Today has been my first proper day trying to use the MacMini as a development environment in my day-to-day work, and I’m extremely pleased to say it’s going well – php5+mysql5 (courtesy of macports.org) seems to be quite happy, and port forwarding is helping me use it remotely. In fact, I’m so impressed that I think I may have to change my laptop to a MacBook Pro if this continues (I don’t think Nicky quite banked on that when she bought me the Mini!).
The one sole sticking point is that the default filesystem installed on the Mac (HFS+) is case-insensitive. One client’s code repository had two files in it named fooBar.jpg and the other foobar.jpg, so that the case insensitivity screwed it up when I was checking out the code; therefore, if I end up changing the laptop I think I’ll have to change the filesystem type and sort that out before I start working seriously with it.
Of course, before I do that I’d better backport almost 10 years of email onto an IMAP server and find a decent Mac mail client – pity Mulberry went titsup and has an uncertain future (although there are downloads still), I quite liked the look of that.
On the subject of laptops, Lenovo have done all the paperwork to get me a complete brand new replacement T43p which is the closest specification to my T42p that they can lay their hands on; however I’ve had my T42p shipped back so I can transfer files when it arrives. Fingers crossed it won’t be too long – lack of a decent reliable laptop is starting to grow wearing.
January 2, 2007 at 2:35 pm
"Col, your SVN repos is broken" … *ahem*
And as for a good mail reader, Mail.app that comes with Mac OS X does the job nicely with IMAP(s).