Why MAMP is Better Than XAMPP?

Just thought I would post a very quick little point for those working with a local server on a Mac. It's pretty easy to set up the built in server on the Mac and do it that way, but personally I prefer just using a pre-packaged solution.

For years I've been using XAMPP. Not sure why I thought it was better. On Windows it's definitely a great choice. But on OS X it's not. The trouble is XAMPP has not been updated in quite a while on the Mac side. So, you'll be using pretty old versions of PHP and MYSQL. Also, there are lots of glitches with it. For instance, it doesn't correctly set folder and file permissions. You have to set these manually, which is pretty ridiculous.

Anyhow, I just recently switched to MAMP and it's much smoother. Everything is up to date, xdebug worked pretty much out of the box. No trouble with file permissions, and stuff is a lot more current. So, for now, avoid XAMPP on the Mac until they start supporting it properly. MAMP is good. XAMPP not so much.

Mac OS X's Finder: The Most Important Tweak to Make Search Function

Apple has made some decisions with Finder that some users might find a bit annoying. So, for instance, if you just open Finder and you hit command + F you get this window by default:

This is a completely useless result. On my Mac the search in fact chokes because so many results are found. This is almost always not what you want in a search result. So, you have to follow these steps to solve the issue and bring some sanity to Finder.

First, you need to change "search the current folder" setting in the Finder advanced preferences.

Firefox 4 on OS X--No PDF Support!!!

Thought I would just post some quick thoughts on the new Firefox 4. I installed it today on my Macbook Pro i7 in OS X (10.6.7). I made sure I didn't write over my Firefox 3 install. It was a lot of fiddling to install all my addons. My first impressions are that it's definitely snappier. However, I ran into a couple of very serious problems within minutes that make Firefox 4 a nonstarter for now for serious Mac users.