ok so I guess I got really used to Windows Live Writer and forgot all the HTML that went into actually properly formatting a blog post. WLW is the ONLY application I have on Windows so far that I haven't found an acceptable replacement for on the mac.

So on Monday my shiny new MacBook Pro came in, and thus began a journey. It was almost like the seven stages of grief, except that I fought for this mac, and I had committed to making the switch. It's been an interesting week.

Funny enough, the announcement came through Twitter about Deep Fried Bytes Episode 5 (Developing for .net on a Mac) at roughly the same time I was announcing my new arrival. Serendipity.

First of all, out of the box some of the experience was very foreign. After using nothing but Windows for so long, I had certain expectations about navigating the OS, installing things, interacting with things, and so on. A couple of IRC/IM conversations later, and I was off to the races. By the end of the first day, the mac felt a lot more natural.

As the week went on I got a lot of tips on applications from some friends, @lazycoder (Scott Koon) in particular was very helpful one night on Twitter. He got me turned on to Adium for IM, Colloquy for IRC, and most importantly, TextMate, which I am using to post this blog entry. I have a feeling I'll be using TextMate for lot of things, but that's another story.

I also got VMWare Fusion and set up a Vista Business VM. As I am still a .net windows developer by day, I need this to get paid. My goal in this however is to have the VM be just a host for Visual Studio, and to do everything else on the Mac. So far so good. Aside from being forced tto install Office 2003 on the VM because I have some Word Interop going on and couldn't build without it, I'm not using the VM for anything but VS2008.

Already in a week I have had my eyes opened to a new way of thinking about the user experience of software in things even as basic as application installation. App installs are basically a joy in OSX, as opposed to my Vista VM which has to be rebooted after each and every multi-gig multi-dialog install experience. The experience of using the applications on the mac is different in many ways too, some of which I like, and some of which I don't, but the important thing to me is that I'm looking at software from another angle, in this system (so far) I'm purely a user, and this perspective change is important for my professional growth.

I am still experiencing some friction, particularly with the keyboard. The layout is fighting a lot of years of muscle memory, and the keyboard shortcuts that I've built up over the years no longer apply. Also I still fumble around the OS trying to figure things out every so often. However, it's only been a week, of part time use, and I feel like I've taken to it well, I have no desire to switch back at all, so I would call that a win.

In the coming n amount of time I hope to use the mac as a jumping off point to really sink my teeth into Ruby, maybe take a stab at some Mac development with Cocoa, and overall continue to improve as a professional software developer by adding new perspectives to my toolbox.