. I'm not even sure if it actually can compete with the built-in backup mechanisms of desktop Windows. After all, Windows can handle streamers and other professional backup devices out of the box - Time Machine can't. Or, in other words: Time Machine is a nice looking toy in comparison to any backup software on Windows, but that's it.

Anyway. I work at a Teleport in my day-time job where I'm taking care of a large network and all sorts of platforms, and thus I've become rather platform agnostic. At the end of the day, they all suck in one way or the other.

My advice is this: Compile a list of the tools that you really need to be productive and to do your job and then objectively compare each platform against your individual needs. There's no shame in using Linux or Windows on Apple hardware, you know. OS X is not the holy grail, and if it turns out to be counter-productive for you, dump it and use the platform that makes you productive. You don't have to buy a new computer for that.

Oh -- and Windows 7 will actually perform awesome even on five year old hardware.

 

[Winni]

What's truly a "mess up of JVM 1.6" is Windows.

That's complete and utter nonsense. Sun provides 32-Bit and 64-Bit VMs for Windows themselves, and they're shipping the Windows VMs before they're even shipping the versions for their own platform, Solaris.

Windows is the most important target platform for Java, and Sun makes sure that Java runs great on it. End of story.

 

[Mork]

For some strange reason, I cannot take any of these reasons seriously. There are many good and serious reasons to move back to Windows, but yours are just looking like excuses.

WinZIP is a commercial program and not a part of Windows. It's not even remotely fair to compare this to the built-in functionality of any OS. If you want to compare WinZIP to something on the Mac, why don't you compare it with StuffIt Deluxe 2009 (or newer)?

I never needed a Password manager. But there are a bunch of Open Source solutions for people who need that for all platforms.

Eclipse - I don't know what MyEclipse does or what it is good for. And I'm glad that I haven't become a Java developer. But when I read the blogs on java.net, it seems that almost all Java developers have moved away from the Mac either back to Windows or they've moved on to Linux or Solaris. And a lot of them are now using Netbeans - which nowadays even runs very well and fast on OS X, by the way.

VMWare will also suck the life out of a Windows machine if you need to run another OS in a virtual machine. You cannot have enough RAM and CPU power for virtualization, it's a simple fact of life.

However, if you spend more time in the virtualized guest OS than in the host OS, then I strongly doubt that you need the host OS at all.

In my experience, Windows 7 64-Bit --is-- much better than Vista and XP and 2000 and NT, where better means stable, much faster and more fun to use. I think Windows 7 has turned out very well, and it's a serious competition to the other desktop platforms.

Anti-Virus & Spyware - well, when you exchange emails and Office documents with other people, you should have an anti-virus software on any platform, whether it is OS X, Linux or Windows. And may it only be to protect them from malware.

The registry: When I look at those millions of configuration files on an average Linux system, I think the registry actually was a great idea. At least you have the chaos in -ONE- place, and not clustered all over your system. I find the configuration and maintenance of Ubuntu Servers rather nightmarish. And OS X is just as bad when you look under the hood.

DLLs: I wonder where that cliche comes from. In more than 20 years in the Windows world, I never had problems with the mysterious "DLL-hell" every non-Windows user is talking about. But as with everything else in IT, it always helps when one knows how a certain technology works.

Backups: Ahem. So you don't backup OS X, no? Time Machine might have a nice GUI, but it certainly is not a competition to BackupExec or some other backup solution in that league. I'm not even sure if it actually can compete with the built-in backup mechanisms of desktop Windows. After all, Windows can handle streamers and other professional backup devices out of the box - Time Machine can't. Or, in other words: Time Machine is a nice looking toy in comparison to any backup software on Windows, but that's it.

Anyway. I work at a Teleport in my day-time job where I'm taking care of a large network and all sorts of platforms, and thus I've become rather platform agnostic. At the end of the day, they all suck in one way or the other.

My advice is this: Compile a list of the tools that you really need to be productive and to do your job and then objectively compare each platform against your individual needs. There's no shame in using Linux or Windows on Apple hardware, you know. OS X is not the holy grail, and if it turns out to be counter-productive for you, dump it and use the platform that makes you productive. You don't have to buy a new computer for that.

Oh -- and Windows 7 will actually perform awesome even on five year old hardware.

Such good info!

What would you think about my dumping my MBP 15" (4GB) and getting a quad-core iMac with 16 GB? From the sounds of your post above, it sounds like you may be recommending I return to the land of Redmond.

My critical apps are in Windows (MyEclipse, Enterprise Architect (sparx systems, and a few others).

Am I giving up something by running windows in a VM? I mean, if my main work is Windows (as much as I love the Mac), would I be better off with, say, some high-end Windows machine than even in VM Fusion 3 on the Mac? From an "up-front cost" point of view, at least, I'd probably be better off with a high-end windows machine.

I think the 27" monitor would be awesome, but with how Apple messed up my life with the JVM 1.6 bugs and the fact that MyEclipse just won't run well on the mac (and the company doesn't even have a complete feature set on the Mac), I'd have to be in Windows one way or another.

My "problem" is, I suppose, is that I am hoping to find one platform that fits all. The mac is beautiful, stable, and other nice things.

Going to W7 64-bit and having to drudge though incompatibilities and such would be a major pain.

As I guess it's all too obvious, I'm not sure exactly what to do....

-- M

 

[HLdan]

Still not on the mac. (though supposedly a version is in the works.) No real equivalent. The screen capture on the mac is, again, very rudimentary - similar to Print Screen or Alt Print Screen in windows. Snagit is the real thing.

I realize Snagit (as you mentioned) offers full webpage capture however have you tried GRAB in the Utilities folder? It's the real deal in terms of screen capture on OS X. The keyboard shortcuts are great but GRAB does everything. You can do timed screen shots, you get an open and save dialog box to rename the screen capture, you can choose the type of cursor you want to use, you can turn off the camera shutter sound. If you want to save as a specific format you can. By default it saves in TIFF. First create the screenshot, then open it in Preview and choose Save As and you can choose any format, Jpeg, gif.....Yes it would be faster if you could choose the format while saving the screenshot but I'm sure Apple did this for a reason.
Also, if you want to capture a whole webpage you can just hit Print and save as a PDF. You will lose some graphics but at least all your text is saved.

 

[Mork]

I realize Snagit (as you mentioned) offers full webpage capture however have you tried GRAB in the Utilities folder? It's the real deal in terms of screen capture on OS X. The keyboard shortcuts are great but GRAB does everything. You can do timed screen shots, you get an open and save dialog box to rename the screen capture, you can choose the type of cursor you want to use, you can turn off the camera shutter sound. If you want to save as a specific format you can. By default it saves in TIFF. First create the screenshot, then open it in Preview and choose Save As and you can choose any format, Jpeg, gif.....Yes it would be faster if you could choose the format while saving the screenshot but I'm sure Apple did this for a reason.
Also, if you want to capture a whole webpage you can just hit Print and save as a PDF. You will lose some graphics but at least all your text is saved.

Very interesting. Nope, I didn't know about GRAB.

Thanks.

- M

 

[Cabbit]

For Java development, take a serious look at myeclipseide.com

The amount of time it saves me is amazing!

Once you get used to the lights dimming when you start MyEclipse (a non-free plug-in for Eclipse), then ....

-- M

I develop for PHP, Ruby on Rails, Ruby, Javascirpt and AJAX, with the odd Coldfusion(yuk) and Asp.net for some picknickity lecturers when i develop something for University.

Java actual i may decide to work with more in the future, but i have yet to see a compelling reason. I would rather work with languages i enjoy than ones i do not.

Soon i will be working with Flex and Air as you canny make the exact same thing with AJAX (according to the lectures, witch from what i have seen Flex is just the same result as AJAX except using a property plugin.)

 

[Cabbit]

I realize Snagit (as you mentioned) offers full webpage capture however have you tried GRAB in the Utilities folder? It's the real deal in terms of screen capture on OS X. The keyboard shortcuts are great but GRAB does everything. You can do timed screen shots, you get an open and save dialog box to rename the screen capture, you can choose the type of cursor you want to use, you can turn off the camera shutter sound. If you want to save as a specific format you can. By default it saves in TIFF. First create the screenshot, then open it in Preview and choose Save As and you can choose any format, Jpeg, gif.....Yes it would be faster if you could choose the format while saving the screenshot but I'm sure Apple did this for a reason.
Also, if you want to capture a whole webpage you can just hit Print and save as a PDF. You will lose some graphics but at least all your text is saved.

Easier than opening preview and save as, i have a folder set with a actionscript to convert all images that enter it into .png.

 

[Sky Blue]

Very interesting. Nope, I didn't know about GRAB.

Thanks.

- M

Even though I mentioned it on the last page?

And, for the third time, try Skitch.

You're so sure that there's not a snagit equivalent and you haven't even looked at the applications folder on your own computer?

 

[Mork]

Even though I mentioned it on the last page?

And, for the third time, try Skitch.

You're so sure that there's not a snagit equivalent and you haven't even looked at the applications folder on your own computer?

Sorry, I did go through my mac reference books. The existing mac tools don't cut it. That's not a snip at the mac, since Snagit is 3rd party even on Windows.

Skitch requires I get an online account, which I don't want to do. It look to me a lot like Techsmith's Jing product.

I'll wait for Snagit for the mac.

-- M

 

[BlueRevolution]

My critical apps are in Windows (MyEclipse, Enterprise Architect (sparx systems, and a few others).

Then use Windows. Why is there any question here?

Personally, I couldn't live without Coda, Quicksilver, Adium, Aperture, AppleScript, and UNIX.

Java actual i may decide to work with more in the future, but i have yet to see a compelling reason.

There isn't one. "Saying that Java is good because it works on all operating systems is like saying that anal sex is good because it works on all genders."

 

[Mork]

Then use Windows. Why is there any question here?

Personally, I couldn't live without Coda, Quicksilver, Adium, Aperture, AppleScript, and UNIX.



There isn't one. "Saying that Java is good because it works on all operating systems is like saying that anal sex is good because it works on all genders."

That's a good one!

With Java, I found that once I re-installed Java 5 (found a resource on the web to do this) under Snow Leopard, then either Intellij IDEA or NetBeans worked OK. Leave MyEclipse for the Windows VM.

- M

 

[kate-willbury]

sounds like you want to be on windows. honestly, right now i boot into windows 7 more often than snow leopard on my mac. mac osx just doesn't really cut it anymore.