It’s official | I’ve switched to Apple

August 22, 2006

OK, first off, I haven’t posted in a while and I apologize about that but, get ready for a lengthy one. I have some exciting news.

So as the title says, I’ve officially switched over to the ‘white’ side, gave my previous laptop to my mom and picked up a Macbook Pro. I took the suggestion from Amos on my previous post and decided to get a reburbished one because it would allow me to get a better laptop for close to the same price as a lower end one. So real quick, here’s the spec’s:

Macbook Pro
2.0 gHz
1 GB RAM
100 GB HD
Superdrive (DVD-R/RW)
15″ monitor (I didn’t actually want the bigger one, too big for me)

I decided to spend a bit more for one b/c I know I’ll use the crap out of it and I’m essentially going to replace my desktop at home with it as well. So, I got it on Friday and started going to town on it all weekend. Here’s what I’ve done so far, software wise with it:

- Firefox (a must)

- iWork ‘06

- Newfire RSS (went ahead and bought it I liked it so much)

- Missing Sync for Windows Mobile (so I can still sync iCal and Address Book with my Cingular 8125)

- Parallels (again, bought it, it’s worked amazing…I’ve loaded XP Pro already, been able to network drives, install app’s, install networked printers, anything I need for work)

- you control: desktops (another freakin’ amazing app that is allowing me to work with 3 desktops (could be more but 3 is good for me)…I got a work desktop, play desktop, and a windows dedicated desktop, using Parallels for that! Man, that’s awesome.)

- Textmate - For all of my developing needs (more on that one later)

- Bootcamp - I went ahead and setup Bootcamp, too, because from what I’ve read running any sort of games through Parallels is sluggish at best. So I setup a 20 GB partition for Bootcamp to load a few games on and that is all that will be used for.

- I also did all the obvious and got Itunes, Iphoto, etc. setup and working. I’m loving it all.

- Keyboard and mouse - You think I’m crazy, right? Well, I had JUST bought one that had been working like crap and talked the Circuit City chick to return it even though it was 15 days past due (yeah, i’m smooth) and replaced it with this one for Mac.

I haven’t even had a chance to play around with iWeb, GarageBand, or iDVD at all b/c I’ve been doing all this other stuff. The last thing that I need to setup is my development setup. Like I said before, I got Textmate, but I’m not sure how to setup a good development structure for working on Rails projects and maybe some CSS/XHTML work. Any pointers/links out there? Was considering getting a hand from my friends over at Trabian if I can free up some time this week.

Man, it’s been a crazy past few days hammering away on this thing but I am honestly loving it. Once you figure out the nuances, it’s a lot of fun and what is weird to me is that it seems like I’ve joined in some sort of fraternity or something. I find myself checking out TUAW page often and interested in the Apple section of Digg now, too.

I guess the Mac Cult is taking over…

Technorati Tags: apple, macbook pro, parallels, bootcamp, textmate, newsfire, iwork, firefox, missing sync, obsessions