Bought my first mac... :shock:

[hallsofvallhalla]

Yep. Not new of course. Dual core 2.6 4 gig ram, 500 gig hard drive. Going to triple boot it linux, Windows 7, Mac, if possible. Wish me luck and give me any advice as I have seriously barely ever used a Mac.

[Viper]

if you havnt, spend a bit of cash and upgrade to the latest version of OSX. Learn how to use the short cuts and gestures for the track pad, they save so much time and make you way more productive on it.

What made you want to get one?

[hallsofvallhalla]

The ability to use Mac, PC, linux, all with a click of a button. And to get some knowledge of a mac so I am not a noob. I also hear Windows runs better on a Mac so before I can argue against that point I need to see for myself.

I am running Lion currently. Should I go newer and where do I get it?

[BobMann]

give me any advice as I have seriously barely ever used a Mac.

Throw it out.

[Jackolantern]

give me any advice as I have seriously barely ever used a Mac.

Throw it out.

Haha, well, you are talking to one of the biggest Apple-haters I have ever known. But I have to say if there was ever any more room for my respect for Halls, this filled it up. It is always good to at least try something out before saying it stinks.

I was also actually considering buying a MacBook Air, pretty much for the same reasons you did. For not much more money, I could have access to the Mac ecosystem as well as Windows. The ultrabook I am looking at (the Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13) is in the price range of a MacBook Air, and that would give me access to iOS development as well without going through bootleg back doors. However, what kind of steered me away was how much extra they were charging for more SSD space. The base model as 128 gb, which isn't enough. The 256gb was an extra $300, while the 512gb was an extra $800! Those prices are out of line with SSD costs for other devices, which can shave an extra couple hundred bucks off that 512gb. For an extra $350 for the Yoga 13, I can get an upgrade to an i7 CPU, 4 more gigs of RAM and the 256gb SSD upgrade. And none of those components are any worse than the same upgrades in the Air since they are the exact same parts (all of those upgrades would run me over $600 in the Air).

However, I am still considering it. Objective-C looks like a terrible mess to me, but I am sure I could get used to it.

Oh, and Lion is not really that outdated, but there is a newer version called "Mountain Lion" that came out over the summer. I would definitely not consider it a critical update for now, considering that the majority of Mac devices in the wild right now are likely running Lion as well.

Check out "Bootcamp" to dual-boot OS's. I have not used it myself, but I have heard it is very simple and streamlined. Do not run Windows in a virtual machine with Parallels or anything similar, since you will get problems with some Visual Studio components, and obviously it won't run that well. It is best to run it natively.

EDIT: Also, be prepared to spend some time not knowing how to do almost anything lol. Every time I get on a Mac I just fumble around and get very frustrated. If you are familiar with the Linux command-line, you can use that for a while to get things done, but it is highly suggest to learn how to do it in the GUI since it will be better in the long run.

[hallsofvallhalla]

haha it is funny you say those things as I try this post on my mac and fumble around with all this new stuff. I now know what a complete noob to computers feels like.

I will have to say I do like the smoothness to some things. The screen is truly brighter and cleaner than any laptop I have ever used BUT I will agree the prices for Macs are WAAAAAY crazy. I luckily got this one on a deal.

I was told to use parallels but your post makes me question that decision and I guess I will do some more research, i like parallels because you can switch back and forth with a push of a button and can drag and drop things back and forth. Like download a excel sheet on the mac side and drop it in the windows bar ad it opens it in windows. With Boot camp it is a complete reboot back and forth with little interaction.

My main reason for all this is one to truly understand the differences but mainly two to get my a$$ back into development. I have not been full time for some time and ready to get back to the community,

[Jackolantern]

Yeah, I highly suggest to go native with Bootcamp. The Internet is littered with people (particularly Windows developers) having problems with Windows running on Parallels. Para is much more convenient, but that is because the Windows is only being emulated on a VM. You will get poor performance and could get issues. And you can't really run any serious development emulators (such as mobile emulators) due to the whole "VM in a VM" Inception issues. It is true they can't really interact, but they shouldn't, since they are incompatible operating systems. You have to treat them like they are two different computers, sharing compatible files through email or flash drives.

[hallsofvallhalla]

very good points. thanks!

[Viper]

I'm running Lion myself so you are fine then haha. I wasnt sure how old your machine may be. I run parallels on my machine currently and for using it every so often it works well but if you plan on running a decent amount of applications through it, definitely run it native. You definitely feel the performance hit when you open up the VM. Typically, I'll have pages up to take notes on my mac and then am working in Visual Studio or Access on the VM.

[hallsofvallhalla]

I used bootcamp and was a simple process and works great now! Must say I am impressed so far. Trying to get use to the Mac side.

Still have not used it enough to say either way though.

Haha i love the throw it out comment though.