Anecdote, but one of my friends is a lifelong Mac user and finds Windows downright confounding, confusing, and frustrating to use.

Unless you are doing office work, playing games, or programming on a full .Net stack, I don't see any good reason to use Windows over OSX or *nix. I'm kind of surprised that programmers would prefer Windows.

I find osx UI to just be bad. Not friendly, and doesn't do what I want it to do. I like the functionality of one button pageup/pagedown/home/end, especially for coding, and osx doesn't work well with 102 key keyboards. Finder is not easy to work with. There's no "show desktop" hotkey in the vein of windows+d. And there's little things like double clicking on a text file will open it in a brand new sublime window as opposed to making it a tab. Maybe that's sublime's fault but still.

Here's probably my best example: what "alt" keys do you use most with osx, and which do you use the least? By that I mean cmd/control/alt&option/fn. Now look at a macbook keyboard. Note which keys are to the left of space. Now look to what ones are to the right. Yeah. I use fn all the time and almost never use alt&option or control.

Are you using the fn key because you use f1, f2, f3 etc all the time? If so why not turn off needing the fn key at all for those?

fn + arrow keys is page up/down and home/end replacement. If there's something better please tell me.

Got my first smart phone after years of refusing. Wtf was I doing with my life? It's an android. Any good app recommendations?

Yeah, I'm with you on that one.
cmd down arrow or cmd O will open it, would prefer enter to open instead of rename, though.

Yes, there is. F11 to toggle show desktop.
If it is disabled (I think it gets disabled if you use hot corners) you can go to System Preferences -> Mission Control to adjust that. Not much choice which keys to map, but you could also map mouse buttons.

That is sublime. Probably has a way to change that to window instead of tab.
Google gave me this:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9...s-in-a-new-tab

I use cmd and option a lot. Ctrl and Fn not that much.
Also, fn is to the left of my space bar on the MBP.

Either way, you can switch around those modifier keys in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys.

Very helpful for those instinctively using control instead of command when coming from windows.

Some more powerful remapping apps are out there. Especially if you just want page up/down, home and end to be remapped to use other modifiers, but not the rest.

I mean, I'd finally adjusted from using space to make selections on pop up boxes to using enter, and then they gotta take away some of enters functionality to make up for it!

Why are you double clicking to open files in sublime? There's a hotkey that gives you a fuzzy search box that is so much faster. I think it's cmd t, but it could also be cmd p or cmd o

Sweet, haven't heard of that one, yet. Thanks, gonna check it out.

I don't like Finder searching. It does work well if you put the effort in, but I find it clumsy to get there.

I use Spotlight to search just about anything.
Search for a filename? Hit cmd and space bar to open Spotlight, type full or part of name, et voila, there it is.
Can't remember the file name, but remember some unique phrase in it? Search for the phrase.
Want to look up contact details, calendar entries, mails? Just start typing in Spotlight.
Want to convert 149 USD to the most common currencies? Type USD149, et voila.
Want to convert fahrenheit, imperial, metric, weights? Just type in spotlight something like 92F, 15ft, 2km, 5oz.

With El Capitan a few more goodies have been added. I use these:
"weather in berlin" pulls that up right there.
"files/documents/spreadsheets I worked on yesterday/last week/month" is quite nice, too. Not quite perfect, yet, though.
"mails from may 2013" is another one I discovered recently.

Spotlight-fu is a must-have skill if you want to find stuff on your mac without waving your fist at Finder's search.

Gotta keep you on your toes, mate.

yeah I know I'm lazy in optimizing my macbook in osx and should probably spend some time on it so I'm mostly old man shaking fist at icloud. I will probably do that here soon because node v4 is a total pain in the ass to set up for windows. Requires python 2 and visual studio?? (node-gyp).

Whats faster than cmd tab to finder and double tap file? I don't use sublime's sidebar.

I'm an iPhone guy, so take this with a pound of salt, but every Android phone I've seen in the wild has Google stuff on it. Google maps definitely is a must.
That also holds true for iPhones, and I don't care how much of an Apple fanboi you are. It still kicks Apple's maps (although they've come a long way) so hard in the nads that it should be arrested.

I would expect you could hit cmd O in sublime to open from there.
If it uses the most basic features from OS X, there should also be an Open Recent section under File in the menu bar.

I personally would use Spotlight yet again.
If you've got sublime set as default app for specific files, you can hit cmd and space bar, type filename til it matches, then hit enter to open that.

(Is it obvious, yet, that I am a massive Spotlight fanboi? Yes? Good.)

I think Android has a built-in one year limit on its kernel. Not sure why, but every Android phone I had hits a wall at the one year mark. This one is at one year now and I'm having tons of issues with it.

You can't get Google Maps on iPhone?

Yes, you can. Just saying it's a must.

Yeah gmaps comes pre-installed. There's a rake of Google Apps on the phone. A friend showed me G translate live ocr'ing a page of a foreign language book and replacing the text on screen in English augmented reality style. Amazing!

Dave have / can you root your phone? I'm sure I will eventually get around to it.

Oh yeah after more than a decade of using eclipse I found out about using ctrl+shift+R combined with the wildcard * to open files instantly.

Ctrl shift t s a good one too.

I used to root my phones, but no longer bother with it. It was absolutely mandatory years ago, and one can argue that you should today.

The problem with Android is the OEMs you buy. Most companies are going to hand you a kernel that is outdated and full of known security holes, but won't upgrade to the latest Android version because that breaks all of the crapware they have preinstalled on your phone. If you can, you should always get the Nexus and nothing else. You root to get the vanilla version anyways, so it is better to get vanilla and not bother with rooting.

Years ago, you definitely had to root because the bloat used up all of the available space and all of those apps were impossible to uninstall without rooting. Facebook, twitter, etc, used half a gig of space each, if memory serves me right.

Some info on what you are buying into:
http://www.greenbot.com/article/2992...to-attack.html

If it matters, I use LG, which is pretty close to vanilla Android, so no need to root it. They send updates pretty often as well. It doesn't surprise me that they have a high score on the study.

I would like to go to iPhone, but I'm not prepared to dump $450 on one yet.

Comment at the end of that article is rather appropriate.

Thanks for the info and link. I must go and read up on some security stuff.

I've been using the tapatalk app for posting. Seems pretty good. My posting rate has increased by a few thousand percent.

I'd bed dollars to donuts that it gets worse as you try more things. Programming on Windows is an exercise in warfare.

I like how it contradicts the paragraph before it.

For me, rooting is about having software freedom (the freedom to uninstall worthless apps and install interesting apps), not so much about security, though I suppose many people feel inclined to root for security as well.

What are people's thoughts on the new Surface Pro 4? I am strongly considering purchasing one when it comes out later this month.

Microsoft flagship device, better not disappoint and probably won't from watching the few videos I've seen about it.
If you want a laptop like a macbook air with a touch screen, the surface pro 4 will be the best option on the market when it comes out.

Nothing looks bad about it, I would program on a Ubuntu VM with it, if I had one.
People have turned the pro 3 into a hackintosh, so the future of more good laptops, looks good.

I would personally go for the Surface Book but my wife s her Surface Pro 3 FWIW.