I recently purchased a few Mac Minis to be used in the development of iPhone applications at Alonso Consulting. This is the first time that I have owned an Apple computer and it is the first time that I have used one for any purpose other than to click on the Safari browser and say, “That’s nice.” In fact, the last time that I actively used a Mac was in 1989 as a consultant at GE Capital and all I used was Microsoft Word to document some requirements for a project. These Mac Minis have given me more respect for Apple. They are solid, useful machines that are easy-to-use and configure. Even taking the components out of the box was a pleasant experience. Everything came in white boxes and all the parts were wrapped in thick cellophane. There is no comparison between the way a Dell arrives and the way an Apple computer arrives. It is a totally different experience.
I have grown accustomed to several open source applications on the PC. Three of these are TrueCrypt, FileZilla and VirtualBox. These are for encrypting volumes of files, using the FTP protocol for file transfers and creating virtual machines on the PC, respectively. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there were Mac versions of these available. I installed them and a few other very useful applications including Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac and am at the point where I could do all my work on the Macs and ignore the PC completely.
I am quite pleased with the way the Mac OS X works. It is pleasant and fast. I find the performance on a 2 GHz, dual core Intel processor with 1 GB of memory to be superior to the 2.4 GHz Intel quad core processor with 3GB of memory on my Vista PC. The only thing that I can’t stand is the crappy Mac keyboard that is flat and missing tactile feedback. I found a way of using an old IBM Model M keyboard with a Belkin USB to PS/2 Keyboard adapter and now feel more comfortable typing on the Mac.
Apple has a good thing going for itself requiring a Mac to develop apps for the iPhone. As we make progress on some applications, I will keep you posted on the progress. If you are looking for iPhone development, please consider my company; Alonso Consulting. We will deliver excellent results at a very reasonable cost.
Add A Comment