I got thinking today that now that I have totally moved over to the Mac for my development needs I need to document somewhere what I have installed and what certain replacement applications I use for the PC ones I once used.

I guess we start with the fact that I bought a Mac Book Pro 17" I Just before Scotch on the Rocks 2007 and I have to say it's the best purchase of mine for a long time. It just feels so natural to develop on it, and with the advent of VMWare Fusion it's a whole development environment in a box without the need to always have Internet access.

So what do I have installed, we'll where would many of us be if we didn't have eclipse installed with CFEclipse, FusionDebug, Mylyn, Aptana and a few other little ones that I may blog about in the future. Then of course where would any of us be without an UltraEdit or TextPad (Or whatever takes your fancy) replacement, this of course on the Mac is TextMate and I have to say I haven't used it that often but I have used it for the column selection editing that makes live easier (Select Vertically). Seeing I've been a bit of Flex work of late as well I also have the Flex Builder 3 Beta 2 Installed (I know working with beta software) but it does the job just fine for me.

I also have ColdFusion 8 Installed as MultiServer, which gives me the chance to have multiple JRun Instances and allows be to continue running ColdFusion 7 as well. There are a few hacks on how to get it started and I hope to blog about how I get it started next week. Of course as mentioned I have VMWare Fusion Installed too, this allows me to have a Virtual Machine installed with CENTOS 5.5 and a Developer copy of Oracle (Like our Dev Environment) so as I said I have a development environment in a box. With 3Gb of memory installed on the Mac Book Pro (If I had waited a few weeks I could have had 4 dam!) You don't notice the drop in performance when running a virtual machine.

Speaking of Oracle and Databases, The best tool out there by far for Database Development on the Max is Aqua Folds Aqua Data Studio. This just frigging rocks. I was using the latest release in trail mode 6.5 but that has since expired (Politics over purchasing a copy at mo). So I have had to go back to using Oracles SQL Developer, which is such a drop in quality but still does the job. The great thing with Aqua Data Studio is that is can talk to Oracle, MySql, SQL Server, DB2 and many more which just makes it awesome and also works on PC and Linux to boot and the licensing allows one developer to use it on up to three PC's which again just rocks. So I may just fork out the money on it myself.

That really covers off the main development tools I use, but there are some non-developer tools I use, these include AppZapper to remove applications totally, Stickies the built in sticky notes very hand to remember stuff and there is Omni Groups OmniOutliner which I use in meetings to take quick notes and also use as a mind jogger when I'm on the train into work I'll make notes in it as they pop into my head.

Then I have the new social annoyance as some say but I have Twitterific, iChat for talking to all the Google Talk guys and other Mac users of course, Skype and AMSN for my Msn Contacts which I really boot up these days. I could use Adium but I don't think the multi protocol apps are as rich just yet as the

But that is basically it and works well for me, maybe a few tools I use every now and then I have left of but these certainly do the trick for me.

May the Scotch Be With You