Josh Benner

After the first day of having the new Mac and playing with iChat, it was time to hunker down and start accomplishing things with the Mac. In the last few years one of the biggest reasons I've been reluctant to get a Mac has been a sense (whether justified or not) that the software selection wouldn't be sufficient for my wants, needs, and tastes. Part of my recent decision to get the Mac was the general feeling that this was no longer the case. I've found this to be true.

I spend a lot of time on my computers. Most of that time is spent using or writing web pages and web applications (and the occasional video game). Web development isn't what it used to be, and tackling everything requires a lot of tools. I'll summarize my needs and the tools that I've settled on using to meet them.

People often ask me how or when I started working with computers, programming, etc. My answers usually hark back to my childhood and my first ventures with my parents' Macintosh Plus, then our family Performa, and my Powerbooks 180c and 540c. Basically, all of my earlier computer encounters were on a Mac, from learning to type to learning my first programming language to discovering the internet for the first time.
Sometime during the late 90s I became frustrated and angry with working in a Mac world and I "converted" to my first Windows machine, vowing to never look back. Since that day I've been working primarily in Windows and Linux, only touching a Macintosh when absolutely necessary... that is, until this last week.