[Ruby] Mac for a Linux guy (off-topic)

[Eric Hodel]

On Dec 16, 2006, at 20:41, Alex Vollmer wrote:

> I love my penguins, but when it comes to laptops I can't help but  
> envy all
> the Mac PowerBook users out there. Nobody seems to provide a better  
> latop
> experience than Apple. So I'm finally giving in and joining The Apple
> Collective. The question is, how?
>
> Given the disproportionate amount of dudes that showed up with Macs  
> to the
> last hacking night at Vivace, this seems like as good a place as  
> any to get
> some opinions on what Mac to purchase for a developer. Sorry if  
> this is too
> off-topic for this list. Please send your flames to /dev/null. ;-)
>
> I'm looking at the 15" MacBook Pro with 2.16 GHz processor.

I just upgraded from a 17" G4 PB to the machine you're looking at.  I  
like it.  Its plenty fast.

> I'm planning on getting the stock 1GB memory and adding another 2GB  
> later (I think I can do that, right?)

You can.  (Those 2GB SO-DIMMs are pricey.)

> I'm curious what folks think about the necessity of Apple Care and  
> if the plain' ol vanilla Mac Books are good enough for a "serious"  
> dev box.

Apple Care saved me the cost of a logic board replacement after I'd  
owned my previous machine for just over two years.  With laptops its  
smart, simple protection.

> Plus, if you can think of any "must-have" apps for a developer, I'd  
> love to know what they are.

I primarily use darwinports for the standard *nix packages you'd  
need, except for ruby itself and vim/gvim which I've compiled from  
scratch.  There's also fun stuff like SubEthaEdit, Sprited Away, and  
SSHKeychain that make working much better.

-- 
Eric Hodel - drbrain at segment7.net - http://blog.segment7.net

I LIT YOUR GEM ON FIRE!