One Week After The New Mac’s Arrival

/ joeygibson

I’ve had my shiny, new Mac Pro for just over one week now and all I can say is “Whoa,” in a very Joey Lawrence sort of way. This thing is the fastest machine I’ve ever owned, and the closest to top-of-the-line I’ve ever been. Granted, I paid a premium for it, but it sho’ is nice.

Eclipse, which on my 1.4GHz AMD box took 45 to 80 seconds to startup, starts in 10 seconds. Yes, that’s 10 seconds. From clicking on the icon to ready-to-accept-user-input, in 10 seconds. And with 2GB of RAM, I can run iTunes, Eclipse, SQuirrelL SQL, SmartCVS, Adium, NeoOffice, TextMate, iTerm, JBoss, two instances of Firefox and Parallels Desktop (running WindowsXP), all at the same time, all without breaking a sweat. It’s a very sweet machine. Oh yeah, the other day I had Serenity playing on one monitor while I was working on the other.

When I decided to get this computer, there was only one Windows app that I was really going to miss, and that was SQLYog. I do most of my SQL work in SQuirreL, but SQLYog has this neat utility to compare the structure of two databases and generate DDL to alter one to look like the other. It’s very handy, and I was going to miss it. Then I noticed that the CodeWeavers folks have made CrossOver available for the Mac. I tried it, got SQLYog running and went ahead and bought a license. I’ve used CrossOver on Linux, and it’s a nice product. My only complaint is that it wants to open dialogs centered across both my monitors, so they end up being split across both monitors, but that’s a small problem, really. I’m just happy I can still run SQLYog.

Anyway, I’m very happy with my machine. I don’t miss Windows at all.

2 thoughts on “One Week After The New Mac’s Arrival”

  1. unfortunately it doesn’t stop the macbooks from being overweight lumps of lard. yes, I have seen and handled a few – even with the battery removed (to stop people stealing it form the shop) they were terrible.
    I’d take my dell x1 / samsung q30 over a macbook every time. I didn’t realise until I got it just how much I would appreciate its tiny weight. x1 + ac adapter + leather portfolio case seems to weigh less than most other 12″ laptops on their own.
    the macbook obviously performs far better than the x1, but for me the enormous weight would inspire me to just leave it on the desk at all times. might as well buy a desktop.
    my main requirement (Bibble Pro for RAW image processing) runs fine on the X1 in both Windows and Linux, but it would run better on a 1kg macbook…

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