Macbook Pro and development

Igor_Beeone

Hello guys,
I'm willing to purchase a new notebook for development. And I decided to purchase Macbook pro and use it with Parallels or VMFusion for development (VisualStudio2K5,Navision,SQLServer,Vista). The question is: has anybody tried programming Nav and VS using MBP? Is it slow or not? Better using bootcamp or it's enough of MBP 2GB to run virtual machines? Hope to hear from You guys
P.S. - maybe somebody is using Dell Precision M4300 here?
Br,
Igor

DenSter

I'm a firm believer in using the right platform. MS products are not designed for Mac products, so I would never use a Mac for MS development, no matter how many good stories there are out there.

If NAV development is your bread and butter I would just get a Windows computer. I would try and get an XP Pro one though, unless you are willing to deal with all the Vista incompatibilities.

I use a Dell Latitude D830, and it's the best computer I have ever used.

Waldo

Well, this is a coincidence.
My colleague purchased exact the same notebook for NAV development. Well, actually not for dedicated NAV development, it's also for multimedia development... . We hire him 4 days a week for NAV .

I was talking about it with him, and it just works perfectly. You can install Vista on it (I thought it was called BootCamp). Not VPC, not VMWare, but full blown Vista / XP / ... . This is possible, because in the old days, MAC used other cpu's. Nowadays, it's just intel, like in a DELL or something. So actually, there is no difference anymore.

I was also quite amazed with the performance and possibilities of the MAC OSX operating system.... .

jth

You can use NAV with the MBP running XP or Vista native and installed with BootCamp. No Problem.
You can use NAV in XP or Vista in a virtual environment like Parallels or VMWare or VirtualBox. No Problem.
There is no difference using NAV in a virtual environment on a PC or a Mac.
Virtual is virtual.

to clarify:
We are not talking about e.g. wine or codeweaver tools.

@DenSter "MS products are not designed for Mac products"
Is a Dell or HP or anything else laptop a Microsoft product?
This is argument is wrong.

Waldo

jth wrote:

@DenSter "MS products are not designed for Mac products"
Is a Dell or HP or anything else laptop a Microsoft product?
This is argument is wrong.

Well, a few years ago, this was true, because of the focus of apple on RICS CPU's. Now, Apple is using CISC architecture because of the fact that RISC CPU's was expensive to get. Windows is designed for CISC-based so these days you can say that an Apple is the same as a Dell or HP... . But as I said, if we were a few years back, Denster was completely right... .

DenSter

jth wrote:

@DenSter "MS products are not designed for Mac products"
Is a Dell or HP or anything else laptop a Microsoft product?
This is argument is wrong.

No it is not wrong. Your question is completely irrelevant, we're talking about using NAV on Mac hardware, not Dell or HP. With the exception of Office for Mac, and perhaps some other products that I am not aware of, Microsoft products are not designed for Mac hardware. The fact that Apple came out with an Intel machine does not change that. It's Apple who is adjusting to the PC world, not the other way around.

What I did was say what I would do. Me personally I would not purchase a Mac for NAV development, because 99.99% of NAV customers don't run Mac computers. If you want to do that go right ahead, I'd be interested in how well it performs, I would just not personally take that chance.

I did look at an Apple notebook, just to see what it would cost, and to see what the options were. I was shocked that with the specs that I wanted it would be more than twice as much as my already ridiculously expensive Dell.

Waldo

True, it's personal. No argument there.
If there are problems .. the future will tell the truth, and also I am not the one who is going to buy it and take the chances.

I also found this:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/irony/macbook-pro-is-the-fastest-windows-vista-notebook-317060.php


I have a Dell D820 which performs like a charm. Also the support of Apple is nothing to compare with the support of Dell and HP. And that's what makes Dell and HP somewhat expensive (but still not as expensive as Apple).

People also buy Apple a little bit for the design and the almost-perfect LCD, isn't it ?

Igor_Beeone

Hello,
I've decided to purchase it Will tell my impressions and how it's going to develop in some weeks I think

Waldo

At directions, I met someone (a NAV DEV guru) that used MAC as development machine. It was quite impressive to see what he could do with his Mac

Miklos_Hollender

Such as installing Win on a separate partition?

Actually OSX is practically a BSD Unix - I wonder whether they have some sort of advanced version of WINE (Windows Emulator) or Cedega which is not available in the Linux/BSD world?

Savatage

Get a Mac: PC Finally Snaps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQbKVUp34v0

Waldo

Actually WINE = Wine Is Not an Emulator (but actually it is) .

It was not just emulation. More running two operation systems in parallel, opening an application from one into the other, and that way, being able to have advantages of both operating systems. I cannot go into detail, because I just saw it, that's all. Basically, I saw the Mac toolbar, the Mac menu bar and the Windows Start bar in one screen, and multiple applications running like office, NAV and some kind of MAC app... .

ps, Miklos, say hi to your employer. I met him on Directions.

Igor_Beeone

Heil guys,
so I've purchased brand new mb pro. 17/1920x1200/2Gb/160Gb HDD 7 days ago. Nice design, alumnium, keyboard with light.
Have tried parallels and vmware to run windows - runs quite smooth, but I've decided to use bootcamp for running windows natively.
Leopard is quite nice OS (nice GUI), but I like Vista much more
Installation of Windows Vista was very easy. Just two clicks to create bootcamp partition, insert Vista CD and wait while installation finishes. Next you need just run CD from MBPRO package and from autorun push button "start" - and all drivers are installed Nice. Everything works perfectly.
There is only one thing I dislike - keyboard keys differs. No normal pg down/pg up/home/end. Also it get's hot while watching film. So... i think it's quite good machine to run vista with pleasure and to develop.
That's all folks Merry Christmas to You all