Advice on Mac versus PC?

Rails
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

On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 11:51 AM, [email protected]
[email protected] wrote:

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:

–
Hassan S. ------------------------ [email protected]

23

? 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 ?

24

Hassan S. 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:

25

On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 1:07 PM, [email protected]
[email protected] wrote:

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.

–
Hassan S. ------------------------ [email protected]

26

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

27

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.

28

On Friday 26 December 2008 06:52 am, Peter De Berdt wrote:

On 26 Dec 2008, at 12:33, Matt H. wrote:

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 K.

I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I created a video
instead.–with apologies to Cicero, et.al.

29

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.

30

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 …

31

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 …

32

On 31 Dec 2008, at 23:12, “[email protected]” [email protected]
wrote:

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:

=3m6s

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

On 01 Jan 2009, at 09:55, Frederick C. wrote:

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

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 …

Best regards

Peter De Berdt