The one thing that keeps me busy with my MacBook is PHP development. Before I bought it, I guessed that XCode (Apple's own IDE) is a great thing and that many open-source items are pre-installed on Leopard... But after some time I gave it a try and configured my machine for local PHP-MySql development. MySql was missing, but Apache was also conviniently preinstalled, so I had my MAMP workstation ready in less than a day. Before that, I even tried RoR, but decided to stick to my own PHP framework.
I was so eager to test how PHP development looks like that I even started re-design of the framework, throwing out the only part that wasn't programmed by me (and it was an MVC framework knows as Fusebox). Before, I had my development on hosting server. Now, I have ultra-fast development environment with all the components running on my own machine. I even started to think about such things as performance (oddly enough, my own MacBook executes my scripts much faster than my hosting server does).
XCode is great tool, especially for its price tag, which is, as you know, zero. IT may be lacking some features of Eclipse and Visual Studio, but I would not use those features anyway, they are too difficult for me. There are no intellisense, breakpoint debugging and refactoring for PHP, but ultra-responsive IDE with code folding and syntax coloring covers all my needs. The one thing that bugs me a bit is that I did not find a way to have Tabbed interface for open documents, the way like Eclipse and Visual Studio are doing, but I used to this. I am now much more creative than on Windows before.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Appearance and built quality
I have not written for ages to this blog. This is not because I stopped to get new experiences, but maybe because using a Mac became some sort of routine when you lose the feeling what could excite readers of the blog. I switched to using Mac for some months, and my previous laptop, which is Dell, is just occupying a space on my desk, and I really infrequently open its lid just to log in to have my machine listed in the domain...
Well, using the machine for 8+ hours a day, I can now tell you guys how machine withstands my usage. In brief: pretty fine, but I can notice it's not brand new anymore. Touchpad became shiny in the center, buttons of the keyboard are a bit grey instead of white, and some plastic next to keyboard degraded and a small chink emerged. Other than that, chassis is still solid, details are attached to each other as on the day 1, there are no arbitrary detaching accumulator as on my estonian-made PC laptop. There are no even ugly scratches on the chassis, despite the fact I don't have a fancy bag for it and put it straight to my backpack.
What is great, is that battery life is still normal. Even with Wifi turned on, MacBook achieves 4+ hours of working time. I never take my AC adapter with me when I go home. I just don't spend enough time behind the computer screen at home so its battery life never ends as a surprise.
Well, using the machine for 8+ hours a day, I can now tell you guys how machine withstands my usage. In brief: pretty fine, but I can notice it's not brand new anymore. Touchpad became shiny in the center, buttons of the keyboard are a bit grey instead of white, and some plastic next to keyboard degraded and a small chink emerged. Other than that, chassis is still solid, details are attached to each other as on the day 1, there are no arbitrary detaching accumulator as on my estonian-made PC laptop. There are no even ugly scratches on the chassis, despite the fact I don't have a fancy bag for it and put it straight to my backpack.
What is great, is that battery life is still normal. Even with Wifi turned on, MacBook achieves 4+ hours of working time. I never take my AC adapter with me when I go home. I just don't spend enough time behind the computer screen at home so its battery life never ends as a surprise.
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