i've switched

I received my beautiful new MacBook Pro on friday! I haven't been able to play around with it much as i spent friday night and the whole of saturday setting up my development evironment and downloading loads of usefull programs. Sunday i spent finishing up the first version of zaadz' photo albums feature - (which should go live sometime during the day - i'll blog about that, and all the features i plan to add to it, later).

So tonight I get to play around with my mac. I've always had a windows machine. (well - i also remember the days before windows3.1, but it's a very vague memory :) I've dual booted linux on my old desktop for a while, but I didn't have an internet connection back then, and linux without internet is like sailing without a sail. - so i stuck with windows.

Mac really was never an option for me. Apple boycotted South Africa during 'apartheid' and there were never really a significant mac user base in South Africa. being a programmer - i had to be able to develop on platforms that could ensure employment - that meant that i spent years in the MS visual studio camp.

That all started to change after I discovered Ruby On Rails as a webdevelopment framework while i was looking for a framework to develop a pet project in.

I've been on the Rails train eversince.

Ruby is an interpreted programming language, which basically means that it is, like java, platform independent.  So with all the hanging around rails newsgroups, i started to notice Mac OSx. All the hackers i looked up to seemed to have switched to Macs.

Then Apple anounced the MacBook Pro. An Intel based laptop. fast, capable, full-featured and beautifull.

Anyway - now it is here.

i feel like a kid that just discovered a new game. i can't get enough. I feel - for the first time in years - like a total newbie, and surprisingly i like it. It is exciting to learn new stuff.
I think it will take a couple of weeks before i'll be a proficient mac user, but i really don't mind.

I've switched a couple of times in the past - with browsers for instance: i used to use IE, then i switched to Netscape Navigator, then Opera, then firefox, then Maxthon (an IE clone with tabbed browsing), then back to Opera and Firefox. - Currently Firefox works for me - especially from a development point of view. - it really is a lot nicer developing for firefox than for IE. Maybe we can change the world sufficiently so more (all of you) people switch to firefox - that would make my job easier ;) .

anyway i'm starting to trail off. what i'm trying to say is that this is exciting times - i'm feeling like one of the cool kids again ;) .

Thanks for making zaadz work. were changing the world already.
there's nothing like a change of scenery