Not everything is perfect yet, but the SWT team has done a great job of fixing issues quickly. So why not help the SWT team in using the Cocoa-port of Eclipse as of 3.5M3? Let’s get some stress-testing going and feedback from the wider Eclipse community. This way, by the time 3.5 is out the door, we will have a very solid Cocoa-port!

Also, if 64-bit support is important to you, pay attention to this bug and voice your support.

My first impression was like… oh no, what a newbie I am… I forgot about the carbon and 64-bit JVM issue. The only funny thing I got out of it was a new word for my lexicon to describe my situation: ‘carb0wn3d’ (credit to Kevin Barnes of the SWT team ;p).

However, never fear, there are good ways to deal with this issue for now. At least in my case, I have cases where I need to do development and test on multiple platforms anyway. VMWare Fusion allows me to do this very well and it even integrates well into my desktop:

Cool huh? Easy multi-platform testing for me now

Anyone have better suggestions besides waiting or hacking on the SWT Cocoa port

I’m slowly adapting to a life without home and end keys. It also took me awhile to figure out how to disable the crazy default setting of having the function keys not act like standard function keys (F5 is for refresh, not for decreasing screen brightness!). I managed to download Quicksilver which is pretty cool. I have Firefox and Thunderbird for my browsing and newsgroup needs.

On the brightside, I should be able to tackle Mac bugs in an easier fashion instead of begging Kim Horne to look at issues. I also see the opportunity to make PDE a first-class Mac citizen when it comes to building products. I’d like to see fancy .dmg type things come out of product export (with customization of course) to make it easier to develop Eclipse-based products in the Mac world.

Finally, anyone have tips for a new Mac user, especially one who spends the majority of his time inside Eclipse?