One Month on Mac

Posted by Stijn Pint on Sep 18, 2009

Last month, I made the switch from my Ubuntu laptop to a Macbook Pro.
Thought I’d share my first impressions and give an overview of the applications that I found useful until now.

It is a fantastic machine to say the least:

• the Alu unibody design is gorgeous, the screen (glossy, resolution of 1920×1200 !!) and the keyboard (with backlight) are beautiful.
• Mac OS X is great, I love the dock, the Dashboard, Spaces and several other features.
• Te multitouch trackpad is a joy to work with, especially once you get the hang of the 2-, 3- and 4-finger gestures. Scrolling, switching applications, showing Spaces or Desktop, all without pressing a key or mouse button.
• Managing the system is really easy and straightforward (preferences, installing applications, searching, … )
• Battery life !!! You can easily work on it for 5 hours, without Wifi and with low brightness settings even up to 7 or 8 hours. This really is a ‘portable’ !

There is a wide variety of Mac OS X applications available, also freeware.
Below you find the ones that I’m currently using.

For Ruby development I use the RubyMine IDE from JetBrains.
A lot of Ruby developers are Textmate fanatics, but personally I like the extra features that an IDE offers.

For FTP, I use Cyberduck, a free, simple application with a very clean interface.
You can also use it to connect to (unix) systems through SSH (SFTP), this can in some cases be a bit more practical than the command line.

If you need to connect to Windows PC’s/servers, there is Remote Desktop Connection available.
It works great, it’s better then the Remote Desktop I used on Ubuntu.

I’m doing quite a lot of (Rails) development on Oracle, so I definitely need a local Oracle installation.
On Ubuntu I had Oracle Express (free) installed, but unfortunately there is no version available for OSX.
I got around this by using Virtualbox, on which I can run an Ubuntu Virtual Machine with Oracle Express installed.
Ofcourse I also have a local installation of Mysql.

To browse databases, both local and remote, I’m using DbVisualizer.
Again, it has a clean and simple interface and it supports a wide variety of databases.

Some other tools that are useful:

• LittleSnapper, a cool screenshot application, it allows you to easily take snapshots of your screen/window/selection and immediately upload it with FTP or to Flickr / Ember.
• Jumpcut, a tiny tool that keeps a history of your copy/pastes
• Norton Antivirus for Mac
• Adium (IM tool)
• OpenOffice
• VLC Media Player

If you know of some other great tools that you think should be in this list,
please leave a comment !

Maybe some small annoyances that I encountered during my transition from Ubuntu:

Terminal :

• no tab-completion on git commands
• opening a new tab starts in home directory (and not in same directory as the current tab as in Ubuntu)

Finder : although it’s hard to say what’s wrong with it, I think it can be improved upon.
It’s not that intuitive or user-friendly as it could be, but that might just be because I’m still quite new to Mac.

**** update ****

I found a solution for the git tab-completion: Ryanb’s dotfiles
These scripts also provide several other neat terminal shortcuts, check it out !

To summarize, the new Macbook Pro’s are beautiful machines that offer great performance and a super user experience.
They don’t get in your way, and just work.
We all know they are pricey, but you’re definitely getting something for your money, up to you to decide if it’s enough :-)

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