Helen Johnson

Now that I am using a MacBook Pro for work I have had to change the way I do some things. The two main programs that I use everyday are Photoshop, for website design, and a text editor, for html/css development. While Photoshop works the same on both platforms (especially now that CS3 supports Intel Macs) the problem was finding a new text/html editor.

For the last few years I have been using EditPlus for all html and css coding. It’s a great little program and I got to know it well, but alas, it is not made for Macs. When searching for a new editor to use, I was pointed in the direction of TextMate.

While they are the same in result, they are both very different in practice. Being a Windows program, in EditPlus everything is much more visual. Menus and options are displayed in toolbars for easy access. TextMate, on the other hand, is more reliant on keyboard shortcuts and little nifty things called tab triggers. In TextMate there are no buttons to click to save your work or to open a document, you either need to use the program dropdown menu or learn the shortcuts.

I still miss EditPlus, but TextMate has been a good replacement so far and I am still learning how to get the most out of it.

I have always been a PC/Windows user, however last year I got a 17″ MacBook Pro to use for work. Previously I was using a pc desktop running Windows XP as my work machine but I wanted something more powerful. In particular I wanted a machine that could handle Photoshop better, and I wanted a notebook. At the time the MacBook Pro was the best machine (hardware wise) around.

The MacBook Pro is of course a very quick machine, it has 2 GB of ram and a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. So it does run Photoshop CS3 well, no more long freezes or waiting for files to open or save.

I would have preferred to get a 15″ MacBook Pro except that they only run a 1440 x 900 resolution, which I did not think was very good, so I went for the 17″ which has a crazy 1920 x 1200 resolution. And let me tell you, the resolution is worth it, especially when it comes to design. Being able to see a whole design when working in Photoshop is really great.

When it come to the operating system though, I couldn’t tell you which is the better. I still use Windows XP on an Asus F3Jm at home, and I do run XP on both Boot Camp and Parallels on the Mac. So far though there hasn’t been anything that has made me think that the Mac OSX is better. Sure it may be a fair bit “prettier”, but once you get past the pretty gimmicks and cute little useless programs that come pre-installed, it’s not really any better (or worse) than Windows for me.

That said I am happy with my Mac, it is a good machine, but I don’t know if I’ll stay with Mac when it comes time to upgrade to a new work machine in the future. Really what will make the decision for me is how good the hardware is. So for now I am happy to split my time between Windows and Mac, and really that’s not a bad thing for someone like me as it means I can always work comfortably in either environment.