One Month Of Mac

Well, I scrounged up a PPC-based Mac Mini yesterday, and I’ve decided that I am going to use it almost exclusively at home for one month. I am not committing to switching to Macintosh, but seeing as it’s been almost six years since I used a Macintosh regularly I think it’s an interesting experiment. At the end of the month it might be interesting to try Linux on my desktop for another month, but we’ll see.

So, for day 1, here’s my report:

Cons:

– There is not a single SSH client I can find that is worth anything. I want tabs, I want green-on-black. Basically I want Van Dyke’s SecureCRT on Mac OS X. I am willing to pay for it. I hear that 10.5’s terminal will be tabbed, though.

– Half of my keys on my Logitech G11 keyboard don’t work. Kind of annoying, especially since I seem to use the ‘end’ key a lot (and I miss it when it doesn’t work!). But it’s a PC gaming keyboard… but, is a keyboard not just a keyboard?

– The Macintosh Remote Desktop Client (to connect to Windows PCs) sucks. I have to figure that out. Then again, it’s from Microsoft, the source of my original problems. Maybe I’ll try building rdesktop.

– I need to find a good RSS reader for Macintosh. NetNewsWire is a little simple for me.

Pros:

– Adium is pretty cool, though it needs some UI usability work.

– The Mini is silent compared to the whine of my homebuilt PC’s fans. Just wish it supported two monitors. I couldn’t fall asleep last night because it was eerily quiet, no noise coming from my office.

– It’s nice to be able to use Photoshop and Dreamweaver again. I know I could emulate XP but if I can find a native solution it’s nicer, one less OS to worry about.

– I adore Command-H to hide an app.

I’ll give another update in a week, see where I’m at, especially since I’ll need to get into some word processing functions.