My New Macbook Pro!

Submitted by ted on 30 March 2006 - 10:32am

Yes, it’s finally happened—I switched to a Mac and I’m loving it! Everything just works so much better and is far more intuitive.

I bought the new Macbook Pro just a few weeks ago and it arrived at my place last Friday. The packaging was typical Mac style… like unwrapping a beautiful present. And the Macbook itself, just as gorgeous. And Tiger, beautiful, clean, and super accessible. It only took me 3 days to adjust to the nuances of the Mac and now I think I’m even more productive then on my Windows machine. I’ve only had to reboot once and that was because I applied some kernel updates to MacOS, how nice!

Right now my machine is a tad bit slow for a few reasons. 512mb of RAM just doesn’t cut it, so I have another 1gb on it’s way, should be here today actually! And then of course the main reason, since my Mac is running on Intel, some of the applications I use aren’t “universal”, e.g., they can’t run on both an Intel and a PowerPC chip, so they have to be emulated (read: slow) on an Intel chip. Once those unverisal binaries come out that are optimized for Intel chips, I should see a dramatic increase in speed, can’t wait!

But still that won’t stop me, I’ve been uncovering tons of awesome Mac apps, many of which are far better than their Windows counterparts. Some of my favorites so far:

  • IM client: Adium — Super awesome client, AIM, GTalk, MSN, Yahoo, and everything built in one, best IM client I’ve ever used.
  • IRC client: Colloquy
  • App launcher: Quicksilver — Why move the mouse to the dock when you can just press a couple keys to launch all of your favorite apps? So much faster than the mouse, awesome program!
  • PHP and MySQL development: MAMP — Although I’ve never been a fan of programs that bundle all web dev programs into one, this is the best one I’ve ever seen and it doesn’t screw up your system. Highly recommended.
  • CoverFlow — Awesome app! Browse all of the CDs you have in iTunes, it automatically downloads album covers.

  • Timetracking and Invoicing: Office Time — Best app I’ve ever used for time tracking and invoicing, super easy to use.
  • Widgets:

And a few more apps that I have yet to try, but come to me highly recommened from Steven:

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