Dual lives

[nalenb]

Okay, I've been using my Mac mini for just over a month. I'm very impressed and can do most of my (non-work) work on the Mac at this point. However, I do have an XP box that I use also. As a software developer I'm unlikely to ever use a single platform 100% of the time. So I'm wondering if anyone else is in the same boat and what they do to compensate for having stuff in two places.

So far I've come up with the following:
web browser bookmarks - keep Mac type links on the Mac and Windows type links on Windows
email - change my email readers to IMAP instead of POP. Therefore the email is on the server and able to be read from either platform. Changes on one show up on the other.
RSS - haven't figured this one out yet. FeedDemon is just so much better than anything I've found on the Mac yet.
Text edior - my needs are pretty modest and I'll probably just go with a native editor on each rather than something like Vim (although I just picked up the Vi Editor book yesterday).
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Mac mini powered up on 2-11-2005

[iMav]

[bubba]

Look into something like ol'bookmarks to store your bookmarks online. That way you can have your bookmarks in as many locations as you like. I have 2 links on my bookmark bar, the link for ol'bookmarks and the javascript link to add a bookmark.

[nalenb]

I classify anything that I need to use X for as non-native. Maybe that's not quite precise, but that's the way I define it. Native apps to me use the native Carbon and Cocoa widgets. Likewise on Windows I classify GTK+ applications as non-native even though they mostly use the native Win32 widgets. I just find that applications work best on the OS they were designed for and grew up on. I think it fits in with the philosophy and tendencies for developers on those platforms. My perception is that most OSX developers focus on minimizing user choices over Windows developers who throw every choice they can think of into the application. On *nix my perception is to have an application do as little as possible and use lots of other little apps to make the whole bigger than the parts over ease of use for casual users. Right or wrong this is my perception over the last 20 years of using different OSs.

bubba, I'll check it out. My thought was that adding bookmarks to a web page would be more trouble than adding to the built in bookmarks list. Too much so to bother using it, but I'll check it out.
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Mac mini powered up on 2-11-2005

[iMav]

[nalenb]

Right. I installed vim and am playing around with it. However, my text editting needs are pretty modest so I'm not sure I gain much by having a cross platform editor.
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Mac mini powered up on 2-11-2005

[iMav]

[nalenb]

Yes, I see your point. However, take a look at Vim vs. something like TextMate. For what I need to do TextMate is sufficient. I want to have about 6-7 lists open at once each in it's own document. I want them to all open when I open something like a project, which TextMate does. Look at how the window and controls look on both, Vim looks like it was designed for another system and just compiled up on OSX without regard to interface rules, TextMate looks more "native" in look and feel. So if I was on OSX only I'd choose TextMate. Same thing happens on Windows. So I end up spending about $40 on each platform for a text editor. Yes, I could use Vim on both and it's free, but the user experience is not as good as it can be. It's the little annoyances that add up over the day that bug me. Joel on Software has an excellent thought on this in his book.

So, while I'm annoyed that I need to pay twice, I'll do it because I believe the long term benefit outweighs the cost. This is solely based on my needs at the present. For text editting I go in make a few small changes and that's it. I do all my heavy code editting through IDE's and am used to doing it that way.
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Mac mini powered up on 2-11-2005

[nalenb]

bubba, ol'bookmarks looks like it's out of active development. It hasn't been updated since 2003. I'm reluctant to start using it because of that. I'm playing around with del.icio.us right now. The only draw back to using that service is that I don't own the data, it's stored on someone else's server.
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Mac mini powered up on 2-11-2005

[iMav]

nalenb, discounting the X11 environment entirely, you pretty much have no other options.

X11 on OS X coupled with something like Cygwin on Windows would give you great flexibility to use a lot of the same tools on both platforms. (and there are some truly GREAT open source tools available) However, you are making conscious decisions to exclude yourself from that potential bliss.
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-=iMav=-
http://geekhack.org

[nalenb]

Yes, I know I'm limiting things without using X11 with OSX. So far (aside from cost) I don't see too big of an impact. There seem to be as good or better apps for every category I need under OSX only.

Have you used cygwin on Windows? I think it's absolutely horrible to work with from a user standpoint. I know many people use it all the time, but I could never use it for more than a couple hours (and I've installed/uninstalled it many, many times). Maybe it's a mindset thing, cause I use a lot of the linux stuff when I'm on linux.

The cygwin thing on Windows and the difficulty of setting up X on Linux keeps me far away from X on OSX. I guess I haven't seen a really compelling application yet (aside from cost that is).
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Mac mini powered up on 2-11-2005

[iMav]

If you find X difficult to setup in Linux, then you have not seen some of the truly idiot-proof linux distros that have matured in the past couple of years.

I agree that Cygwin is not the most enjoyable...luckily, I do not need to use windows at work nor at home. My work-issued thinkpad happily runs linux and with the help of great tools like the exchange plugin for evolution and OpenOffice, I am able to function quite well along side my windows-using co-workers...

BTW, I was wondering if you've played with JEdit at all (and, if so, what are your thought)?
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-=iMav=-
http://geekhack.org

[nalenb]

Yeah, I have to use Windows at work, along with developing apps for Windows on the side, forces me to use more than 1 platform. It's okay though, since I get to see the best and worst of each platform. Whenever I use Linux I always go with Debian. I know it's not the most friendly for installing/maintaining, but I like it and am familiar with it. Happily once X is setup, I don't have to mess with it anymore.

No, I've not tried Jedit. I've heard good things about it, but I generally don't like Java programs for lots of reasons.
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Mac mini powered up on 2-11-2005