Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:00:00 GMT

My Failed Mac Experiment

A few weeks ago, serendipity provided me an older, but quite serviceable Macbook.  I've never seriously exercised a Mac in my day to day life due somewhat to the steep buy-in cost but mostly because of inertia.  In that time period I've spent quite a bit of time building up Max (the network name for the Macbook) to match my needs in a notebook computer.  In addition, I decided to use it as the host computer for my new iPhone.  I've talked before about my dislike for iTunes and other problems I've had making Max usable in my life but this is only half of the story.

I have two fairly distinct uses for a notebook computer.  The first is similar to most people's use: Firefox gives me a window to the world.  I consume various media using Firefox or iTunes and indirectly via an iPhone.  I create a few documents or spreadsheets via Google Docs or Open Office. 

The second use for a notebook is less typical.  I write software and I need a complex set of tools to allow me to do that development.  While I still do ocational support of very old Windows desktop and server software that I developed in the 90's, I have been developing for Internet platforms almost exclusively for the last 12 years or so.  (With a few side tracks into the mobile world).  That development has been targeted toward Linux centric technologies with a primary focus on PHP, Ruby, and Python using MySQL.  To do that kind of development you need a development computer that supports these technologies.

OS X, with it's roots in BSD, would seem like a great platform for this.  A slick user interface with a familiar UNIXly environment under the skin was pretty enticing.  So with that, I started the process of getting all of these technologies working on Max.  I quickly found out that many of the software packages that I tried to install would not work with Tiger, OS X version 10.4, only one generation old.  So I upgraded to Leopard, the lastest version of OS X and only a month or so before the new Snow Leopard comes out.  (Interesting: there is no free upgrade to Snow Leopard for purchasers of Leopard just a month before shipping.  Microsoft would not get away with this for Windows.)  What also prompted the upgrade was the issues I was getting trying to install MySQL-python connector.

The archive and install upgrade of Leopard went well and I was pleased with the improvements.  But it didn't solve my MySQL-python issue.  It did allow me to install Aptana, my preferred development editor.  After much experimentation and many hours lost, I did get the MySQL-python connector working.  I've long been using PhpMyAdmin for administering MySQL.  It's so much easier than using a command line MySQL client.  That took many hours more.  Should have been 10 minutes.  The only pieces that were easy were the ones that were already installed and often to get other things installed, I needed to install a different version from the default Leopard version.  That leads to many copies of almost identical software scattered over the BSD/OSX Frankenstein file structure.  Each tool that I installed, complicated the situation.

In the end, I've given up trying to force my requirements on Max.  I'm sure that with a couple more weeks of work, I'd get it working the way that I want.  The thought struck me that at that point, I'd have a computer that meets my needs only as well as my 3 year old Dell notebook.  It might be a little faster but I cannot tell.  There is no software that I *need* OS X to run and lots of apps that while not critical, will not run on OS X.  My experience with OS X has not shown me any compelling reason to use it over Windows 7.  I understand that I'm not a tyical user and that there are many for whom OS X works well and might be ideal. 

I think that if I had been coming from OS X and trying out Windows 7, I'd likely have an overall similar experience.  In a lot of ways, OSX, Windows and Linux have become quite close in terms of features but they all differ in the details of how you get things done.  In the end, it comes down to personal preferences and experience as to what works best for an individual.

So my next "experiment" is to see what Max is like running Windows 7.  Will the hardware work better for me than the Dell with the same OS?  If nothing else, I can easily install the software that I need on it in a couple of hours, and it will hold me over until I figure out my next portable computing platform.  I've got Boot Camp and Windows 7 already setup.  That was easy.  Now to duplicate my desktop setup.

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:38:00 GMT

OS X Leopard Update

I have upgraded my "new" macbook from Tiger to Leopard and it turns out have been a really good idea.  When using Tiger, I had this concept of OS X being really clunky.  I chalked that up to being new to the OS and not real failings in the operating system.

The most noticeable improvement for me is in the Finder's ability to browse remote Windows network drives.  Leopard's "Places" makes network drives much more accessible.  The WiFi menu is not so annoying as in Tiger where it would wait and do a rescan of available networks before it could come up.

A lot of functionality under Leopard just seemed more usable.  I am a bit surprised by this.  I regularly switch between Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 and while there are differences, the basics just do not seem that different.  I'm sure that part of this is that I've been using Windows for over 20 years so a lot of it is just second nature to me.  I guess I'm not the idea switcher as I've got such depth of knowledge in Windows that using OS X is often frustrating to me.  Luckily Leopard seems less frustrating.  Looking forward to Snow Leopard!
Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:59:00 GMT

Small Steps into Apple's World

I haven't used an Apple product seriously in a long time.  In the early 90's I worked on a project where I had to use a Mac for a few weeks but nothing since then other than occasionally borrowing a friend's Mac to check email, etc.

A couple of weeks ago I acquired an 18 month old Macbook with a dead hard drive.  When I got it you could hear the heads tearing themselves apart and then nothing.  A nice 320GB 7200 rpm drive fixed that up.  I decided to use this Macbook as my portable computer.  Replacing a 3 year old Dell.  The Dell still works great, especially with Windows 7 running on it but I thought that the Mac experience would be good to have.

My desktop environment is still a mix of various versions of Windows and Linux machines.  That makes six boxes under my desk.  It is also why I write this sitting outside, under a tree.  It just too hot in my office with all that equipment.

About a week after I got the Mac running, Rochelle and I decided to take the plunge and go for iPhones.  So I've a few steps into the Apple world.  

It will be interesting to see if there are any surprises in this experiment.  I have been writing software in one form or another for over 30 years.  For many years DOS/Windows and UNIX/Linux have been the software development platforms of choice but over the last couple of years there has developed a large continent of Internet software developers who prefer Macs to do their development.  Good graphics and video manipulation tools have obviously had a lot to do with that but more hard core developers have been promoting the use of Macs.  It was particularly noticeable when I started doing some Ruby on Rails development a couple of years ago.  Windows was definitely not the ideal platform for Rails development.  I had been contemplating purchasing a Mac when this one fell in my lap.

I'm not going to go cold turkey into a Mac only environment.  I will still do most of my work on a Windows 7 based desktop machine but this new Mac will allow me to explore the possibilities.  I hope to replicate a basic software development environment on this machine for my mix of PHP, Rails, Python projects that I have either under active development or maintenance.