[thelist] Switching back to Mac

[Stephen Rider]

On Oct 27, 2004, at 7:27 AM, Mike Roy wrote:

> I guess my question is, do any of you do real work in both [Windows 
> and Mac]
> environments, and if  so,  what are some of the drawbacks/advantages
> vs. staying with one platform.

I'm an admitted Mac-head.  For web developing, one big advantage I find 
is testing.  With Virtual PC, I can test a page in Win IE 4, 5, 5.5, 6, 
pretty much any version of Netscape, Mozilla, Safari, Opera, Lynx, etc. 
etc. etc.

On a Windows machine you can't have more than one version of IE 
installed (there are theoretical ways, which have been discussed on the 
List before, but they involve a lot of messing around), and you can't 
test Mac or Unix programs.

Also, Apache server is built in to OS X, making testing easier.

As you are, I am a big fan of BBEdit.

There are also some interesting text-manipulation Services (system wide 
menu functions) available for the Mac.  See "Word Service" for an good 
example of this.
<http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10398>
or
<http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/freeware/freeware.php>

The second link there has several interesting Services available for 
free.

This is all beyond the general stability and security of Macs, of 
course.

The only disadvantage to using a Mac is that I've had difficulty 
connecting to Windows servers without using a third-party Networking 
software (Dave), and from time to time I would like to be able to 
develop in MS Access, which is not available on the Mac.

Steve