Well I've done it now...

[hollyking]

I've begun the switch. Thanks to an excellent quarter I just ordered a 15" PowerBook G4. Apple's order page says it will ship in 1 to 3 days and will take from 1 to 5 days to arrive. So I can expect my new toy any time between tomorrow and Friday the 19th. Now I need to come up with a name. Any suggestions?

I know I need to pick up SubEthaEdit. What other killer Mac apps should I be sure to get?

Comments

[istukan.livejournal.com]

Duuude! I don't know whether to congratulate you or curse you for getting a powerbook before I did ;) One thing I do know is that you're gonna love it. Just make sure you devote some attention to Wren or she might get jealous ;)

As for killer Mac apps... First of all, get Quicksilver; it's an awesome little app that lets you quickly launch applications you don't use all that often, among other things which I haven't played with yet. Also, if you prefer virtual desktops instead of cluttered desktop or minimize/maximize, get Desktop Manager; it too is awesome, if you're like me :D Hmmm... Can't think of anything else, really. I personally got Firefox and Thunderbird for my web/e-mail instead of the default Safari and Mail.app, but it's a personal preference. If you don't like Safari or Firefox, take a look at Camino, which is also a great browser. Oh, and get Tofu, which is another little app that opens text files and displays them in multiple columns for easier reading; it can get a bit annyoing at times when you open text files with something other than text.

Let me know if you need any help from a seasoned Mac guru like myself with a whole couple of months experience ;)

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

Mail is going to be fun. Right now the important stuff is kept on my server and I use ssh and mutt to read it. I would like to setup some secure connection where the mail is archived on the server but I can download, read and reply to it on the PowerBook.

The first thing that's getting installed is Perl and probably emacs of one form or another. Although now might be the time to convert to vim. I've also been impressed with demos of TextMate, although I'm not sure how well it supports Perl syntax.

[istukan.livejournal.com]

In regards to mail, I take it you're downloading mail from some mail server and use mutt to read it? I think you might be able to set up a mail server on your server, have it fetch the mail for you, then offer IMAP service for you to use on your computer?

I can't remember if Perl came pre-installed with OS X... I think it did, but am not sure. Anyhow, I installed the Carbon Emacs and it works pretty well. There's also 'Emacs on Aqua' available for download from here (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/emacsonaqua.html). I wouldn't be surprised if Vim was better integrated with the OS, since Emacs by its nature resists integration :) As for TextMate, I have only one word for you: BLASPHEMY!

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

Nope, I ssh into the server and use mutt to read it there. The plan is to convert the existing maildir folders into IMAP folders and then use that to process the mail on my local machine.

After a bit of checking Perl does indeed come installed on OS X. I need to get the developer kits and stuff, but they're already on the way so that's set.

Carbon Emacs is just the GNU source recompiled for OS X. Emacs on Aqua looks like they've gone farther with integrating the editor in the OS. However EoA is using the 20.7 source and I have quite a few extensions that expect version 21. So it sounds like Carbon Emacs is the winner.

[istukan.livejournal.com]

Ah, cool. That shouldn't be too hard then, right? Though I have no idea how to do that :D What IMAP server are you using? If you haven't decided yet, check out Cyrus (http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/imapd/) :)

As for Perl, good to know. I've installed Developers Tools soon after installing the OS, so it all fused together into one event ;)

Yeah, I also had problems with the EoA (it was called differently, though, but I don't remember how exactly) working with SLIME (http://common-lisp.net/project/slime/), so Carbon Emacs seemed like the best option then too. Maybe EoA will catch up with the current Emacs in near future...