Posted by: wpd | June 19, 2006

A Month on a Mac

Well, I thought I'd give Apple a month to change me. I've exclusively used an Intel Mac for all of my Web programming, Desktop Publishing, Video needs. And here is what I found:

1. OS X Tiger has some really nice built in tools: PDF viewer called Preview (which also does other things), a REALLY handy exact screen capture, very nice integrated iLife and iWork software. Spotlight is great.

2. Downsides: XP is faster. no native GUI FTP support (you could use the terminal), no way to open MS Access Databases. NO support for my ProTools card yet. No dual monitors.

Conclusion: It's easier than XP! I thought XP was easy but I never knew until I forced myself to only use OS X. BTW: I've been using Vista and there's only a few things that "nice" but I'm not sure are necessary. I'll review that in a few weeks.

I'm Changed!

UPDATE:
> Mac Mini's don't have dual monitor support. iMac and Mac Books do!
> FTP GUI support is included - Read Jim's comment
> So really that's makes the Mac darn near perfect!

Posted in Apple

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Responses

No GUI FTP support? OS X has great FTP support! It’s built right into the Finder. Just open the Finder, click Go > Connect to Server, enter your FTP details and that’s it. You can use your FTP server just like it was a folder on your local computer.

Also, there are some wonderful 3rd party tools for (S)FTP on the Mac. There are the open source programs Fugu ( http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/ ) and CyberDuck ( http://cyberduck.ch/ ). There are also great commercial programs like Transit ( http://www.panic.com/transmit/ ).

Also, all modern Macs support dual monitors (including the Macbook).

By: Jim on June 20, 2006
at 9:17 am

Thanks for the info - I am toying with the idea of switching to a MacBook instead of my trusty Dell.

By: strawberrysoup on June 20, 2006
at 9:48 pm

Also, one area that I’m still trying to resolve is connecting my email to an Exchange server. I’ve had no issues with google or Webmail based email. It’s very strange.

By: wpd on June 22, 2006
at 10:06 pm

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