I’ve never been one to be unwilling to try something new, especially when it comes to computer software. Still, it’s easy to become set in my ways when it comes to programs I use every day, almost to the point where I
am unwilling to look into alternatives. This usually means I overlook creeping problems until they finally piss me off.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve transitioned away from two pieces of software I’ve used for years.
The first to “go,” (and I use that term loosely, because both of these programs I still use in limited situations) is
Mozilla Firefox. I simply cannot abide Firefox’s Mac performance problems anymore. Startup and shutdown times are measured in minutes - and this is on a 16-month-old Macbook Pro. At times it consumes close to 1 gigabyte of memory, crashes randomly and often, at the end of the day, simply has to be force-quitted so I can just go home.
In its place:
Google Chrome. I experimented with using Safari, but its limited plugin selection was a turnoff. I’ve had my eye on Chrome since it was first released for Windows, but was held back, first by the lack of a Mac release at all, then by a lack of a Mac release with extensions. With the most recent release of Chrome for Mac, it finally gained extension support. So after feeling particularly anti-Firefox a few weeks ago, I gave Chrome a whirl and ... I really, really like it.
It’s fucking
fast. Incredibly fast. Amazingly fast. Starts up in under a second and, even after a day of heavy browsing, still shuts down in under three seconds. It renders pages incredibly fast. And, having the tabs as independent processes means that, if something goes wrong in a tab, all I have to do is close it. All in all, it’s a very nice browser.
It’s not all perfect, to be sure. There’s no working Greasemonkey in Chrome yet, and the developer tools aren’t anywhere near as good as the ones on Firefox (the inspector built into Chrome is no replacement for Firebug). Pendule is good, but it’s not Web Developer Toolbar. And the version of Adblock for Chrome is usable and gets 90% of ads, but doesn’t block as much Adblock+ on Firefox. But, for day-to-day browsing, it’s Google Chrome now. I only fire up Firefox when I need to do heavy development work or to test.
The other piece just happened today:
Xjournal. Ever since I switched to Mac three years ago, I’ve used Xjournal to post to LiveJournal. But it’s always been a begrudging acceptance. While Xjournal seemed to be the best LJ client for Mac, it was nowhere near as good as Semagic was on the PC. It had no WYSIWYG support, limited preview support and was generally a pain to use. But the final straw was the recent upgrade to Snow Leopard. Something inside Xjournal isn’t Snow Leopard compatible, causing it to freeze and randomly crash.
In its place:
MacJournal. This is a pay software (and can currently be had as part of the
MacHeist Nanobundle, which is how I got it), but it’s pretty amazing quality. And, in addition to LJ, it supports MetaWeblog, Movable Type, Atom and Wordpress. It allows you to use multiple journals simultaneously (something Xjournal couldn’t really do), has WYSIWYG support and a lot more. It can even upload images for you to hosting services or to your own FTP server. Totally worth my $19.
So my little ecosystem has been shaken up, but with change comes a chance to explore something new.