NYCPHP Meetup

[Chris Shiflett]

--- David Mintz <dmintz at davidmintz.org> wrote:
> I think it's time to move on from my old Dell Inspiron 2000 and I'm
> trying to talk myself into a G4 PowerBook.

That's a pretty easy sell, considering it's easily the best laptop money
can buy.

> You happy Powerbook owners, please tell me about how great they are for
> AMP development.

For development, I find Mac OS X comparable to Linux, with the added bonus
of BBEdit, one of the finest text editors on any platform. That was my one
software purchase.

I was in the market for a laptop a little over a year ago, and I was
pretty narrow-minded on an x86 architecture. I've been using Red Hat for
years, and I didn't feel like learning anything new. After all, I just
wanted something I could carry with me and do some minor development while
traveling, and I also wanted to be able to give the occasional
presentation from it.

IBM and Dell were my top choices. IBM has a X series that is nice and
small, and Dell had something like that, too. But, both made you sacrifice
a lot of nice features for the smaller laptops, and none could match the
elegance of the PowerBook. I finally just gave in and bought a 12"
PowerBook, thinking I would just install Yellow Dog or something if Mac OS
X turned out to be a pain.

I've yet to uninstall Mac OS X. It has all of the niceties of a
"mainstream" OS - I can buy games, tax software, and such without having
to do anything weird to get them running. It also has all of the great
development features of a Unix. Throw fink into the picture, and you can
make it look and feel almost exactly like Linux. Only the directory
structure is different, and that becomes less annoying with time.

> Persuade me how easy it is to run Apache/PHP, mysql

As easy as any Unix, which is pretty easy. Plus, it more closely resembles
a proper server environment, so anytime I'm setting up stuff like this, I
don't feel like it's a wasted effort, because I'm learning something
useful (or keeping my "skills" sharp). Contrast this with setting things
up on Windows...

> also things like the Zend and Eclipse IDEs

I don't use IDEs, so I can't say, but you will have access to arguably the
best text editor. The only real competition for the throne would be
UltraEdit for Windows. I still use vim a lot (and I know Dave is an avid
emacs user), but these types of full-fledged GUI editors are pretty nice.

> Tomcat, cvs (or perhaps Subversion) etc.

I use CVS from my PowerBook, but I've never played with Tomcat or
Subversion.

> Assure me it will also be possible to figure out a way to run the one
> and only Windoze program I'd like to keep, which is Paint Shop
> Pro.

Possible, yes, but unless there is a Mac version of that, it might be a
hassle. I use Gimp myself, and I know all the Adobe products are available
on Mac (most of the artsy folks seem to prefer Macs).

> Convince me that it will be fast and stable and just plain cool and I'll
> wonder how I lived without it.

For what it's worth, I can't imagine ever "going back." I'm a laptop snob
now, thanks to Apple. It's sort of like how I'm a barbecue snob, thanks to
living in Memphis for a few years.

Fast - It's no faster than a Pentium 4, and arguably slower. The
architecture is quite a bit different. Coming from my PII, which is my
fastest PC, it seems pretty damn fast. :-)

Stable - It's FreeBSD.

Cool - It's Apple.

> Further, enlighten me as to what specs and features and stuff you think
> a geek would require in order to attain nirvana.

Install fink first thing, and if you're a Unix guy, consider buying
O'Reilly's Mac OS X for Unix Geeks.

> Also -- maybe a naive question -- can you build and install something

Yep, everything is normal in that regard. Configure, make, make install.

Another telling sign is that well more than 50% of laptops at conferences
such as OSCON and ApacheCon are Apples. If you go to the speaker lounges,
that number is probably well over 80%.

Chris

=====
Chris Shiflett - http://shiflett.org/

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