scott.hodson.blog

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Well, I finally made the switch…

My bro-in-law had an unused G4 350MHz sitting around, and I’ve always wanted to play with and experiment with OS X, especially since writing write-once-hope-it-runs-anywhere (WOHIRA) Java desktop software and launching Mac versions without even testing it on a Mac (they always seem to work anyways, yay!). Also, when I build websites sometimes I get “it doesn’t work on Safari” comments, primarily from my web designer friends/partners, not that they don’t matter.

So, in general, I am very impressed. There’s certainly a Mac way of thinking/approaching computing that I’m not used to and need to learn a bit more to get more productive on it, but I was pleased with the ease of use and thoughfulness of the overall experience. And I got to reminisce with a UNIX command line again and play with running Apache/PHP/MySql (XAMP?) on it as well in addition to getting Eclipse 3.1 up and running. While this Mac is pretty old, at 350MHz it is rather responsive in terms of reading e-mail, IM, web browsing, etc. Just about everything I tried to do was plenty responsive for my needs, though the video card chugs along when I’m trying move and quickly re-open lots of windows around (genie mode). So this machine will suffice for now, until my bro-in-law needs it back, or my other bro-in-law needs it back (the actual owner of the Mac). If so, well then the upgraded Mac Minis are pretty attractive options at this stage.

As for Windows Vista, I will be interested in working with the next demo when it comes out, supposedly tomorrow. I’ve generally avoided the Longhorn betas so far because the launch has been so far away and, especially the ones that had WinFS, they were extremely slow. Also, I’m not a big fan of doing some company’s QA for them unless they are going to give me the product for free or at a discount. But I think I will give this next rev a try, especially now that I have MSDN download access again, thanks to Ubero’s joining the Empower ISV program for $375 (includes 5 MSDN Universal subs). The running joke with the name change to “Vista” is V=virus, I=infected, S=spyware, T=trojan horse, A=adware, which brings me to my next point…

I was recently asked to help a friend fix or diagnose his PC which was freezing up on boot-up. So I took his PC, pulled out the hard drive, put it in my HDD enclosure, attached it to my other PC, and virus/adware scanned it. It had 4 viruses, 500+ spyware candidates. The frustrating thing for him was he thought he was safe. He had Norton anti-virus (but the subscription expired 6 months ago) and installed Stopzilla, a supposed spyware blocker that totally failed for him too. He’s not a tech guy, he and his family use it for family/general purposes. I patched it (XP SP2 and all other updates), told him to renew his Norton sub, and installed AdAware and Spybot S&D and gave it back to him with a reluctant “good luck”. I’ve come to the conclusion that many frustrated PC users have: maintaining Windows PCs on the internet requires tech savvy, beyond most people’s ability. It’s almost as if you should have a license or certifiaction to prove you can handle running and maintaining a solid Wintel box on the Internet, like a driver’s license for Wintel usage on the Internet.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that when my kids get old enough to download programs (spyware) or get e-mail (viruses) I’m switching them to a Mac. However, since I do so much .NET/SQL Server development, I could never fully “switch” to Mac no matter how well my future explorations into Mac go. I think we’ll just become a dual-OS family and take advantage of both platform’s strengths. Competition is good…