Headaches of Switching to Mac OS X for Development
In the terminal windows, it works like on Linux but with one exception. When you middle click, it doesn’t count that as clicking to activate the window. A lot of times I’m pasting in a command and I then want to hit Enter and have it execute. On the Mac, the Enter key keystroke is captured by the window you copied from, not the one you just middle clicked in. You have to middle click and then left click to activate the window you just pasted to. Maybe Linux does the same with click to focus window behavior but with focus follows mouse enabled, the window I’m in is the active one so it’s not an issue.
Fuzzy Screen
I’ve seen flame wars and huge discussions on the font rendering engine on the Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux and I don’t intend to reignite those, but for me, the Mac screen is fuzzy. I should say that I’m using an external 24″ 1920×1200 monitor on the Mac (it’s an HP LA2405wg) and it is being driven by the Mac at it’s native resolution (the Mac is a MacBook with a 1440×900 LCD screen that is just way too small for a guy that uses dual 1920×1200 screens on all his other systems). I get used to it after a bit but whenever I have to be switching back and forth between systems, its definitely an irritant.
Slow Response
I don’t think this really has anything to do with the fact that the computer is a Mac, per se, other than the fact that the machine has an old Core 2 Duo processor where my other systems are a Intel i7 and an AMD Phenom which are both quad-core and much faster. I’m running Mountain Lion on a system that originally shipped with Leopard and I can feel it. Luckily, this is soon to be rectified and I’m getting a new MacBook in a month or two with a faster processor and more RAM.
The other area of slow response is when I do switch between systems. I have all my computers hooked up to a pair of monitors, keyboard, and mouse via a KVM switch. For some reason the Mac has issues with the switch. Many times it doesn’t connect the keyboard and mouse and sometimes just doesn’t grab the keyboard. It also doesn’t seem to respond very well to the video switch when the screen saver is on. Again, I think these are mainly issues of the old hardware and are only an issue when I switch to the Mac for the first time any given day.
Final Thoughts
Overall, the experience of working on the Mac has been fine. I don’t have adapters to do the dual screen setup like I do with my other computers (only one video out on the MacBook) but that typically isn’t an issue since my work on the Mac is fairly focused.
Would I ever switch to a Mac as my primary system? Probably not, although it’s not out of the question. If I was doing mobile development full time and had to target iOS, then I might just out of necessity. But while that’s only a side project, I think I’ll stick with what I’ve been using longer and am more familiar with.
I think the biggest thing I learned by starting to do development on the Mac is how ingrained some habits are and what I took for granted in my usual environment. It has helped me to realize what is core to my workflow and what is extras provided by the environment I’m working on.
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