Sometimes its odd the way events can line up together. Once in a while its almost seems as if things have been pre-calculated and I'm just flowing down this river of life bouncing from event to event.
To better explain:
I switched to a Macbook Pro earlier this year. Prior to switching OS's, I was a religious Windows user for a long time. My father (now deceased) was an ASP coder. He taught me the ways of ASP and Windows 2000 when that was the new platforms to do things on. In his footsteps I too had started to develop web applications.
This was before the term officially existed. This was also during the period where people were afraid of web applications, specifically storing any data online. Now that I'm making it sound like I'm really old...
Moving back to the point, the Mac switch was part of a larger switch of development platforms in general.
Classic ASP is a good system and it stills works and is in use today. Trouble is, it hasn't been updated in years and never will be. Microsoft abandoned in its peak in trade for the .NET concept.... I never took up the .NET methodology. It was never properly presented in the development world. It was never presented as something that would be "pleasant" to use and reading up on it further confirmed that.
I'm sure things have changed as they moved on from the initial version release.
I'm watching all the new web toys come out. Not one is made using a Microsoft technology? How strange. This was the beginning eye-opener that I need to change. I want new toys to play with too! All these PHP guys are having all the fun now!
So at any rate, I switch platforms. If you're into web development you can imagine the culture shock going from my own IIS server with Win2k Server, to a Linux machine with Apache. Major difference. Also waaaay better. (for me at least!)
Meanwhile I have this Macbook Pro that I do 95% of my work on with one item left over - MS Access.... and not a Mac replacement anywhere on the planet. How very very sad.
I install Boot Camp. Its okay. Rebooting is a pain in the ass, especially to just glance into an MS Access file to remember what that field name was in that old table on that old site I made several years ago.
I got ready to purchase Parallels. Other Mac users were leaning towards using VMWare instead. I got ready to make the online purchase...bam! An idea hits me - check for a Remote Desktop for mac? Hey, why not?
One exists! Holy shit of shits!
I immediately download (for FREE!). It works great! I'm running my Windows Server without rebooting! I'm opening MS Access files! Hurray!
Bottom line: This isn't for everyone since most people wouldn't be remotely accessing Windows machines, but for thos who do - this program is EXCELLENT!
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/remote-desktop/default.mspx