"1. No easy way to maximize window." - Of course there's a way. You have to go to System Preferences >> Keyboard >> Keyboard Shortcuts >> Application Shortcuts

"1. No easy way to maximize window." - Of course there's a way. You have to go to System Preferences >> Keyboard >> Keyboard Shortcuts >> Application Shortcuts >> + >> (Application) All Applications, (Menu Title) Zoom (http://cl.ly/image/1k462h342I28 http://cl.ly/image/1k462h342I28) "2. Sometimes, my window would get minimized and when I cmd+tab back into it, I don’t see anything." - Yep, you have to hold alt/option when you let go of cmd +tab for hidden windows. "3. On Windows, I’d just start+e and just start typing to get to any folders/files on my PC. On Mac, closest I’ve come across was to just locate finder from cmd+tab, or launch finder via an app called Alfred." - Alfred is amazing, but you can also bring up spotlight with cmd + spacebar. "4. No Zend Studio 5.5. This was almost a deal breaker right on the spot." - Can't help you there since I'm a vim user, but it seems like you've found an IDE you like. "5. Mac keyboards aren’t too friendly for emacs user. Hitting that option button for meta is quite an excercise in itself." - Also can't help you here since I haven't really used emacs enough, but I'm pretty sure you can remap the key to the windows counterpart. --- For a GitHub app, I recommend you trying out http://mac.github.com/ http://mac.github.com/. I'm a fan of SequelPro (free) for MySQL http://www.sequelpro.com/ http://www.sequelpro.com/