So here, in no particular order, are the Mac solutions I’ve found, things I think a web designer should consider if using a Mac.

App	Windows	Mac
FTP Client vs.	WS FTP Pro. I've used this in one form or another since 2002. So I've grown used to it. I understand the explorer tree and it's easily configurable. $54.95	Transmit. This program was recommended to me by one of my favorite Apple fanboys. It works almost exactly the way WSFTP does so there's no learning curve! $34.00
Graphics Editor vs.	PaintShop Pro 8.0. I've been working with this program since 5.0 and stopped at 8.0, when Jasc sold the program to Corel. It does everything I need it to do and I've learned how to tweak it for the minimum effects I require in the modest amount of graphic work I do. So something like Photoshop is definitely overkill for my needs. $79.99	Acorn 5.1. I discovered this neat program after trying out Pixelmator, which I simply couldn't figure out how to work with. This has a lot of the same features as PSP so I think it will do nicely for what I need. $49.99
Code Editor vs.	Edit Plus. Edit Plus bills itself as a text editor, but it is so much more. Recommended by my web design partner years ago, I took to it like a duck to water. I have the spell check plugin, and one neat feature of EP, besides the color coding, is its ability to apply a feature or task to not only the open window, but ALL open windows. Very handy, timesaving feature. $39.95	TextWrangler. This is a very close approximation of Edit Plus and it has a built in spell checker. It's free and you just can't beat that price. It's highly customizable and recognizes the standard code languages and you can, if you are enterprising, create your own custom code settings. Free
CSS Editor vs.	TopStyle Pro. I've been using this program since about 2003. I fell in love with the way you can see your stylesheet changes on the fly and can even load custom style templates. (This is very handy when designing themes for certain CMSs). It also has a style checker that keeps you from making typgraphical errors in your properties. $79.95	StyleMaster. This is the closest thing to TopStyle that I've found. I've tried other CSS editors such as CSS Edit, Code and Espresso, but none comes as close to TopStyle as Style Master, and it's cross-platform! It also has a style previewer and is highly customizable. $59.95

Notice how the majority of the Windows programs cost a bit more than the Mac apps do! Also, it’s worth mentioning that in addition to recommendations from some of my Mac-using friends and colleagues (you just can’t beat THAT!), this site was invaluable in making my decision whether to download and try certain apps.

Pixelita Designs has a Pinterest account and you’ll see our collections on the sidebar of this blog. I also have my own individual Pinterest account where I share more than just web design related pins. I also have boards for personal style, housewares, cooking and food, fabrics and places.

If you want to jump on the bandwagon with Pinterest and integrate it into your WordPress web site — or if you want to block pinners from pinning images on your WordPress-based site, here are some plugins you’ll love.

1. Pinterest Follow Button Add a Pinterest “Follow” button.
2. Block Pinterest Block your site’s images or content from being pinned on Pinterest.
3. Pinterest RSS Widget Add your Pinterest feed to your blog’s sidebar (in use here at Pixelita Designs).
4. Pretty Pinterest Pins Display your Pinterest pins with style.
5. Pinterest Clone This is a Pinterest clone. Start your own Pinterest site ($199).

I finally bit the bullet last September and when Verizon came out with the iPhone, I was on that bandwagon, simply because I had finally come to terms with the fact that my now five-year old Treo was now reaching the very end of its usefulness. (I’d had to go on eBay and buy replacement phones on several occasions, and lately, I could find them for around twenty bucks.) And the Palm-based phone had its limits as far as being able to bail me out using its puny web browser and dodgy GPS capabilities. It was time to let go and let Jobs.

I didn’t have the iPhone long before I was trawling the Apps Store looking for cool new apps to slap onto the iPhone. Meanwhile, my friend, not content to just bask in the glow of my contentment with the iPhone told me one day in chat, “You need an iPad.” Much like the snake to Eve in the Garden of Eden. Go ahead, taste the apple. You’ll like it. (The first bite is free, right?)

So in December, I decided to go ahead and bite yet another bullet and get an iPad, albeit a first generation. I am a bargain-hunter and cheapskate by heart and could not justify the over $500 price of the new ones. I found a well taken care of iPad on eBay and bought it, along with a 12-month warranty, for under $360. As soon as it came, I couldn’t wait to play with it. I loved it even more than my iPhone, and it operated in much the same way, except that, unlike my iPhone, the screen was large and bright and I had no trouble seeing things on it or typing with its keyboard. But I went ahead and splurged on a ZaggMate bluetooth keyboard and case just in case I needed it. I don’t use it too often due to the way I seem to use my iPad the most, which is lounging on my back in bed or on the sofa.

And like with the iPhone, in no short order, I was in the App Store looking for apps for fun and for productivity, which is the main reason my bestie urged me to get one in the first place (not to play Angry Birds on). I went ahead and purchased Documents To Go so I could at least create and edit my Office documents (Word, Excel, etc.) on the iPad if I were so inclined. And the iPad is great for testing out whether or not a design renders well in a small browser window. (Thankfully all our client sites I’ve viewed on the iPad look just fine.)

But then, bestie had another idea. After I groused for probably the tenth time in the six years I’ve known him about an insidious Trojan that had infected my Sony Vaio laptop, he told me, “That wouldn’t happen if you had a Mac.“

Can you guess where this is going? Well, I started looking at online auctions on uBid.com. Not knowing squat about Macs, and especially not knowing the difference between a unibody and a non-unibody Mac, I bid on (and won) a nice (so I thought) MacBook Pro, 17 inch, late 2006 non-unibody Mac running on (please don’t laugh), Tger (10.4.x). I’d tried to get ahold of Ivan with minutes to spare on the auction and when I didn’t hear from him, I went ahead and bid on the thing. I was perfectly content with it … after all, it would be a nice first foray into the Mac world and I wasn’t out that much money if I didn’t like it.

Well I loved it at first. Loved its clean, elegant lines and how quickly it booted up. Like with the previous two Apple products, even the packaging was nice. Ivan tried to tell me it was too old; get rid of it. I argued that it was the same era as my still running Sony Vaio laptop that my husband had bought for me right after we moved into our house. But, as usual, he was right, and once I started using it, its limitations became apparent. Several of the programs that I wanted to install just refused to run on that old operating system, requiring either Leopard or Snow Leopard. I couldn’t sync my iPhone to it using iTunes because it was running iTunes 7 and iTunes 10 or later is required to allow iPhone syncing. Not that this was a huge deal breaker, since I detest iTunes, but it was just another nail in the coffin for the past-its-prime MacBook.

So I decided to put the machine up for sale simultaneously on Craigslist and on my company’s bulletin board. I got a taker in no short order. I was then free to look for a newer MacBook, which I did. Again, via uBid. This time, a 17-inch unibody, mid-2009. And it came with Snow Leopard already installed, Time Machine, and the programs I wanted to install (Espresso and Coda) installed and ran flawlessly on the new Mac. I even went one step further and installed a program called CrossOver which runs certain Windows programs in a BASH shell so I now have my favorite, cannot live without, Windows programs EditPlus, WS_FTP and Paintshop Pro running on the Mac very nicely. And the cherry on top? Right about the time I purchased the newer Mac, my company advised me about a program where employees could get the latest and greatest Microsoft Office for Windows (2010) or Mac (2011) for $9.99 plus shipping. I was all over that, naturally! Mac version of course!

Will all this Apple madness be enough to make me foresake Windows entirely? Probably not. I’ve been working with DOS and Windows since the early 1990s, but I do have to say that OSX is a very friendly and intuitive operating system, much more than Windows is. It’s a bit harder to get “under the hood” but you really don’t have to. And that’s the beauty of it.