Evernote

Evernote is one of a long line of notetaking applications, from Microsoft OneNote (which is supposedly pretty good) to Zoho. In my search for a notetaking application to supplement my brain (which has horrible short term memory), I settled on Evernote as the most full featured of the bunch:

• Has a desktop AND web AND iPhone client
• For notebooks that are synced to Evernote's servers, free OCR
• The ability to have synced notebooks (to take advantage of web/iPhone clients and free OCR), or desktop only notebooks (for sensitive info)
• The ability to add pics, pdf, word, excel, numbers, pages, webpages, or free text to a note
• quick searchability

The only thing remaining for me is to put my local Evernote notebooks into my truecrypt partition, then I'd be all set

Remember The Milk

I was a dedicated omnifocus user, but I just switched to Remember The Milk. If it was just my notebook or a desktop, omnifocus is the top GTD app hands down. However the omnifocus iPhone app is just tooo..... clunky. I have all the usual complaints about it, it loads slow, too much navigation to do simple things, so on and so forth. To me it seems like their developers are too used to the high horsepower of modern macs, and are having a hard time writing an app for a processor/ram/hd constrained product like the iPhone.

Remember The Milk on the other hand, is a pure webapp for macs, with a syncable iPhone app. The webapp is slightly slower than omnifocus for mac, which is understandable. However, their webapp has gmail like keyboard shortcuts, which is nice. I do miss omnifocus's ability to add a new task from anywhere. Remember The Milk also integrates well with gmail, I subscribed to my task list as a calendar in iCal, and has nifty settings like "postpone", and understands natural language as you input data. Unfortunately for omnifocus, the faster Remember The Milk iPhone app made me a switcher. 

I heart my mac

I always made fun of maczealots, poked at the linux people, and stuck my nose in the air at people who only knew windows. However, I now have to eat all the words I ever said against apple fanboys. If it wasn't for games, I'd never leave OSX. Not only is OSX all shiny and slick, but all the things I thought were just eye candy actually end up increasing my productivity. Coverflow for folder browsing, Expose as an app switcher, tagged files searchable through Spotlight, Multitouch for touchpad interaction, not to mention a fantastic screen and great keyboard. Here's a quick list of the apps that I have come to use on a near daily basis.

MS Office 2008 - yes yes yes, I know. As a converted macdude, I'm supposed to hate everything made by M$ (or whatever the cool kids call em nowadays). Word and Excel still can't be beat. And I still hold Visual Studio for .NET as a shining example of what a modern IDE should be.
iWork - I haven't found a need for Keynote yet, but I do use Pages on occasion. Pages isn't as full featured as Word is, but it is much much easier to write a pretty document in Pages. Case in point: I made my newest resume using Pages, and exported it into a *.doc.
Eclipse - Not as good as Visual Studio, but getting closer.
Terminal - OSX's terminal does all the good things that terminal apps other *nix os's do, tabbed sessions, etc. Not to mention all my familiar *nix commands which I can run. Indeed, I manage all the application servers at the office from Terminal.
Safari - not as good as firefox, but I need my Multitouch, which only works on Cocoa apps. No firefox extensions makes me a sad panda.
Omnigraffle - WOW. Just as full featured as Visio, and extremely well put together. I use Omnigraffle for mind mapping, especially when I have to learn new things.
Omnifocus - double WOW. I've read all about the GTD (Getting Things Done) fad, I thought it was just for people who don't know how to use post-it notes or a text editor. While I don't have to eat my words again.... I may have to nibble them.... just a little.
iTunes - Meh. I liked using Media Center in Vista better. Media Center's "album view" is just as pretty as Cover Flow, and lets me see more albums at once.
VLC - Oh yeah!
TrueCrypt - This app is a must. Seriously. The entire world should be using this.

MacBook Pro - Pros and Cons

Cons:
* Cost - There is no doubt that buying high end Apple hardware has a high sticker shock. The only way I could justify it to myself is that as a computer professional with delusions of grandeur and an overinflated sense of self worth, I deserve a high end machine =P
* Weight - The MacBook Pro is a heavy laptop. But that's ok, I think of myself as physically stronger than your average geek.
* Crappy Driver support for Win XP - For such a powerful machine with dual boot capability, Apple has some Win XP graphics drivers that are far behind the times. I mean, why can't they roll Nvidia's latest drivers into their bootcamp driver package?
* OSX Quirks - Yes yes yes, OSX is pretty cool, but it does have some annoyances. Luckily all of the ones that have bothered me so far are solved with some nifty 3rd party addons. I mean really...... who at Apple decided that Apple+Tab will bring an application to the forefront, but not give focus to the last window.... really...

Pros:
* Build Quality - This laptop is the most well constructed laptop that I have sampled, and while I didn't take the time to look at any Asus or Acer laptops, the MacBook Pro clearly *feels* better constructed than a Dell XPS or Latitude, or Sony Vaio.
* Keyboard - This is the best laptop that I have typed on yet. Keyboards are like mice, every person has their preferences. For me, the keys feel solid, with just the right amount of *springiness* and response. Typing is crisp.
* Looks - There is no doubt that when considered from all angles, the MacBook Pro is better looking than all other laptops in its price range. Lately, I've been more into minimalist designs in the things I buy, and Apple's current designs tickle me.
* High End Components - 2.6ghz proc with 6mb cache, 2gb ram (soon to be 4gb), 250gb hd, 802.11n, 512mb graphics card, LED screen.
* OSX - I consider OSX to be a selling point. To me, it feels that OSX took the GUI usability of Windows XP, included functionality from the *nix world (like multiple desktops), and added a heaping spoonful of eye candy. So far, it's seemed well put together.
* Nifty Things - Little things that make me go "hey, that's pretty cool". Examples are the magnet power connector, the backlit keyboard, the autodimming screen, the good keyboard, etc.
* Multitouch - I so thought that multitouch was just a gimmick. When I added a 3rd party addon called Multiclutch, it put multitouch firmly in the category of a must have. I know that Firefox has addons that do gestures, but you still need to click and drag. Multitouch is faster. Now only if firefox can have the appropriate Cocoa "hooks" so that I can have my multitouch AND firefox extensions, I will be in web browsing nirvana. Seriously, I only use safari because I can extend the multitouch functionality with the multiclutch addon.

Laptops only

My personal computing life has taken a change recently. I have moved from a homebuilt desktop only kinda guy, to a laptop-everywhere-I-go kinda guy. It all started when my graphics card died on my desktop, and I realized that in order to fix my pc I would need to rebuild it from scratch as my components were 2-3 generations old. So I figure I'll try a laptop. I originally bought a Gateway MT3422 from Best Buy, and I firmly believe that as of today, it is the most laptop that you can buy for the money.


Then came a lan party. I haven't been to one of those things in years, and indeed it had been about 2 years since I had played a pc game. Holy crap I forgot how much fun gaming is! So since my trusty gateway had only integrated graphics, I decided I needed an even better newer laptop. I began looking around at the flagship laptops from Apple, Dell, Lenovo and Sony. Do you know what the interesting thing is? When you spec out a Sony, Dell, or Lenovo to equivalent specs of a MacBook pro, they end up being about the same price! With that in mind, and the fact that you can use bootcamp to dual boot WinXP/Vista with OSX, I figure... why not. So I splurged and bought the high end 15" MacBook Pro. 



I've had my MacBook pro for about a week now, and I can honestly say that it is tied with my first homebuilt pc as the finest piece of computing hardware that I have ever owned. It is totally worth the money that you pay.