Post Archive
› January 16, 2006
Mac Intel = good for web design
If you work in a mostly Windows based environment, you might have a Mac somewhere that you check your sites with before showing to clients. Conversely, if your workspace is largely Mac, you might have a Windows machine that you check your sites on before showing to clients. If you are a good deseloper*, with enough time to do their job right, you'll check your work carefully, you'll rework, fix, and refine. Sometimes, when time is tight, testing in the "other" environments (whichever they are) might be more of a lets-make-sure-its-not-awful check. When this happens, the smaller refinements that your client will never even think to bring up - get lost in the shuffle.
With the recent release of Intel based macs, and Microsoft's renewed commitment to develop for the Mac, I'm hoping we will soon be able to run Windows within the Mac OS X environment at decent speeds. We might have to wait for Microsoft to completely re-write Virtual PC, or perhaps another method will prove itself sooner, but the end result will mean easier access for testing/refinement, and as a result - better web design.
Meanwhile I'll keep my comparatively noisy windows box nearby, and keep using Synergy to switch from OS to OS, but it's nice to think of the potentially silent and speedy testing environment we might soon be able to enjoy.
*I'm really tired of not having this word available, so I'll make it up: Deseloper = web designer and/or developer. Correction: someone else thought of it already of course, but I still like it because it sounds animal-like.
Comments
1. January 16, 2006 09:12 PM
2. January 16, 2006 09:23 PM
3. January 17, 2006 12:10 AM
tom sherman Posted…
Ack. Both of those words are horribly awkward. How about "technical designer?"
4. January 17, 2006 12:18 AM
Nate Posted…
horribly awkward - completely agree. technical designer - closer, but still seems off the mark somehow, maybe just a bit too generic. Hrmmmm.
5. January 17, 2006 12:48 AM
6. January 17, 2006 01:04 AM
7. January 17, 2006 01:07 AM
8. January 17, 2006 05:23 AM
Julian Posted…
yeah, geek fits perfectly... but.. wait.. what about those clients, just tell 'em "oh I'm a geek, I can do all that for you"?
9. January 17, 2006 10:24 AM
10. January 17, 2006 04:48 PM
ned Posted…
If you're a web designer, the only reason you would need a windows machine is to test out your page in IE6. Using Wine on linux, it's a fairly straightforward process to install IE6 sans windows, and since the Darwine project already has portions of wine running on OS X, it shouldn't be too long before you can run IE6 and IE7 on an intel mac with no windows or emulation of any kind.
11. January 19, 2006 04:28 AM
Guy Carberry Posted…
How about letting us run Mac OS-X on a windows machine? Much as I love Macs, it does seem to be a very one-way process. Since Microsoft is willing to enable usage of its OS on a Mac, surely Apple should create a 'virtual mac' app for Windows? Or am i just being stupid?
12. January 19, 2006 09:55 AM
Nate Posted…
I think that's a fair question Guy. I'd argue that it would be a wise move on Apple's part to do so. What does it say if Windows can be made available on Mac but not the other way around? Even from a marketing perspective it seems to imply that you might need to use Windows on Mac, but never the other way around, that the Mac does not include anything vital that Windows users don't already have.
I'd even argue that this is true to some extent. The Mac OS is valuable to me as an *environment*, it doesn't have a must-have tool or piece of software that I can get elsewhere. Conversely, Windows makes up for an incredibly taxing and often non-sensical environment by being mostly about the pervasiveness of it's software tools.
So I occasionally use Windows, and I need to access Windows because it's so pervasive, but I use Mac because it works better and offers more to me day-to-day. This is how it has *been*, but might change if Apple continues to do things right and get more pervasive itself
13. January 22, 2006 10:32 PM
Manon Posted…
It's funny. I've been using Macs since 1989. The few times that I've been forced to use a PC (the occasional temp job to supplement my freelance designing), I've found myself forced to think about computer navigation and searching through cluttered windows rather than the work at hand. I don't particularly care about the pervasiveness of Windows and its myriad software options. I find value in ease of use and an uncluttered work space.
I also have friends who've switched because reinstalling their system every month due to security issues and spyware wasn't cutting it. And now don't miss their PCs at all. The point is running a Mac OS on a PC machine won't make the security flaws and the spyware go away.
Filip Posted…
Dude, you're doing it the wrong way. It's devigner.