Comment Re:my own experiences (Score 1) 255
Your post completely echoes my experience. I love OS X and I love Mac hardware. I visit Apple's website once a week just to lust after some new piece of aluminum or some new software feature as described by their marketing gurus.
But as a full-time Java developer, the Mac sucked as a development platform. Why? A few reasons.
1. It's important for me to stay one step ahead of the pack, and with the Mac, it's not an option. They release their Java Runtime Environments too slowly behind Sun (1.4.2 just as 1.5 beta came out -- ugh), although lately they've gotten much better.
2. I couldn't live without alt-tab; but then, I was coding in OS X 10.0 and 10.1 days and a third-party alt-tab solution didn't exist. As I understand it Panther now has solved this problem.
3. All the tools were much more sluggish on OS X than on a comparable Windows machine. I was using a snow iBook G3 with 512 MB RAM, and it was UNBEARABLE. I sold it on eBay for $1,000, and used the same $1,000 to buy a used ThinkPad P3, which is wicked fast for all of the same tools.
I can only assume that the performance difference between a PowerBook G4 and a comparably priced PC laptop would be equally noticable.
But as a full-time Java developer, the Mac sucked as a development platform. Why? A few reasons.
1. It's important for me to stay one step ahead of the pack, and with the Mac, it's not an option. They release their Java Runtime Environments too slowly behind Sun (1.4.2 just as 1.5 beta came out -- ugh), although lately they've gotten much better.
2. I couldn't live without alt-tab; but then, I was coding in OS X 10.0 and 10.1 days and a third-party alt-tab solution didn't exist. As I understand it Panther now has solved this problem.
3. All the tools were much more sluggish on OS X than on a comparable Windows machine. I was using a snow iBook G3 with 512 MB RAM, and it was UNBEARABLE. I sold it on eBay for $1,000, and used the same $1,000 to buy a used ThinkPad P3, which is wicked fast for all of the same tools.
I can only assume that the performance difference between a PowerBook G4 and a comparably priced PC laptop would be equally noticable.
