Move to an iMac?
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They're coming on Intel chips!! and you know someone will figure out how to dual boot them to Windows as a backup.And they look cool!!!
These are similar to what Andy and I have been looking for as a small footprint, nice looking PC for a training center. We're debating about getting into the training business (let us know what you think!) in Orlando and these would save lots of space. The price is a little high, but it's an idea.
I've loved Mac, from my Apple II in high school to a bunch of work in college on Macintoshes. The price has usually been out of my budget and when it wasn't, I was too entrenched in Windows for work. Still we have a 2nd generation iMac for the kitchen that I got when a company failed out from under me. It's nice for iTunes and browsing when I'm cooking.
When I bought a laptop last year, I briefly debated about getting an iBook. I'd had a friend at Peoplesoft that used one in a mostly Windows environment and after all, most of my work is email and web related. Even most of the stuff to run the site. There's a terminal server client I use on my iMac to get to my desktop if needed and there are lots of cool entertainment stuff on the Mac. Plus it just runs. When I put OS X on the iMac, I really liked it. And it's secure because the Mac is less of a target than Windows, which is not a bad reason to switch.
The only thing I really would need for speed is a Query Analyzer equivalent. Someone sent this one, Aquafold, to me and while I haven't tried it, it certainly makes me think that I could work on an iMac.
So I know most of you are Windows guys, a few cross platform people. Are any of you considering or using a Macintosh for daily work, including SQL Server related stuff? Worth considering? Anyone thinking about switching?
Steve Jones
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As an aside I read an article quoting Steve Jobs on the subject of cars.
He was lamenting that the gorgeous concepts you see at a motor show rarely translate into a gorgeous production model. His take was that the iMac, iPod et al only got made because he insisted as CEO that they got made.
He said that the engineers always have one hundred reasons why something shouldn't change and why something new is a bad idea.
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I believe that a has already hacked the Intel code for the Mac and ran it on a vanilla PC... (I saw a snippet on that in a local South African magazine) 😉
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Sorry, that should read "..that a team has..."
And yes, budget has also kept me out of the Apple stable... ;-/
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I borrowed a powerbook from a friend for an afternoon, and had ordered one by close of play the same day.
I still am forced to use Windows at work, but would never consider using anything but Mac at home.
It just works...
The best description I heard was rom the same friend. He always said you could do the same thing on either - some software may cost you money for Windows whilst it was included with a Mac, but you could acheive the same results.
The biggest difference is that you enjoy using the Mac.
I'd recommend one to everyone.
Fee
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My Brother in Law has always had Mac's (he works in the photography and graphic design business and swears by them) I personally think they are great but have never been able to justify the extra expense to purchase one. As lots people seem to say they just run!
I find them so much nicer to use than Windows and they certainly look a lot better, maybe one day, i may just get one.
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I have never really considered switching to a Mac. I thought about Linux instead of Windows but haven't done that either. The main reason for my sticking with the Wintel platform outside of work is the development platform. The type of software I write doesn't require the detail for C/C++ and there is no way to get the latest and greatest .NET Framework for any platform other than Windows. Visual Studio .NET is the best development environment to date and I don't see anyone doing anything except playing catch-up.
The only exception I see is the KDevelop environment. It looks pretty mice and I have been hearing a lot about Ruby lately so I might load up a Linux virtual machine and give it a whirl when I get finished with school.
As far as the hardware platform itself, we don't usually buy whole computers in my house. We have six computers altogether and when we upgrade something in my or my wife's computer the older stuff gets passed down to the kids' machines. I find that it's easier to keep up with newer (not necessarily newest) hardware than trying to find a pre-built PC that doesn't cut corners in some areas or cost a fortune all at once.
[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog -
Interesting posts, by everyone, thank you...
What has happened in my world is that I'm developing software as a permanent employee instead of being a contractor as was the case for many years. That said, I have to support what I write long term.
We all know that programming tools are constantly being upgraded for mostly good reasons to make us more productive and provide the client with more features in each new application.
My current development computer is an Acer Ferrari 4000 laptop running the AMD Turion64 bit processor with 2 Gig of ram. When I begin work in the morning I crank up 3 Virtual Machines. My host operating system is 32 bit Windows XP Pro and my VM's are Windows 2000 Server operating systems. Seems like a lot of extra effort so far, huh? The 3 VM's function as a SQL 2000 Server, a Development Server with Visual Studio and many other development tools, and a special app server that I won't explain in detail, but trust me I needed it on this project.
The payoff for using VM's is that if one should crash, I just go to my latest backup of that VM and start from there. I usually backup the VM's weekly, and use source code control to keep all my code history available and backed up beyond the copy on the VM. When the project is complete, I will make copies of all the VM's and store them as a snapshot of the development computers I used to create the application. Then, some time in the future when a client wants new features added, I can drag out the VM's and start adding the new features with the same computers on which I wrote the application.
What does this have to do with purchasing a Mac? Well, I can choose many different operating systems when I build a VM. For some reason, I don't think Mac is one of them, but I can have most any flavor of Linux or Windows that I require. And if I checked the VMWare site I might find that I could have Mac as well, but I'm not sure
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I want one, but thats just because I'm a geek and I want every shiny new thing.
On the post about VM's, THATS where its at. I don't really want a Mac. I want a shiny new dual core Intel or AMD, that has Zen or similar virtualization built into the processor. Then I can just run VM's for everything and switch between Mac, Linux and Windows at will.
Better still - I want it to be a server that sits in a closet in my house. Then I'll use my linux laptop or a thin client PC and Term Serv into the various machines as needed. Couple that with a very large network attached storage device with backups and I'd be a happy camper.
Oh, but THEN, I can use a browser / client to get to my desktops on all my VM's from anywhere around the world. I don't think we're very far away from someone (Google?) doing this commercially and putting large scale "O/S as a Service" on the web.
Your O/S is going to change dramatically over the next 5 years. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Vista is the last version of desktop Windows that ships. Maybe next to last, with the next version being a floppy with a thin client and a network stack on it for a full "Live" service.
O/S is going to go back to truly meaning "Operating System". It'll be very thin, and you'll never see it again.
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I am a happy macintosh user, I have been since I was in elementary school, on to high school where one of the reasons I was hired on in a special school-to-work program as the IT Network Assistant was that I knew macintoshes, to now where my platform of choice is a iBook. I love the platform, the graphics are fast and slick, the user interface is intuitive, and now I have the added advantage of having a unix core which ads tons of functionality and programs (almost all open source software that is written for Linux will recompile without much trouble on a Unix based mac).
Although I am a loyal mac user, I have a couple of Intel bassed machines at home which run Linux. When I first started working for Hilgraeve, I was using a HP Omnibook that ran Fedora Core Linux. When that omnibook finally died, I was considering buying a cheaper Wintel book and reformating it so that it would run linux, but then decided against it since there would be no guarantees that the hardware would work properlty in Linux (I especially wanted wireless networking which wasn't built into the Omnibook), so I chose to drop the extra cash on a iBook. I would consider it the platform of choice for the developer (primarily I do C#/.net development here in Orlando at the conveyor company, but I am more fond of Java and just got done writing a website in PHP). The mac comes with the development studio already (it will handle Java/Cocoa (which I don't yet know but will soon
and I believe even C++. For .net developers, there is always Mono which will run on a mac (I haven't tried that out yet either, but soon I will have to ). As far as database support is concerned, the mac will make a connection to a SQL database, and as Steve has already pointed out there is software for it already to connect to a MS-SQL database. As far as it working on the intel platform, I have seen reports of people taking (pirated) beta copies of the x86 versions and loading it on regular PC's. I have not heard if it works well or not, but I suspect that it would run almost perfectly. The core unix environment has always been publicly available for free for x86 (darwin) and since that makes up most of what the mac does, the only concern is whether or not Aqua will work OK on your PC (the graphics environment) but even that seems to run OK on a commodity machine. The catch is that once Apple releases the first versions of x86 Mac OSX it will likely have to be hacked to work on a commodity PC. Steve Jobs (who makes lots of bad marketing decisions) has already said (or eluded I am not sure which) that Mac OSX will only run on Macs. Meaning there will be some sort of hardware chip that will tell MacOSX to run on this machine, otherwise the operating system will simply not work. I think that there will be people who will hack this so that you can buy MacOSX and load it on your Dell, but Apple is not going to give it to you easy. As a side, I think Dell has already been asking apple to license it to build x86 computer using MacOSX. Steve, I am sure that you will be able to run windows on your mac in a dual boot type environment. I think the main reason that Apple won't sell its operating system (at least in the begining) is the stability issue. No I am not saying that x86 MacOSX is unstable, but what I am saying is that the reason why the Mac platform has classically been so stable is that the hardware is known to the software manufacturer. Mac hardware is standard and similar for every mac ever built (I mean, if I take Mac OS 7.5.5 most of the computers that will run that version of Mac OS are very similar, same types of hardware). If they let anyone run it that means that there will be the same problems with stability that PC Unix and PC Windows have had for years. Non-standard cheap hardware is the cause more many of the problems with windows today (and that is comming from a Linux/Mac guy). Even my Linux machine is more unstable than the mac!
So I look forward to running MacOSX on my PC at home, even if I have to hack it to work
PS Steve, as a happy resident of florida for a year, I am happy to hear that you are considering opening up a company here in my back yard!
Aleksei ( http://www.elgrecocomputers.net )
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Hi Steve,
I work in the training industry and you've got to make things simple - you want to spend time teaching not on setups and compatibility issues.
If you are going to set up a training centre then I would not recommend that you do it with Macs (unless it's Mac centred of course!) for the following reasons:
1) You want maximum compatibility with the software that you are training on. Since you will be training SQL Server then that will mean PC's, and probably Dell PCs - coz of their cost and that they are a standard in their own right. Virtual PC technology has helped here of course. It's very easy to setup a training room when all you need to do is copy VM disks from DVDs (don't even think of distributing the VM disks via a network it will take all day - USB drives work well too for deployment).
2) You don't want to spend half the course on a Mac\PC crusade with the 99% of Windows people that you would be training.
3) It would cost you a fortune. Training gets worked hard and it gets abused. You need to be able to replace bits cheaply.
YMMV
Best regards
Steve
PS: Shameless plug: Don't forget to take a look at our training procurement and training administration tools if you do decide to do something 🙂
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I like the Mac but it is the really blantently silly things like one button or electronic accoustic clicking mice that drive me away. I can muddle my way through using them to achieve results, a few programs such as Filemaker Pro, Quark Express are mostly their domain but if you know one version you pretty much know the other version.
I will be the first to admit it: I like Windows. I like Microsoft.
We get every type of graphic file for output on can imagine. So i run across some of the gretest nuiances of the differing OS's. But once you know one version the other comes easy. Mac's just seem not to explain why it works to the user it just does it. Utimately its 'us' who make windows better than macs. THere are more of us and therefore a larger pool of technical expertise.
on another note: almost anyone can program in windows, if only marcos or setting up task scheduler and the OS makes it feel important rather than the 'better' Applescript which makes you feel like it is so obvious why did you not do it before.
But, good grand scale programming in windows is although difficult; it is obtainable and scalable much more efficently than in MAC, filemaker pro for example, sure it can make web apps and connect to a Database, but it sucks ass as compared to even using VB6 or vb.NET and direct connections to your SQL tables and stored procedures.
I could almost put forward that Access ,VBA, and IIS5 in win2k would be better, at least cheaper.
Maybe I like feeling superior to others and require to be able to make the best I can afford or offering the best value the market bears for my company, to reflect my smrtness.
My failing might be pride and desire to one day sit on the jedi council. I just don't think anyone would take me seriously if I showed up with an Apple and my one button mouse to click on a screen that shows simple things like buttons and UI that though might look good in a movie do not reflect 'windows' feel.
Not that I do not find misthought out accesories for IBM's, such as natural keyboards, for one. It's the fact that the industry lets one OS perceive as its leaders show; Bill Gates, the affable soft spoken man who brings cures to the world, give you room to make the internet be functional without losing the audience.
While Steve Job's ends up looking like the guy who lets you borrow his tape and movie collection and copy it to your stereo.
Cheers
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I really like my hp laptop, but would be very interested in running a macbook, with the intel. I think I would like have a dual boot system though, so that I could have options depending upon what I need to do. As far as a query analyser equivilent, I recommend dbvisualizer. It is java based so it will work on any system, and as long as you can find a java driver you can connect to most any database. Here is the link
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I love Mac. They are pretty, work well and the interface just makes sense. Everytime I use one even if it is for a minute or two I miss it. I never feel that way about Windows. Most people don't buy the same industrial office furniture for their home so why is a computer operating system different? Because some of us decide to(or believe they need to) work well beyond regular work hours to maintain their job. Me too. Oh well
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A friend just bought a PowerPC based dual-proc Mac and got me to thinking...
An article on how Apple's the only computer maker to care about the end user, Windows is increasingly bowing to the demands of the corporate IT manager, got me to thinking some more...
With the Intel Mac announcement, paired with the plan to get a laptop upgrade in a year or so, I'm now considering Mac as an option. I've been very happy with my AMD64, though, and since I'm convinced 64-bit is about to turn the corner from running 32-bit apps well to running 64-bit apps exceptionally I'll have a hard time committing to a 32-bit box, pretty Mac or not.
The notion of VMing a Tiger instance, however, is quite appealing. I've never so much cared what the externals look like as much as what shows up on the screen...
Happy decision making! Mine's financially delayed about a year, so I can watch the market and user response to help mine.
But boss, why must the urgent always take precedence over the important?
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