Today, I want to revisit the article I wrote 2 years ago about 10 things I missed when switching from OS X to Ubuntu. There have been 5 major Ubuntu upgrades since I wrote my original article, have things changed that much? Do I still miss the things I missed back then? Let’s look at each point again, and see how things have changed.

1. Dashboard – No longer missed

When I first switched to Ubuntu, I really missed the OS X Dashboard feature. Most of all, I missed being able to open the Dashboard and quickly check the weather, see the calendar, and check the time in multiple time zones. I tried many different widget systems on Ubuntu, but found them all clumsy and unusable. Perhaps there are some out there now that are great, I don’t know, because I don’t even want a Dashboard any more!

At some point, Gnome added the weather and multiple time zones to the standard clock panel widget. This allows me to always see the full date, time, and weather conditions in the top-right corner of my desktop. If I click on the date, I’m presented with a calendar, events from Evolution or Google Galendar, and the time and weather conditions in any city that I’ve added to my list. This is far more convenient than pushing F12 all the time on the Mac and waiting for the Dashboard to appear. Of course, the dashboard can do much more than this, but for my needs, Gnome panel widgets do everything I want.

2. Quicksilver – No longer missed

I still love Quicksilver on the Mac for quickly launching apps and doing repetitive tasks. I can’t use OS X without Quicksilver because digging through the Finder to launch something like the Activity Monitor drives me nuts.

Since I wrote my original article, we’ve seen the major improvements in Gnome Do. It’s now a great replacement for Quicksilver. The thing I find most interesting, however, is that I almost never find myself using Gnome Do. I think this is because it’s so much easier to launch programs from the Applications menu or the Gnome Panel that I simply do not need another application launcher for Ubuntu.

3. Adium – No longer missed

I still think that Adium is one of the best chat clients I’ve ever used. It’s functional, beautiful and the best chat client on OS X.  But I no longer miss Adium when using Ubuntu. Not long after I wrote my first article, GAIM was renamed to Pidgin and along with the renaming came a load of improvements, including a much better looking interface. Today’s Pidgin and Adium aren’t really that different form each other, they look different, but act basically the same.  Unfortunately, Ubuntu no longer includes Pidgin by default, but it’s super easy to install.

4. Professional Graphics Software – Still very much missed!

The lack of professional grade graphics software for Linux is still a huge problem. I’m even more convinced of this today than I was 2 years ago. I actually forced myself to use only Ubuntu and open source graphics programs when working on 2 major projects. Did I succeed, yes! … but the process was extremely painful.

First, there was the pain of learning GIMP. From a technical point of view, the GIMP might be just fine, but from an end user point of view, it’s simply horrible. I was able to make it work, and I was able to complete my work, but the end result left me feeling disgruntled and I feel that my projects suffered as well. I used other programs too, such as Inkscape, and generally found them acceptable, but I still kept wishing that I had access to Adobe Fireworks or Photoshop.

5. TextMate – No longer missed

Vim: The Free Man’s TextMate

I still spend a lot of time working in a text editor. I got hooked on using TextMate for my web and Ruby on Rails work. It seems like all the cool Rails developers use TextMate exclusively, but we’re starting to see a shift from that. I see more and more people talking about using Vim for their coding projects.

Thanks to this great article, I discovered that I could do almost everything I want right in Vim and a Terminal window. I now have a set of Vim configuration files that I can use on any system (even on Mac and Windows) that have everything set up just how I want it. I love it and I’d never go back to TextMate!

6. Dictionary – Still missed

Mac OS has a great built-in dictionary application. I used to find myself using it all the time. It has high quality entries are from the Oxford American Dictionary.

On Ubuntu, there is a dictionary application installed by default, but it can only look up words in free dictionaries (results and quality vary). This means that you must be online to look up a word, which can be a real bummer.

I’ve also played around with other dictionary programs like StarDict. Unfortunately, I found them rather unusable and they generally don’t “just work.” I personally think that a high-quality dictionary program for Ubuntu is needed. I’d even be willing to pay for something, especially if it can give me multi-language translations.

7. Quicktime – No longer missed

When I was first moving to Ubuntu, playing media files was a really big problem. The codecs and players that were available at the time were very unreliable, they often crashed, didn’t work properly and sometimes didn’t work at all. I found this extremely annoying. It was also difficult to install the necessary codecs.

All this has changed now. Playing media files on Ubuntu is a breeze. The media player will automatically find and install any needed codecs, and it plays just about any file you throw at it. In fact, I can’t remember the last time that a media file didn’t “just work” in Ubuntu. The Linux community and the Ubuntu team have done a superb job of making media files work – way to go guys!

8. Bluetooth Support and Syncing – No longer missed

Much like the situation with media files, Ubuntu 7.04 did not do a good job with Bluetooth. The latest versions of Ubuntu, however, are pretty good at working with Bluetooth devices. It’s now trivial to connect a Bluetooth enabled phone to your computer, transfer files, etc. There may still be some ways to make Bluetooth better on Ubuntu, but I can’t think of any, it just works now, and I think that’s great!

9. System-wide spell checking – Still would be nice, but not missed

I can’t say that I miss this feature on a daily basis, but it still would be nice to have.

Mac OS X has system-wide spell checking for all Cocoa based apps. This means you can have just about everything you type into your Mac spell checked. This unified system means that you only have to train one dictionary with your new words.

Of course there is spell checking in almost every Ubuntu application, but each one has its own system. You need to train the dictionaries for each app and get used to each system’s little quirks. Hopefully, someone out there is working on a system-wide spell checking framework for Linux.

10. Smart Trackpad – Still would be nice, but not missed

When making the switch to Ubuntu, the trackpad settings (from 7.04) really drove me nuts. I had all kinds of problems with the trackpad not being shut off when typing, and missed some of the fancy trackpad features in OS X. In general, I don’t like using trackpads and prefer using a mouse, but when using a trackpad on Ubuntu, I can say for sure that things have gotten better.  Things have also changed in the OS X world of trackpads (multi touch, etc). I still consider Linux to be behind Apple in trackpad technology, but I don’t miss any of those features any more.

Conclusion

I have to say that over the last couple of years, I’ve really come to love Ubuntu. Until recently, I rarely felt the need to go back to Windows or OS X (I’ll tell you more about that in another blog post). I’ve been generally pleased with each new release of Ubuntu and enjoy seeing the incremental improvements. Ubuntu has come an unbelievable way since I first tried it almost 5 years ago.  I think the future is bright for Ubuntu and Linux in general … but there’s still a long way to go!

What are some things that you miss from Windows or Mac when you’re using Ubuntu? Share your ideas in the comments below!

Related posts:

1. Switching From OS X to Ubuntu: 10 Things I Miss
2. Mac OS X Home and End Keys
3. KeyFixer – Fix Your OS X Home and End Keys

After doing some quick googling, I realized that this motherboard series is actually quite popular and that people are using them for all sorts of tasks. Some make them into entertainment centers, low-powered servers, car computers and even hackintoshes. This peeked my interest and I decided to try it out for myself, after all, using some of my old computer parts (HD and DVD drive), I could make this new desktop for less than $200, what did I have to loose?

So, are these Intel motherboards with their low-power Atom processors really all that people claim? Could I run Ubuntu (my main goal), Windows 7 and OS X all on this dirt cheap hardware?  Here’s what I found out.

My Hardware

• Intel Desktop Board D945GCLF2D with integrated Intel Atom processor
• Compucase Mini ITX case 8K01BS-SA12U
• 2GB of Kingston DDR2 RAM
• Old 400 GB Seagate SATA hard drive
• Old IDE DVD drive

Build your own

• Intel Desktop Motherboard with Atom Processor, about $90 – Intel D945GCLF2
• Mini ITX Case, about $60 – Mini ITX Cases
• 2GB of RAM, about $25 – Kingston ValueRam 2GB
• Hard Drive, about $50 – Western Digital Caviar Blue 250 GB Hard Drive or pick out a bigger one
• Optical Drive, about $25 – Optical Drives

This motherboard is really small, and you can buy some incredibly small cases to put it in. The smaller cases don’t have much room for add-ons (but really, how often do we really fill our cases with addons?). It seems that just about everything can be added by USB these days. In fact, I decided not even to install an internal DVD drive, because I don’t need a DVD drive for everyday use.

I found the case to be very nice and I have no complaints. Putting everything together was a snap and both the case and motherboard came with adequate instructions. The real question here is about performance with different operating systems.

Ubuntu 9.04

Since I do most of my daily work and programming in Ubuntu, this was the most important OS for me. I was going to try installing from a USB flash drive, which everyone claims is easy, but found it easier to just hook up my old IDE DVD drive temporarily and use my trusty Ubuntu Jaunty install CD. Everything went like normal, the Ubuntu install is incredibly simple these days. I had Jaunty up and running in less than 20 minutes.

I’m happy to report that all of the hardware worked perfectly with absolutely no tweaking – I never opened a terminal once while setting up this machine – it just works!  I was immediately surprised by the performance of the machine. The dual-core Atom 330 processor runs at 1.6 GHz and I figured that performance would be pretty poor.

The machine boots Ubuntu quickly and launches applications seemingly just as fast as my Core 2 Duo system. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it works very well for daily use. I don’t use any really power-hungry applications (besides Firefox, which seems to demand more resources every day) and spend a lot of time in Vim and the browser. Video performance is acceptable and Compiz works flawlessly.  I didn’t do any benchmarks, but I can say that I find the performance to be acceptable.

Windows 7

I decided to install the release candidate of Windows 7, again expecting poor performance. (Note, if you want to dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows, it’s best to install Windows first). Windows 7 also installed on this hardware without any tweaking, I didn’t even need to download any drivers. To my amazement, everything just worked. Even all the fancy visual effects worked out of the box!

Windows 7 takes significantly longer to boot than Ubuntu, but boot times were acceptable. Performance seemed reasonable to me (although, installing AVG anti virus really made things work a lot slower). I installed several applications and didn’t run into any problems. I’m not a heavy windows user (pretty much Windows free since late 2005) so I can’t compare the performance to other machines. I can say that I found it usable. For a part-time Windows user, or for those who just like to surf the web and organize their photos, this hardware should be sufficient for running Windows 7.

OS X

I did some quick searches, and found a lot of reports of successful OS X instillation on this motherboard. I have an old Macbook for when I need OS X (which is rare), so installing OS X was not a priority for me. I did give it a try, however, using one of the newer methods which allows you to install from a Leopard retail DVD. I’m not an advocate of cracking or stealing software, so this method seems more palatable to me (it still breaks Apple’s EULA, but not the DMCA).

I followed several different tutorials and was able to get OS X installed on a spare hard drive. I wasn’t, however, able to get things to work perfectly. I had problems with the video drivers that I found online, and all of my 5 attempted installations ended in a machine that either would not boot properly or had messed up video.

I’m quite sure that it’s possible to install Leopard on this hardware, especially since so many others have reported success. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you can probably make it work. Personally, Ubuntu does 99% of what I need, so I’ll stick with the free, open source and legal OS that “just works” on my hardware rather than spend days trying to make a hackintosh.

Conclusion

I think this computer would be a wonderful addition to any household. It’s a perfect computer for anyone who’s not a power user (you don’t want use it for gaming, to do high-end video processing or run virtual machines), for kids, grandparents, anyone really. I would feel good about giving this computer for just about any of my friends or relatives. Why not build your own and give it a try?

Related posts:

1. Run Windows Apps With Darwine
2. Goodbye Windows (Sorta)
3. Linux is Losing to Windows XP in Netbooks

Then, about two months ago, I switched to using a new Dell with Ubuntu Linux at work. For the most part, I couldn’t be happier, but there are a few things I really miss about my Mac. Here’s a list of the 10 things I miss the most. If you know of replacements for any of these under Ubuntu, please leave a comment and share your solution.

1. Dashboard

When I first upgraded to OS X Tiger, I thought the Dashboard was silly and a waste of processing power. After almost two years, it became the thing I instantly missed the most when using Ubuntu. With a selection of Dashboard widgets including clocks displaying multiple time-zones, the weather, system stats, and website stats, the Dashboard can become quite addicting. When using Ubuntu, I keep wanting to press F12 to check my widgets, but I haven’t found a good desktop widget solution for Ubuntu yet.

2. Quicksilver

I love Quicksilver on the Mac for quickly launching apps and doing repetitive tasks. I can’t use a Mac without Quicksilver because digging through the Finder to launch something like the Activity Monitor drives me nuts.

I’ve only scratched the surface of what Quicksilver can do, but I can’t find anything on Ubuntu that does these tasks quite as well. I’ve tried Deskbar but find it slow and annoying. Is there something out there that compares with Quicksilver on Ubuntu?

3. Adium

Adium is simply the best chat client I’ve ever used. Because it is based off the same messaging library as Pidgin (GAIM), it supports just about ever IM network out there. The interface, however, is much nicer than Pidgin’s interface and integrates perfectly with OS X.

When Using GAIM on Ubuntu 7.04, I feel like I’ve stepped back 5 years. GAIM under Ubuntu is clunky and rather ugly. It’s also much more difficult to see when new messages arrive because there is no notification system similar to Aduim’s Growl based notices. The version of Pidgin shipping with the Ubuntu 7.10 looks more promising, hopefully it is more polished and fun to use.

4. Professional Graphics Software

Yeah, I know, this is probably the number one complaint that everyone has about using Linux, but I’ve found it to be true – I can’t find any really great professional graphics software for Ubuntu. I know, GIMP is great, but I’m accustomed to using Adobe Fireworks for web design and site mockups, and GIMP just doesn’t fit my needs. Come on Adobe, start supporting Linux already!

5. TextMate

The Free Man’s TextMate: Gvim + Nautilus

I spend a lot of time working in a text editor. I got hooked on using TextMate for my web and Ruby on Rails work. It might not be the best text editor in the world, but it seems to be the best on the Mac.

On Ubuntu, I’m using a combination of Gvim and Nautilus to replace TextMate. Gvim is fine, but I’m not yet a Vim expert and the lack of a good integrated file browser really bothers me. I think I’ll get over this one pretty soon.

6. Dictionary

Mac OS has a great built-in dictionary application. I often find myself launching this app (with the help of Quicksilver) to check a word or find a good synonym. The high quality entries are from the Oxford American Dictionary.

On Ubuntu, there is a dictionary application, but it can only look up words in free dictionaries (results and quality vary). This means that you must be online to look up a word, which is kind of a bummer. There are some cool features like multi-language dictionaries, but the quality often leaves much to be desired. Is there a really great dictionary app for Linux?

7. Quicktime

Quicktime is one of those things that Mac users take for granted. It’s just there and it plays almost any media file you throw at it (especially if you’ve installed the Perian plugin).

Playing your favorite media files on Ubuntu is not a great experience. Sure, if you hunt around the web enough, you find instructions on how to make just about any media file play in Linux, but the results are usually buggy. I often find it possible to play a file but not possible to fast forward or rewind without the player crashing. I miss Quicktime and its simplicity.

8. Bluetooth Support and Syncing

Bluetooth support in OS X is simple and easy to use. I have a mobile phone with Bluetooth and it only took me a few minutes to pair it with my Mac and start syncing files. A few minutes later, I was using the phone as a mobile modem that can connect my Macbook to the net while on the road. Transferring files to and from devices like mobile phones and the Nokia N800 is also a breeze.

While I was able to get rudimentary file transfers working with the Bluetooth module in my Dell N1420, it was not easy. Syncing contacts and calendars also seems to be impossible. Much work could be done to improve the Bluetooth experience in Ubuntu.

9. System-wide spell checking

Mac OS X has system-wide spell checking for all Cocoa based apps. This means you can have just about everything you type into your Mac spell checked. This unified system means that you only have to train one dictionary with your new words.

Of course there is spell checking in almost every Ubuntu application, but each one has its own system. You need to train the dictionaries for each app and get used to each system’s little quirks. Hopefully, someone out there is working on a system-wide spell checking framework for Linux.

10. Smart Trackpad

I prefer to use an external mouse instead of a notebook’s trackpad, but if I have to use one, I want it to behave itself and be easy to use. Apple’s implementation of the trackpad is simply brilliant. You can customize the trackpad to ignore accidental clicks, use two-finger scrolling, and the all-so-cool two-finger “right click”.

After using a Macbook for over a year, the trackpad included with my Dell Ubuntu system seems horrible. First of all, the scrolling feature of the trackpad doesn’t work at all. What’s even worse is the lack of a setting (that I can find) to make the trackpad ignore accidental taps. I’m constantly having the cursor jump to another spot on the screen because I accidentally tapped the trackpad with my palm while typing. I’m really hoping that Ubuntu 7.10 addresses some of these issues.

Overall, I have to say that I’m very happy with using Ubuntu. These are just a few little things that really bug me about my Dell Ubuntu notebook. With a little patients, I’m sure most of these issues will be solved. There are also a lot of things I love about Ubuntu that I miss when I use OS X, maybe I’ll share those in my next post.

Related posts:

1. From OS X to Ubuntu: 2 Years Later
2. Why I’m Switching to Mac and Linux
3. Dell Inspiron 1420N with Ubuntu Unboxing

This puts Safari in the territory of the bad guys

With the release of Safari for Windows, Steve Jobs has placed key Apple software squarely in the sights of the world’s black hat hackers and script kiddies. Security researchers and hackers, who have always been annoyed with Apple’s arrogant claims of security, now have direct access to pound on Apple software on their own turf. Within hours of the release, security researchers are already finding vulnerabilities “popping out like hotcakes“. Some of these vulnerabilities are reported to also work on the production version of Safari for OS X.

Safari on Windows becomes a huge attack surface

If Jobs and company manage to get just a tiny percentage of the current iTunes users to switch to Safari, we could soon have millions of people surfing the web with Safari on Windows. With iTunes, Apple has seen its share of vulnerabilities, but iTunes is not on the front lines when it comes to the virus/malware wars. The browser is the front line of defense against internet vulnerabilities, after all it’s the thing you use to browse the internet! Just ask Microsoft and Mozilla, securing a browser is no easy business and requires constant patches and vigilance. So far, Safari has not been much of a target for hackers, but if Apple successfully doubles or triples its market share, Safari will become a much more appealing target – no more “security by obscurity.”

This move could compromise Mac OS X and iPhone security

The core rendering engine for Safari is called Webkit. Webkit was originally taken from the open source KHTML browser engine and is now used as the core HTML and JavaScript rendering engine not only for Safari but for Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications. Safari and Webkit are also central to the iPhone. Apple is even telling developers to develop for the iPhone with Safari. I’m afraid the bad guys will soon be targeting OS X software and possibly the iPhone from the comfortable surroundings of their Windows machine. It’s entirely possible that an exploit found in Webkit on Windows could be exploited in OS X Mail or the iPhone.

Apple can be very slow at releasing bug fixes

Traditionally, Apple has very slow turnaround times for fixing bugs. Symantec recently reported that in the second half of 2006 “there were 43 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X and a 66 day turnaround on fixes.” This slow response time for releasing security fixes is simply unacceptable in the current, often hostile, Internet age. Microsoft has addressed this problem over the last few years by throwing more developers and money at Internet Explorer. Apple most likely does not have as much money to throw at Safari development as Microsoft and it may prove difficult for a handful of developers to track down and quickly fix Safari for Windows bugs. Mozilla generally gets patches out much quicker due to its strong open source community. While Apple has made a small attempt to lure developers to Webkit, it seems only half heartedly open source. One gets the feeling that it’s only open source because it has to be, not because Apple really wants community support and involvement.

Safari for Windows could damage Apple’s reputation

Talk of security vulnerabilities in Apple products will only damage Apple’s image of being secure. These days, many people assume that Apple is more secure than Windows. If the news is suddenly (and consistently) filled with news of Safari security problems, this assumption could quickly change. In short, Apple is opening themselves up to a lot of potentially very bad press.

Apple’s track record with iTunes and Quicktime does not give me hope

Apple has a practice of developing new iTunes and Quicktime releases in complete secrecy (sometimes even keeping information from their own support staff). They generally release applications immediately after some keynote by Steve Jobs. In the past year, there have been many problems with iTunes upgrades crashing computers and iPods. Customers are often left out in the cold as even Apple tech support has yet to see the new version. I can tell you that it’s annoying when your iPod crashes, but if this practice is carried over into Safari releases, it could prove much worse than annoying.

This is BETA software but is being pushed like the final product

Steve was quite clear when he said that Safari 3 is a beta right now. Beta generally means that it’s not ready for production use and should be used with caution. Recently, the word “beta” has been attached to every piece of software that people want to push to the mainstream but where they want an easy excuse when things go wrong (Gmail for example). Apple is not treating Safari 3 like beta software! It has placed Safari 3 in prominent locations all over the Apple website including the home page. Pushing buggy software out the door to millions of users is just not a good idea and increases the chances that the bad guys will find holes.

These are just some ideas that came to my mind. Hopefully Apple will figure everything out and all my security fears will be proven wrong. Well, I guess we can hope.

June 14, 2007 Update:

Looks like Apple is staying on top of the bugs. They’ve already released Safari for Windows 3.0.1. Keep up the good work Apple!

Related posts:

1. WebKit Nightly Builds Offer Great New Features For Web Developers
2. 10 Ways The Nokia N800 Is Better Than Apple’s iPhone
3. iWish iHad an iMac

Buy VMware Fusion

Related posts:

1. Install Ubuntu 7.04 on Your Intel Mac with VMware Fusion
2. Parallels vs CrossOver Prizefight
3. Parallels Screencast

It seems there are 3 possible ways to try Ubuntu 7.04 on your Mac.

1. Install Ubuntu directly to your hard drive.
2. Install Ubuntu in Parallels (available at Amazon).
3. Install Ubuntu in VMWare Fusion (available at Amazon).

Installing Ubuntu directly to your hard drive might be a good idea if you have a spare drive that you can use. From the instructions I’ve seen online, installing Ubuntu on a partition alongside OS X is not for the faint of heart. Personally, I’m not willing to risk all of my data and my OS X install on an experiment to see if I can install Ubuntu.

Installing Ubuntu 7.04 in Parallels is not such a walk in the park either. There seem to be some problems with the latest Linux kernels and Parallels. When trying to install, Ubuntu will not be able to properly load the cd-rom driver and will fail to install. There are some (rather odd) workarounds for this, such as telling Parallels that you’re using Solaris during the install process. The guys at SimpleHelp have a tutorial that will help you get Ubuntu 7.04 installed in Parallels. Don’t expect things to work perfectly once it’s installed. I still experienced problems with the video drivers and screen resolution as well intermittent problems getting cd-roms to mount. The Ubuntu startup and shutdown screens also fail to display in Parallels. You’re left with a black screen wondering if anything is happening during the boot process. There are other annoyances such as the virtual machine failing to full shut itself down, a bug that causes most progress bars to be transparent, and the constant need to hit a key combination to release the cursor from Ubuntu and get back to Mac OS. Features such as Coherence and dragging files between Parallels and Mac OS are also not supported.

Because of all the problems with Parallels, I decided to give the VMware Fusion Beta a try. While Parallels may have beat everyone else to the Intel Mac virtualization market, VMware have been doing virtualization for much longer. With the Fusion Beta, they bring their years of experience to the Mac platform. Does it work any better with Ubuntu? The short answer is YES!

I was able to install Ubuntu 7.04 in VMware Fusion Beta with no problems. The only thing that was a small problem was installing the VMware Tools package, which I had to mess around with for a few minutes. Once those tools are installed, VMware really starts to shine. Fusion supports features such as file drag and drop between Mac OS and Ubuntu, clipboard synchronization, automatic cursor focus as you move in and out of the VMware window, and easy screen resolution resizing (it even works with the widescreen Macbook monitor). Fusion still needs some polish (like, seriously, those huge buttons at the top of the window are UGLY), but I’m sure VMware will work these things out before the final release this summer.

So far, I couldn’t be more happy with VMware Fusion, and highly recommend you download and try out the free beta evaluation (or buy it at Amazon).

Here’s a screencast I put together to show some of the features of VMware Fusion running Ubuntu 7.04.

Related posts:

1. VMWare Fusion: Looking Better Than Ever
2. Parallels vs CrossOver Prizefight
3. Goodbye Windows (Sorta)

While I believe that this software will not harm your system in any way, it is offered to you for FREE with NO GUARANTEE! This patch for Firefox has been tested by several brave beta testers, and as far as I know, it won’t damage Firefox in any way. I would however, recommend making a backup of your Firefox.app before running this patch. KeyFixer will only try to patch versions of Firefox 2.x found in your Applications folder. Also note that you’ll need to re-run the patch each time you update Firefox.

So, what does the patch do? It simply replaces the platformHTMLBindings.xml file buried deep within a .jar archive inside Firefox.app with a new version that contains fixes to make the home and end keys work correctly. Thanks to everyone who tested this and helped by making suggestions and submitting code. Please post your feedback in the comments section.

Download KeyFixer for Firefox – version 0.2

Also try the regular version of KeyFixer for fixing the home and end keys in other Mac OS X applications.

Related posts:

1. KeyFixer – Fix Your OS X Home and End Keys
2. Mac OS X Home and End Keys
3. 37Signals Releases Free Version of "Getting Real”

I decided to put Parallels and CrossOver Mac to a simple test and see which one works better for me. There are many technical (and even philosophical) questions surrounding this topic which I won’t cover here.

The task: Edit a photo from iPhoto with the Windows version of Photoshop 7.

First Up: Parallels

Also available in Quicktime [small] [large]

Pros
• The new Coherence features of Parallels make integration with your Mac OS workflow much simpler.
• Because you’re running a full version of Windows, you get the familiar Windows graphical environment for all your windows and dialogs.
• Can run any version of Photoshop that Windows can run.

Cons
• Parallels can be somewhat resource intensive.
• This latest beta has been fairly unstable and has crashed several times.
• While Coherence is a great feature, the tight integration of Windows into OS X can make a person feel dirty.

The Challenger: CrossOver Mac

Also available in Quicktime [small] [large]

Pros
• No need for a Windows license!
• Runs Photoshop 7 at a good speed with no crashing.
• Great installation wizards.

Cons
• Poor integration with OS X.
• Widgets and dialog boxes are ugly and confusing.
• No Dock or Command+Tab integration for individual applications.
• I found myself clicking multiple times to get some buttons to work.

The Winner (at least for now): Parallels!

Related posts:

1. Parallels Screencast
2. Install Ubuntu 7.04 on Your Intel Mac with VMware Fusion
3. VMWare Fusion: Looking Better Than Ever

• Place Windows applications on your Mac desktop or in your application dock. Just click to launch them directly from OS X!
• Use Command+tab to cycle through Windows and Mac applications simultaneously, and hide and show Windows applications just like you would with Mac applications

Download this screencast in Quicktime format here.

Enjoy the screencast? Don’t miss the Parallels vs CrossOver Prizefight!

Related posts:

1. Parallels vs CrossOver Prizefight
2. Using Backpack Offline with PackRat – Screencast
3. iTunes Killer Plays the Web on Windows Mac and Linux

Here’s a list of 10 Mac OS X applications with really cool icons. What are your favorite OS X application icons?

Get more Mac OS X software here

 

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