Friday 27 August 2010

Mac v PC v laptop

I've got used to the whole Mac and PC thing now and I can easily switch between them. It takes a bit of conscious effort if I've not been on one or the other for a few days, like remembering to press alt on Mac for cut, copy and paste for instance, but apart from that I'm good. What I still can't get used to is going between my laptop and desktop. It's not just the fiddly little keys or the lack of mouse it's the desktop real estate that gets me. My laptop makes me feel claustrophobic as if I've been squeezed into a little box and forced to work. The little keyboard is partly to blame for this feeling but overwhelmingly it's the small screen.

My laptop is a cheepy. £329 and coming on for 2 years old now. It's a 15 inch screen with only 1280x1024 res. My desktop on the other hand has 4 monitors of 1600x1200 each. Going from 6400x1200 pixels to 1280x1024 is like trying to fit into those jeans I found clearing out my house. The ones from my teenage years before I discovered pie, or before I discovered I could eat all the pies anyway.

So what to do? Well there's nothing to do. You can get laptops with higher res screens but at a price I wouldn't feel comfortable with paying. So I'm stuck with it I guess. I'll just try and limit my work time on the laptop.

While I'm on a rant roll..... I found out that iOS 4, the software to write iPhone software with, does not support any Mac OS earlier than Snow Leopard. Great, except my laptop doesn't run Snow Leopard. So I either live with the old software and not use my laptop for iPhone 4 development or I try to get Snow Leopard running on it. Hmmmm, my last hackintosh attempt with Snow Leopard, albeit it very successful, took the best part of a week to get going!

Anyway, news from the development front. I'm Once again coding for iPhone. A friend of mine came to me with a nice idea and we managed to get an artist and musician interested so I've started work on it. It'll go slowly no doubt as I'm very busy with my day job and have to sneak the odd hour here and there while J's asleep on the sofa.

Watch this space for updates!

Time for bed. 1.23am and knackered from 12 hours of straight coding today. I do love my day job but it's ever so slightly addictive.