Gone partially Mac
October 26, 2008
I just picked up an ‘old’ white macbook (the kind that are now $999 at the stores) for a pretty low price. This is mostly for business purposes – I need a way to test sites on a Mac, and bugging my wife to use her business one isn’t terribly efficient. I’ve put off getting one for some time – when they made the move to Intel CPUs it made it easier for me to consider getting one. I’ve been a Linux user for 8-10 years, and rely on open source programs quite a lot. OpenOffice, for one, Pidgin/GAIM for another, vim, etc. We’ve had a Mac in the house for awhile, so there hasn’t been a huge *need* to get one, but with the recent deal that I got (not a steal, but close), and combining that with an interest in iPhone app development, it made some sense to get one. Also, the designer who’s working on GroovyMag with me is using a Mac, so this might make it easier for me to eventually swap files with her (except I don’t have Indesign, and don’t think it’s worth it for me to fork out – perhaps I’ll get her to use Scribus in the future? but then I could have stayed on Linux!)
My Linux laptop isn’t going anywhere any time soon. It’s hosting my XP VMWare image, and it seems VMWare costs something on the Mac, so I’m not rushing out to get it in the near future. Also, I can’t find anything that states that an older VMWare image can be converted to Fusion (I’d think so, but can’t confirm it yet).
Anyway, so far so good. Got most of my updates done, things installed that I normally use, and I’m getting settled in. I’m living in too many worlds right now – Linux/Mac/Windows – so I’m not sure I’ll ever get down to just *one* machine, but maybe this will be the one?
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Entrepreneur, developer, writer, podcaster, teacher, ex-bassist.
October 26th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Welcome to the cool table
Here’s the list of must have applications.
VMWare Fusion ( you can run that XP VM of yours out of the box)
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TextMate (best text editor ever created)
Adium (libpurple, formerly gaimlib, Cocoa client, open source)
Colloquey (Cocoa IRC client, open source)
iTerm (improved terminal, email me and I’ll send you my .zshrc with lots of goodies)
ExanDrive (Mounts ssh filesystems as local filesystems)
FuzzyClock ( do you really need to know the EXACT time
October 26th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
thanks for the tips. I got adium already, and will likely get fusion before xmas
exandrive sounds cool – a bit like the fish protocol in kde which I’ve grown used to.
Heard good things about textmate – might give it a shot, but I’m very vim-oriented (still) these days
iTerm sounds good too. The konsole in KDE is one of those things that you just get used to, and using anyone elses terminal/console just feels crippled (really, it’s just the ease of creating new tabs more than anything else)
October 28th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Isn’t it the same keystroke on KDE’s Konsole or the basic Terminal program on Mac OS X to create a new tab? Ctrl-T on KDE and…uh….pretzel-T on the Mac (I think the pretzel on my Logitech wireless keyboard is also the Windows key).
October 29th, 2008 at 6:15 am
I didn’t think the basic terminal came with tabs. Lo and behold it does. Is this a leopard thing? I don’t remember this in panther or tiger? Thanks.
October 30th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Uhh…maybe? My first and only Mac thus far is a Leopard.