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Einar Ingebrigtsen — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:23:31 GMT

The new position I´m starting at Objectware the 1st of September is focused around Silverlight and WPF. Seeing that Silverlight truely is cross platform, I asked for a MacBook Pro as the preferred computer and got one. The reason for this is both professionally, seeing that I will be working a lot with Silverlight, but also on the personal side. I wanted to explore a part of the universe I´ve never been and I wanted to do it properly. The plan is to use only Windows for Visual Studio and have everything else as software in Mac OSX.

As a true Windows man, I was quite curious as to how this journey would end up. The weeks prior to getting the computer I read articles and started to get familiar with the user interface by skinning my Windows to look and "feel" like Mac OSX. Still, after doing all this preparation I can truely say that I was not prepared at all. Keep in mind that besides Windows, the only operating systems I´ve ever had has been C64, Atari TOS, Amiga OS, OS/2 and DOS.

Thus far, the experience has been quite positive. Apple has truely created a complete experience. The only thing I´ve been having trouble with is to find free software for the things I need; newsreading, blogging, screencasting, torrents. It seems that it is more common for people to pay for software for the Mac. It´s not that the software is expensive, usually the price is some $20-$30. I guess I´m just spoiled for not being used to it. I´ve so far landed on the following software for the 4 activities mentioned:

* Newsreading = NewsGators NetNewsWire
* Blogging = Brain Juices Blogo (In fact, this article was written with it)
* Screencasting = Ambrosia Softwares Snapz Pro
* Torrents = xTorrent

For virtualization, I´m using Parallels. I liked their Coherence mode better than VMWare Fusions. The Windows installation runs in Boot Camp and is used directly by parallels. Runs smoothly. Just gotta figure out the occassional bluescreen I´m having.

One of my goals the next 6 months is to get started with some development targetting the Mac using XCode and Objective C. Also I´ve been wanting to look into iPhone development. The SDK is downloaded at least, so let´s see what the future holds.

Blog'A'Little : OSX, wpf

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