My New MacBook Pro Rocks For Rails Development

The last week or so I have been very busy playing with and setting up my new MacBook Pro. This is, in fact, my first post from it. After spending some time with it, I have to say that I am still extremely pleased! I have my Ruby on Rails environment all setup and working spendidly. I have my primary dev toolset CocoaMySQL, Locomotive, TextMate, and SVNx and now everything is pretty dialed in. I was able to grab one of my rails projects from my SVN repository, and run it successfully, after tweaking a few file permissions.

Wow, this baby can cook! Not just the temp, but the performance is great. I installed Parallels and couple versions of Windows XP for testing. It seems funny to me, having XP in one window, bash in another, and a stylish OSX app in a third. I know I could have done more with virtual OS stuff before I had this Mac, but now it's just so fun and easy!

Anyhow, now that I have come back to the Mac side, I sure feel a whole lot better! I guess you really CAN have it all nowadays...

Just Say No To Vista?

Security expert Bruce Schneier says not to use Windows Vista, due to the flaws of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) incorporated into the OS. No, really. One of, if not THE, top security expert says not to use Microsoft's newest OS.

To quote Mr. Schneier:

Windows Vista includes an array of "features" that you don't want. These features will make your computer less reliable and less secure. They'll make your computer less stable and run slower. They will cause technical support problems. They may even require you to upgrade some of your peripheral hardware and existing software. And these features won't do anything useful. In fact, they're working against you. They're digital rights management (DRM) features built into Vista at the behest of the entertainment industry.

And you don't get to refuse them.

The details are pretty geeky, but basically Microsoft has reworked a lot of the core operating system to add copy protection technology for new media formats like HD-DVD and Blu-ray disks. Certain high-quality output paths--audio and video--are reserved for protected peripheral devices. Sometimes output quality is artificially degraded; sometimes output is prevented entirely. And Vista continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying to figure out if you're doing something that it thinks you shouldn't. If it does, it limits functionality and in extreme cases restarts just the video subsystem. We still don't know the exact details of all this, and how far-reaching it is, but it doesn't look good.

Microsoft put all those functionality-crippling features into Vista because it wants to own the entertainment industry. This isn't how Microsoft spins it, of course. It maintains that it has no choice, that it's Hollywood that is demanding DRM in Windows in order to allow "premium content"--meaning, new movies that are still earning revenue--onto your computer. If Microsoft didn't play along, it'd be relegated to second-class status as Hollywood pulled its support for the platform.

Schneier then goes on to explain why story is even worse then just controlling what music or movies you can play:

Microsoft is reaching for a much bigger prize than Apple: not just Hollywood, but also peripheral hardware vendors. Vista's DRM will require driver developers to comply with all kinds of rules and be certified; otherwise, they won't work. And Microsoft talks about expanding this to independent software vendors as well. It's another war for control of the computer market.

Unfortunately, we users are caught in the crossfire. We are not only stuck with DRM systems that interfere with our legitimate fair-use rights for the content we buy, we're stuck with DRM systems that interfere with all of our computer use--even the uses that have nothing to do with copyright.

And then finally the big kicker:

In the meantime, the only advice I can offer you is to not upgrade to Vista. It will be hard. Microsoft's bundling deals with computer manufacturers mean that it will be increasingly hard not to get the new operating system with new computers. And Microsoft has some pretty deep pockets and can wait us all out if it wants to. Yes, some people will shift to Macintosh and some fewer number to Linux, but most of us are stuck on Windows. Still, if enough customers say no to Vista, the company might actually listen.

That is a pretty dark picture you paint, Bruce...

Switching Back To The Mac Side Of The Force

Once upon a time, I did really cool things at Apple Computer...

It was during the reign of Jobs the First, and all was well with the world. Except for the installed base of Macs, and trying to sell businesses on buying Macs. Shareholder were incensed, board members impatient.

Even after the coup, and various poorly executed attempts to rectify the situation by the imposters Scully and Gassee could not change, and the kingdom was greatly endangered. Many of us who bled in five colors left the kingdom for greener pastures where we could make our livings under the Pax Microsoft. I feared that someday from my new vantage, I would see the final end of the great dream.

But Jobs was brought back from exile, and in due course has returned the kingdom, not only to its former glory, but stong enough to challenge the Microsoft empire.

Diehard Windows users have seen the Vista, and rejected it for the Mac Way.

Look at the slow pace of innovation in the important areas of developer tools (how many years between releases?), and software rollouts in general. Combine this with the pointless MS-centricness. Why did Visual Studio 2005 have to reinvent well respected open source tools like NUnit and NAnt, with just different for difference's sake tools MSTest and MSBuild?

With so many troubles within the diehard loyalists, mercs, and vassals, the Microsoft Empire in clearly in decline. I have seen the future, and MS is really in grave trouble. Call me opportunist, but I for one, am switching back to Mac the first chance I get! I will run Windows XP SP2 under Parallels, and have the best of both worlds.