Slashdot Mirror
Take a Mac User to Lunch
A Slashdot reader writes "LinuxWorld is running a story explaining how Mac OS X may help break down the walls for non-Windows operating systems, including Linux."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I recently got a G3 mac for free from someone who no longer wanted it. I had never used a mac before and I was kind of curious how they worked. It had MacOS X on it, including the developer tools which include command line tools all Linux developers are used to. After a few minutes of playing around with the interface I was hooked. Everything is so clear and tidy. The Unix core is not hidden away, but it never gets in the way. Real hackers have everything they need, but in an interface that makes the interaction with this Unix power elegant. Now I have the mac I am porting my softwre to support it as well as Windows and Linux. It is a pleasure to develop in, and I am really glad I found it. Give it a go.
almost all users? Almost all windows users wouldn't know how to transfer their mp3 collection, office documents, favorite sites, etc, etc without a cd burner.
Which is why Apple published this handy ``How to Switch to a Mac'' page. Of course, it necessarily has to gloss over burning CDs on the PC, because there are so damn many different ways to do it. All Apple can do is say, ``Read the instructions that came with your PC.''
Of course, if you don't want to use CDs, you can just share your hard drive on your PC and mount it from your Mac over AirPort. Macs and PCs interoperate flawlessly over AirPort, and Mac OS X mounts Windows shares over the network without any third-party software required.
Don't have AirPort? Run an Ethernet cable between PC and Mac (either straight or crossover; the PC probably cares, but the Mac doesn't) and mount your PC's drive that way.
Don't have AirPort or Ethernet or a CD burner? I hear a lot of PCs, for reasons that are beyond me, still don't ship with any of those built in. Amazing! Well, in that case, you can buy or borrow an external FireWire hard drive to move your files over. Initialize it on the PC, copy your files to it, then just plug it right in to your Mac. Poof.
Oh, wait. Your PC probably doesn't have FireWire. That's okay. A USB drive will work just as well, but be prepared to wait a really long time.
Sounds to me like there are plenty of easy ways to move your files to the Mac. And I haven't even mentioned Move2Mac yet. I haven't seen it myself, but it's supposed to take the pain out of getting all your stuff out of the various Windows nooks and crannies and over to your new Mac.
That's kind of the Mac philosophy in a nutshell, with apologies to Larry Wall: there's more than one way to do it, and one of those ways is to just pay somebody else to do it for you.
As for me, is there any program to load a list of music videos? I use media player b/c I can make a playlist of my 600+ music video collection.
So use Windows Media Player for Mac OS X. I haven't used it myself, so I can't say whether it has the specific feature you want, but if that's what you're comfortable with, it's just a download away.
As much as I like linux, this proves next to nothing. Linux's 'lack' of user friendliness is not a matter of technology, it is a matter of politics.
The technology is fine and no one will dispute that. You can build a nice gui over top of any sufficiently good core, which almost all modern OS's offer now. For example, XP's core is the evolution from the NT core, which was heavily inspired by VMS. You can see in the taskmanager particularly signs of the VMS underpinings underneath. VMS by itself is quite similar to Unix systems, so XP itself demonstrates that the UI on top makes the usability difference, and the solid core only helps (by delivering good performance with high stability).
The difference between Mac/Windows and Linux is that a single entity controls the system from top to bottom. Any disagreements as to how to do it are settled inside the company and a single offering is made to the public that is highly integrated, where each part knows *exactly* what to find where when it needs something. For a small example, an application installing on Mac or Win knows exactly how to register itself to show icons and menus in the right spots, whereas in linux, it isn't clear cut. You can probably manage to show up in Gnome and KDE, but there are other options. I love the breadth of choice and how I can pick and choose my favorite component for everything, but it does prevent offering a unified interface to home users.
Also, they distribute easy-to-install binaries. This relates to the previous point in that they *can* do this and not run into any wildly devating configuration that won't run that particular version (i.e. kernel/gcc/glibc versions differ a lot in the linux world). This is also because they don't have the free source ideology as a driving force. Sure, Darwin is open, but it is more of a side note, and what comes out of apple (with MacOSX) is tightly controlled. Source is easy for me to install, but it can take a long time and some people think it difficult. They could care less about the philosohy of Free software, they just want stuff to work easy and quickly.
Finally, these systems don't try to fit into an existing standard. I'm of course referring mainly to ditching X. X is a great and powerful/flexible system. I love X, but current implementations lack a lot of things XP and OSX have in terms of colorspace handling and access to hardware functions. Two clear things that come to mind are true alpha transparency (not copy and blend as all the translucency under X is) and the ability to change resolution and color depth on the fly without the 'slippery desktop'. Sure, extensions could be written to patch over this stuff, but it was more efficient to simply write a new low level graphics system and let X lie on top of it if needed. This is the way to go, it works well with Windows (Exceed) as well as MacOSX(XDarwin). You optionally get all the power of X without the limitations underneath. For linux users and developers, X is 'good enough' and there is no dominating business authority to force developers to do something more advanced.
Linux remains my preferred platform, though I want to try OSX. I like having choices and am a good enough admin to not care about the roughness around the edges, but for a common user to be satisfied, it needs to be consistant no matter where they may go..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I've been a Mac user since 1984. I worked at Apple for a while in the 90s, but then I got a better paying job at IBM. I have worked at IBM since then, almost exclusively with UNIX and Windows. It's strange to see the reactions of other IBMers when they learn that I'm a Mac user. Even the die-hard UNIX guys and open-source fans are often prejudiced against the Mac. This is ironic, especially given that Macs compete more with Windows boxes than with IBM boxes. That said, I do see that people at IBM are beginning to take Mac OS X seriously. IBM makes a lot of money from its software and services businesses -- more than from its hardware business. The software can be easily ported to Mac OS X, and services are profitable no matter what OS the customer is running. Unfortunately, thare still a lot of people at IBM who haven't figured this out. Maybe discussions like this one will help to change that.
Apple's commercial said that if you bring your PC in (to an apple store), they will transfer the files to your new Mac for free.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.