Why Macs instead of AMD or Intel ? Just curious

Rails
41

On 2/1/06, Dylan S. [email protected] wrote:

I read somewhere that all of the core Rails team uses TextMate on OS
X. Not 100% sure if that’s true or not but if so I think it makes
sense. I like Rails because it’s very powerful and elegant and doesn’t
get in my way. I like OS X for exactly the same reasons. I wonder if
the Rails team makes the same comparison?

OK. I now officially hate this thread. I’ve been looking for a new
laptop and thought that I had made a decision. Now I have to evaluate
the Apple products more closely.

Being lazy, I’ll ask a couple of basic questions. Here’s your chance
to play salesman and swing me back into the Mac world, having left it
years ago for Windows / Linux.

  1. Just how awesome is TextMate? I generally use vi, jEdit, or
    Eclipse / Radrails. I really like the perspective-view aspect of
    Eclipse, where I can very quickly find and switch between various
    files and resources.

  2. Are there any problems I should be aware of regarding support for a
    standard two-button + wheel mouse? There’s not a chance that I’m
    going back to a one-button mouse.

Convince me please.

– James

42

I just ordered a new MacBook Pro with a 30" monitor. First mac ever for
me.

My logic is this: I first learned of Ruby 2 years ago and ignored it
because
PHP was working just fine for me and now that I’ve made an effort to
look at
Ruby, I feel like a smuck for not doing it back then.

Same thing applies to this purchase, how will I know if I’m missing out
on
something better, just because my current PC works fine, if I don’t
actually
give it a try.

My blog dives a little deeper on the subject but I will have to try real
hard to have an open mind about the Mac since I’ve “hated” it for so
long.
That and my wife would kill me for spending so much and then not using
it.

Bob

http://www.railtie.net/

PS: Does this mean I can apply for a job at 37signals now?

From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dylan S.
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 10:56 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Rails] Re: Re: Why Macs instead of AMD or Intel ? Just
curious

I read somewhere that all of the core Rails team uses TextMate on OS
X. Not 100% sure if that’s true or not but if so I think it makes
sense. I like Rails because it’s very powerful and elegant and doesn’t
get in my way. I like OS X for exactly the same reasons. I wonder if
the Rails team makes the same comparison?

Here’s an interesting snippet from the Rails blog: First some guy
weighs in on news that a new user manual was released for TextMate.
Look who responded to him.

Louis said 1 day later:
I’m planning on reading this over the holidays to convince me to buy a
Mac - just for TextMate. Of course, my life would be so much simpler if
you’d just release a Windows version - or work with another programmer
to do it, or something. I’m going crazy here without it. _Sigh_s with
longing.

David Heinemeier H. said 1 day later:
Louis, consider TextMate the tip of the iceberg. Once you’ve switch
over, it’s just one of the many wonderful aspects of OS X. You’ll thank
Allan not so much for TextMate as for making you do the switch :wink:

Soooooo… Apple is eventually going to buy Ruby and Rails, close it’s
source, and require it’s run on OSX.
I know this would never happen… but c’mon people… do you not see the
eminent world domination of Apple !?

Keep it freeeeeeeeeee !

On 1/29/06, Peter De Berdt [email protected] wrote:

As laptops go, I miss my ultralight Thinkpad (it was an old 240,
one of the best little laptops I ever owned), but I like the fact
that I have Unix under the hood without Cygwin (uugggghhh!) or
being forced into spending hours configuring X and struggling to
work with KDE instead. OS X has seemed to hit a sweet spot, and I
expect once they’ve worked out how to get Windows and FreeBSD
booting on the intel Apple kit, all my hardware will move over 100%
to Apple hardware on the desktop side. I’ll stick with HP and Dell
for servers though. I probably spend 80% of my time on OS X now.

Yeah, well, if you’re a whizkid and can get OS X running on a MacTel,
you’ll get it for free (and can even buy you another two MacBooks),
the contest is at $8000 for the moment.

http://winxponmac.com/The%20Contest.html

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

Rails mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

43

  1. Just how awesome is TextMate? I generally use vi, jEdit, or
    Eclipse / Radrails. I really like the perspective-view aspect of
    Eclipse, where I can very quickly find and switch between various
    files and resources.

  2. Are there any problems I should be aware of regarding support for a
    standard two-button + wheel mouse? There’s not a chance that I’m
    going back to a one-button mouse.

Convince me please.

– James

  1. it all depends…i use eclipse as my primary tool at work…doing
    projects with probable 1000 classes or so…Eclipse make it very easy to
    navigate, search throught the code…
    However…textmate just feels so right…Its like writing your code
    covering in thick cream and chocolate…

  2. no problems…

44
  1. TextMate is a nice text editor, probably closest in feel to jEdit
    in the list you gave. It’s not a full-fledged IDE like Eclipse/
    RadRails (nor does it pretend to be). On the other hand, it’s not as
    bare-metal as vi or emacs. I am functional in any of them – TextMate
    just happens to be the most comfortable for me right now.

I agree with an earlier post on this thread, though – TextMate is
just the tip of the iceberg. The Mac OS isn’t just about eye candy or
style (although it has those in spades) – it’s also an industrial-
strength OS that let’s me work in the GUI if that’s desirable, but it
also (crucially) lets me drop down to the command line whenever I
want. It has all of the power of a Un*x OS under the hood. Want to
log in to a remote box? Open a Terminal and ssh. Want to copy some
files to that remote box? Same Terminal - use ftp. Or sftp. Or scp.
Or rsync. There’s no PuTTY, no dual-booting to Linux, no (shudder)
Cygwin to muck around with. It all just works.

  1. I have used all manner of non-Apple mice with all of my Macs. No
    problem. Ironically, the only one I refuse to use is Apple’s own
    Mighty Mouse. My latest is the Logitech V270 Bluetooth. Open the
    package, insert the batteries, turn on the mouse, pair with my laptop
    – done. No muss, no fuss, no stretch marks. There’s a sizable
    instruction sheet and CD that come with the mouse. Both are worthless
    (because they’re unnecessary) for Mac users. Windows users, on the
    other hand, have some serious hoops to jump through.

Wanna know why I bought my Powerbook? When I close the lid – it
sleeps. When I open the lid – it wakes up, within a couple seconds.
And when it wakes up – it resumes whatever it was doing when I put
it to sleep. Downloading a file? Resumed. Building an XCode project?
Resumed. It just works.

45

James L. wrote:

  1. Just how awesome is TextMate? I generally use vi, jEdit, or
    Eclipse / Radrails. I really like the perspective-view aspect of
    Eclipse, where I can very quickly find and switch between various
    files and resources.

TextMate is awesome in a minimalist sorta way. Not that it doesn’t have
a ton of features, I just discovered Command-T (file-switching) a couple
days ago. Worst case scenario, fire up Eclipse on OS X.

  1. Are there any problems I should be aware of regarding support for a
    standard two-button + wheel mouse? There’s not a chance that I’m
    going back to a one-button mouse.

None. Multi-button mice on OS X gives you a ton of cool features too,
such at dashboard and expose from the mouse. In fact, Apple now makes a
4-button mouse with a 360-degree scroll ball (Mighty Mouse). That’s
what I’m currently using.

Happy shopping!

-Brasten

46

My Apple is better than your orange!

j/k – been years since I last saw this debate and I never thought I’d
see it here. but, fwiw, I’m on the edge but massively paranoid. I’ve
always been a Mac guy, but lately I’ve been a Mac guy who ran Windows
because Steve Jobs did too many unpleasant things to my hindmost
orifice. I’m waiting to see what he does to you all, and whether
you’ll still be able to walk afterwards, before I make any drastic
leaps. that being said I think the current direction of the company is
the coolest yet, and I can’t wait until some plucky hacker makes it
possible for me to run OS X on any damn hardware I want.

On 2/1/06, John D. [email protected] wrote:

Rails mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

–
Giles Goat Boy

http://gilesmakesmusic.blogspot.com
http://gileswritescode.blogspot.com

47

Giles B. wrote:

Steve Jobs did too many unpleasant things to my hindmost
orifice.

Like what?

I can’t wait until some plucky hacker makes it
possible for me to run OS X on any damn hardware I want.

Amen to that!

Joe

48

IMOH the OS is just a tool. Which one you use depends on your mind set,
skill set, how much bit twiddling you really want to do and what’s
available. Personally, I’m agnostic and use what’s available. But when
given a choice I’ll usually go with the OS I know better.

In my experience I’ve found that OS bigots can rarely quantify how
exactly their OS is better than any other. The argument always boils
down to “It’s what I know”.

The other thing I’ve noticed in this business is that if you don’t
specialize your chance of becoming extinct is a lot less. After all,
how many Pascal positions do you see in the classified adds? (Monster
for you kids)

So the $0.02 worth of advice from the wayback machine is; The more you
know the more your worth. That includes how to use multiple OS’s.

49

Brasten S. wrote:

days ago. Worst case scenario, fire up Eclipse on OS X.

Looks like Intel Macs don’t run eclipse yet. Supposed to be fixed in
Eclipse 3.2.

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=98889

John

50

On Feb 1, 2006, at 11:28 AM, James L. wrote:

Convince me please.

You’re going to be so happy.

As soon as you say what you said above, it’s
already over! You know you want it, just go
for it.

You sound like a impatient young woman urging
her timid young boyfriend along… :slight_smile:

–
– Tom M.

51

On 1/28/06, Sean S. [email protected] wrote:

I read somewhere that all of the core Rails team uses TextMate on OS
X. Not 100% sure if that’s true or not but if so I think it makes
sense.

It’s true. Right from the source: http://www.rubyonrails.org/down

See the “Editors” section at the bottom of the page.

The problem I have is that recently, I’ve been touting “open source” so
much, that I might find it difficult to presuade my boss that it’s worth
the
â?¬37. Perhaps proprietary software isn’t all bad. (As long as I can save
in
UTF-8.)

:wink:

Doug

52

On 2/1/06, James L. [email protected] wrote:

  1. Just how awesome is TextMate? I generally use vi, jEdit, or
    Eclipse / Radrails. I really like the perspective-view aspect of
    Eclipse, where I can very quickly find and switch between various
    files and resources.

I first thought, “Hey, I have BBEdit. It can’t REALLY be much better
than
that.” I’m currently six days into my TextMate 30-day trial, and my
officemate has heard me say “Holy crap!”, “Wow, that’s cool!” or “YES!
It
CAN do that!” so many times, he’s throwing stray office supplies over
the
cubicle wall at me. It’s THAT great. BBEdit is second-class next to this

for coding/scripting. BBEdit might have a few more features overall, but
none that I’ve needed for RoR or (r)html. I feel like a kid at Christmas
time.

  1. Are there any problems I should be aware of regarding support for a

standard two-button + wheel mouse? There’s not a chance that I’m
going back to a one-button mouse.

Nope. No problems. Buy the standard USB mouse of your choice and plug it
in.
If it doesn’t work (and I just know it will) buy a utility called “USB
Overdrive” for cheap and forget it. Buy a Mac. You won’t regret it.

Doug

53

On Feb 2, 2006, at 12:20 AM, matthew clark wrote:

Truth is, not so easy. To make a long story short, you have to
identify and install a bunch of dependencies on your own. Fink and
apt are hopelessly broken on the Intel machine. Ports would be
better, but it needs rsync, which doesn’t work. Others may take
issue with this, but as a Mac newbie, I was lost.

Well there’s your problem. :wink: Just kidding.
Have you tried darwinports. I think you will find it much better. I
left fink years ago, won’t go back.

However, you have been given a double whammy. New to Mac and everyone
else is new to Intel on Mac.
It may take some time to work through the transition pains.

Jim F.

54

I’ll wade in here. I’ve been on Ubuntu for 1.5 years, linux for near 5.
On
Monday I had a new job, and a new Intel mac. After two days, my
feelings
are mixed towards the Mac. I can clearly see the “wow factor” goodies
that
non-developers point to as reasons that Macs are better, and yes, the
gui is
nice if you like nice fade effects on windows and icons that bounce
around.

But, what really matters? How easy is it to get Rails up and going on
Tiger
on an Intel Mac? How easy is it to get sqlite running? mysql?
lighttpd?

Truth is, not so easy. To make a long story short, you have to identify
and
install a bunch of dependencies on your own. Fink and apt are
hopelessly
broken on the Intel machine. Ports would be better, but it needs rsync,
which doesn’t work. Others may take issue with this, but as a Mac
newbie, I
was lost.

All of those dependencies have their own idea of what is a good bin
directory, so plan on exporting your path a lot. (If you don’t know what
that means, good luck)
/sw/bin:/opt/bin::/opt/local/bin:/usr/local/share/bin – I’m not making
this
stuff up.

Yes, we are developers, and we can figure all of this stuff out, so
maybe it
is worth it because the GUI is so intuitive. I like the Mac system I
have
now, seeing that it is usable, and you will too. Although, with a new
job
that has heavy demands, things get fudged and quirks get compensated
for. I
still don’t have sqlite. Someday I’ll get to it and get it working.
Until
then, I’ll work around it. Living like that though, is not living with
an
“easier to use” OS. So, like I say, my feelings are mixed. Tiger is
very
user friendly, and for email, IM, office tasks, etc…, it beats any
LInux
,hands down. But, comming from LInux, wanting to do programmer type
things,
Linux is more predictable, less tweaked, and makes installing things
like
Rails and sqlite much simpler.

matt

55

matthew
> But, what really matters? How easy is it to get Rails up and
going on
> Tiger on an Intel Mac? How easy is it to get sqlite running?
mysql?
> lighttpd?

As easy as downloading Locomotive:
locomotive.sourceforge.net/

Alain

56

Like discontinuing support for third-party hardware developers like
Power Computing, like the way you had to buy all new apps to move to
Tiger, etc.

Have to echo the sentiment that choosing sides in an OS battle makes
you the weak kind of specialist. (Strong specialist knows the
technology inside out, weak specialist just hides from any other
version than the version they feel safe with, etc.)

I hope Apple has the good sense to realize that adopting the most
hackable OS architecture and the most hackable hardware architecture
equals being hacker-friendly. I’m once bitten twice shy with them, but
I have to admit, I borrowed a new Powerbook from work a while back and
absolutely loved it.

On 2/1/06, Joe [email protected] wrote:

Joe

–
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Rails mailing list
[email protected]
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–
Giles Goat Boy

http://gilesmakesmusic.blogspot.com
http://gileswritescode.blogspot.com