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I bought the iMac in December of 2007. I couldn’t believe how fast and responsive everything was. Especially compared to my old PC. But things aren’t quite as ripe as they once were.

One of the many cool things about the Mac (er, Leopard) is Time Machine. I have a 500GB external drive (primarily for photos) that I partitioned. I’m now using 300GB for Time Machine and 200GB for photos. It’s pretty cool to know that everything is backed up automatically, all the time.

But here’s the kicker, I can’t remember ever needing a backup. Of anything. And the truth is, I’m starting to notice a slight lag in load times and such, and it’s always when I hear the external drive boot up to process the automatic back ups. It seems like, as the back ups increase, the load times get slower. I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth it. I can’t believe how spoiled I am, because if you’d use it for a day and I pointed out the times when I think it’s “lagging”, you’d probably think I was crazy. But in this day and age, every (milli)second counts.

What would you do? The right answer is probably to keep the backups. But I’m on the edge, here. If I notice any more decline in performance, Time Machine is history (pardon the pun).

As I write this post, I’m staring at a beautiful 24” iMac. I finally splurged on the inevitable, and I have to say, so far it’s amazing. Everything just works. I can’t compare with other versions of OS X, but Leopard is perfect so far. I’m particularly enjoying spaces. Even though it is a 24” widescreen, it’s still nice to have focused sections that I can quickly toggle through (a space for developing (ie, terminal(s) and Textmate), a space for browsers, a space for chat/email/calendar, etc).

I’m not going to be able to put into words how excited I am to finally have a Mac, so I probably won’t say much else. Those who have a Mac know what it’s like, and can probably remember the feeling of getting “their first one.”

Without further ado, here it is in all its glory…

The 18” Windows machine gives some perspective as to how large the screen actually is. I’m giving my old computer to my sister, so it’s only there temporarily. It actually works out nicely for testing, though. All I have to do is svn up and refresh IE.

I’m sure questions/problems/frustrations will come soon, but right now I couldn’t be happier (considering that goofy desk with the raised up center column).

I can’t afford it. I can’t afford it. I can’t afford it. That’s what I have to keep telling myself after seeing things like this (and this).

Apple designs have a way of making decisions seem so obvious. Oh and, Amie, just so you know, I’m not plotting to get a new iMac, despite how beautiful (and fast and crisp and clean) they are ;)

I don’t get to use Textmate (hopefully E will suffice), so I don’t know if these tips are even worth sharing. But you never know… just because I can’t benefit from them, doesn’t give me the right to hold you back.

Ruby Documentation

When you’re coding and you draw a blank on what the acceptable parameters are (strftime for example), in Textmate, with your cursor at the end of the method you can hit CTRL+H to bring up the RDoc for that method. It would probably take me a bit to get used to doing that, but I’m always referencing documentation, so I could see that being huge for me.

Finding your way around

Let’s say you’re inside of a controller method, if you hit OPTION+COMMAND+SHIFT+DOWN, you will be presented with a drop down to navigate to the associated files (views, helpers, etc) for that method. Seems to be a nice and easy way to navigate.

Displaying the Schema

If you’re in a model, and you need some DB table details, hitting CTRL+UP+OPTION+S will pop-up the schema for that model, displaying the column, primary key, data type, and default value.

Completions

You can use the ESC key to complete what you’ve typed so far, based on matches within the current document (handy if you use long, descriptive method names).

Refactor Partials

I am grateful for the ability to refactor partials. All you have to do is select the chunk of view that you want to convert to a partial, and hit CTRL+UP+H (I think this is possible in E, too). This will prompt you for a partial name, then replace your text with a <%= render :partial => 'the_name_you_chose' %>, and create the partial using the replaced text. Very useful.

Footnotes Plugin

The footnotes plugin throws up a simple footer allowing you to access and monitor everything around the current action and the application in which it resides. For instance, you can easily view (and edit) the controller, the template for the current action, the layout, and the JS. You can also view the session, cookies, params, and debug. This is only for Mac, but seems like it’s an unobtrusive way to monitor things in development.

Like I said, these tips may be very common to Textmate users (and why wouldn’t they be… I don’t even use Textmate and I know about them). Anyway, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’m not going to try and link to all the useful references for Textmate, but they are worth looking up—just Google it. And just today, Chris mentioned word of a new Textmate book that’s either out or is coming out soon, and it’s fairly cheap.

This morning I’ve been spending some time on the Mac trying to get everything setup for RoR development. I found a nice rake task that should handle the permission problems (since we develop in Windows and OS X now). And I believe I have MySQL setup correctly (although there are still some annoying user permissions there, as well). So that leaves me with the development server. We chose to use lighttpd because webrick is rather slow, and I’ve heard nothing but good things about lighttpd (but that still doesn’t mean it’s good). It’s installed and working correctly, but my issues are with the config/lighttpd.conf file. I specified the server.port = 3000, but what I don’t get is when I run the application on 3000, then stop lighttpd (Ctrl+C), I can no longer run it again on that port. The only way I can get it to startup again is by going to the config/lighttpd.conf file and incrementing the port (say 3001), which I’m well aware of as being ridiculous. So, how do you get lighttpd to use the same port all the time? Or maybe I’m not properly shutting it down, where it really is still running on 3000 (meaning Ctrl+C is not enough)?

Also, if I try to run webrick on a port I haven’t used (i.e., $> script/server webrick -d 3010), I get binding errors. Is there something I should change for that, too?

I believe the problems are narrowed down to the development server (and maybe MySQL). I really should look into sqlite3, but I don’t want to get too much on my plate at once since I’m new to this environment.

I’m going to lose my mind. This is a major deterrent for me to want a Mac. I’ve spent most of the afternoon trying to get Ruby/Rails/Mongrel/MySQL setup on this MacBook. I have too much ego to look up the little things I feel that I should know how to do.

After looking around online, I found this script from Geoffrey Grosenbach, which basically does this. I changed the script so that it would install Ruby 1.8.5 and MySQL 5.0.27 for the Intel Mac, and set the PATH (because that’s what it told me to do) by doing:

$> export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH" 

Eventually, after realizing I needed Xcode for the C compiler, the script executed. Perfect! Wrong. The next step was to install the mysql gem, and this is what I see:

$> sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql
$> mysql.c: In function 'Init_mysql':
   mysql.c:2015: error: 'ulong' undeclared (first use in this function)
   ...

After searching a little bit, I found out that I need to add a line to /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.7/mysql.c, so I do this:

$> cd /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.7
$> open -e mysql.c

The file opens in TextEdit. I add the following line:

#define ulong unsigned long

Now, this is where I lose my mind. I cannot save the file. It tells me I can’t overwrite it. I thought maybe I needed to set permissions on it, so I ran a chmod 755 on the file, seemed to work fine, but still the same issue. After more searching, I found another way. Add the above line of code to the stdlib.h file in /usr/include. But I get the same result there: “Couldn’t overwrite the file.”

In desperation, I tried setting permissions on the directories and opening the file(s) by doing this:

$> sudo open -e mysql.c

I’m honestly unfamiliar with the sudo command, but I took it to mean this will gain root permissions, even though I don’t know if that’s what I need to do—like I said, I was (am) desperate. But I’m ready to close the lid and never open it again. It’s so frustrating. Anyway, assuming that would work I’m supposed to run make to recompile the source:

$> sudo make
$> sudo make install
$> sudo make clean

In conclusion, I have a few of questions (some related to this, some not):

1. What am I doing wrong? Is there a better way?
2. How can I overwrite files when I open them in a text editor?
3. How can I setup the mate command to open files in TextMate?
4. How can I open the ~/.bash_login file to edit the PATH? And are there other .bash_xxxxx files I need to edit?
5. How come after install Ruby 1.8.5 (and verifying it with ruby -v), later on, it’s back to default install of Ruby 1.8.2?
6. What does it mean to “mount” something?

I’d love to see the light one day and realize how wonderful it is to develop on a Mac, but it’s honestly not looking so good at the moment. I really do think it could be fun once I got familiar with everything, I’m just losing my desire more and more (and clearly speaking out of frustration at the moment).

At work, we just got a new MacBook, and my boss let me take it home for a day or two. So far, I love it. It is so amazingly smooth, fast, and intuitive. Everything I thought should happen, did. Remember, I’ve only spent a minimal amount of time on a Mac, and that mostly came from taking Stat quizzes during my undergrad. So I knew nothing. I absolutely love the two-finger scrolling available on the touch pad—it makes navigating so much easier. I may even be able to use it without a mouse. And the view of all open applications was awesome (not sure what it’s called, but the F9 key). And the slide up feature (F11? F12?). And the Doc. And the entire thing.

Aside from loving it, I do have a couple of issues. They’re not really issues per se, but more like questions/concerns. So here they are:

Shiny screen—I’m pretty sure there is an option to choose the “xbrite” type of screen or a regular screen. For me, I think the screen was a little too shiny. Rather than viewing the screen perpendicularly (for lack of a better word), I had to angle it a bit to get rid of the glare and see the true colors.

Testing in IE—If I were to get a Mac, I would move all web development work to it, but I still need to be able to test on IE (mainly IE6). I’ve read about parallels, but I’m not sure how it works. And I don’t know if IE for Mac has the same rendering as IE for Windows (a.k.a. painfully wrong). Anyway, specifically using Rails, migrations, and subversion, it’s no big deal to update and run it on a Windows machine, but I would imagine there are better ways.

Safari’s bold-ish text rendering—This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and I’ve read that Safari handles type beautifully, but it looked a little “bold-ish” to me. Is that just how it is? And how does Firefox work on a Mac? I would assume it’s fine, but I didn’t install anything other than what’s already there. Safari seemed to handle everything perfect, so I don’t think there are any issues using it, but I’m very partial to Firefox these days.

Photoshop—I’m guessing it’s extra to get Adobe Photoshop on a Mac? Someone once told me it came pre-installed as part of what you buy, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Unless I just didn’t see it. Anyway, it would be hard for me to not use Photoshop when building a site, but I’m not attracted to the thought of buying it extra, either.

Overall, I’m sold on the Mac. Now I just have to figure out how to come up with an extra $3,000, and decide if I want a desktop or a laptop (right now it’s 60/40 with the laptop in the lead). Until then, I’ll keep dreaming. Oh, and Amie was right. I did end up posting about the MacBook… I just couldn’t resist.

That’s how much the Mac I want would cost. That’s for the 24” display. Although, if I were to get a Mac, I don’t know if I would get a laptop or desktop. A laptop would be nice so I wouldn’t feel so inclined to sit at my desk all the time, but that 24” widescreen would be surreal. I guess that would be a good problem to have.

I’ve been partial toward Windows, and not because I agree with and love all of the abundant and cluttered features, but because I’m familiar with it. I know the file system, I’m used to “hacking” when I need to hack, and so on. I’ve alwasy been reluctant when it comes to getting something else. But lately, I’ve been pondering the thought of owning a Mac. I think I would like it. It would take some time to get used to, sure… but in the end, I think it’s a small price to pay for what I would get out of it.

Apparently OS X allows you to run LAMP (+L+inux +A+pache +M+ySQL [+P+erl, +P+HP, +P+ython]) solutions locally on the desktop. Other things will work well, too, but that’s a comforting move in itself since (I think) globally around 64% of web servers run Linux/Apache. And it has available tools, such as shell scripting, FTP, SSH, CVS, (WebDAV?), etc., built right in. It looks like they have the design tools covered as well: Adobe, BBEdit and Macromedia all come with the package. I use Photoshop extensively when I’m designing something, so that’s a major plus. It get’s better. The last few projects I’ve done have been in Ruby on Rails. Well, it looks like the next edition of Mac OS X (10.5) will ship with Ruby on Rails. The advantage, here, isn’t the fact that Ruby and Rails will come pre-installed, it’s the welcoming effort that Apple provides toward all the things I see crucial in web development. Ruby on Rails is relatively new, and Apple is already taking steps to integrate this into their package, because they realize it’s potential and growth. I think it’s impressive.

Just like a lot of other things I do (and have done), if I did make the conversion to Apple, I think I would look back and wonder how I ever handled developing on Windows. There is one downfall to this whole idea, and that’s money. I can’t justify the money, or the reasoning, to go out and get a Mac. Maybe the issue will work itself out. For now, I’ve still got some researching to do, as I know very little about the true benefits and consequences of leaving Windows.