zabbo

A significant number of my friends — not exactly newcomers to software! — have embraced OS X. With memories of the early days of the Mac, I was nervous. Allow me to share the story that finally pushed me over the edge.

A few months ago I spent an hour or so configuring X on my Dell X1 to support both the built-in LCD and an external LCD monitor. There were a few scary moments where I, being human, screwed up the configuration of which pipe went where and gave the laptop’s LCD some very bad refresh rates. Luckily it wasn’t damaged.

When I finally got it working the result was pretty cool! Windows flowed off of one LCD and onto the other. I had to logout and edit the config file to disable the second display, or change its resolution or anything, of course. That’s just how X rolls.

Then a week later Alice plugged that very same LCD into her MacBook Pro and it just worked. Live. We tried unplugging it with apps on the display being unplugged and they were moved back onto the remaining laptop LCD. Holy crap!

Step back for a moment and imagine that we’re talking about something other than the dizzyingly complex world of software and computers. An expert using tool A gets mediocre results after an hour of risky work and any user instantly gets superior results using tool B. Why on earth would anyone chose tool A?

That was roughly my line of thinking when Apple released the MacBook Pros with the Core 2 Duo. I broke down and ordered one. That was about two weeks ago and I’m happy to report that things have gone as well as I’d hoped they would. I haven’t had to fight the hardware support battles that are sadly present in the Linux world. I’m appreciating having apps that work nicely together. I think this is the first time that I’ve had the significant players in my contact game — phone, palm, mail app — all talking to each other.

I was down in the bay at Oracle HQ last week. I was asked to give a presentation. I threw together some slides with Keynote. I plugged the projector in and hit the “Play” button and had each slide on the projector and the presenters display — the current and next slides, time spent total and on the current slide — on the local laptop LCD. Even the most mouth-foamy Linux advocates had to admit that this was neato.

Don’t get me wrong. Linux is a fantastic tool for a non-trivial set of problems. Our customers certainly have some serious problems that they prefer to solve with Linux. My day job is still working with Linux. I’m damn good at it and I enjoy it. This leads me to Parallels, the current leader of the OS X PC virtualization pack. It was trivial use an FC6 ISO on the network to install Linux in a virtual machine. I now have a window, which I can full-screen if I so desire, that offers the comfortable Linux environment. Hence the title of this post — I didn’t give up Linux in exchange for OS X. I made it so I can use the modern desktop in OS X to avoid trivial hurdles while solving hard problems for people with Linux. I’m one happy camper. A hoopy frood, if you will.

I couldn’t end this post without mentioning Quicksilver. I was referred to it about a week into my OS X experience. I have been using computers for nearly all my life and I can say this with a straight face: Quicksilver has changed the way I interact with the computer. I will not attempt, and no doubt fail, to clearly describe it in depth. Tutorials exist for that level of introduction. I will, however, share this example of the keystrokes required to bring up my dad’s (a.k.a. Doug) entry in Address Book at any time: control-space, d, o, u, return. I now take this kind of warm-knife-through-butter efficiency for granted.