I Bought A Mac
I have always been a long time PC user and developer on the PC platform and recently made the switch to a Mac. Throughout my entire life I have owned desktop PCs and PC laptops, even though I have used Macs and am familiar with them, I have never owned one. Late last year I began considering switching to a MacBook Pro as my primary development platform.
The development that I do is in .Net, Java, and C++. All three are developed on a PC running the various variants of Microsoft Windows operating systems. When Apple introduced the MacBook Pro in February 2006, I seriously began to think about switching from PC to Mac as my primary machine.
To switch to the MacBook Pro as a development environment for PC Windows based projects, specifically .Net I needed a way of running Visual Studio. Microsoft had not yet decided to port Visual Studio to OS X. If they did do so, there would be quite a few developers who would be willing to purchase it (myself included). Although this would be an interesting scenario and expansion of Microsoft’s development lineup, it would not be more than a dream on my part.
There were two choices that I could use running a .Net environment on a MacBook Pro: install and run Windows XP by booting directly; or run Windows XP on a virtual machine. I knew that I could use Boot Camp as an option (http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/) but did not want to have to reboot the system every time I needed to open Visual Studio. The other option was to use Parallels Desktop and run the environment virtually. I was apprehensive of the performance I would experience while running .Net under a virtual instance of WinXP, but I decided to go ahead and try. If it didn’t work I could download Boot Camp and run .Net through a native instance of WinXP.
The Mac purchase experience inside of an Apple Store is vastly different than within a Best Buy, Circuit City or CompUsa. Apple has targeted the Apple Stores to clearly be a boutique shopping experience, with ample examples of their products on display for users to try before buying. The sales associate that I met was a little taken aback by the fact that I knew exactly what I wanted.
The purchase went smoothly and I took delivery of a base model MacBook Pro and retail copy of Parallels Desktop. Installing Parallels went smoothly and after installing WinXP and Visual Studio, I was able to open a project that I am working and compile it with no incident.
.Net on Mac works…now if only Microsoft would come out with Visual Studio for the Mac and a .Net framework.
I have always been a long time PC user and developer on the PC platform and recently made the switch to a Mac. Throughout my entire life I have owned desktop PCs and PC laptops, even though I have used Macs and am familiar with them, I have never owned one. Late last year I began considering switching to a MacBook Pro as my primary development platform.
The development that I do is in .Net, Java, and C++. All three are developed on a PC running the various variants of Microsoft Windows operating systems. When Apple introduced the MacBook Pro in February 2006, I seriously began to think about switching from PC to Mac as my primary machine.
To switch to the MacBook Pro as a development environment for PC Windows based projects, specifically .Net I needed a way of running Visual Studio. Microsoft had not yet decided to port Visual Studio to OS X. If they did do so, there would be quite a few developers who would be willing to purchase it (myself included). Although this would be an interesting scenario and expansion of Microsoft’s development lineup, it would not be more than a dream on my part.
There were two choices that I could use running a .Net environment on a MacBook Pro: install and run Windows XP by booting directly; or run Windows XP on a virtual machine. I knew that I could use Boot Camp as an option (http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/) but did not want to have to reboot the system every time I needed to open Visual Studio. The other option was to use Parallels Desktop and run the environment virtually. I was apprehensive of the performance I would experience while running .Net under a virtual instance of WinXP, but I decided to go ahead and try. If it didn’t work I could download Boot Camp and run .Net through a native instance of WinXP.
The Mac purchase experience inside of an Apple Store is vastly different than within a Best Buy, Circuit City or CompUsa. Apple has targeted the Apple Stores to clearly be a boutique shopping experience, with ample examples of their products on display for users to try before buying. The sales associate that I met was a little taken aback by the fact that I knew exactly what I wanted.
The purchase went smoothly and I took delivery of a base model MacBook Pro and retail copy of Parallels Desktop. Installing Parallels went smoothly and after installing WinXP and Visual Studio, I was able to open a project that I am working and compile it with no incident.
.Net on Mac works…now if only Microsoft would come out with Visual Studio for the Mac and a .Net framework.
Labels: macbook pro parallels desktop .net development java c#
posted by Steven at
10:55 PM
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