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Recently in the company I work for we started some software redesign and hired a consulting company to help us, which use agile methodologies (and in our team we don’t). It was an interesting experience.

In the past few years agile development was much talked about, but is it still as high regarded as before? I am not sure. Definitely for some projects it would fit perfectly, but for others may not be good at all and frankly I think it has been misused in many cases as an excuse for not doing something right.

Is the agile methodology really more productive? Would it actually help develop a better product? I don’t think so by itself – it would much depend on the implementation of the process and the dedication of the team. As in any team if there is no discipline – there are no good results with either approach.

For outsourcing I think the waterfall is definitely the better approach. Imagine outsourcing your project and having a consulting company deliver in the end a bunch of code with no documentation because it is “not necessary”. I don’t think the projects should be over-documented to a point where you just won’t read the documentation, but there should be some to the appropriate level.

Choosing the right approach is very difficult IMO and depends on many factors like who is going to implement and maintain the project, management decisions, size, etc.

Lets start with the good news first.

Good things:

• On battery the MacBook boots up (including the time to logon) for about 50 sec. Pretty quick if you ask me; My Vista laptop (with faster CPU and HDD) takes more than 2 minutes;
• The global shortcut key definitions and editor (System Preferences->Keyboards->Keyboard Shortcuts);
• Command-W and Command-Q keys are very convenient; I catch myself trying to use them on the PC…

Annoyances:

• It is really hard to access the menus with the keyboard. Nice that there are many shortcuts, but I am so used to Alt->Letter to access menus; Really bugs me… (To access the menus Ctrl->Shift->F2 and then arrow keys);
• Switching between windows in the same application (why on earth Command-`?) bugs me, but I can live with it.
• File management – I still can’t figure out how to move a file with the keyboard in Finder (apart from copy and then delete);

Anyway – I keep exploring. Now I study Objective-C as I get some free time and trying to write some UI apps using Cocoa and Cocoa Touch. Some pretty cool stuff (and some too relaxed rules for my C++ nature);

Well it’s been more than a week since I started using a Mac.  I figured that my previous posts were mislabeled since I am not really migrating to Mac. I merely explore the possibilities to use a Mac along with a PC.

One really cool thing on the MacBook Pro are the gestures on the multi-touch pad. It’s just awesome.

• Sliding up/down left/right two fingered touch will scroll (I already catch myself truing to do it on the PC Laptop).
• Swiping three fingers left and right would to the browser’s back and forward. Very slick.
• Rotating two fingers would rotate and image/pdf/etc.
• Pinching and expanding would zoom (in/out) images, web-pages, etc.

Another greatness is battery life. My Lenovo barely lasts 1h and 40 min (15.4″). The MacBook (13″) may not be as good as the advertised 7h (they probably tested idling), but it lasts over 5h. Cool.

I also like the “sleep” mode a lot. Drains much less battery than my PC with Vista. Don’t know if it’s the hardware or the OS, but also the waking up is very fast. Actually the initial boot is pretty speedy as well.

I learned a new shortcut Command+, displays preferences in any application. Shortcuts, shortcuts… I wish they didn’t make them with so many keys to be pressed at once.

This time I guess my annoyances didn’t prevent me to give Apple credit where is well deserved (although I still look for the “About” in the Help menu, I learned it is in the App Name menu).

I upgraded to the “Snow Leopard”. The upgrade went very smooth for about an hour. Unlike the windows upgrades/installations it didn’t ask any questions with the exception of whether or not to actually start the upgrade. Really weird, but most users will pick the default options anyway, so why bother.

I think it’s probably kind of confusing for many users to answer questions about things they are not really sure about and Apple thought to decide for them. Not bad for me – just different than windows.

Now after a few days of usage I have some small annoyances:

• Safari browser doesn’t have ad-blocking, so I installed my favorite – Mozilla Firefox (yeah AdBlock Plus works on mac).
• I don’t know about the desktop macs, but the MacBook doesn’t have delete and backspace keys. There is a delete key, which works as the PC’s backspace, and the actual delete is Fn+Delete. Somewhat annoying.
• Another thing I miss is the PgUp/PgDown keys. There are combinations equivalents, but not as convenient yet to me.
• Maximizing windows – apparently no such thing on the Mac.
• XCode is not a MDI application (as my usual Visual Studio on the PC). I’ll get used to it, but it will take time.

Other software (apart from the Firefox) I installed so far:

Open Office
Skype
Remote Desktop Connection

The adventure continues (I haven’t used my PC much for about a week)….

P.S.: For those looking for where the “Startup” is: System Preferences->Accounts->Login Item

Opening the box:

The box it came in is very well made. Thick high quality looking cardboard and much smaller and well thought than the box my Lenovo R61 came in. Inside the MacBook rested in a plastic shell, which also had a section for the CDs and the user manuals. It all fit really snug and well thought. So far so good: I didn’t expect much less since Apple are known for their well designed and eye catching products, but was impressed nonetheless.

I was pleasantly surprised that in the box was also the installation disk for the Snow Leopard OS, which was released just a couple of weeks ago.

There was a pretty thick EULA included in the box (almost as thick as the manual), so to all that complain about the Microsoft’s EULAs – they need to see the Apple’s.

The First boot:

The power supply is really small. It actually has foldable “ears”, so you can tie the cable around them to save space. Kudos to Apple for style and design again for it (see the image to the right).

The connector for the computer is a magnetic piece with contacts that are reversible. At first I was a little concerned whether the magnet will hold the contacts tight, but so far so good. I can imagine the contacts getting loose and causing problems, but the magnet seems pretty strong.

The keyboard backlight is kind of nice and a lot more useful than my PCs keyboard light.

Another really cool thing is the battery meter: a little push button on the side of the MacBook with a tiny charge indicator, lighting up when the button is pressed. Great attention to detail in the design of the case!

I pressed the power button and got greeted by a single apple in the center of the screen. There were no POST messages, no press DEL for setup, nothing. A user is a user and does not apparently need to touch in the BIOS. As a long time PC user it was a little disturbing to me, thinking how can I access the BIOS if I need to. After a little consideration I tried to remember when was the last time I accessed the BIOS on my PC laptop. I couldn’t.

Anyway, after a short wizard asking me to create a username it started and I was given control.

I opened the “System Preferences” and started clicking all icons to tune the settings for what I thought would be convenient for me. The first was to enable the function keys by default, not by Fn+<functionkey>.

Woohoo – I am in.

More to come as my experience grows…