Jimmy Z

Yesterday, I got a nice and shiny new white MacBook. I eagerly tracked my order from China to Provo, and couldn’t wait to come home and fire it up.

So far my experience has been very good. I used a Mac for about a year and a half while working at BYU’s SAS Creative Marketing and came to really love Mac OS X. So, I’m not coming from a non-Mac user experience. Still, I’d never started from scratch with a brand new Mac.

The only real complication that I’ve experienced so far is that I was getting really slow response from my D-Link 524 wireless router. I finally fixed the problem by either running the updates, and changing a configuration on the WEP password. I don’t know which one fixed it, but it’s working really well now.

I’m not quite set up to the point that I can put away my Windows machine yet, but I’m getting there. The applications that I’ve installed so far include:

• Adium - a messenger client that handles my MSN and Google Talk accounts
• Skype - I can’t live without skype. It’s my favorite chat/voip client
• Fugu - an visual SFTP application for file transfers
• Firefox - I’m hooked on Firefox, although I’ll give Safari another look
• Growl - a notifier that helps with alerting me of Adium messages
• DarwinPorts - helps me get and compile Open Source applications and their dependencies with which I’ve installed RubyGems, MySQL5, and other web related applications
• Eclipse - an IDE for writing applications in either Java, PHP, Ruby, etc. I’ll use this until I can get TextMate.

Still to come:

• Parallels - A virtual machine application that will allow me to run Windows, Linux, etc. while running Mac OS X
• TextMate - An awesome code editor for the Mac
• Macromedia Studio - I have a Mac/Windows version of MX 2004 which I’ll be installing here
• MS Office for Mac - I’m still deciding whether to do this, just run my Windows version from Parallels, or get an Open Office version.
• Other cool applications from FreeMacWare.com

I still like Mac OS X. I’m new to Tiger, so I don’t have any favorite Dashboard widgets yet. I’m still discovering cool new features that didn’t exit in Panther.

Anyone have a killer app that they can’t go without on the Mac?

I just discovered that Apple has UK versions of the Get A Mac commercials. There’s something about the British accent and lingo that makes these extra funny. My favorite is the “Office at Home” commercial.

Anyways, I’m still stuck on a PC, but have been dieing to get a mac for about 3 years now. We’re saving up for a Mac, so I’ll probably get one as a graduation present. I’m still not sure whether I want a high-end Mac Book, or a smaller Mac Book Pro. Does anyone have any advice for me on this?

As soon as I’ve got an Internet connection that gives me a public IP address, I’ll probably get a Mac Mini to host my files and act as a small web server.

Yesterday, Apple released Boot Camp Public Beta which provides all of the software to run Windows on a Intel-powered Mac.

I have a friend who has hacked his system to dual-boot Windows XP and Mac OS X, but he had no native video card drivers and his machine wouldn’t shut down properly.

I had been considering buying a new Mac Book Pro, an Intel-powered iMac, or an Intel-powered Mac Mini, but I had been holding off until it looked like the dual-boot thing would be more supported.

All around the Information Systems program, Boot Camp has been the big buzz. I have heard several people say, “Buying a Mac is all of a sudden very tempting!”

I love Mac OS X. I think the interface is clean, beautiful, and easy to use. I’m excited to buy a Mac shortly in the future!

Apple Stock has jumped over 15% since the announcement.

Read more at http://www.google.com/finance?client=ig&q=AAPL

Also, check out Google’s new Finance Beta. It is awesome!