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January 30, 2006

Falling behind my peers

I find myself drooling over the Mac product line almost on a daily basis. And why not? Their products are cool, sleek and extremely functional. In addition, my friends have been purchasing them as well and I'm just a tad jealous.

Everyone has their reasons for wanting a Mac. I have mine too. After all, as a Web developer, I have a responsability to look at a design through multiple operating systems and Web browsers to make sure that a design looks and operates the same. I want a user who visits one of my sites to have the same experience despite their OS and browser of choice.

I have access to Windows and Linux ... that's never been a problem for me. I know that the pages that I create will work for these operating systems and the browsers that can be used on them. But access to a Mac, well, that's always been a little bit out of my reach. I don't have anything to make sure that my designs look right or are as functional on a Mac.

Now, I am aware that the Safari Web browser, which is the defacto standard of Web browsers in Mac OS, is based on the Konqueror Web browser core. But there are other variables that may or may not be available in Linux and Konqueror that are or are not available on a Mac. It's these variables that make my designs on a Mac unknown to me, and it's extremely frustrating.

With that said, I'm looking very very hard at aquiring a new Mac. What will I get? Well, I've been looking at a couple:

Intel iMac
* 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512
* 250GB Serial ATA drive
* ATI Radeon X1600/256MB VRAM
* SuperDrive 8x (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW)
* Keyboard & Mighty Mouse + Mac OS X - U.S. English
* Accessory kit
* 20-inch widescreen LCD
* 2GHz Intel Core Duo
* AirPort Extreme
* Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
Price: $1900.00 (without tax and shipping)

Mac Mini
* 1GB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
* 100GB Ultra ATA drive
* 4x SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
* Internal Bluetooth + AirPort Extreme Card
* No modem
* Mac OS X - U.S. English
* 1.42GHz PowerPC G4
Price: $900.00 (without tax and shipping)

Now, I've discussed my desire to purchase a Mac with Kyle, who already owns two Mac machines (desktop and laptop). He's telling me that I should only go for the Intel chipset Macs, as I will get more bang for my hard earned buck. This is frustrating to me, because I'm really wanting to purchase a Mac Mini, but I don't know if I can wait for the Intel version of these machines to be released. Heck, they may not even make an Intel version of the Mac Mini for all I know.

I'm so screwed.

Ultimately, the main reason why I would like to get a Mac is simple: I can run Windows and Linux on it with no problem at all using emulators. This will give me access to three operating systems and multiple browsers without having to have three computers at my desk.

Not to mention that I may finally catch up with my peers.

Update - February 5th, 2006: According to Mac OS Rumors, there could be a Mac Mini with an Intel Core Duo chip by July:

"The Mac Mini will indeed transition to Intel in July, according to reliable sources responding to our inquiries about recent rumblings on the grapevine...."

~out...

Posted by ed at 03:35 PM | Comments (3)