The SquizLog

MacBook Pro!

I'm not writing this to gloat or make any of my fellow developers jealous. Honest! However, a few of my colleagues know that I recently took delivery of a new MacBook Pro to replace my aging iBook and they would expect me to blog about it. So here goes.

Of course the new machine is a treat to use. I was very pleasantly surprised with the painless migration from my old iBook. During the set-up process, everything within my user context on the iBook was seamlessly transferred across via a firewire cable. To get back to roughly where I was on my old machine I then needed to install Xcode, X11 and follow this excellent guide to setting up a Rails development environment (I did try MacPorts but encountered a problem and gave up.)

Then it was time to install Parallels. I had been looking forward to this with much anticipation. One of my justifications for upgrading to a MacBook Pro with 4GB RAM was to allow me to run Windows XP, which I need for tools such as Rational Software Architect that I currently use to earn a living. So far Parallels is working like a dream. I have a 1.5GB virtual machine for Windows XP and love the Coherence view mode that allows me to use a Windows program within an OS X window. One day soon I hope to create another VM for Ubuntu. For now I want to focus on making the most of this MacBook Pro to be productive in OS X or Windows wherever I am.

So there you have it. After three days with my second Apple laptop I'm definitely giving it the thumbs up!

Posted to Computers by Keith Pitty