Making The Leap To Mac

Yesterday I made the leap.  I had been pondering making the jump to a Mac ever since the Mac Mini made its debut a few years ago, but it hasn't been until the iPhone came out that I started seriously looking into it.  The Mac's increased popularity and market share haven't hurt either, but it's viability as a development platform has certainly increased because of the appeal for iPhone apps.

The barrier to entry has always been price.  The Mac Mini was a tempting diminutive box to get, but its hardware was dated and it wasn't getting the regular hardware refreshes that its siblings would get every six to twelve months.  So when the Mini got a all-of-a-sudden hardware upgrade, I knew the time was right.  Coming with Leopard and Apple's latest iteration of iLife, now more than ever was a good time to break into the Mac platform.

The biggest adjustment I've had to make so far has been keyboard shortcuts.  I'm a big user of the home and end keys to quickly move around in text editors, so losing that one-key functionality has been a bummer.  In fact, while trying to use the Mac equivalent, I accidentally navigated away from creating this blog post.  That was pretty frustrating considering that I was almost finished, but I understand that there will be pain coming from a PC-centric paradigm to an Apple one.

The first piece of software that I installed was, of course, Firefox.  There are a few functions that I'm used to having that Safari just can't compete with with.  The first one being the JavaScript blocker, No-Script.  The other is closing tabs by simply click wheeling the tab instead of having to click on the 'x'.

All in all it has been exciting to do something new and I look forward to learning something outside of my current experience.