How I Learning to Stop Worrying and Love the Mac
30 Jan, 2008
In my new job, a Mac is the preferred tool of the trade. So now I'm learning to use a nice shiny MacBook Pro, and after years developing on Windoze, it's a very pleasant experience. Here are some of the things that are making my life just that little bit more delightful:
- It's Unix. On Windoze, Cygwin helped a little, but this is soooo much better.
- Launchbar - an application launcher and more. I bought this almost immediately after getting my Mac, based on some random recommendation somewhere, and haven't regretted it - I probably use it once every 5 minutes, on average. I've subsequently tried Quicksilver, but it didn't feel immediately "right" in the same way Launchbar does.
- Textmate - "the missing editor". I've been a dedicated Emacs user for about 20 years now, but had to give Textmate a try, given all the hype. It's noice! Many of the features I know and love from Emacs are there (albeit bound to different cryptic key-combinations), and the UI is clean and Mac-savvy.
- 1Password - a password manager. I got this handy little utility as part of a bundle from macheist.com. It stores all your passwords in a (secure) keychain, indexed by website, making it really easy to log back in next time you visit. Best of all, it integrates with most browsers, meaning you only need to store passwords once. It can store multiple sets of login details per site, too, which is very useful when testing web-apps.
- Safari is a nice little web browser, and once you turn on the debug menu, it's even better. Normally, I'd reach for Firebug for this sort of functionality, but the built-in Safari equivalent is almost as good.
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