It is done! I purchased a Mac Mini and received it last Tuesday. I turned it on that night, and played with it a tiny bit, but then had to let it sit until this weekend.
The big news is that I have returned to the fold previously known as NeXT via the Mac. This purchase doesn’t make me cooler or special, but it will hopefully create a more aesthetically pleasing productivity. For example, as I sit here making this post… the display is just so much nicer. What else? I’m finally, properly ripping my CDs… and it is too damn easy (as I knew it would be.) In the past I ripped using Lame on linux with a Perl script. This wasn’t nearly as good as what I have right now.
Anyways, one of these days I’ll post a timeline as to how I got here. Just recently I tried out Linux on the desktop briefly without really giving up on the PC. For the last 4 years I was a Windows guy, and my day job is still doing that hard-core 1995 C++ with the COM boogie (with a hands up in the air twist every now and then)… I don’t see that changing too soon.
Prior that that era, I was firmly in the Unix world and had made the switch off of Windows and NextSTEP. Unix never had the media part of the equation solved. Why did I leave NextSTEP 7 years ago? Well in contrast to now, things were looking bad and only getting worse. The Apple announcement was a huge deal, but then there was the chaos that followed for 3 years. I wasn’t going to suffer through that, and I’m glad I didn’t. The Apple machines looked good, BUT they were way too pricey and behind on the standards.
I think Apple really edged out the competition when they came out with G5 Powermacs and Tiger.
“So what are you saying here Dru?”
I think the Windows platform has lost a lot of its strengths compared to the OS X platform, especially after the transition to the Intel CPU occurs. I also think that OS X has a lot more for the developer than the Windows OS does. If that changes, then I’ll change. I will move to whatever platform gives the best experience.
“Ok, what does this really mean.”
So, in a nutshell, expect more posts related to OS X. I’ll still have a Windows box, but I’ll be moving off of it mostly. I just wanted to get those little stories out.