Going all Apple anyone do it?

the_Grinch

So I am thinking about going on Apple (at home). My phone contract is up in a month and the iPhone is looking pretty good (even without the 4G). I have been a Mac user for the past 7 years. Finally, in the world of Tablets hard to beat the iPad. At work I am the Mac guy and I do enjoy their products. Currently my phone is a Motorola Droid and in the beginning I liked it, but not it is a hassle. I had a chance to play with my sister's iPhone and I fell in love. Anyone else go all Apple before?

*Written on a MacBook*

Daniel333

I don't make that much money and I am not big on brands. But I like their stuff and all. I picked up a used Mac mini which I managed to get my apple certification from. I was going to resell it, but it's just too awesome.

When it comes to gadgets if my job doesn't pay for them or I don't see hard returns on it inside of year (aka, my apple cert got me a gig which paid for itself easy) then I don't bother.

Given your security background you might be able to spin free ones through your job? Forensics of iOS was a interesting read.

But ask yourself if you covered your needs first
1) How much do you invest per month? "pay yourself"
2) Do you have a years salary set aside for hardtimes (a year in the new economy)
3) What do you have to cover medical if something not-covered happens to you?
4) How's your home emergency kit?
5) How much college money for your kids do you have?
6) Home about that dream vacation?
7) Student loans and CCs all on $0?
How much money do you invest into your local community/church etc?
9) How's your retirement fund looking?
10) Can you increase your 401k?

Personally I have found most people can't afford their gadgets. Toss open GnuCash and set your plan. If you have all your bases listed above and more covered, then go for it! You earned it!

Otherwise I would suggest sticking to an old celeron with linux

Plantwiz

Daniel333 wrote: »

....But ask yourself if you covered your needs first
1) How much do you invest per month? "pay yourself"
2) Do you have a years salary set aside for hardtimes (a year in the new economy)
3) What do you have to cover medical if something not-covered happens to you?
4) How's your home emergency kit?
5) How much college money for your kids do you have?
6) Home about that dream vacation?
7) Student loans and CCs all on $0?
How much money do you invest into your local community/church etc?
9) How's your retirement fund looking?
10) Can you increase your 401k?

Ah and so close to Dave Ramsey's model

1. $1000 Emergency Fund (or $500 if you make $20K or less)
2. Debt Snowball (pay off debts smallest to largest, not including home) Skip this step if you have no debt
3. Full Funded Emergency Fund - 3-6 Months of expenses (though a year is not a bad plan either ).
4. Retirement accounts funded to 15% of your income
5. Save for College
6. Pay off Mortage
7. Live like no one else!


*******

But to the OP -

NOPE I won't go a full convert to one OS and gadgets (at least no particular reason I can see). I have too much need to have access to various interfaces and devices that limiting myself to only one (such as Apple) I couldn't bring in enough work on solely Apple product.

And for as much Apple hype that exists...Most of my clients and friends all have a mixed back of platforms they use...so only one...Not for me.

shodown

Did it for a while. Too many dropped calls. Ditched the Iphone for a EVO never looked back. 4G, unlimited bandwidth teather to my Macbook pro. I've had linux laptops, and windows, but I can honestly say I enjoy my mac much more, even more so now that there is secure CRT for a mac.


Pro's
- able to get most software I used on window's or nix
- Long Battery Life
- Never crashes on me
- A cisco guy with a mac is just so much cooler.


Cons
Expensive
no Visio
Steve jobs is trying to take over the world.

Forsaken_GA

I wouldn't say I'm all Apple. My personal computers (ie, non servers) are all Apple, except for the Dell that work foisted upon me as the only machine I own allowed to connect to the corporate network.

I do have an iphone, and my ereader is an ipad, but both of those choices were made after much debate. My lab consists of ESXi servers which run a mix of unixii guests.

I wouldn't say I'm all apple, but I'm definitely no microsoft.

shodown wrote: »

Cons
no Visio

You don't need it anymore. Go pickup Omnigraffle Pro. It can now read and write native visio format instead of
being limited to dealing with Visio XML export. It was a VERY happy day when I saw that come out on the feature list, was a no brainer upgrade for me.

The other happy day will come when vsphere 5 is released, and I no longer need Windows for vSphere Client or vCenter. Then Windows will be relegated solely to a gaming platform for me.

shodown

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

You don't need it anymore. Go pickup Omnigraffle Pro. It can now read and write native visio format instead of
being limited to dealing with Visio XML export. It was a VERY happy day when I saw that come out on the feature list, was a no brainer upgrade for me.

The other happy day will come when vsphere 5 is released, and I no longer need Windows for vSphere Client or vCenter. Then Windows will be relegated solely to a gaming platform for me.

Thanks for the tip I"ll be checking that out. Heard about it a while back never followed it.

I'm not allowed to connect my mac to my corperte network either, but we have Kaseya so I just use my mac to connect to my 2 work computers so no data is ever really on my machine except a few Secure CRT IP's. I like it that way to actually have seperation of work and personal machines but still only have 1 real machine.

the_Grinch

Won't be too expensive, my laptop is still going strong. Phone is will be $200 which isn't an issue. The iPad is expensive, but I will probably get a used one/refurb.

I have my $1000 emergency fund, but needed to touch it for brakes so the first name of the game is get that back to full strength.

Thanks all!

UnixGuy

I don't need any Apple gadgets. I use company laptop, and I have an old blackberry to chat with my girlfriend when I'm travelling, and that's it. If you like it and you can afford it then why not

Webmaster

The initial cost may be relatively expensive but if you consider how Apple devices retain their value and the included OS and the cheap OS upgrades that price difference is gone over time.

I find myself using Windows mostly to VNC to my Mac but I'm not ready to give up Windows entirely, yet. Besides some software that isn't available on the Mac (3ds max, learning curve to high to switch to another package) I just love my notebook (Alienware M15x)

shodown wrote:

Thanks for the tip I"ll be checking that out.

+1, downloading.

SteveLord

Only apple product I actually own is an iPod touch that was a gift for the wife.

Otherwise, my iPad 2 was bought by the office. I am dumping my office blackberry later this month for the Droid 3. I would never purchase an Apple laptop or desktop.

tpatt100

My wife always used Macs but she got on that kick back from her graphic design days. I would love a Mac Pro desktop but I think half of the price is the freaking case itself. I might get a Mac mini someday.

I switched from the iPhone to Verizon and have an HTC Incredible. I kind of like it but the fragmentation of the Droid market makes researching phones a must. I know my HTC likes to reboot randomly, might try a reset on it.

rwmidl

My wife and I both have iPod touches - and we both really like them and use them a lot. I think we both would go to an iPhone "if" Sprint gets the iPhone - I personally don't like carrying both the iPod and my cell phone around.

We've been talking about getting an iPad for the family. My only complaint about it is iOS really isn't designed for multiple users. Since Apple is really making the push for iPad's to replace the traditional computer, iOS really needs to be revamped so that multiple users can log on some how. Yeah, I know you can set up multiple email accounts in the mail app, but what if I don't want my kids to read my email? Having only one user makes sense for an iPhone/iPod, but not really for an iPad.

As for a Mac, I purchased a MacBook Pro back in March. So far I've been really impressed with it. I do use BootCamp quite a bit to boot in to Windows since there are some things I still use Windows for (the copy of Photoshop and Acrobat we have is only for Windows).

Mishra

Mark me down for owning 0 Apple products and expecting to buy 0 more.

Nothing against Apple, just don't really get that into devices. They are more of a burden then a help.

TesseracT

I love apple devices. I've never owned any of their computers but their i-gadgets are the shiznit. I have a 160GB ipod (so I can fit my whole music library on it - yes it's that big) an iphone and two ipads (1st gen is mine, work gave me a 2nd gen).

My brother is a programmer and uses a macbook pro. It works better for him than a windows machine as it's based on Unix. I have nothing against them, they're pretty slick machines but I quite like Windows 7 (I'm a network admin). I have all my tools on there, our corp network is AD based as well as most of our servers, and to be honest it just seems like a pain migrating to a new OS. I'm happy with gadgets = apple, computers = microsoft... works well for me

nerdydad

I am almost all Mac, I do have a Windows 2008 server in the lab. I use the iPad as a study tool, all of my textbooks, training videos and such, plus RDP to the server for labs and to use any windows only programs on the ipad. My main system is a Macbook pro, I use it with Fusion with Windows and Ubuntu. I also have an iPhone, the fact that all my remote desktop apps work on both my iPhone and iPad is a big bonus, also use the iPhone for my 3G connection on both the laptop and the iPad.

As awesome as the iPad is for studying, I am planning on getting a Macbook air, it will solve almost every limitation the iPad has, and is not much bigger.

There is also a console cable available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch for getting into a cisco device.