One of the biggest things that keeps me from using a Windows machine, is the lack of a proper shell. One that exists as a first-class citizen, and not as some bastard add-on hack. Cygwin really doesn't cut it for me, and the only other real option is to run VMWare, at which point I might as well run Ubuntu.
I ran VMWare on the MacBook but it was way too slow.
I'm not being snarky, it's a serious question. I'm a programmer, but I use Visual Studio 2008 and I rarely have to touch a command line to do anything that I need to do...
How is that remotely amazing? Mac users tend to be honest about what their stuff is like. Liking an operating system doesn't mean you can't be critical of parts of it.
Although, I like Finder more than I do Windows Explorer. What features does Explorer have that put it leagues above Finder, like this article would suggest?
But that's something that Finder handles, also. The CMD-2 view. Or am I missing something?
Also, what are in Merge and Tortoise? I don't get what context menu integration means.
No problems at all.... In fact it seems to churn the disk considerably less than my colleague's Vista Dell machine.
So not sure where that is coming from at all. The MBP is almost the ideal Eclipse workstation imho.
FWIW, I also find eclipse (Ganymede) to be a bit slow on my 2.4Ghz Mac Book Pro (Mac OS X). I think I'll splash out for a solid state disk as soon I find one with good ratings.
I'm using Java and C/C++ at the moment - but I used a base install and then added the bits I wanted. Maybe the J2EE/whatever Eclipse releases have a whole lot of other cruft? Not sure, but it's plenty usable for me.
Although, Git support and proper shells are valid problems with windows. Powershell helps, but the git people really need to get a valid, working, non retarded git client for windows. Like Tortoise SVN which is freaking awesome.
Until then, windows will be an inferior development platform for anyone doing ROR stuff.
