You've gotta love Platform Independence

It has been a rough week. Last week my MacBook Pro burned his logic board and then I managed to brick my PC. This week, though, I got a new mother board (with a decent Core 2 Duo processor) for my PC and I'm up and running.

Going back to Windows is annoying as expected. The worst annoyance comes from the difference  in the location of the Mac "Command" and the Windows "Ctrl", especially when it comes to copy/paste: in OS X it's Command-X and in Windows it's Ctrl-X, but the Command is placed where the Alt key is in Windows. I also miss Quicksilver and Exposé. I know, there are alternatives, but I just couldn't be bothered to install any.

On the upside, my environment is surprisingly the same. Here's some examples:

• Eclipse - exactly the same. Right down to the plug-ins. The keyboard shortcuts are a bit different which takes some time to get used to.
• Subversion - I just got my repository from my Mozy backup, installed the Subclipse Eclipse plug-in and that's it.
• H2 database - completely cross platform. I didn't even bother to install it, just downloaded the generic package and unzipped it. Works beautifully and exactly the same (maybe faster?).
• Firefox - yes, I have all my add-ons running. It's feels at home.
• Open Office - I had to work on some documents. On the Mac I use NeoOffice. My very complex spreadsheet didn't even notice the platform change.
• I use Cygwin which gives a Unix prompt, much like the one I get in OS X. Cool.

After some minor tweaking the application I'm developing was up and running. It was working beautifully. I was working fluently and almost forgot I switched the platform. I made some progress this week, but...

• All my tasks are managed in OmniFocus - I couldn't find anything that can open my backup files on PC.
• All my brainstorming and designs are in OmniOutliner format - again, I couldn't read it. Not even close.
• I had some notes in xPad. I managed to partially recover the ones I needed.

Some after thoughts after this "fun" week:

• The Mozy backup service allows downloading backups through a web clients. However, Mac backups are downloaded as DMG files. It took me time to open these on Windows. I finally used IsoBuster, which isn't free. I'm just wondering what's wrong with plain-old ZIP files.
• I have backups of my sources and documents. I missed out on some important stuff - like Eclipse workspace settings (including launch configurations and what not), my test projects, etc. Luckily, I'm going to get my MacBook Pro early next week with the hard-disk intact.
• It took me hours to install the Eclipse & Firefox with all the plug-ins and settings. This gave me a great idea - write a plug-in which synchronizes the settings and plug-ins. You could then download a distribution of Eclipse/Firefox with this plug-in and the plug-in will install your other plug-ins and do all the configuration for you. Sounds like a million dollar idea to me.

Finally, this is the price of going solo and not having an IT department behind you. I knew that when I "signed up". This helped reduce the anger and pain involved. I knew this is going to happen some day and I just said to myself: "well, today is the day".

Comments

[Alon]

Hi Zviki,

Glad to hear your are back on the road..

Regarding the "Firefox extensions synchronizer", check out
FEBE https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2109
and
BELOW
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4928

I think there might be others that provide similar functionality.

[Zviki]

The FEBE plug-in looks exactly like what I was looking for. I'll try it. The one thing that caught my eye what checking the screenshots was the synchronization of browsing history. It's surprising how much I miss my history. I ofter start typing a URL and expect the browser to complete it from my history. It's annoying to work without it.

It could be an interesting idea to develop something similar to Eclipse. Genuitec Pulse is somewhat close in terms that you can build your own sets of plugins and install them automatically.

[Zviki]

Short update... I moved to Leopard this weekend and formatted by entire HD in the process. I used FEBE to backup my Firefox stuff. While the backup went fine, the restoration process was very clumsy and unclear. There's a very complex procedure you need to go through in order to achieve that. I decided to pass, it seemed like a good opportunity to start from a clean slate anyway.