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Titanium G4, Mac OS X Prove Powerful Lure to Windows Users

Why would a hardcore, PC-using, enterprise software developer buy a Macintosh? Just a short while ago, this would not be an option for most, but I'm delighted to say things have changed. With the advent of OS X, the Mac is finally a viable enterprise development workstation due to its BSD underpinnings and built-in, up-to-date, Java support.

Common tools in enterprise development are J2EE application servers, Servlet/JSP engines, web servers, and the like. Recently, robust, extremely fast, enterprise-level server software has started to appear written in 100% pure Java, which should run on a Mac right out of the box. OS X also inherits a strong, enterprise-enabled Web server, Apache, thanks to BSD.

All this, however, is still not enough to convince one to switch. PC users already have all these tools at their disposal. What it does do, however, is give the enterprise developer the tools necessary to work on another platform if there were compelling reasons to. Fear not, there just so happens to be many reasons!

I have only been tracking the Macintosh scene for a short while, and I am simply amazed at the recent progress of OS X. Apple appears to add more features (that matter) to its beta in a 2 month period than Microsoft adds to Windows in an entire year! It's extremely fulfilling to see an OS that is actually polished instead of an unsatisfying, clunky, interface.

Is this enough? Almost, but not quite enough for this PC user. To be honest, this was almost enough for me, as I even went to CompUSA with the intent of purchasing a system. After seeing the prices of the then current offerings, I went home empty handed. The cube was rather nicely designed, but priced almost the same as the low-end towers. The tower pricing was spaced just right as to force any power-loving PC user to want to pay the extra cash to get the higher end hardware. The problem was, the differences in prices for the next step up really didn't buy you much hardware for your money, at least from a PC user's perspective it seems like 50 Mhz is a drop in the bucket, and the same with the additional RAM, and HD space. End result, had the Cube been priced at $1299, it would have found a new home with me as an OS X trial system.

By now you must be wondering if I'm now a Mac user. The answer is no! Not by choice however, I'm waiting for my beautifully designed Titanium 500 MHz G4 PowerBook to show up on the 10th, and after owning over 15 Windows machines, I am not the least bit nervous about my new investment!