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...is actually my old iMac.
My trusty old Toshiba has been appropriated by someone who evidently wants to do actual work on it, and I've been struggling with the problem of how to have a nice big screen, a small keyboard (my desk is a little cramped), and convenient access to a Windows and MacOS box.
So the 5 year old iMac that was our dev machine is now my new Windows machine at home (and MacOS machine for debugging iOS stuff) and I have to say I forgot how nice the Mac screens are.
Has anyone dabbled with the new all-in-ones that have come on the market to compete with the iMacs?
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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I e only played with the all in ones at the shops - and haven't been that impressed - generally just don't look as good or feel as well built as the Mac. Of course they are cheaper but they also don't run Mac OS too well!
I've been using my 27" Mac aas a windows 8 machine (vm) for a while and, full screen win 8 is great running vs2012 (I use dual monitors so the oth screen is my 'Mac' screen.
I had to buy a proper Mac keyboard though - the itsy Bluetooth ones are fine for a bit but I missed the numerical keypad and the lack of a delet key cramped my style a lot!
If you are doing any Mac programming I would recommend trying jetbrains' AppCode - swapping between it and vs is much easier than with xcode
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Interesting points. I'm using my 27" Mac with dual-boot (Win7). I tried Parallels but sometimes found the VM a little sluggish. Since dual-booting Win7 runs really smooth and I'm but a click or so away from booting back into Mac-mode. How did you manage to get a dual monitor running. From what I read it's a pain in the ass to setup and use? Macs don't have VGA cables and that's all my HP monitor has. Hence it sits up in the loft, unused.
If I were to do Mac coding, I'd go for AppCode myself. Just about anything that JetBrains makes is exceptionally good. I've been using Resharper for a few years now. I'd never consider anything else and AppCode seems to have excellent reviews as well.
"I do not have to forgive my enemies, I have had them all shot." — Ramón Maria Narváez (1800-68).
"I don't need to shoot my enemies, I don't have any." - Me (2012).
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I'm using VirtualBox on the Mac - and found Windows 7 slightly laggy sometimes, just those occasional mouse delays, but haven't found it so with windows 8 (although only been using that for a short while)
If I rebuild my Mac I will probably go the dual boot option also - just for ultimate performance and games playing ability really - and as my hard drive is on a recall list, that might be sooner than I thought.
dual monitor was easy with a DVI monitor, anyway. Had to buy a dongle thing to convert miniDisplayPort to DVI and that was it - plugged it in and it "Just Worked" No pain, in Ass or elsewhere (I had also read of folks having problems but I think they were software probs that have been fixed in the OS releases). VGA monitor - not so sure, but I did see this[^]
AppCode is definitely the dogs doodads for me. Taking time to discover all the tings it can do (but not so long as it did with XCode!)
To be fair, XCode isn't bad at all for a free product (I bought AppCode at 75% off - yep - I"m a cheapskate)
Best feature in AppCode so far -
Command-C / X / V for copy paste work on an entire line when nothing is highlighted (e.g. click somewhere on a line, press Command-C and the whole line is copied to the clipboard.)
This works just like VS2010 and is something that, after I discovered, I used all the time - so much so that I still kept trying to do it in XCode and ended up pasting all sorts of rubbish n my code!
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So that's how it's done. Trust Apple to come up with something and then charge the bloody earth for it. I'll bear the adapter cable in mind.
"I do not have to forgive my enemies, I have had them all shot." — Ramón Maria Narváez (1800-68).
"I don't need to shoot my enemies, I don't have any." - Me (2012).
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It's half that on monoprice[^]; and theirs is a 6 foot cable; which is about the same price as a dumb video cable bought almost anywhere else.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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I feel certain the fascinating rune you have created in your message, above, composed of "frown face" icons has cosmic significance !
Unfortunately, today, I am feeling merely mortal: and; while my mind is caroming around my neural networks, bouncing off Cantor, Godel, Szilard, Heisenberg, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Teller, Fermi, and Maldacena, I have yet to have a partial-seizure, or get into trance, so that even a hint of a dribble of what you significated has reached any state in which I am even partially conscious.
Care to give a hint ?
thanks, Bill
“Thus on many occasions man divides himself into two persons, one who tries to fool the other, while a third, who in fact is the same as the other two, is filled with wonder at this confusion. Thinking becomes dramatic, and acts out the most complicated plots within itself, and, spectator, again, and again, becomes: actor.” From a book by the Danish writer, Paul Moller, which was a favorite of Niels Bohr.
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I used the sick smiley, and drew it puking from the side.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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How long did it take you to create your reply? It's Saturday today. Have you been outside this weekend yet? 
"I do not have to forgive my enemies, I have had them all shot." — Ramón Maria Narváez (1800-68).
"I don't need to shoot my enemies, I don't have any." - Me (2012).
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PHS241 wrote: How long did it take you to create your reply?
About 20 minutes. I drew it in Excel with cells resized to be square using X's to mark the faces, and filled in the white space with 0's. I then copied that into a text editor replaced the X's with X| the 0's with 5 nbsp's. I tested in the preview window did a global tweak of spacing by doing a 10 to 9 replacement of the nbsp's, and then finally adjusted the right edge manually where it was a bit ragged.
PHS241 wrote: <layer>It's Saturday today. Have you been outside this weekend yet?
I've only been out of bed for ~10 minutes; so no, not yet. Once I've finished my morning reading and showered I'm sure there's a bit of fresh snow to deal with and I need to go down the street to have my my hair cut.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: all the other parts are obsolete.
Do obsolete parts suddenly stop working? 
My 3.5 year old 27" iMac still runs smooth and fast for OS X or Windows 7 (dual boot or VM).
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington
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Mike Mullikin wrote: Dan Neely wrote: all the other parts are obsolete.
Do obsolete parts suddenly stop working?
For my purposes they're no longer adequate. The 5 year old HD I'm using for media storage is old enough to make me a little nervous; and despite having them, restoring from backups is slow and emergency hardware purchases are more expensive than anything you wait for a sale on.
Going from 6 to 4 ram slots means I need higher density dimm's, probably 8GB to give myself upgrade headroom later if I need it.
For gaming the CPU's speed is already starting to impact performance both in overall frame rates and more importantly in latency on the slowest frames; it's the latter (often referred to as micro-stuttering) that generally set maximum playable framerates. The Tech Report's[^] has been measuring frame rate latency to pound the drum on this issue for the past year or so.
I game at 2560x1600; which means I can't skip more than 1 generation of GPU if I want to be able to play at native resolution with the eye candy cranked up. I suspect that the new generation of consoles may end up pushing even that back into a yearly upgrade cadence for a while just by no longer being hopelessly obsolete anchor chains on AAA titles. Even if they don't; I intend to buy a 4k screen as soon as one is available at <$2k <40" (preferably ~35). Doing that's going to give a major bump in GPU loading and wipe out lots of headroom; probably for years.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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What I wonder about any all-in-one box with a display like an IPS LED driven at 2560 x 1440, and some high-power CPU, like an i7, with lots of ram (as in 32 gigs or more, which I think will be about average by the end of this year), is: what about "life-expectancy," given the assumption that significant heat is generated.
Personally, I think I probably will never "get over" wanting to have a big aluminum box (like the Lian Li I have now) with lots of fans, and the opportunity to swap in new motherboards, video-cards, CPU's, etc.
But, the aesthetics of the new all-in-one iMac: oh yes; I definitely like the design. Whether my large hands could learn to speed-touch-type "naturally" on what appears to me as a "midget" standard Apple keyboard, or adapt to a one-button mouse: unknown.
yrs, Bill
“Thus on many occasions man divides himself into two persons, one who tries to fool the other, while a third, who in fact is the same as the other two, is filled with wonder at this confusion. Thinking becomes dramatic, and acts out the most complicated plots within itself, and, spectator, again, and again, becomes: actor.” From a book by the Danish writer, Paul Moller, which was a favorite of Niels Bohr.
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Bill! Oh! Bill!
The days of Apple one-button mice are as long behind us as, say, the days of booting from floppy disks.
The new Apple touch-mouse is a sexy wee beauty , with two buttons and the entire surface multi-touch enabled.
There are disadvantages, for sure; simply sitting at the desk one is tempted to just stroke it's smooth surface, which can have unfortunate screen-switching effects, for example.
The keyboard? Yeah - a bit too titchy for my mitts, but it can use any old keyboard (Bluetooth or USB) .
And me, I've given up upgrading computers - I used to buy machines with an eye on their upgradabiluty - but beyond the odd disk upgrade, and maybe some ram(both of which you can do on a mac quite easily) I've really not bothered (I always thought I would upgrade video cards, but they tended to upgrade the tech (agp to pcie etc.) before I saved my pennies)
Go buy a Mac.
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Depends what you do with it. As a gamer I've done lots of GPU upgrades in addition to others. MY current i7-920 box is ~4 years old and has been upgraded from 6-12GB of ram, had 128 and then 256 GB SSDs added for OS/apps (the latter is almost full now  ). and gone from 1xGTX260, to 2xGTX260, to HD5870, to GTX560.
Later this year I intend to replace it with a Haswell box that will be almost all new components and will probably keep the core system for equally as long.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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_Maxxx_ wrote: Go buy a Mac.
Thanks, _Maxxx_,
I am now updated on the state of Apple mice, and appreciate your kind offer !
How shall I send my SWIFT bank-code, and account number, to you, so you can transfer the funds for my new Mac to me ? Be assured I am not in Nigeria.
thanks, Bill
“Thus on many occasions man divides himself into two persons, one who tries to fool the other, while a third, who in fact is the same as the other two, is filled with wonder at this confusion. Thinking becomes dramatic, and acts out the most complicated plots within itself, and, spectator, again, and again, becomes: actor.” From a book by the Danish writer, Paul Moller, which was a favorite of Niels Bohr.
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Ah, Bill, now there's the rub!
You can be assured that, had I been some sort of multimillionaire, I would buy you a Mac to ensure the continuation of your missives on code project.
Alas, and of course, alac, as my rather cockney bank manager would tell you "'e's skint, mate"
I suspect the reason for said skintness may well be the purchasing of so many Macs !
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My old windows laptop, was actually a Mac Book Pro. The best perk of my last job as an employee was a 15" Mac Book Pro quad core i5, 4GB, 500GB. It ran Windows7 better than anything else I had ever used, desktop or laptop. It was an affair that lasted 9 months before we had to part ways.
However when it came to buying my own I couldn't bring myself to shell out £1200 for a similar model, even the £900 ex display dual core model I was offered just didn't cut it when the polite and friendly Taiwanese would sell me a Quad Code i7 with a better screen, bigger hard drive, blue tooth, hosted wireless, USB3, Bang and Olufsen audio, 2 graphics cards and a Blue ray player, card slot, HDMI etc etc for the same price. That was 18 months ago and I'm not sure Apple have anything to match my Asus yet. It's creaky plastic junk compared to an aluminium Mac Book with a lighted keyboard but I just can't give up the tech.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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