On a Mac

I like this. I'm sitting here at my desk in my room at Burgmann College (paid for by the RSISE as part of my Summer Research Scholarship). I've just posted an entry on my other 'blog (Very Big Graphs) to the effect that I've just discovered that I needn't have done a lot of the work I have done and that, had I read the documentation for the library I'm using, I would've known that.

The part of this situation that I like is that I only realised this because I've been working in Xcode on my new iBook for the last two days. The iBook is seriously cool. If anyone on the OS X team ever reads this: you rock (and could you tell the hardware engineers to read this next bit). If anyone of the Apple engineering team ever reads this: you rock (and could you tell the OS X people to read that last bit). This is probably, of all the computers I've owned, my favourite.

The only problem is the I now have the urge to switch completely: the Mac mini is looking quite tempting. I'll be able to hold out for a while (primarily due to a lack of disposable income), but once I've got my enrolment, accommodation and various other fees out of the way, I think that some small part of my scholarship might become available for conversion to a more solid, white, Mac branded form.

Another benefit is the software. I'm starting to get used to everything "just working". Unfortunately there are a few bugs in some things I've been using (like Bibdesk, a bibTeX database editor), but on the whole, I like it.