Migrating to Mac from Windows

I picked up a new MacBook Pro at work a couple of days ago and currently am in a process of migrating to it.

I have been using a Lenovo T60p Laptop with Windows XP for almost 3 years. Before which I used a another IBM Thinkpad for 3 years, with a dual boot option for Windows XP and Fedora 4. Even before that I used to work on various flavors of Microsoft and Linux OSes.

This is my first time, full-time, with a Macintosh and its been good so far. My new Apple MacBook Pro 15″ is running on my company’s image of Mac OS X 10.5.8. It has 4 GB of DDR3 memory and a 2.53 GHz of Intel Dual Core processor.

Installing apps on a Mac is really simple. Just download/copy the .dmg file of the application that you want to install, double click on it and following the application specific on-screen wizard. The new app gets installed in a newly mounted partition under the list of devices.

The application is now installed on the system and is ready to use. If you want the application to be there on your disc along with the rest of them, just copy the installed file (folders in some cases) to the Applications directory.

I have already installed a bunch of softwares that I use like Firefox for the web, Microsoft Office (including Entourage for emails) [:-O $299 O-:], Adium for chat, SQL Developer for accessing Oracle DB, MAMP, DivX Player & VLC player for playing media, Grisbi for my personal finance, a couple of games etc. I am yet to install a soft phone app, video capture utility, a development IDE and a bunch of other stuff.

So far, I have not stumbled upon any application that I used on MS Windows and wouldn’t work (or does not have a substitute) on Mac OS X. The experience has undoubtedly better, both in terms of the hard-ware and the soft-ware. It’ll, however, take some time to get used to the much smoother and responsive multi-touch trackpad. And also to Entourage for my emails (I havn’t been able to find a view that lists all my follow-up/flagged emails across folders in a single view).

So far so good.

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You’re currently reading “Migrating to Mac from Windows,” an entry on /kapil/blog

Published:: 2.15.10 / 12am

Category:: General, Mac, installation

Tags:: installation, mac applications, mac os x, migration, software, windows xp

About

I have over 6 years of experience in architecting and developing web applications.

I am currently working at Akamai Technologies as a Sr. Software Engineer responsible for gathering/conceptualizing requirements and architecting the “Media Analytics” product, which is part of the Akamai HD Network. Previously at Akamai, I was working in the portal development team for the “Performance Analytics” suite of products, responsible for feature development and usability enhancements. At Akamai, I have gained an in-depth understanding of the business of online “Analytics”, and building & using large-scale software for it.

Prior to this, I worked as a Technical Architect at Info Edge (I) Ltd (company that owns high traffic portals like: Naukri.com, Jeevansaathi.com, Brijj.com, 99acres.com etc.). I was the first member of the Brijj.com technical team and was responsible for hiring and bootstrapping the complete team; and architecting the product. For Naukri.com, I played a key role in implementing and optimizing Lucene based distributed and scalable Resume Search Engine in Core Java. I was also responsible for performance tweaking (Apache & Lighttpd for high performance and low response time), and taking initiatives to deliver smart, fast and quality products for the company.

Apart from these, I have also undergone six months of extensive training experience at Tata Consultancy Services, responsible for re-writing existing Pro*COBOL code in equivalent PL/SQL scripts.