Through the Interface

Well, I've finally taken the plunge and ordered a MacBook Pro. I have very little experience with Apple products – other than owning an aging iPod Photo and having bought an iPod Touch for my wife – so this is quite a departure for me. I'm far from being ready to call myself "a Mac" rather than "a PC", but if I'm to talk intelligently about working with AutoCAD for Mac then it was bound to happen, sooner or later.

I ordered the 15" model with a screen and processor upgrade. I'm very curious to see how it performs.

A number of my team members use MacBook Pro machines as their primary systems, albeit hosting a Windows OS for the vast majority of their day-to-day work: some use BootCamp but others are using Parallels Desktop exclusively with great success. I'm probably going down the latter path, as I'm keen not to partition my harddrive and take a wild guess at where the space will be used up more quickly.

While on the topic of Mac machines, our old friend Fernando Mallard has launched a new blog focused on ObjectARX development for Mac. I'm certainly looking forward to learning more about this topic, myself, in due course.

Another old friend (and ex-colleague), Eugene Evon, is now working at Apple, heading up their Certification Training product development and programs. He emailed me a few weeks ago to let me know of the first "certification" to come out under his watch, focused on helping integrate Macs into Windows networks (which I imagine lots of people are doing, these days).

Here's the free online learning content. It looks as though some of the pre-requisites for this class (such as Switch 101) would be of use to me, so I'll probably run through that, at some point.

I have to admit to being a bit apprehensive about "the switch" (although I'm hoping my Mac will simply be a great PC for much of what I do :-). I can see how integrated hardware and software can bring certain advantages from a quality perspective, but the loss of choice and of control is something that concerns me. I dare say I'll get over it, in time, but for now I'm just doing my best to reserve judgment.

If any of you have experience or opinions you'd like to share on this topic, feel free to post a comment.