I remember earlier this year that I was feeling uninspired and a bit bored with both technology and development. I felt I needed to shake things up a bit and expose myself to technology and development that was new to me in order to grow as a developer and technologist.
MacBook Pro
I started by purchasing a MacBook Pro. This was somewhat on a whim, but it was an easy purchase to make given that many of my colleagues also use a MacBook Pro and have nothing but great things to say about it. It is sexy and consistently ranks highest among other laptops in terms of performance, usability, and support. The quality of the MacBook Pro was also substantiated given all the MacBook Pro's I saw at TechEd 2008 this year, many of which were used by the presenters themselves.
Most of my colleagues completely removed Mac OS X from the MacBook Pro and ran Vista, but I decided to use Mac OS X as my primary OS when not doing development. Hence MAC OS X is used for mail, calendar, contacts, etc. and Windows XP is only used for development. I use VMware Fusion to run Windows and all my development tools flawlessly on the Mac. Turn on VMware Fusion's “Unity” and it looks like Visual Studio, SQL Server, and everything else is running on the Mac. Very cool.
MobileMe
After purchasing the MacBook Pro, I purchased MobileMe when it immediately became available. Mainly I wanted the contacts and calendar syncing so I can access my calendar and contacts remotely from a browser. The service was a bit flakey for the first week as I think Apple mis-anticipated the initial demand, but after the first week or so the service has been rock solid for me.
The fact that I can now manage my calendar, contacts, and email via a browser, Mac OS X, and my iPhone and everything is transparently in-sync is amazing! Although I haven't tried it, you can also use MobileMe from a PC running Windows! Therefore, if you work on a PC and a Mac, you have the best of both worlds. Utterly amazing.
iPhone 3G
The addition of the iPhone 3G became the icing on the cake. Now I can do all my email, contacts, and calendar from my iPhone, and again, it automatically stays in-sync with MobilMe and my MacBook Pro. Sweet! I can also stay in touch with news feeds using NetNewsWire, and of course, there are iPhone Applications for Twitter, MySpace, various IM clients, FaceBook, etc.
More importantly, however, is that some of the time management, project management, and other 3rd party services that I use for my businesses have either an iPhone App or an iPhone specific web interface that allow me to conduct business operations via the iPhone. This means I can be anywhere and have access to important data as if I was sitting at the MacBook Pro in the office. Unbelievable.
Conclusion
The MacBook Pro, MobileMe, and iPhone 3G have opened my eyes to a lot of new technology and allowed me to grow in many ways. It has also allowed me to become much more connected and untethered from my office. For me this was a great choice and just what I needed to become inspired again in my development. I couldn't be happier. As always, your needs and mileage may vary :)
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