Advice on Mac versus PC ?

rubyonrails-talk
21

> I know it was mentioned textmate IDE for rails ...

I wish that you don't purchase a Mac to only use Textmate. You should have bigger goals for investing in a Mac or at least using it more than to run Textmate. In short, you should evaluate your goals as well as your budget constraints in making your purchasing decision.

I do have a general favorable impression of mac, and that's just one aspect of it. I have been sort of obsessed with Ruby and Rails. I also wonder if having some familiarity with mac software might help my IT resume in general ..

22

I saw there are some u-tube videos on dual booting with vmware,

? I'm not sure what you mean: VMWare just runs as an application under MacOS. You install other operating systems under it. So, for instance, I'm using all my Mac apps plus I have a window open with an OpenSolaris desktop and apps, or Ubuntu, or Windows.

Perhaps you're thinking of Boot Camp, which is a dual-boot setup.

If I got a mac, I could possibly set up my older HP laptop to run Ubuntu, it has 500 meg of ram .. I

If I had a 3-year-old laptop with only 500m memory and a bad CD drive, I'd call it a doorstop and dump it.

that way I'd have ITunes on the mac and could still play with a serious linux distro

Get the Mac and VMWare and you can play with as many distros as you have disk space for, while you're listening to your music :slight_smile:

23

Hassan Schroeder wrote:

If I had a 3-year-old laptop with only 500m memory and a bad CD drive, I'd call it a doorstop and dump it.

Whereas if I had one, I'd do something useful with it :stuck_out_tongue:

My router/firewall is a dual P2-350 with 400mb ram and it's been working fine with gentoo on it for years and years. It never overheats, it's almost silent and I almost never have to touch it :slight_smile:

24

? I'm not sure what you mean: VMWare just runs as an application under MacOS. You install other operating systems under it. So, for instance, I'm using all my Mac apps plus I have a window open with an OpenSolaris desktop and apps, or Ubuntu, or Windows.

I guess people also use VMWare on IBM PC's to dual boot linux and windows ..

Is the VMWare you use free ?

25

I guess people also use VMWare on IBM PC's to dual boot linux and windows ..

1) it's *not* "dual boot" -- dual boot means you're choosing which OS      to run, and only one at at time; VMWare lets you run multiple guest      OSs simultaneously along with your "host" OS.

2) VMWare has desktop versions for Win/Linux/MacOS. I run VMWare      on my SuSE desktop to host Windows and other distros for testing.

Is the VMWare you use free ?

Nope, but at US$60 extremely reasonably priced for what it does, IMO.

26

Hi,

I have a few arguments (some philosophical, some practical), for you to THIMK about.

1- I'm a Windows user. Why? phy - I think I'm just in the middle: not so open like Linux (which pretend to run and work with everywhere), and not so closed as OS/X which is TOTALLY platform dependent. pra - I'm an AMD fan regular user (they are cheaper), a Mac costs twice here then everywhere else, thanks to government taxes.

2 - I'm a happy windows user for years, with a few tries on Linux, but always back to Windows. phy - Laziness pra - Things simply don't work on Linux out of the box: once I need to buy 3 web cams, to get one working (Ubuntu), and I couldn't use it on the "Messenger like" Linux software. Another one: where in the hell things you download and install goes? I need to download the stuff i choose again and again (OK it is laziness)... Look, I'm using Windows XP SP 3, installed for more then a year and man believe me I' download a LOT. My Win-AMD station still working fine. Most of the time the problem is on the software around and people blame Windows ! Firefox 3 is driving me crazy for instance. I think I will be back to 2, or give Opera a try.

3 - About iTunes, well... Sorry for you. phy - there is a Zillion of open stuff to do the same (OK may not so cute). pra - iAnything costs a LOT.

4 - Better developing on Mac then Windows ? Well, it is like the old question: Which is the best text processor? which leads to the ancient answer: It is the one that bast feet you! phy - I don't buy it pra - If you are an IDE guy? Use Netbeans. If you are a Command line + editor guy use Console + Komodo edit, and be happy

The only draw back on Rails World with Windows is that most of the time, Rails developers (which unfortunately most of the time are Mac users) tend to ignore 90% of the market (don't ask me why), so, there are somethings that you will need to wait a few months to get working good on Windows (recent experiences: Merb, which was not Rails but now it is and they fixed that before the "merge"; and CouchDB, which I'm still waiting a decent Windows version which I don't need to do by myself from sources, to give it a try).

Good look with your decision !

All the best.

27

My Win-AMD station still working fine. Most of the time the problem is on the software around and people blame Windows ! Firefox 3 is driving me crazy for instance. I think I will be back to 2, or give Opera a try.

I have Firefox 3 running perfectly on every operating system. Must be the software again right?

3 - About iTunes, well… Sorry for you. phy - there is a Zillion of open stuff to do the same (OK may not so cute). pra - iAnything costs a LOT.

iTunes is free. iLife is free with every consumer Mac. iWork is $79 for a complete office suite that works very well. How much is Microsoft Office?

4 - Better developing on Mac then Windows ? Well, it is like the old question: Which is the best text processor? which leads to the ancient answer: It is the one that bast feet you! phy - I don’t buy it pra - If you are an IDE guy? Use Netbeans. If you are a Command line + editor guy use Console + Komodo edit, and be happy

IDEs are a personal preference, true. Most Rails developers seem to like something that’s slim, fast and reliable. Netbeans for me is bloated, extremely slow and crashes more than a drunk driving a car (at least it still does on Windows for me, but that must be the software again).

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

28

Don't forget there's an XML file in your iTunes library (probably in the "my music" folder) that has your playlists and such. You'd have to move that tp the mac or what ever you get. And if you plug in the USB drive into a mac the "drive" letters might be different. Find/ replace? HTH

John.

29

>> I have a HP laptop that is not quite 3 years old. I've downloaded >> alot of stuff, and the machine seems to run alot slower than it

used

>> to. It takes along time to boot, and it's gotten really bad, though

I

>> do have AVG. > > Backup, format and re-install windows. Every computer needs this now
> and > again. I do that to my desktop about every 3 months, keeps it

running

> like new, plus you'll have the experience for when a hard-disk dies.

You gotta be kidding.

I did it about every 6 months on my regularly used (Windows) computers--this was back in the day when I used Windows 95 and 98. It definitely was required for Windows and/or the mix of applications I used.

To the OP: I think you know that PCs today can run Linux (just has to be installed unless you find a pre-installed version), and then, with Linux installed, I wouldn't expect a Mac with Linux to be any better than a PC with Linux (with the possible exception of some different applications available).

Randy Kramer

30

Here's some other thoughts I had on macs after looking at this page and browsing around some sections on the bottom: http://developer.apple.com/macosx/architecture/index.html

I think it might be cool sometime to maybe do some programming with ITunes if I could think of some cool projects. I never download all of my podcasts automatically, but sometimes I might be interested in knowing which of my favorite podcasts have updated as I am more interested in some than others and looking at each one individually is time consuming, maybe there's some other things I might think of at some point.

I like the idea that MAC OS probably comes with a linux C++ compiler and maybe I could write some ruby gems in C++.

If the MAC has some decent free API's for audio, video, or other peripherals, I might want to play around with stuff of that sort.

All that kind of stuff could potentially help me build my resume up a bit and be interesting ..

I looked at the MAC laptop that has 2 gig of memory for a round $1300 that looked interesting ..

31

One other thing that I am curious about is if I could put together text to speech utilities on a Mac using free stuff or what's already there ? I bought the book 'practical ruby projects' and from some stuff in there I did a simple utility that just runs from a dos shell. Anytime you highlight text and copy it into the past buffer it reads the text using some text to speech .dll .. so I can have it read email, stuff on the web, whatever ..

I'd also be curious about free speech to text stuff on a MAC ? I never got that far on windows, though I played around with some stuff, it was a bit more complicated ...

32

One other thing that I am curious about is if I could put together text to speech utilities on a Mac using free stuff or what's already there ?

There is a text to speech api that is part of os x

Fred

33

Oh the memories, a small history lesson, this is something from a year before Windows was introduced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0FtgZNOD44#t=3m6s

Things have considerably improved over the years, but back then it was groundbreaking.