Mac SW versus PC SW

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idcm's picture

This is a message to all you Drupalers that are on a Mac. We are in need of a new computer at my house. Do I go with another PC or a Mac? If I go Mac, I have to run Parallels so that I can flip back and forth between windows and mac to accommodate the Adobe SW in which I have a lot of money invested. So this begs the question, what SW out on a Mac that I can't get on a PC? What Mac only SW do you use as Drupalers? Is the switch worth it (processing power aside)?

thanks
c

Comments

I love having a Mac for

BrockBoland's picture

I love having a Mac for development.

  • MAMP (http://www.mamp.info/) makes it really easy to run a local web host
  • TextMate (http://macromates.com/) is about the greatest text editor available today (unless you're an emacs or vi person, of course)
  • The Unix sub-system means you can do anything you like from the command line (I'm partial to iTerm: http://iterm.sourceforge.net/)
  • I'm told that git is a little wonky on Windows, but haven't used it myself

Less development, more general-purpose usefulness:

A qualified "it depends"...

jmcintyre's picture

Disclosure: I'm a Mac person.

I'd say there are other questions to consider when you're trying to determine whether a Mac is "worth it."

What else besides the Adobe software will you be using? Are there other apps you have, or would like to have, that are Windows or Mac only?

Who else in your family will be using the computer, and for what? If the computer is used heavily on the Internet by a bunch of people in your family, will upkeep fall on your shoulders? If so, are you more comfortable fixing Mac or Windows issues?

Which platform are you more at comfortable with for everyday use? Which do you just like better, and what is that worth to you?

The biggie, of course: what fits within your budget?

The Mac-only apps I use the most (for Drupal work, anyway) are Coda and BBEdit. Both are great code editors. I'm sure there are quite a few code editors for Windows too, but I feel much more productive with them.

I think that's the most important deciding factor for me: I'm much more productive and happier overall on a Mac. Although Win 7 is a big improvement, I still prefer the user interface on the Mac, and I prefer the look and physical feel of the Mac to any Windows computers I've tried.

Hope this helps!

This may help to make your decision easier....

dsachdev's picture

http://georgecoghill.com/blog/482/adobe-software-switching-windows-mac/

Switching your Adobe license from Windows to Mac....

A vote for the other side

ahoymehearties's picture

I have to cast my vote for what has now because the dark horse OS, Windows (how did that happen?). First of all, you're at absolutely no deficiency when it comes to Drupal development on a Windows PC. You have the Adobe suite, and beyond that, you can use WinSCP for FTP work, Poderosa (or PuTTy) for shell work, and Notepad++, which has very high capability for extensions as a text editor. Oh right, and WAMP (counterpart to Mac's MAMP) for local development.

Windows 7 has proven very capable for me, and some of the effects is uses for at-a-glance usage help me see what I'm doing with ease, to greater effect than exposé.

thanks everyone for the info.

idcm's picture

thanks everyone for the info. Very useful.

I use both

valeriod's picture

I have a Dell laptop running XP and a Mac. I run VMware Fusion on the Mac but you really need 4GB or more to run it comfortably, especially if you run multiple VM.

I'll eventually retire the Dell because the Mac + VM has more flexibility. I can test with XP, Vista, 7, Linux and Chrome OS. The VMs talk to each other so you can set up a network on your machine, it's developer's heaven.

Don't use Parallels

cdesautels's picture

I would suggest that you look at VMware for a virtual windows environment. I use Parallels on my office production machine and VMware on my laptop and VMware is better.

Chris Desautels

VirtualBox is free, and faster

dsachdev's picture

Don't forget that you can also try the OpenSource VirtualBox which is available free, and in most cases is faster. I'm a previous user of VMWare, and I even own stock in VMW, but for the individual looking for good performance in a VM on a personal desktop, I really do think that VirtualBox is a great solution:

http://www.virtualbox.org/

Don't use VMware

atchijov's picture

I would like to offer different opinion on VMware vs. Parallels discussion. I have used both extensively for last few years. Parallels is hands down better option for Windows on Mac. It is faster, it has much tighter integration with host OS. It even looks better! Early versions of Parallels had problems with some Linux distributions, but now it is thing of the past.

Andrei Tchijov

Descision??

mcfilms's picture

What did the OP decide?

idcm if you are still around, which platform did you choose and why? Are you happy with the choice?

still on PC

idcm's picture

I am still here and still contemplating my options but am staying PC for now. Here are all the points for not going Mac right now.

  • I have six computers with Windows XP. Three are limping along while the others are doing okay. Two that limp need to be replaced soon.
  • Not all the SW I have will run on Mac so I would have to run XP on the Mac to accommodate.
  • I would want enough processing power to have both operating systems running at the same time (I believe its Parallels that can do this) so that means $$$ and I might need the quad processor and the laptops don't come with the quad.
  • When I added up the SW that I would run in XP mode, it was the majority. This means I would spend 2-3 times more for a Mac than simply replacing my PCs and still be operating in a Windows environment most the time. hhmmm?
  • It would be some time before I would replace/upgrade the SW (especially if I spent all my money on Macs).
  • I need a small traveling computer. The iPad isn't keyboard friendly enough for what I need so am looking at a Netbook - Windows again.
  • Hubby can't go Mac because of the SW he uses won't come out on Mac. Do we mix computers? We like to swap and share. We couldn't do that if one of us was on Mac and the other not.
  • I kept asking myself what functionality does Mac offer that I don't already have. I don't have performance issues now. Okay, there is the virus thing but not an issue so far. But otherwise, PC is fine and affordable.

Decisions, decisions. Hope that helps.

Some observations

valeriod's picture

"Not all the SW I have will run on Mac"
That's strange: I thought ShockWave was 100% cross platform.

"$$$"
Absolutely! a Mac solution will be more expensive, no way around it. But keep in mind that XP runs faster on a Mac than on a PC: you pay more but you get more.

"Do we mix computers?"
I have been running a mixed environment since the early 90s with no problems at all.

"what functionality does Mac offer that I don't already have"
A real OS, but that might now matter much to you if you don't use UNIX tools.

MS vs Apple OS

enginpost's picture

I will throw my two cents in. I don't know if anyone else has covered this so i thought I would. Here are the reason I went Mac (after about 15 years of Microsoft):

The #1 reason is the hardware + the OS. Together both my iMac and my MacBook are pretty flawless.

A few years back I was ready to shopping because my Windows OS took a dump for about the third time in as many months. I have been working with computers since owning an Intel 8088 and I spent many years actually writing in Microsoft coding languages: Visual Basic, Classic ASP, C#, .NET, etc... you know, stuff that only runs on a PC. I was all armed to the hilt arguing with my friends about how my 95/ XP/ 2000/ Vista OS was actually better than their wanna-be Apple proprietary "doesn't-play-well-with-others-including-their-own-previous" operating system. The trouble was, I kept noticing that no matter what I did I still ended up having to virtually reformat my computers annually to get them to perform reasonably well. I was starting to think it was a built-in defect to encourage system upgrades.

Once I hit that moment when I actually did the math on the time I take to keep my computers running, I figured I could invest the cash into a macbook pro instead of the two weeks of downtime it took to reformat and get all of the drivers and software and licensing and configurations re-established onto my PC (I had a fairly beefy system with a lot of pro-software... no viral downloads). When I went to the store I was shocked at the price... more importantly I was shocked at what I was getting for the price... 15" monitor, 4 GB Ram (who has that little?), not a big video card, limited number of ports ( only 2 usb?) but then I started talking and fiddling. It is difficult to imagine a jump from the bloated Microsoft OS world where RAM is like a precious ring coveted by every application in Mordor, to Mac OS 10 where the system can boot up and shut down twice in the time it takes Windows to launch while simultaneously running OSX, Entourage, Dreamweaver, Flash Pro, Flash Builder, and IE under Windows Vista in Parallels all on 4 GB of RAM! Yes! You think I am kidding, as if I am playing with you but I am not.

That is when I sat down and counted up my most precious applications and started to see if either I could get an equivalent from the maker for OSX or if I could find a competitive equivalent that ran in the OSX world.

Here is where I pause and inform you that I love it that MS and Apple and Linux exist. They drive each other forward. In fact, Apple can't even claim any victories with it's OS. It owes it's success to FreeBSD (an open-source Linux alternative) which it is built on top of these days. You are basically running Unix with an Apple OS shell. All of that to say, I am not a Apple fanboy by any stretch of the imagination. I simply switched because it saves me time and works well. I don't find that I am wasting my time defending it. If it suddenly does something goofy (banning Flash Player from iDevices), I get vocal about Apple stupidity. And from what I hear Windows 7 is a leap in the right direction. But I can say that I couldn't be more happy with leaving behind the headache of "maintaining my pc".

So, back to my story. I went down the list and send emails and called friends. Within a few days I was convinced I could switch but it would mean swapping a few older apps to learn new ones. other than that, i was able to setup Windows Vista in parallels (did I mention that Vista never once crashed for me under Parallels in OSX... but it fatally crashed literally a dozen times on my PCs). In most cases I have been able to find free-open-source solutions to replace my PC software I figured I couldn't live without. In fact it seems that the open-source community building for OSX is fairly involved and bloatware free (so... again, not freeware, but free-open-source well-maintained solutions).

Here, 2 years later, I almost never have a reason to go into Parallels. I have also not had to "maintain" a computer in that same amount of time. Both the macbook and the iMac (a later purchase) boot up in less than 10 seconds and I haven't fiddled with any driver for more than 30 seconds in the time I have owned it (they are truly plug-n-play machines).

Good luck with your new purchases!

Adobe apps

moreyfineart's picture

Has anyone mentioned that Adobe allows for cross-platform "sidegrades" on all of their applications, so they do not have to be repurchased if you switch to OSX?

I had to use PC's on the job for years as an IT Specialist with the Federal Gov. Had a Mac at home at different times, but only had a PC at the time (4 years ago?) when there was a choice between "upgrading" from XP to Vista or getting a Mac. I went with the latter out of general frustration with Windows issues which amount to a bunch of hidden costs.

Washington, DC Drupalers

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