I never thought I'd be one to join the ranks, but some of the developments from Apple over the past year or two have me now considering whether I might be better served picking up a new Mac. I'm hoping some input here will help me decide one way or the other.

It isn't that I haven't bought Apple before... back when I had more money than sense I picked up the G4 Cube, but that was no doubt more out of the novelty of the item than any kind of practicality. I had it on my desk for month beside my Windows box, and eventually put it away when I couldn't find a use for it. I couldn't find Mac software that I didn't like less than the Windows counterparts I was using at the time.

I probably never would have again considered spending money on an Apple PC had it not been for two major shifts: first, OS X with it's unix-based underbelly (and my growing involvement with unix-based platforms over the years); second, the move to Intel processors and the corresponding benefits to virtualization and such. When I watched a coworker with a MacBook Pro running XP in Parallels, the gears started turning.

In my home office now I run a Windows XP machine side-by-side with a Fedora Linux box. XP is my main system, which I use mainly for PHP development, email, web, IM, playing tunes, World of Warcraft, etc. The Linux box holds my music collection (which I keep rsynced with my Empeg), runs SlimServer, keeps a working copy of code (via Subversion) and provide a more comfortable environment for command line tasks than a terminal window in Windows would. I am now wondering if a Mac Pro could replace my Fedora box running those apps natively, run an XP workstation in Parallels to replace the need for a separate Windows box, and give me an environment to try out the Mac OS and apps again... all at the same time.

So for those who have some exposure to OS X & Parallels, can you tell me if this would fly?

My primary concern is that Windows in VM would turn out to be frustrating compared to the Windows experience I'm used to. I must be in the minority, but I have never had a problem with XP. I wouldn't say I'm pro-Microsoft in an ideological sense, but I'm a fan of the OS and I consider it to be the first solid release of Windows in the company's history. Common sense and a little help from NOD32 has always kept me free of virus problems and most spyware trouble, and anything that did manage crop up was cleaned off the system easily enough. It's always been stable, performance perfectly fine and I've never had trouble with compatibility. If XP in Parallels turns out to be sluggish, or its functionality limited, or in any other way shit doesn't work the way shit is supposed to I would rather stick with what I have now.

Other random questions or concerns:

* Wondering if there's a GOOD app for web development for OS X. It's hard enough to find one on Windows (and I've tried quite a few editors) where there's a much larger selection of them.

* NOD32 isn't available for Mac. Drat.

* Is there any difference between playing WoW on PC and on Mac? Would it run okay on XP in a Parallels installation?

* Is it a bad time to invest in a new Mac Pro? Some might suggest so (such as http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ ). If I bought one, and a week later Apple announced immediate availability of new machines with high def optical drives or 8-core processing or some other cool innovative thing, that would be sad. Also, perhaps there's a compelling reason I'd want to wait and have it packaged with Leopard (I would think a later upgrade would be perfectly fine - but then I'm not a Mac expert)

* Would I still have to rely on Samba or other network-based services to share a filesystem between OS X and Windows in Parallels? I expect it's so.

* Would all of the various mouse buttons still work in Windows? The little things count.

* Will running Apache/PHP/MySQL on OS X work as well as it does on my Fedora box now?

* Is package management on the Mac pretty sweet? Installing and removing software, finding dependencies, etc.


Feedback appreciated