Mac Switching

February 7, 2007

I had heard the ads – they were all over TV. “Switch to a Mac”, yadda yadda, but then something shocking happened. A long time friend of mine, a certified windows guy, called me and said, “you have to go get a new Mac Book!” So I did… Then, I read all the blogs on top 10 Mac apps this, and switching from windows that and in the reading, a few things spoke to me, a web developer with a long background in administering Linux systems.

Mac runs on a BSD kernnel
Most of the things a sysadmin/web developer needs are already on a Mac “out of the box”
The things that aren’t are easily downloadable (most for free)

So what follows is another what you need when you switch – list. “Wonderful” you say…but wait this one is coming from a perspective that I was unable to find when I did my “should I switch” googleing – from the perspective of a web/sysadmin.

First off, don’t do what I did and load Parallels with Windows “just in case you need it” – just put on your swim trunks, step the the edge, hold you nose or do whatever it is that you do, and step off into the great unknown. After a bit, you’ll want Parallels and Windows removed anyway (it’s gone off mine) – so save yourself the time, effort, and the 80 bucks.

Secondly, I am not going to blow smoke and tell you that “switching is seamless”, it’s not. When you get a new TV or a new cell phone, it’s different than the one you’re used to – so it seems odd at first. Same with a PC -> Mac switch. They are different machines you have to change a few things about yourself when going from one to the other, and if there is one thing that our little opposable thumb having group hates more than anything, it’s change (especially when we’re the thing that needs to change). Accept that there will be bumps, and deal with it – you’ll be happy you did.

Now moving on to the real issue here what do you need? I had four basic questions that I had to have answered before switching:

How could the Mac sync with my Treo
How could I remote desktop to a Windows machine
How could I ssh to my Linux machines
What application would i use for HTML authoring

The answer to the Treo Mac Sync was pretty easy. One of the guys at the Mac store knew of an application called Missing Sync. This slick little application will set ya back 40 bucks, but syncs seamlessly with the iLife suite that comes on the mac (including iTunes (although it obviously won’t play iTunes purchased encrypted music)) and it does it all over Bluetooth so you, like me, can loose your Treo Sync Cable.

The second question was fairly easy to answer too. Remember that friend of mine who is the windows sys admin? Well not so surprisingly, he knew how to Remote Desktop to a Windows box from a Mac. There is a dirty little secret that Microsoft is keeping…they have a site just for mac users called MacTopia. On that site you can buy office for the Mac (which you’ll likely need) but the real gem is a free, yes Microsoft and free, odd i know, little application you can download called RDC. Download, install and before you know it – you’re remote desktopping from a mac to a pc and you’d never know the difference.

Number three, although it should have been the easiest, took a little while to figure out. The ONE “gripe” I have with the Apple Store is that their “Mac Specialist” (the fine folks who answer your questions on the sales floor) are just that – specialists in using the Mac and iLife products – not specialists in how to use a mac for what YOU want to do with it. So when it came to answering “how do I SSH”…what i got was a lot of blank stares. Googling didn’t help much either and truth be told, I don’t remember where I found the very simple answer. It should have been obvious, as I mentioned earlier Mac OSX is basically Linux, albeit a very sexy Linux – Linux lives and dies by the command line – it would stand to reason that the Mac would too. Sure enough, just go to your Applications Folder -> Utilities Folder -> Terminal. It’s all built in. Pretty cool eh?

Now all I was left to figure out was a good HTML authoring program. This one was tough, not because there aren’t 100 great aps out there, but because I was used to using Homesite and I was comfortable with how Homesite worked and wanted a program that pretty much duplicated its features. I played around with a few; Text Wrangler, Taco HTML Edit and a few others. I ended up landing on TextMate – it’s similar to Homesite, is customizable in it’s look and has many different “themes” so you can control how you like your code to look. Recently I have also started using HyperEdit because it will show me PHP errors without putting the file up on a server (another benefit of the Mac – PHP compiler…included) – but I only use HyperEdit for debugging.

So after 5 months or so using the Mac, what do I think? Well, Parallels is gone, my windows laptop is sitting to my right and it’s turned off, and I am in the Market for a MacBook Pro. That should tell you more than any commercial right there…(paypal donations to MacBook Pro fund are being accepted )