

Switching from Windows to Mac - One Year Later - ciscoriordan
http://www.davidalison.com/2009/03/switching-from-windows-to-mac-one-year.html

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riobard
I found Mac and OS X very appealing as a development platform. For me the most
important think would be that I have a *nix system without any hardware
support issue -- yes, "it just works".

Got really really tired of dealing with various driver issues on Linux as I
would usually spend tens of hours trying to configure some devices and then
they just became unusable again when I did an upgrade.

Oh, and the font rendering on Mac is so nice esp. when one has to face codes
more than half of the day!! ClearType on Windows looks so so. Linux fonts ...
well, not so many great free fonts :( This is just personal preference though
...

~~~
windsurfer
I'm an Ubuntu 8.10 user, and I have to say that the font smoothing is much
better than XP, and almost on par with macintosh computers.

If you are looking for graphic design fonts for Ubuntu, I would highly
reccomend the Aenigma fonts package:
[http://crunchbang.org/archives/2008/06/14/aenigma-fonts-
for-...](http://crunchbang.org/archives/2008/06/14/aenigma-fonts-for-ubuntu/)

~~~
riobard
I've been using Ubuntu since 7.04 and I'm still using it in virtual machine
now. I agree that esp. for 8.x Ubuntu really beats XP on font rendering (well,
except for OpenOffice and occasionally Firefox).

However both Windows and Linux still have very far way to go to beat Apple's
font rendering engine. Apple just needs to get the font right because
otherwise it cannot sell so many Macs to designers. And they did.

I remembered I was seduced by the Ruby guys' screenshot of Monaco font in
TextMate. In my opinion Monaco is probably the best ever designed monospace
font for programmers. Well, of coz it must be rendered by Apple's font engine
to get the right look -- tried Monaco both on XP and Ubuntu and it sucked big.

I have to face code more than half of the day, and thus a good Monospace font
is very important to me. On Ubuntu I think Bitstream/Dejavu Mono is the best,
and on Windows I prefer Consolas, but both look kinda unpolished compared to
Monaco on Mac.

No, I'm not talking about those cool design fonts. I'm talking about the basic
typefaces like Times, Helvetica, etc. I think probably fonts are the area
where commercial companies do better than open source --- fine-tuning a font
requires so much time and energy of artists which I think is a very very
scarce resource in the open source community. It also explains why a good set
of typefaces costs big bucks. Sad, but true ...

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godDLL
Every new release getting better, faster, more usable; growing market-share
faster all the time... I'm a Mac user (for now) and this scares me. I mean,
statistically -- how long can such a thing be maintained? What goes up must,
must come down, at some point.

P.S. Enjoy your new computing preference, David. You're in good company.

~~~
briansmith
> Every new release getting better, faster, more usable; growing market-share
> faster all the time...

You could be describing Windows or Mac OS X with that.

> What goes up must, must come down, at some point.

That rule doesn't really apply to software. The main thing problem in
producing an operating system is coming up with a significant improvement over
the previous release. For example, Windows XP was and is still good enough for
almost everybody. Vista makes a lot of things easier and simpler, but for many
people that isn't a compelling reason to upgrade. I'm sure Mac OS X has the
same problem; except for programmers, I've never met a Mac OS X user that has
upgraded Mac OS X.

~~~
nfg
> > Every new release getting better, faster, more usable; growing market-
> share faster all the time...

> You could be describing Windows or Mac OS X with that.

Vista was faster than XP?

~~~
briansmith
I used Windows XP for years and then switched to Vista about six months ago.
AFAICT, there is nothing slower about Vista than XP on the same machine (an
old ThinkPad T60). But, because of usability improvements in Vista, I can get
things done faster. UAC removes a lot of the hassles of running as a limited
user in XP, and that is the main reason I upgraded. UAC probably saves me at
least an hour a week.

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amichail
I bought an ipod touch and mac mini to develop iphone apps.

I don't find OS X to be better than Win 7. But the ipod touch is pretty cool
and hopefully I will have some success selling Numbrosia for the iphone/ipod
touch.

~~~
w1ntermute
" _hopefully I will have some success selling Numbrosia for the iphone/ipod
touch._ "

Come on, you didn't just shamelessly plug your app, did you? :/

~~~
blasdel
It's better than a coy back-and-forth exchange of "I don't want to plug my
crap" -> "Just tell us what app you're working on"

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jamroom
I've owned 3 mac minis over the last 4 years or so (2 G4's and now a new Core
2 version), and there's one thing that keeps me coming back to Windows for dev
work - window management. Maybe I just don't get it (or haven't figured it
out), but when I have 20 windows open on then Mac, trying to figure out what
is what in the dock is painful (all of the terminal windows look the same in
icon form). I find it much easier to jump between apps using the Windows task
bar.

~~~
tvon
I don't know what people did before Expose came around (I'm only about 2 years
into being a Mac user here so I have no non-Expose experience). I have thumb
buttons on my mouse bound to Expose and Spaces, I use them constantly (often
at the same time, Expose in Spaces is very convenient). Honestly I have enough
running most of the time that the Windows taskbar would have to be 4 rows high
to be readable, but with nine desktops in Spaces and Expose a touch away I
have never had a problem finding my way through the absurd mess of windows I
make.

By the way, if you use Terminal in OSX, I highly recommend checking out Visor
(<http://docs.blacktree.com/visor/visor>), I have it bound to ctrl-~ (tilde)
and I use it constantly.

------
thras
I'd have more belief in Apple software engineering genius if I didn't have to
use iTunes on Vista to sync with my (otherwise wonderful) iPhone. What an
awful, awful, product. And god help you if you try to do any management of
your music files outside of the program.

So sure, OS X is great, I hear. But every time I put a Mac on my desk next to
my Windows or Linux machine at work or at home, I get bored of it very
quickly. Like Linux, like Windows, it runs multiple graphical applications at
once. What else do I need an OS to do except stay out of my way?

~~~
evgen
It could be worse. You could be a Mac user who needs to use one of Microsoft's
products. There is no more worthless piece of shit in the world of computing
than MS Entourage....

~~~
ComputerGuru
I wholly disagree. Entourage sucks, but Excel and (particularly) Word for Mac
are even better than their Windows counterparts.

Word 2008 is a masterpiece. It has a number of nice features (notebook mode is
great for university students).

