After switching to Apple a year ago, my computer life has become easier as expected. Every mac user on this planet would say off course, every Windows user might say something like ok, but (…). But it is not the ease of OS X that astonishes me the most. It is that the ease of the OS has translated into some of the programming tools. I still have Windows running under VMware for programming electronics and for using Samplitude, but OS X will be my main platform for programming productivity tools, as long as the client accept an Apple among the Windows.

Two Apple tools that can save your day:

Applescript is a time saver. End of story. Another story about applescript that has to be told and retold is the semantic syntax….. If all computer languages was semantic, then programming would be something that everyone could do without having to spend a lot of time learning how to think cryptic to do something easy.

Automator is a familiar concept for anyone used to MaxMSP Jitter, Pd, Bidule, Quartz Composer and so on. Make a program in a few minutes, distribute as standalone and your computer has become a little more easy to use (maybe…). Plug and play a program.

Cheers
Arve

Very well. There is no other reason than Samplitude and a few programming tools for the occasional MCU, for me to ever get into Windows nowadays so that was it for VirtualBox on my computer.

Then I installed VMware and everything was fine. VMware let me run Samplitude on Windows while checking email, skyping and surfing while programming Max/MSP tools for my Goldwasser on OS X. And performance seems to be good enough for me. Happy days until something comes up wrecking the horizon. Until then I enjoy my Samplitude and could not be less bothered. I really like this virtualization thing.

cheers
Arve