My Future .NET Development Machine: A Mac!


It's official: Apple announced that they'll provide the ability for new Intel-based Macs to boot Windows XP via Boot Camp, available now as a public Beta and later as a feature bundled with OS X. While some clever people have succeeded in bringing up Windows on a Mac before, an official Apple solution will be better received, particularly among businesses that might like to give Macs a try. But the question my fellow Visual Studio users may be asking is, "Why bother?"...



Most of the posts on this blog tend to lean toward the Mac; I admit it, I'm biased, despite the fact that I spend most of my waking hours working in Windows. Or perhaps because I spend most of my waking hours working in Windows. Either way, it's a preference I've acquired over the last few years, and all of my personal computing is now Mac-based.

But my employer's market is rather tied into the Windows platform, which means as a software developer most of my time is now spent in Visual Studio 2005 --- thankfully, a pretty nice application. Occasionally I'll need to do some graphics for either software or a design spec, and I'll go back to the Mac to use OmniGraffle, but for the most part my development work gets done on a Dell laptop.

Traveling thus presents me with a few options: take the iBook for my personal work, take the Dell for my professional work, or lug along both. (Travel without a laptop? What kind of crazy notion is that?!)

One laptop, capable of running both OS X and Windows, solves the problem nicely... and since this iBook is getting a bit long in the tooth and is destined to be replaced soon anyway, it's a solution that won't cost me anything extra. Mind you, I'd rather have Windows run within OS X via something like VMWare or VirtualPC (if the performance isn't too bad, that is), but until such solutions appear for Intel-based Macs, dual-booting will suffice.

The ability to run both OS X and Windows apps natively gives Apple a selling point that no other manufacturer can lay claim to. If time and reviews prove the Mac to be a solid Windows machine, Apple will be positioned to give PC manufacturers some solid, value-based competition.

Posted: Wed - April 5, 2006 at 11:18 PM          

©