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Hello Apple

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When I started my current job Linux wasn’t an option so I got a Windows laptop. Ugh. It originally had Windows 8 on it and after some whining I was able to update to a Windows 10 machine. I was anxious to try WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).

WSL was cool, but unfortunately I had a lot of issues due to the way our corporate anti-virus rules were set. Downloading any packages, git checkouts, etc would all slow to a crawl as they were scanned. And unfortunately I couldn’t turn off or exclude certain directories from being scanned (welcome my draconian IT overlords).

Then recently my anti-virus started running every Wednesday in the middle of the day and this would essentially kill my machine. It was already a bit slow with Docker, ColdFusion, SQLServer, etc running. Add in the scan and my fans would come on and work would grind to a halt. I worked with our IT department trying to fix it but to no avail. Finally I whined some more and decided to break down and get a Mac.

I’ve primarily always been a Linux person and used Windows where I had no choice. I had never used a Mac before.

Now I have a shiney new MacBook Pro!

For the most part the transistion has been good. Most of the apps I use are cross platform:

I found Steer Mouse to map my extra mouse buttons.

I was able to spin up Docker and use SQLServer for Linux for our app at work.

And I was finally able to tinker with Alfred which is a terrific app - esp. with the ‘Power Pack’. This replaced a few apps and I’m using it as a launcher, a macro app and for text replacement.

Probably the biggest hurdle has been the keyboard. Deleting, home and end. Nothing works the same :) But I’m slowly getting used to things.

Homebrew is a great package manager and it’s so nice to have a real terminal with Bash!

And I also have Windows 10 running in Parallels though I haven’t had to use it for anything so far.