Mac and I

Published 04 September 07 10:09 PM | andersnoras 

A little over a month ago I made the big switch from Windows to Mac OS. In that post I wrote that apart from me having a hard time getting used to new keyboard shortcuts, life on the Mac felt good. So how does it feel a good month down the road, and what applications did I end up using? (A big “thank you” is due to everyone who gave me tips on stuff I should check out.)

First of all, it doesn’t feel good to be a Mac user anymore - it feels great! The different applications play so nicely together, and ever since I made the switch I’ve discovered lots of tiny little features that make the user experience better every day. Did you know that you can scroll a window by placing two fingers on the trackpad? Ok, but did you know that you can zoom in if you do the same thing while pressing ^ (that’s Mac-speak for ctrl)? Of course you did, but if you’re anything like me and need to learn all of these things check out some of the comments on this post.

So what software am I using? * Launcher: QuickSilver totally rocks! * Java development: IntelliJ IDEA - My favorite IDE - ever! Maven takes care of my dependencies. * .NET development: Visual Studio 2008 with ReSharper 3.0 running in Paralles coherence mode on a bare bones Windows XP image. * Text editor: TextMate! Currently I’m only scratching the surface of the features of this editor, but I can safely say that this is the best text editor I’ve ever used. My biggest challenge is that there are tons of keyboard shortcuts to learn, but thats means that I can use the keyboard for virtually everything which isn’t bad at all. * Blogging: After trying both ecto and MarsEdit, I ended up using the Blogging bundle for TextMate and write all of my blog posts in MarkDown. This is a bit short on the WYSIWYG side, but again its very efficient to work with. The downside is that Community Server doesn’t support MarkDown, which implies that I have to convert the posts to HTML before posting them. TextMate handles this nicely, so it really isn’t a big deal. (I really should have investigated other blog engines when I set up this blog. If anyone has some tips on how I can preserve the Community Server links when moving to another platform please let me know.) * Browser: I never gave Safari a chance, its Firefox all the way. * Instant messaging: I use Adium, and for a guy who’ve only used Windows Live! Messenger this is a killer. * Office suite: I haven’t really decided on this yet. I’ve used the trial of iWork ‘06 a bit and I kind of liked it. I guess I’ll go back and evaluate iWork ‘08 if I really need such tools.

For everything else I use the tools that came with Mac OS X (with a few additions like Flip4Mac with QuickTime). All in all its a minimal setup, which fits nicely with the overall experience.

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# Antonio said on September 6, 2007 8:27 AM:

Ahh...nice to see a satisfied Mac convert. I think it's just so much more personal, and full of character, on a Mac. And ease of use is high on the list.

I've found <a href="http://osx.iusethis.com/">iusethis.com</a> for a source of popular apps and such. Off the top of my list would be the Unsanity products <a href="http://www.unsanity.com/products">HERE</a>, of course, as you've listed it already, <a href="http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm">Flip4Mac</a> is excellent, and there's also, <a href="http://www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup/">iBackup</a>, <a href="http://www.xheadsoftware.com/info_xhead.asp">info.xhead</a>, and another free one by the Flip4Mac people, <a href="http://www.flip4mac.com/drivein.htm">Drive In</a>.

# Peter's Pattern said on October 17, 2007 5:38 AM:

Cool, Anders made the switch ... Last time I needed to buy a new laptop I really considered buying a

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