MacBook?
 

At work, my boss suddenly says "here´s your new machine"... and now i´m sitting here on a MacBook, and i´ve never touched a mac before... any suggestions? :confused: :D :p (no i can´t throw it)

-thondal-

Love it and cherish it.

trying to. I havent had much time to program lately, it has mostly been 3d (blender) so i have to see it as a good sign that i now have a mac to do my 3d on... but the thing is, i´m not allowed to install anything on this computer untill I can master it completely...

but just found a huge list of video tutorials on atomiclearning.com so i´m hoping they are going to give me a push in the right direction.

-thondal-

You'll eventually get to love it:

Suggestion: Apple loves updates, and every update is a substantial improvement over the previous version (no matter the program). You should always be up to date with your system and apple applications.

Also very important: In the "applications" folder, inside the "Utilities folder" there are many useful things. Open all programs and see what they do. Especially, open Disk Utility, and see how you can "Repair permissions". Once a month, you should do that. Whenever you encounter any problems with your mac (ANY problem at all) this will fix things in 99% of the occasions.

Yeah, well, it won't fix the wake problem on my G3, and neither will the 40,000 other solutions offered by the other 100,000 people having wake problems. ;)

Apple provides great free developer tools. If you haven't already, sign up for an Apple Developer Connection account and download Xcode.

For web development, you'll want the excellent BBEdit text editor (or if you're not ready to dole out cash, TextWrangler is a free alternative).

I'm looking to buy a MacBook Pro. Expensive buggers... are they worth it?

I still have no idea why people love macs. They are just like any other computer. Its not like OS X is great either. It always trying to hide the underlieing os form the user(good for averge users, bad for advanced users). App packages were a nice idea, but just deleteing them to remove software wont get rid of all the programs files. This is because when you run a new app package for the first time it will usually install or update libs and write config files that are deep into the file system.

Xcode is ok, it does not stand up against Visual Studio. Yes it free, but most users dont care if the dev tools are free. Some apple software is very buggy, you always wait for at least two updates to be released before you upgrade to or buy new versions of apple software.

The only reason i got a mac was so i could test some of my java software on it, mess about with some unix stuff and find out why everyone thinks OS X is so great. Its now relegated to being used to run subversion on linux(which is does very well).

The only reason that i think they sell so well is because some people think they are aesthetically pleasing to look at. There is also delusion that OS X is immune from viruses and from hackers, which its not. There is also the problem over the quality of the hardware produced. In some cases apple just ignore the problem until enough users are pissed off. Just like most other hardware companies.

Their customer service is not great either. I had a slight problem about two months after i brought my mac, i phoned up the customer service and it was just a joke. It ended up that one of the memory modules was bad so i ended up replacing it myself as apple were in denial that i had a hardware problem. They just said install OS X again(even though i told them i had done that after the first time i called them). This is the same standard of service you would get from dell or hp, so nothing special about apple.

In the end its just a PC, nothing to get all excited about just because it has an apple logo on it. All computers have their problems and apples are just the same. Im am not saying you should not buy one, just dont think the grass is greener on the other side.

There is some historical basis for the preference of Macs by professional graphics designers. The first PC that had really nice graphics was the Commodore 64. The first one (PC) to really accommodate professionals was the Mac. There's a lot to graphical reproduction if one is moving things from a screen to a medium like a magazine page. Mac and Mac software addressed these issues. Reputations, deserved or otherwise, tend to persist beyond their actual maintenance.

OS X actually hides less of the underlying OS from the user. If you want to get your hands dirty, launch the Terminal application. Uninstalling software on a mac is as easy as dragging it to the trash, since most apps are self-contained--there might be a few preference files left over, but nothing more than a few kb. If that sort of thing really concerns you, you can search and delete, or get AppZapper.

Xcode is an excellent IDE. I have used Visual Studio, and in my opinion, it doesn't stand up to Xcode. Explain yourself.

I'm not sure why you think Apple software is buggy; care to give an example? I use a host of Apple software regularly, including Mail, iTunes, iPhoto, and Xcode, among others. I have never been bothered by bugs.

OS X is virtually immune to viruses; just as 95% of the world runs Windows, 95% (or more) of viruses are for Windows. You will be hard pressed to find a harmful virus for mac; in the 8 years I have used a mac, I have never had used antivirus software, and never needed to. And spyware simply doesn't exist for the mac.

Apple has its problems, like any other company. And in the end, as you say, the grass may not be greener on the other side. But I would still point out that a number of your claims may be incorrect, or at least exaggerated.