The new Veggie Mac

I'm new with a Mac. I just recently got my first Mac (a black Macbook). I've been using variations of Linux, Unix and, ahem, Windows for quite a long time now (well, professionally for 14 years of software development).

Why a Mac? A few reasons... it allows me to develop on all platforms in one place (Windows, Linux, Mac... even BSD if I choose)... it has a much better look, feel and experience than Windows, but retains the familiarity of Linux that I enjoy (from the command line)... and, while at the Spring Experience 2007 conference last year, I noticed that EVERY PRESENTER was using a Macbook - I figured the 'big brains' of industry can't all be wrong.

So, this will begin my adventure into the Mac world. I'll spend some time getting acquainted with the nuances of Leopard and setting up my development environment. I'll probably blog a bit about that.

Dev Env
My dev environment will consist of MyEclipse, NetBeans 6.5, MySQL, Tomcat, Glassfish, OpenLDAP and perhaps a few other tools. I'll be using things such as Grails, Spring MVC and WebFlow, Spring WebServices, ICEFaces among other things. I'll also have the iPhone SDK and iPhone Simulator.

Actual Dev
Afterwards, I'll move on to developmental topics. I'll be doing some freelance development work (Java based development), as well as working on a joint venture project with another local freelance developer for the iPhone.