Slashdot Mirror

Okay, if you want to look at a ton of articles on boot camp, visit macsurfer.com. It's a very nice and simple metasite for mac news. Since released, Boot Camp is all the buzz so there are tons of articles there. It's also pretty neutral. They just post the links to articles. No discussion, but no bias either.

This article was listed, and it was the only damn article with a negative spin. Then I see this article here. All the articles to chose, and the slashdot editors of course pick the article which will stir up the most hornets.

Now I'll admit that there could be a lot of overly positive articles about boot camp, and that this article could potentially have a unique perspective. But c'mon, it's CNet. And I did read the article and it's nothing insightful. Same Apple bashing rehashed to include boot camp.

Post something balanced for a change that actually gives us real information for a change. Mod -1000 for annoying crap that is beneath the average slashdot reader.

This just a symptom of modern day internet, each has his/her own site/blog/mailing-list/developers/whatever-page, and a dispersion of effort will make no-one read what anyone else wrote eventually (I know i didn't in this case ;)).

Just look at the ridiculuous amount of Tiger reviews on http://www.macsurfer.com/ ...

But considering that:

• Raskin attacked the Mac in an October 2004 interview in The Guardian.
• He wasn't a current employee
• Corporate death notices sting corporations stock prices
• There's further suspected but unpublicized animosity between Apple and Raskin

I should also have included some relevant links to Internet based news sources bookmarked in Safari:

Slashdot of course.
CNN of course.
NYTimes for the writing and quality of reporting.
BBC for the big mainstream non American news perspective.
Kevin Sites for on the ground reporting in Iraq.
Dan Gillmor for news grassroots news.
CBS for financial info.
CNET for tech news.
Global Security for political defense news.
Google for a good news accumulator.
Cryptome because John manages to pull some pretty damned interesting articles out.
NPR of course. Don't forget to donate.
Reuters because they have the news.
Washington Post for beltway news.
Wall St. Journal for more financial news.
NPR Marketplace for more financial news.
CBS for mainstream US news.
Technocrat for real science oriented geek news, like Slashdot only with less noise.
Oh, yeah and
Macsurfer for a Macintosh community oriented news accumulator.

If you're a student, the $950 iBook 12" is a really good deal. You get a compact little notebook, 1.2 GHz G4, CDRW/DVD-ROM combo drive, about 4 - 6 hours of battery life (5 hours real-world), and plenty of I/O options. The GPU is only a Radeon 9200, but it's still vastly better than having onboard "integrated" graphics that eat CPU and RAM bandwidth. Plus the Radeon 9200 is actually slightly faster than the crap FX5200 in the 12" PowerBook that costs more! The iBook is small, but thick enough to survive backpack life at 1.3 inches.

PowerBook hardware is very sturdy and very classy, but you'll pay out the nose for what's essentially only 0.3 GHz faster and Radeon 9700 GPU.

Anyway, getting back to OS X... I think it's a great OS and I love my iBook, but I still use and enjoy WinXP as well. They are different worlds, but the variety is nice. OS X has a great X11 environment if you so desire and the bundled developer tools and sample code are very handy. There are plenty of Mac sites and even a few that sell games too. Apple's online store is actually a good place to browse some of the more popular commerical apps, I think they try to maintain stock of 100 of the top selling Mac apps. They don't tend to sell the less popular, but still cool fringe apps, so you'll have to hit up some other resellers (like MacWarehouse or MacMall or Amazon) for those.
http://www.versiontracker.com
http://www.macsurfer.com
Both very handy sites.

Why should I pay money to people who can't even run a decent website than can stand up to a pre-Slashdot effect from subscribers?

A fair question, but the website has been down since a link to it was posted on Macsurfer.com earlier this morning.

Even if the Cherry OS is a workable solution, I would have a problem buying something from a company that hates making money enough to not post a mirror of their website *somewhere*. It just shows that there will (more than likely) be next to no support for the product.

Or, perhaps they had no idea that running Mac OS X on an x86 machine was of any interest to people.(?)

1. Max out the RAM you can afford. Don't buy them at Apple.com, though.
   
2. You will need to re-learn and familiar yourself to the Mac's GUI philosophy. For example, the menu bar is always at the top. You need to get use to new keyboard shortcuts. Don't be frustrated at the change, it's not as difficult as you may think. You just need time. To make it easier, forget about being a power user right away. Mac OS X is flexible enough that you can do many things differently. As you familiarize yourself, start picking hints for doing things more efficiently (tips and tricks).
   
3. When you are stuck at a task, usually the answer is simpler than you think. Many converts try to find a complex answer when it is actually staring at them on the screen. Sometimes, simplicity is hard for people used to runabout ways.
   
4. One button mouse. This always comes up. Mac OS X and apps writen using Apple's guideline are operable using one button mouse. Simple as that. But, you can use CTRL key and the mouse button to simulate a right click. However, if you are a power user or you really prefer multi-button mouse, simply use your old USB mouse. No driver installation is needed.
   
5. If you are familiar with linux, you'll find almost at home with Mac OS X. CLI is a click away and many open source apps support Mac OS X. sourceforge.com is a good start. For searching apps, google helps alot, but it's easier to go to VersionTracker first.
   
6. Lastly, visit lots of Mac websites. You'll find that Mac communities are a helpful bunch. One site you shouldn't miss is MacSurfer. It's a Mac news clearinghouse. It has links to news, rumors, tips, tricks, deals, etc.. From there, you'll find many links to other Mac sites (at the bottom of the page). You can also visit Apple Insider for their excellent forum where you can discuss problems and speculate on rumors.

I check all these daily:

MacInTouch
MacNN
MacMinute
MacFixIt
Mac OS X Hints
MacSurfer

Great software update resources:

VersionTracker
MacUpdate
OS X freshmeat

Other great sites:

O'Reilly Mac DevCenter
O'Reilly Mac OS X Page
Apple Mac OS X downloads
Apple Third Party Products Guide

Developer sites:

Mac OS X Developer Home Page
Mac OS X Developer Documentation
Darwin
OpenDarwin
fink

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Apple hates bad PR. Once all the Mac sites pick this up, the pressure will mount and Apple will likely release a fix.

MacSurfer lists a bunch.

As always, good old MacSurfer toi the rescue with a link to the Gnutella News story.

Lots of interesting details; it looks like Apple is being fair and genuinely trying to help out independent artists as much as possible.

Here's some answers

1. Apple's own MacOS X material
2. Apple's own Darwin material
3. A MacOS X developer site
4. An over-view of Mac-specific websites & their headlines
5. Current listings of MacOS X-specific applications

With all the apple info on slashdot lately I thought some of you geeks would want to be more 'in the know' about mac stuff.

Macsurfer kicks ass.

-//vm