I switched to Mac a couple of months ago. I'm totally happy with it. Browsing through all the available little cheap apps is like walking through a candy store. I bought more software for the Mac last month than the whole last two years combined for Windows. I've got a slick, fast machine (MacBook Pro 2.0), OSX is stable and pretty, and just in general it feels 'right' to have switched to Mac for development and bookwriting.
There is only one major annoyance: some software isn't available for OSX.
Some of that stuff I can live with. Like Picasa 2 – which is 10 times better than iPhoto – and Skype 2. I hope those products will come out for OSX soon, but until then, I'll use something else.
Others, like Enterprise Architect, are more annoying. If you target the development crowd, I think it is just plain stupid to only support Windows. I posted on one of their forums (started by other people that also were asking for OSX support) and got the unsurpising reply that they thought the market was too small. Imagine that: they make an UML tool – and a good one – which doesn't run on Linux* and OSX! I seriously wonder if the marketing people over there did their homework and have any idea how many developers they are shutting out from their market potential. Btw, I put a * at Linux as they kind of support it, but they want you to install a 'windows compatability layer' – available commercially only – and some other Windows bs first. Right… that looks like an attractive offer (not). Anyway, the licence that I bought last year is pretty useless now. It'll be the last time I bought something without first making sure it runs on more than Windows.
My major annoyance is my Sony MP3 player though. Last year I bought their MD-HD5 music player. It's a great player. It has a good sound, a decent user interface, and the battery life totally rocks (minimum of 30 hours in my experience). What's not so great about the MD-HD5 is that it must be used with software that runs on Windows only. WTF?! They must have spent millions on R&D, production and marketing, but those last couple of bucks to put some extra effort in making software that runs on OSX and Linux too was too much? And how are you supposed to deliver an 'iPod killer' without at least trying to penetrate the main competitor's base camp – the Mac? I am ready to buy an iPod now and ditch the MD-HD5. And Sony will be on my wallet's black list for the next couple of years.
Think of the incredible rise of Firefox. Many companies are finding out that it pays off to not tie their products into a specific browser. And really, if you make browser independence your goal from the start it's not that hard to achieve. I hope publishing software that does run on multiple platforms will be the normal practice soon. Even without using Java it's very doable to write software for multiple platforms nowadays, and if I look at the number of people (developers) that I know personally that use Linux or OSX, many of them being pretty vocal with their books, blogs and conference speaking schemes, I think we'll see something like we saw with Firefox. First people laugh it away, pointing at that 1% market share it has, only to find out that 2 years later they have a problem as Firefox suddenly accounts for 10-15 % market share, and customers start complaining they can't use their favorite browser on some sites.
Mac use is certainly up among Wicket developers! But I’m surprised if you’re completely satisfied programming Java on it compared to Windows or Linux. I do at home a little bit, but I’m surely more efficient on my Ubuntu box at work. It’s annoying to have all your Mac applications be consistent with each other, then you open up Eclipse and it all goes to hell. And separately, there’s the issue of Java lag between Mac OS and the OSes that Sun bothers to write JVMs for.
Well, anyway, welcome to the fold. If enough Java devs come over things will get better.
I’ve heard that some people had dissapointing experiences in the past with Macs and Java development. However, I’m comming in green, and my experiences thusfar have been positive. I set up Java 5 and Eclipse 3.2. the first day I had this machine, and it’s been running fine. And IDEA and NetBeans work fine too btw.
The only thing that gets in the way sometimes is that the key bindings in Eclipse differ from the Mac default bindings (like refresh for instance). But it’s me being lazy that I haven’t fixed it yet.
So, concerning Java development, there isn’t anything I miss on OSX right now. Eclipse runs much smoother than on my Windows laptop, and it’s great to have a decent terminal.
Hi,
Just to help you select a new iPod killer. Ever thought about cowon iAudio stuff? I have the Cowon iAudio u2 and I must say the sound is incredible even for something as small as mine. They are rather expensive but they support a lot of audio formats and have a lot of options you might be missing on an iPod.
Byeee…
Looks nice, thanks. However, I just bought that iPod. The only thing I was unhappy about with my old iPod was the battery life. The next gen is supposed to be a lot better though.
About Java lag: there is now a Java 6 release available from Apple, for intel macs! Seems to work very well indeed. So it seems that Apple has discovered how popular their machines are growing among developers.
I can also chime in with a “me too” here. My MacBook is the sexiest developer machine I’ve ever had. Eclipse just flies, and everything works great.
If only Skype get their act together and get the Mac dev team on par with the windows one… I sure want a universal Skype with video support now.
got another “me too”, it’s just that on an old g3 iBook the screen resolution is far too low to do anything useful ;)
Although I see more Java crashes on OSX than I ever saw on Windows, my apps ultimately run on Linux, so I can put up with the odd crash. Aside from that, I don’t care about the little idiosyncratic differences. There are so many enormous advantages to my MacBook Pro, that my PC has become a doorstop. What I’d really love is for Apple to get a lot more serious about Java, particularly WebStart.
Welcome to the fold, I made the switch over 3 years ago. I had used Linux for a year before making the switch out of sheer desperation. (Never got audio or DVD play back going on my laptop – things may have changed by now).
With OS X I feel like I have my cake and eat it too.
There was only one app I *really* missed and couldn’t find a good substitute for until recently – TextPad.
The substitute on the Mac side is TextMate. In case you were looking :o)
Yeah, TextMate is great. Anything from Omni is great too. And now Skype has 1.5 beta with video support which works good too. I’m getting happier by the day :)
Nods in agreement with ^…anything ‘Omni’ is pretty fantastic.