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Mac OS X Switcher Stories
spid writes "Tim O'Reilly posted an interesting article about people switching from other OSes (Mac OS, Windows, Linux) to Mac OS X. The resounding consensus is that most folks appreciate how, compared to these other OSes, Mac OS X 'just works.' O'Reilly also makes an interesting point that UNIX/Linux users, rather than Windows users, would be the best target niche for Apple's 'switch' campaign."
...just works! I guess with an underlying *nix core, things seem to just work better. Wouldn't it be interesting to see a version of Windows with a *nix core?
I'm a GNU/Linux user and have been since about 1995. I bought a Mac Powerbook laptop a few weeks ago, but ended up selling it after only a few days. Yes, it was sleeker, cooler, and generally nicer to look at than my current hodge-podge of hardware and software, but I decided that it wasn't for me. Yes, right now I have to tinker a little bit to keep things running, but I enjoy that. I realize that puts me in the minority of people in the "Real World," but I can understand how the Apple way isn't for everybody.
Don't get wrong, I think it's a great system, especially for people who aren't computer gurus, but it's not for me. The main thing was that OS X didn't offer me anything "new." There wasn't a compelling reason for me to learn a whole new set of shortcuts and keyboard commands in order to do what I'm already doing.
linux is far less widespread than windows, and is far more stable... basically why advertise to a small group (linux fans) instead of the masses of unhappy windowz users?
Ever since the first time I saw a computer science lab full of iMacs, I've had no respect for anything related to Apple... Just too depressing... Yeah, so they've adopted *nix... Too little, too late...
"The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
Switch to OSX from Linux? OSX is an incredible OS, but as long as I have to buy proprietary Apple hardware, and pay full price for minor upgrades, Apple can forget getting any of my money. Don't get me wrong.....technically, Apple got it right with OSX. But I still like the freedom of building my own machines as I need them. Apples are great for people that need convienience most of all, and have lots of cash to burn. The rest of us will continue to roll our own.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I'd switch if OSx ran on an x86. But it doesn't, and I don't like dealing with the PPC architecture... It's costly, and difficult to get hardware for (since the BIOS code on such things as PCI cards, needs to be in PPC opcode format, not x86 opcode format).
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Yes, I see how Linux users may be the more likely candidate to pick up a Mac. Familiar *nix feel, sweet desktop and windows manager, kick ass hardware. What is there not to like?
On the other side, what's not to like? THE PRICE! Most Linux users have a Linux box that isn't the biggest and best machine, just a box with spare parts that you put together (cause, hell, it works GREAT on subpar hardware). Not many get stuff like GeForce4 cards, because the 3D gaming market hasn't really hit Linux hard. Now, to switch, you have to buy a fairly expensive machine. Personally, I'd rather spend the money on a PC, because I'm a gamer, and that's where my cash usually goes.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
O'Reilly also makes an interesting point that UNIX/Linux users, rather than Windows users, would be the best target niche for Apple's "switch" campaign.
As a Linux user, I agree, at least partly: Linux users are the most likely people to switch from Windows to Macintosh. I was never able to live with just Linux, I always used to have at least one Windows partition somewhere. Now I find that having a Macintosh around the house helps me sever my last ties with Microsoft. I'm still not giving up Linux, but Macintosh is a nice compliment to it.
Here I sit, writing on MacOSX IE 6, waiting Software Update to install new version of OpenSSL on the background. I use apt-get (fink), KDE and Emacs, develop software on this iBook and run it on *nix machines over network, be it command-line or X11, thru openssh.
I have not switched. This was, with it's 6 hour uptime, the best *nix-laptop I could afford.
I have not "switched", nor have I to "switch" back when someone puts out a better laptop. I just use whatever *nix is applicable to me. Yellow Dog, yeah, I would try, but I don't need to fix what is not broken.
Apple simply did not break BSD when they created Darwin.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
Let me build my own box.
More and more I get the impression that there are people from within the Open Source community that are actively working against Open Source and GNU/Linux on the desktop. What's up with that?
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
It's nice and all, but not that great. Definatly a step waaaay up from Mac OS 9, and much smoother than windows.
;)
I have a TiBook 667 with a Rage128 card, and it's pretty fast. I'd use it all the time except under my fink install both enlightenment and windowmaker crash at startup. Also it's interoperability with linux blows - it cannot mount any kind of ext2 filesystem, and hfs+ is not supported by linux yet. Sure, I could use hfstools and copy stuff off the HD... (I think) but I want it to just mount. I'm also kindof bugged by having to set my NFS servers up for insecure mode. Not really because I have to change the settings on my boxes, as much as getting the settings changed on other machines.
So, I've installed gentoo on it instead. I'm usually a debian fanatic, but I thought I'd check it out, since I'd already messed up my debian install by totally hosing my kernel when I compiled it myself. First kernel build on the new machine, totally going to break. We don't need to steenking backups
So anyways, gentoo has given me all the linux goodness I need. I won't say it was easy to set up - X11 didn't get my keyboard type at all, and I actually had to resort to hand hacking a ~/.Xmodmap file in order to use my keyboard in Xwindows. It's mostly usable now, only a few more symbols and all the keys will actually be typeable.
On top of that, I can actually play divx files. Divx support for mac os X is bad - the few files that actually play the sound skips horribly. And ogg vorbis support sucks too (i.e. imusic doesn't support it)
I love my linux boxen. *sniff*
Meleneth
remote access CLI with tools is the only friend you'll ever need.
OSX works without having to know to hack configs and source, but if you want to, the ability to drop into its unix core is still there. It is both easy to use and powerful at the same time.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
This is all I'm going to say
I would switch, but I don't know what I'd be switching to, because I can't see any of the Quicktime demos on the Apple website...
Linux users would be one group to target but theres such a small percentage of us, I'm not sure its worth it for Apple to pursue.
:)
It'd sure be nice though if the two main unix desktop environments "just worked". Right now, GNOME is a configuration nightmare and KDE ships with a broken browser among other quirks. OSX is a godsend compared to the two of them.
Apple's doing right by targetting Windows users who want stuff to "just work" compared to Linux users who dont mind tinkering a bit. Lets not second guess them.
siri
Whatever platform you switch to, they are going to sell you a shitload of books anyway, in fact they want you to switch as often as possible so you end up owning all the books they publish and end up bankrupt.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
from the article:
"It's taken a coupla weeks and several false starts -- but I'm getting more and more enthusiastic about X. And (as I am about to write in some "public" comments) David Pogue's Mac OS X: The Missing Manual is an absolutely stellar -- and ESSENTIAL! -- tool for understanding X and getting the most out of it. (Apple's idiotic "Help[less]" files verge on being worse than useless -- partly because one can spend unending time slogging through their links, only to FAIL to find most of the answers. )"
all it took is a couple weeks and a goddamn book on how to use it? Yeah that's great. That was coming from a self-described "mac guru" too.
I am hoping for my next computer to get a Mac with OSX. Thanks to Linux I've grown to know and love Unix.
Problem is, I need my windows partition for games. With a Mac OSX machine I could have a complete Unix environment, and still play most of the popular games. I don't think I'd be willing to give up Linux, but I'd certainly be happy having both OS's running on the same computer.
Linux has more than just stability. I love the whole philosophy behind it as many others do, and while Apple is closer than Microsoft, it's still not as good as Linux.
I doubt you will ever see Apple sell the OS X for any other platform. Thats the genius of Apple's business model; Want the OS? Gotta but the hardware (which is not cheap). They got it right. Let just hope Microsoft doesnt try this.
I read an interesting article on Salon.com yesterday about a minister who had been suckered in the "Switch" campaign. The article can be found here.
OS X is so good that even
Hrm... I switched.. from default KDE theme to an OSX theme. It is mad sexy. I think OSX's window manager is everything. I've been using it for a few days now, and it still makes me warm and fuzzy every time I look at its details. "Theropudic Window Manager?"
Can all fish swim?
I do agree, switching from another unix OS is more beneficial for some people but the target audience is smaller. Targetting the windows users is better in that sense. :)
But in the end, Apple is targeting the average user. Pro user already know the pro's and con's or can get the info. Average user don't really see the difference...and telling them how much easy and bug free it is can make them change.
If Apple want to target a wider audience, they have to offer better price on their hardware because not everybody want to pay the big price for hardware. Mostly the average user that don't see a difference.
Although I think the scientific people are quite a good target. Some of them were using Apple before and some already switches. Apple unix core is a good scientific platform.
Soo many audiences....not enough users
Switching back and forth between different boxes all supporting your standard toolset is "freedom". Apple is in the game as long as they support it; soon as they start "locking" (see the excellent interview of Dre), they're out. Wish it were the same for every company.
Fix your laws, United Slaves of America!
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
I do not think OSX is an alternative to linux, as a developer i think that linux is the best OS period. It has all the toold I want and I have the freedom to customize it tehy way I want to. Linux freedom can not be matched by any commercial OS.
Win 2000 & XP are VERY stable - as long as you keep the CRAP off of your system! My personal XP rig (generic P3) NEVER crashes, because I don't have the usual Kazaa/Gator/Bonzi/warez garbage running.
I use mac os x for my everyday stuff but all my servers run linux (free == I can afford it) with the exception of my db server which is a sparc with solaris 8 and oracle 8i.
...
OS X is by far the best Total OS offering by any company out there. It's rock solid (I've yet to crash it in 3 months) and the GUI beats the shit out of Gnome/KDE/Enlighenment
Jaguar is going to be great (although my G4 Tower is smoking fast).
Apple took a risk switching their entire OS core over and not having 'native combatibility' with older apps (yes I know it can run them but it has to load the whole classic mode which takes a long time). Apple went through a similar change when they went from motorola cpu's to the powerpc ones, and having the older code 'emulated' (although it ran just great anyway).
Apple seems to be much more willing than pc makers and microsoft to switch to new things and I think this is very good as it encourages others to follow. I am mostly a windows user and I must say that OS X is deffinately on par with winXP when it comes to usability and surpasses it when it comes to stability.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
"O'Reilly also makes an interesting point that UNIX/Linux users, rather than Windows users, would be the best target niche for Apple's "switch" campaign."
I tend to agree with that, but I would further qualify it to say that "Linux users as well as those who don't think that Linux has a place on the desktop would be the best target niche."
Obviously, OS X has a BSD filesystem, not Linux, but as a user of both Slackware Linux (at work) and OS X (at home) I have come to think of my iMac as a *nix machine with a hecka-sweet desktop environment......far sweeter than any currently available for Linux.
Is it possible to hang X Terminals off a XServe server to host remote displays? A Mac OS X thin client would be cool, and definately something to look into...
DivX support on OSX is bad - if you use QuickTime. VideoLAN Client plays my DivX files perfectly on my 700MHz iBook. There is a small compatibility glitch if you have QuickTime 6 installed, but setting your display to Thousands of Colors instead of Millions of Colors fixes it. It's free, it's fast, and it lets you watch movies in full screen without the QuickTime tax.
Apple doesn't seem that interested in getting DivX to work well in QuickTime. Instead, they're pushing their own MPEG4 format. VLC is definitely the way to go.
They are going after the windows user base, because it is the biggest! If you are going duck hunting you probably want to go to a lake with a lot of ducks.
I know a lot of windows users (non-geek) who hate windows, but feel that there is no other option, and this is just presenting another (and better) option to windows. Last time I checked windows 98 was the most used version of windows, and it is a piece of sh!t. I hope these Mac ads grab 10-15% of M$'s customers. I personally switched my parents to Linux about 3 weeks ago, because they were tired of Windows.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
But despite Tim O'Reilly's warnings, he still says:
In other words, switchers appear to be adopting Mac OS X at twice the rate of Mac OS 9 users. Linux users, and Windows users who also use Linux or another Unix, appear to be the most common switchers."
So while I don't disagree that it is possible that a greater number are coming from switchers than upgrades, I do think Tim should stick to his own warning - 15 responses is woefully inadequate for any representation.
According to this Salon article Windows users shouldn't switch unless you want all the old problems of incompatibility.
A lot of people are complaining about Apple's hardware, however, I have a slightly different view on it. I used to be a Mac person, and I am presently planning on going back, not because of the software (I prefer NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux, all of which support most modern Macs), but because of the hardware. Their laptops look nice, have reasonable battery life, and have more then enough power for what I do under Linux. As such, I'm currently planning on buying a loaded iBook as soon as possible, while the iBook doesn't look like that great of a deal if you look at it is a low end notebook, if you look at the 12.1" iBooks in comparison to PC "compact" laptops, the prices are really quite good. Sure the processors just are not keeping up with the x86 world these days, but my experiences with Apple in the past are such that I'm willing to bare that (plus their tech support ships you replacement parts quickly).
Once you use it for about a month Linux seems very immature and the GUI is far superior to Gnome/KDE/Enlightenment. Plus it has ssh sftp ... all built in so nothing to even install to get to my Linux servers. Don't get me wrong I love linux, it just has a million miles to go to catch up to OS X on the desktop, plus os x has better apps > flash, quicktime, photoshop, illustrator, ...
The cost is not that great (as long as you use a monitor through vga instead of the adc connections) and if you desire a 3 button mouse simply buy one (I did > MS Optical has drivers for OS8.6+ and OS X).
Go look on eBay and get a used one to try it out, just give it a chance and go in with an open mind (like all you Linux users expect windows users to do).
Windows and Linux users are used to having their desktops change dramatically throughout the years (for Linux users, sometimes weeks). Therefore, when plopped in front of a Mac OS X interface, the users tend to scout around and adapt pretty quickly.
Mac OS 9 users (Lord bless 'em) are the most stubborn, inflexible, fearful sort of user you can imagine when it comes to how their Macs work. That's a compliment to Apple--it shows the power of the original Mac OS interface over its many years of tenure. When you have a good thing, you are very stubborn to change.
But the loyalty to Mac OS 9 hurts Apple's move to OS X, of course. I anticipate having to take my client's OS 9 users through a Mac OS X orientation, watching them kick and scream in the process.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Why not? Isn't that the primary goal, A stable OS, that is easy to use and configure. I don't have ANY problem with MS using a BSD/UNIX/LINUX kernel. I have a problem with MS and their method to create a proprietary PC platform.
IMHO - The majority of /. users disgust with MS is not the OS, but the desire to make the computing platform proprietary, and non standards compliant.
Don't flame me for supporting MS. I am not supporting them, just making a point.
www.oobersworld.com - For those that ride.
sweet, I'll have to check into that. Thank you :)
remote access CLI with tools is the only friend you'll ever need.
Well not totally dead, but corporations would be far more ameniable to switching to OSX than they would Linux. It's not Microsoft, yet runs Office (so ensuring they can still use powerpoint, word, excel, outlook etc) and as many people have say "it just works". And once the corporations move, people get comfortable with working with something different and they eventually purchase it for home because that's what they've used and understand.
It isn't going to happen for various technical and business reasons, but it's something to think about anyway.
(cue lots of people either confirming the technical impossibility, telling me i'm dumb because i find OSX easier than KDE/GNOME, asking why I can't use OpenOffice instead of Word or just plain accusing me of trolling etc.etc)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Basically, it boils down to "make it work".
I love Unix - I love the power and the stability. I still use Linux as a server system (though, I admit I wouldn't mind trying out an Apple server just to compare).
But the biggest reason why I switched just deals with making it work. Do I have to worry about whether my clock program, which has the features I want, works under Gnome or KDE or not? Will I be able to cut and paste between Emacs and Mozilla? How do I install the serial port adapter software - oh, wait, I'm using Red Hat, and the designer made it to work with Suse....
Again, it's not that Linux is bad at all, it just takes that much more work to tweak. Want to change resolution in Xwindows? Get out to a prompt and run Xconfigurator.
Then I use OS X, and I get the best of both worlds. I get the power of Unix (I spend more time in Terminal than anything else), but I still get a slick interface and programs that look great. I don't worry about whether the program I'm looking at needs Windows Manager or something else - it fits in. I can still run Gimp (because I'm too damn cheap for Photo Shop) under XDarwin.
I'd love for Linux to make huge desktop roads, but that will take a change of paradigm[sic]. Linux developers will have to give up some things - say "Let's stop the KDE vs Gnome arguments, and say *this* is the standard - let folks experiment with things if they want, but we will heretofore say *this* is the way to do things", then go out and make it. They'll have to have an Interface guideline, and try to hold to it. They'll have to get follow up programmer who don't just focus on cool technology - which we need, and I thank God they make it - but then they need someone to come along after them and say "All right, let's put a good interface on this puppy."
Is OS X better? Probably not - the stability is about the same, the speed is probably less than Linux, but the interface is great. Linux is faster, but isn't as pleasing to work with.
So that's why I switched. I keep up with the Linux stuff for my servers, but my day to day gaming/typing/communicating is done on OS X.
And just to self pimp (or for more on this subject): Penguin2Apple: How a Linux Lover turned to a Macintosh
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Moreover, what's so intuitive about these impossible newfangled CD-RWs
Yup, not having to deal with eight year-old technology is as good a reason as any to shy away from computer manufacturer . Hard drives in the gigabyte range? Ten... one HUNDRED network cards? Eep! A nineteen inch screen!!
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
an iBook. I think laptops are where Apple has a chance. I still build my own boxen, and will not be buying ANYBODY's pre-built systems for my Desktop. But laptops, well you can't custom build them anyway. (At least I sure can't). If I'm gonna buy somebody's hardware for a laptop, Apple's is nicer than most. With Fink, and XDarwin, I can run apt-get to grap redesktop and admin the few Windows Servers I oversee. I'm mounbting SAMBA and NFS drives, as well as SSH'ing into my Unix boxes. And the iBook loos NICE, and OS X is very pleasant. Hell I'm using frotz to play some old infocom games in the OS X terminal. Playin' Warcraft 3 and RtCW.
Also, at least on the iBook, the 802.11b Airport wireless card has a great range. SuSE ain't gettin replaced on my deswktop PC anytime soon, but I blew off Yellow Dog Linux on the iBook. For a laptop, IMHO, OS X does it all.
In other words, switchers appear to be adopting Mac OS X at twice the rate of Mac OS 9 users. Linux users, and Windows users who also use Linux or another Unix, appear to be the most common switchers.
Does anybody else see something wrong with this statement? First, what percentage of his sample of alpha-geeks used Mac OS 9? We don't know. In general Mac has what, 5% of the market? So lets make things really simple and assume that the list he emailed consists of 1000 people. 50 of them use Macs. Of these 50, 5 have switched to OSX, a rate of 10%. Of the remaining 950, 10 people have switched to OSX, a rate of 1.05%. So what does "rate" mean to Tim?
More interesting is his claim that OSX is more appealing to those who already use some flavor of Unix as opposed to those who currently use Windows.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Just from the whining posts of "OS X is cool but Apple is a big, mean, evil proprietary hardware manufacturer", you can see that O'Reilly is completely wrong in suggesting Linux users are a perfect niche target. Apple should focus their ads 100% towards Windows users--people that expect to pay for what they use. There is no point going after the Linux folks. The attitude of "if its not free its evil" is not one you are going to change with white backgrounded commercials. Plus why would you focus on 1% of desktop users instead of 95%?
Unless Steve Jobs wants to lay prostrate in front of Linus and RMS and wail, "I am not worthy, I am not worthy!", there isn't an ad that is going to convert a hard core (masochistic) Linux desktop users.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
First he bashes Open Source advocates in their attempts to lobby government:
Next he says,
"Apple may be wise to target Unix/Linux rather than Windows in their switch campaign."
From this, we may conclude that the ways of the Dark Side are indeed seductive and powerful...
i bet OS-X is much better than Windoze 9x/ME/2k/XP or anything else Micky$oft can ever produce, but since Apple/Macintosh software only runs on Macintosh hardware o wont get it when i can build my own computer for about 500 bucks that is equivelent to a 2500 dollar OEM PC..
so i will continue to build my own computers as needed and use my favorite Linux (Slackware) on it and rebuild Slackware to fit my needs, it works for me, and saves me a TON of money, and nobody owns it but me, and i don't have to worry about Micky$oft having the privledge of r00ting my box legally via their crazy EULAs
Don't get me wrong - i use Linux for server applications because it's rock-solid.
Having said that, i don't know why this campaign of "It just works" isn't raising more eyebrows.
First of all - OS9 apps don't "just work" on OSX - there's a lot of cajoling to get older OS9 apps to run properly under X.
And, correct me if i'm wrong, Apple is still limited in the number of applications that are developed for the platform. Sure if you want to wait 6-8 months after the windows version of a game or app is realeased to have it ported to Mac, that's great - but i'm impatient.
As far as hardware is concerened - well at least NVidia cards work. But you certainly don't have as wide a variety of hardware available that's Mac-compliant - completely disregarding the hardware that the OS runs on!
OK. Make the campaign "It doesn't crash as much" or "You don't have to restart all that much anymore"...but say what you want - Windows 2000 and XP have taken Windows stability a long way since 95/98. Sure there are still some annoying points that i wish would go away (which is why i don't use Windows in a server environment) but on the whole i rarley encounter crashes anymore. And who leaves their machine on 24x7 anyway - i doubt all of those mac-usin' graphic designers do. They're all the artsy, crunchy, lets'-preserve-our-electricity types.
Bottom line is this - "It Just Works" is misleading at best.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
I want to be able to elevate priorities as a user, so I edited out the check that only lets users raise their "nice" value on processes.
On my old laptop, the driver for a new PCMCIA card was refusing to start the card because the voltage was wrong. After checking the card to verify it could take either voltage, I edited the voltage check out of the driver. I used the card successfully for over a year, and now use it in a different laptop (with a non-hacked driver). Under Windows, the card seemed to install and start but never worked.
My point is not whether these specific tasks could have been accomplished on another OS, just that it's extremely gratifying to find and fix code that's giving you troubles.
I guess the obvious "common man" argument will be made, but what do I care what somebody else wants?
I switched to the Apple desktop when OS X was in beta and 9 was king.
It worked great for running high end audio programs (thanks to the ppc architecture) but it was hard to get work done on one mouse button and without knowing the guts of the machine. OS X kept me on the Mac for a little bit longer but by then my G4-500 was showing its age.
I've recently ordered a PC (should be here sometime) to run linux on. Its going to cost about 400 less than I paid for my G4-Cube but with a 4" larger monitor, more RAM, hdd etc.
I've been using Ximian-Gnome at work with 8 virtual desktops and now I can't live without that feature. So when the PC comes in, I'll snatch out the OS, and put on RH and get to business!
Sorry Apple but its too expensive and doesn't have the niche features I need!
Get paid to code OSS
Yes, everyone please read the article JiMb0b linked too and see for yourself what kind of wanna be glamour girl yuppie scum are attracted to the Mac for all the wrong reasons. Jeez, an episcopal priestess is super attracted to the sexy, daring, counter culture mac users and saleman with their "artsy" lifestyle so she tries a Mac and hates it. Good riddance, no one needs another pompous ass promoting the Mac.
Divx is a poor standard that MS tried to force down our throats. MPEG4 is every bit as good or better. The only people who need Divx on Mac are those pc folks who have downloaded all their porn in Divx, and now can't find a way to play it.
Well, I've been admiring the new iMac?, eMac?, the really cool looking single unit with the flat screen, for some time. I've also been lusting over the really nice looking Aqua interface. Anyway, the other day I had the opportunity to drive one of these machines for a day.
I started out with great excitement and anticipation. OS X presented me with various music and video applications which, I naturally couldn't resist trying. The picture was good and the sound from the little clear globe shaped speakers blew me away. Literally, they almost knocked me out of my chair, as the volume was set too high at first. I still marvel at the quality of the sound that comes out of these small speakers.
After a few minutes I tired of the quicktime sample movies and decided it was time to get to work. It suddenly became far more difficult for me to use this Mac. I found that there were a plethora of multimedia and surfing apps presented to me by the desktop but getting to the root of the file system and finding an xterm were much harder. It took me a fair bit of time to figure out how to get at these apps and several other productivity apps that I needed. It seemed as if Apple had intentionally hidden these apps, perhaps to keep it simple for less advanced users.
After about 30 minutes I also found that the *so cool* looking flat panel monitor was just too mall. The actual display area seems like about 14", I'm not sure what it really is. I am sure though that it is too small for extended use when you are trying to get work done.
All in all, I found my experience with this slick little Mac to be surprisingly cumbersome. I had expected the much touted, dead simple ease of use that Apple is famous for and I didn't feel that I experienced it. And, with the small screen I came to realize that I could never use this machine for an extended period of time.
Don't get me wrong, I still think that the Mac with OS X is fine. There's no doubt it's the coolest looking computer yet. I also know that with OS X it can probably do anything a Linux or Windows box can.
But, in the end I feel that I'm better off with Linux KDE and Mosfet's Liquid theme mimicing the Aqua interface. The simple fact is that this setup is just as capable, if not more so, than OS X and the difference in cost between a great Linux box and this cool Mac is mind boggling. Sorry dudes, no offense meant.
Why switch at all? As a computing professional and enthusiast I feel compelled to try out everything under the sun! If I like it or feel there is some justifiable reason to spend more time with it then I'll keep it around. But no marketing campaign is going to get me to throw something away..
:)
I don't think targetting the "switch" campaign at UNIX/Linux users would yield particularily stunning results, by and large we're hackers and if we can afford it we'll accumulate as much hardware and software as we can get our hands on to tinker with.
Switching isn't an option, however accumulating more stuff certainly is
I work at a university, and I can see clearly who is switching.
Those who say they wont switch here are probably system administrators. Since I do sysadmin as part of my job, I can say that that part of me is a control freak, and loves the power of linux. That is also the reason why Linux has it hard on the desktop: only macosx, lycoris, lindows are even thinking of deprecating root in their OS'es.
The part of me which programs is split. Doing scientific programming today is easier on linux because of the number of high quality numerics/graphics libs available for X11. This will change. However, have you seen the simplicity of macosx? Every app is a directory. No gtk compatability problems(for those who remember). Copy the app anywhere. click, go. For command line people, change defaults using the default command, since all apps use plists. Open any file by saying open bla.pdf. It will use the default app. use open -with if you want a specific app.
The linking model is simple. The loading model is simple. applescript scripts most apps and is way easier to use than COM or bonobo. Still linux is a familiar model to lots of people. So I know people now, grad students and post-docs and engineers, whose desaktop is a macosx box and who program on linux..the professors dont program much so macosx works well for them. This student/scientist/engineer/programmer is the only remaining market.
But at the end of the day its the apps. Excel is available. And itunes and iphoto just rock.
There was a time when i liked struggling with linux to get all this working. At some point, one just wants to code. One dosent want to deal with dependencies, etc. You will say apt-get and I'll say hallelujah, its a great thing, but why cant i just install the freaking app where I want it too, and delete it by trashing it. rpm --erase??? Who would think of that?
The sad part is, most of what macosx has done could and still can be done on linux. Make a restricted distribution. Share earnings with app developers. Choose 10-15 best-of-breed apps, thats all. Thing of the next evolutionary step in these apps, rather than remaining behind the curve. root should only be a single user mode thing. Like gentoo, make init scripts dependent on whats running and whats not. Simplify the runlevels to single-user, and multi-user. Reduce hardware complexity by certifying systems based on linux friendly manufacturers. run daemons not as root. Get rid of the start, or hat, or whatever menu. Get rid of the XP like icons(see redhat8 beta). Give gtk a default look which dosent look like grey shit. Use a tasteful muted color scheme. Make sure pcmcia and usb and firewire just work on plug in. Use hotplug and devfs like mandrake do. Get rid of one million etc config files and use gconf and alchemist like redhat do. Simplify the gnome2.0 desktop. Check out the innovations in oe-one's desktop. Use autofs pervasively. Implement per process namespaces. Implement a simple event layer on top of bonobo, pipes, mimetypes, clipboard, etc to make scripting the desktop trivial. See plan9's plumbing. Unify zsh(bash) and nautilus to use same mime system. Allow apps to be manipulated as directories. When such directories are opened in either, allow hooks to be called which can start or install apps into a dependency database. Create a pasteboard server like in macosx. Implement gnustep over gtk2.0...
You get my point. There is so much thats already there but just missing a bit. It needs people with that extra bit of innovation, and that extra bit of compansation a app-royalty scheme would generate to push it across the edge. It needs that part of me that is a system administrator to let go. But it may be too late.
The Inscrutable Gargoyle
for using that aqua-style design. They have already scared the shit out of a guy who created an aqua-theme for Mozilla.
It isn't so much the platform, but rather the way they code it to avoid working with alternative platforms. Windows itself is fine, but locking other platforms out of specific Windows file formats is just wrong. That is reason enough to avoid supporting Windows.
D MCA bullshit. That is what pisses me off.
All of these folks on this article talk about going out and buying a Mac, then installing MS Office. It just feeds Microsoft even more. How about Open Office with an open, XML based file format. Not some cryptic-reverse-engineer-and-we'll-have-your-ass-
Closed software is OK (I love Opera), but it needs to be able to work with other alternatives. Standards are the issue here. Microsoft just doesn't support that idea.
I think the PC OSes like Linux and Windows should try to switch users from MacOS buy showing them that mice really do need 2 or more buttons!
Sounds like Astrid the Priestess needs to pray to God she gets some freaking brains. She's still using Floppies for God's sake! I can't even fit one MP3 on a floppy these days. She reports that she uses "Disk Utility" often -- something smells real fishy--is Gates religious?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
About 4 months ago I moved from a Dell laptop running linux (I was on it for 2 years) to a PowerBook with OSX and I love it. The first month was a bit of pain as I had to change some ingrained work habits and find stuff like uControl (can't work in emacs without it) and Launchbar etc.
Things I like about the switch.
1. MS Office (I can finally easily read all those powerpoints)
2. Consistent keyboard shortcuts between applications
3. Really easy networking and sleep that always works
4. The cool form factor of the G4, good battery life too.
Things I don't like about the switch
1. My code (mostly perl, some ruby and C) runs a lot slower on OSX
2. I miss virtual desktops and don't like the OSX virtual desktop add-on's
3. Paying for the upgrade to 10.2 (open source software has spoiled me:-))
My servers all run linux and I won't switch them, but for the desktop OSX rocks.
Pretty, clean, responsive(low end G4 with 256Mb), not nearly enough options to dig under the hood(especially during installation), give me an 'expert' mode, or give me death! :)
Hard to find some things, super easy to find others. I can't tell if my 'iDisk' is actually on a server at Apple, or a local cache of stuff on a server at Apple. A mount is not really a disk mount, like me Mr. 6 years of Unix would think of it as.
I like the Dock. I really like iTunes. I reallly like iPhoto.
I didn't like not having root access out of the box. It's no lie, Mozilla really does suck on OS X. :( /bin/tcsh has got to go. Configuring everything is a snap, and the XML based config files are cool. If I could find them.. The directory struct. is gonna take some getting used to, as is remembering that programs don't close when you click the 'X" on the top window bar, only that window does. SSH support(albeit an insecure version) out of the box is nice. The software updater package thingy is slick. I'm haven't totally figured out how to add new users, although its rumored to be under this 'Netinfo' thing, which is like a seperate control place for the Unix stuff.
So here I sit nearly 6 months later, still enjoying my Mac, but it splits time with my Linux box as well via a KVM switch. Some tasks are just better suited for certain tasks than other. The proof of that for me was coming back from South America and being able to plug my Sony Handycam right into my Mac via firewire and using iMovie to pull video clips right off the camera, editing them, and making a 'home movie' that turned out really nice.
The coolest part was I hit 'record' and it wrote my 'iMovie' back to a blank tape in the Handycam. Sometimes it is just nice to have things work like that without having to config anyting. Not that it's my primary machine(mandrake 8.2 still holds that role) or anything, and the iMovie software is just a small unique example of something I really like about my Mac, but as a Linux user for nearly 6 years, there's a lot I've come to appreciate about Mac's and OSX in particular and I think others in similar situations may feel the same way...
I have been using OS X for roughly 1,5 years now. I will now switch back to the x86 world. OS X lacks speed, the UI is not intuitive and rather builds on good looks than usability, I find myself running a lot of applications in XDarwin as their Aqua equivalents aren't as usable and in general am opposed to the hardware costs involved, especially after recent evidence that as an example the new DDR Dual 1GHz Mac is slower than its predecessor.
-thies
At first I was glad to come home to 98 for ease, XP for stabillity, and Beos for zippy speed. OS X 10.1.x had me hating the Mac. Many of the problems plaguing my Mac was due to bugs and features that I (still) can't believe they left out.
With 10.2, alot of the 'bugs' have been fixed, windows open a TON faster, the machine is far more responsive, and I have handwriting recognition too (which is just cool).
Arguably, It should have been that way at the start, rather than me beta-testing 10.1.x. I can't say I'll be auctioning off my p4 1.8 (which still smokes the mac) anytime soon, but Apple is definitely becoming more tempting.
If Apple gets faster hardware than my PC (blah, blah gigahertz/flops, whatever. IE opens in 2 seconds on my P4, and 8 on the mac 733) or if OpenBeos makes a strong case (which it will!) will make some of my decision to switch or not for me. The preceeding sentence was exceedingly poorly crafted. Thank you.
I switched to mac because the Powerpc g4 1Ghz CPU is 2x faster for RC5 than any known AMD MP boards.
Currently, according to the RC5 benchmarks AMD is far slower than dual CPU based Macintoshes. In fact an AMD MP high end motherboard is only HALF as fast as a Mac.
21,129,654 RC5 keyrate for dual 1 Ghz g4 system ! (The old Feb 2002 model)
A dual 1800+ AMD MP yields only half as many keys! 10,807,034 rc5 keys per second !
Source code available for core rc5 loops for most Processors http://www.distributed.net/rc5/
There is a 10 thousand dollar prize if my computer finds the RC5 key and the money is worth it more and more each day as the keyspace shrinks.
The Mac Dual 1 Ghz g4 is faster than all existing dual AMD motherboards in RC5 benchmark by almost 100%. The curious "Mhz myth" is demonstrated quite soundly here.
Apple now is selling even FASTER machines but with smaller caches and less fast read-write ram (it now uses DDR on newest boxes, but its FSB is slower than the DDR itself at the moment.)
The mac uses a 2 MB L3 cache and no AMD mp dual cpu boards I know about have any L3 cache at all!. That's possibly common macs are over twice as fast, its not just the few meager altivec tweaks to rc5 core. AMD have similar , but less amazing vector ops for SIMD.
Another reason my RISC Mac might be over twice as fast as an amd dual mp board is not just the 2MB l3 cache but the fact that Mac can read and write to a cold page of memory simultaneously FASTER than any AMD MP designs which are biased for linear access and streaming. Many memory scatter benchmarks show this too. The new AMD Hammer is even SLOWER in many ways and not expected to de better at RC5 as shown in the early SSL benchtests.
Another reason to use a mac is that there are less exploits and it has a great implementation of NeXTStep's programming environment called Cocoa (uses Objective C , C, and C++). Cocoa allows one man teams to outperform 3 man teams.
I picked up a Mac magazine, and thumbed through it while waiting for my wife. Looking through the magazine brought back nightmares from the bad old days before commodity computers. The magazine was similar to magazines of 15 years ago in that it was full of expensive gizmos, pricey software patches and costly utilities, oddball interface cables, and all sorts of froufrou designed to make up for deficiencies in the host system. There exists a cottage industry providing "fixes" for the shortcomings of Macs. You won't find this kind of stuff in mainstream magazines such as PCWeek. You won't even find this kind of stuff in Linux magazines.
The advsertisements in the Mac magazine spoke volumes more than the editorial content. You need these expensive add-ons to acheive parity with mainstream computing. And the editorial content was not silent on the matter either. One of the featured articles was titled along the lines of "50 Must-have Utilities Which You Need". It was mostly the kind of stuff Windows users and Linux users take for granted beause they are free. In the case of the Mac however, these "must have" utiliites cost between $50 and $400 dollars each.
If you remember the days of proprietary computing -- Atari, Amiga, and so on -- a peek of at a Mac magazine will be dark trip down nostalgia's trail. You will see the "must have" chips, extenders, specialized memory fixes, patches, work-arounds, and all the stuff you left behind when you stepped off the proprietary trail for the road of main line computing.
The Mac world is a different world stuck in a time warp. I'm glad I have the free choice not to participate.
It seems like most of the comments here have been along the lines of "I won't switch to OSX because it doesn't run on x86 and therefore I can't build my own box". But it's clear that people who really want to build their own box is in the decided minority, and Apple would be crazy to go after this market in particular. And if you have an OS where users can build their own box, then you necessarily open yourself up to compatibility/driver/etc. issues.
And I think the reason Apple isn't targetting the Linux/Unix market is that there just isn't enough people using those machines to make money selling $2000 boxes...
At first, I was hesitant to take the leap, but after a few hours of playing on the iBook, I realized that beyond the geeky parts of the iBook, I love the user interface the mose. Sure, having a RISC-based UNIX is cool, that's why I bought my SPARCStation 20, but even better is a RISC-based UNIX with a pretty and application-rich GUI! WOO HOO!!!!
All you ney-sayers who haven't given it a whirl can blast me all you want, I'll still hold to the notion that OS X has beaten all the *NIXes at the desktop level. How well OS X will perform at the server level is outside the scope of my interest... I'll stick with OpenBSD for all my server needs, thanks.
-C
"This above all, to thine own self be true"
I have been a Linux user sience 1994 and I like linux and I still do, Then I started working and I no longer have the time or the will of tinkering with a Linux box tring to get every peice of new hardware to work, and I never like PC archecture. So I switched to using Sun Hardware, and I was much more productive with it, Applications that I wanted to use generally ran better, and much more smoother. Then I switched to OS X. And I find that I am the most productive with it. GUI when GUI is best the terminal when CLI is best. The GUI is clean and out of the way, (unline CDE, GNOME, and KDE and Windows that tries to impress you with all the graphics) I found that using OS X is just more productive. And there is a larger selection of comerical software for OS X, (Open Sourse Software has a great software selection base but it still not there for everything I need). Just as the comerical says "it just works."
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Not only do you tell us that you bought a cube (bleh!), but you also tell us that you can't figure out how to attach a multibutton mouse, or read the specs on your machine...and then you go on to brag about having virtual desktops in Ximian-Gnome (which is also easily accomplished on a Mac). Well, Mac OS has the features that you mentioned, you just weren't able to figure out how to implement them. Given that we're talking about Mac OS (legendary ease of use), that's pretty sad for you.
Even though Tim O'Reilly prefaces his "poll" with a statement about how these 15 responses do not "represent a significant sample" he still bases a large part of the story on it.
I don't think that those numbers are "suggestive" or "intriguing".
Now, his statements about David Pogue's book being bought in high quantities do raise an eyebrow, but i would still like to see more numbers.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
I think what the first post in this subthread meant was the M$ could make both a proprietary OS and hardware [already make X-Box, keyboards, mouse] and make you buy both, every 12-18 months. Who says things couldn't get worse than they are?
Re:Switch? Nope RUN DARWIN the OS is OPEN SOURCE!
You know little about the mac!
Plus MAcs are over twice as fast as AMD MP systems according to http://www.distributed.net/rc5/
21,129,654 RC5 keyrate for dual 1 Ghz g4 system ! (The old Feb 2002 model)
A dual 1800+ AMD MP yields only half as many keys! 10,807,034 rc5 keys per second !
Upon reading this article, it's fairly obvious to me that she's using Mac OS 9 for some reason, rather than OS X. All of Apple's marketing is actually referring to OS X, although it doesn't say so.
All Macintoshes have been shipping with OS X as the default system for quite some time. She (or whoever set up her system) switched her into Mac OS 9, where she's suffering.
Steve Jobs is making the biggest mistake he has yet. Apple sales would explode if Jobs ported OS X to the Intel platform.
Granted, it may indeed threaten Mac hardware sales but, he could test the waters with less optimized Intel version. That way you could get a great OS on Intel but, if you wanted to see *really* fast, you should buy the Mac.
I'm certain that OS X on Intel would fly off the shelves faster than Apple could stamp out the CDs and Microsoft would crap all over themselves. Everybody wins.
Somehow, the idea that someone who's already been suckered into religion, was suckered into advertising, is not too surprising to me.
This is a joke - right?
You pose a question to a number of people you have no knowledge about, get 15 answers and write an article about this?
Assume that from all the suscribers only 5 were pure windows users and 1000 use other systems. Then 100% of the windows users switched but only 1% or so of the others.
Aktually if you assume that the standard deviation is the root of the measured number then you have:
Windows users: 5 +/- 2.2
Others : 10 +/- 3.1
These numbers agree within statistical limits!
So this may be worth thinking about but the numbers are completely worthless.
She's still using Floppies for God's sake!
And why not? They're considerably cheaper than CDs, and they make a lot more sense if you only have a 30k file that you need to backup or take/send somewhere.
I can't even fit one MP3 on a floppy these days.
Did you even read the complete article? Did she ever mention wanting to store MP3s on floppy?
Remember, just because something isn't useful to you doesn't mean it isn't useful to someone else.
Dinivin
I'd used macs for years before I had to abandon them because none of my clients used them. I'm also a very long time Unix user (Since System III). So, OSX is a natural for me right? I have at TiBook with OSX and I would love it.
Except for the damned dock.
This is an incredibly misbegotten feature. First of all, let me state my UI bias: the user should be in charge, the UI elements should just sit there until called upon. I favor responsiveness over intrusiveness. The dock is cutesy, and keeps calling attention to itself with the stupid Genie effect (if I tell you to go away, just do it), and having icons bounce up and down. So right off the bat I was ill inclined towards the thing. In its default configuration it robs the user of valuable real estate. Yeah, you can do alpha blending, now go the hell away so I don't have to look through you to see the bottom of my documents.
The only thing that makes the dock tolerable is that you can use the System Preferences to make it tiny, hidden, and to turn off the idiotic genie effect.
The sad thing is that all the functions of the dock are done better by the apple and upper right hand menus of MacOS 7-9. These functions are clearer and separated in space. When applications needed to get the user's attention, they didn't have to jump up and down, they just flashed the upper right hand application menu (if I remember correctly).
The problem with the dock is that it is overloaded with functions. As I keep telling PDA developers I work with, overloaded UI elements are a very poor substitute for good design. The Dock really undermines the Mac experience. I find KDE much more responsive and less intrusive.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Haha, that's funny. The scary thing is it sounds just like my wife who insists on saving all her work to floppies and won't let me junk the drive.
:) ... I love being married.
Me: baby we have DSL if you need a file while you're at school you can transfer it, its faster than loading the 500K word doc off the floppy
her: but what if the harddrive breaks?
me: that floppy will go bad long before the harddrive breaks
her: I don't care, it could still happen and I want it with me!
Women
The Anti-Blog
since I have a three year old Bronze G3 Powerbook, and it's my understanding that it's too damn slow to run OSX, or OSX is too damn slow for it. Still true?
sulli
RTFJ.
Interestingly enough, she states that most of the problems she encountered were Microsoft applications throwing up on her. MS apps misbehaving on a competitor's OS? Quel Suprise!
[switch to black & white... interior Rick's Cafe Americain]
I'm shocked, SHOCKED that this is happening to her. (Your DR-DOS error message, sir) Oh, thank you, thank you very much.
[fade to present day]
banished to the lonely "Mac user" printer port at Kinko's
I dunno where she lives, but all the Kinko's I've visited recently (DC Metro area) have Air Ports up and running. Point and shoot printing!
losing all ability to communicate with my Euro-traveling boyfriend
Last time I looked, neither SMTP nor POP gave a rat's ass what OS was running.... this smells and looks like an eNORmous red herring. (but Salon, published by MSNBC, would NEVER do that, right?)
From all her whining, my suggestion to her would be to sell her iBook, and use the proceeds to purchase a good typewriter as her needs seem to be the ability to type up sermons and little else
MAX OS X is not match for my CRiSPIX system. It is *the* most stable OS in MILK. period. The Rice architecture is splendid.
Some of us want to do more with our computers. In fact, I bet you want to do more with your computer. In that event, MacOS X is a worthwhile consideration.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
... that they can take our code. But they'll never take... our FREEDOM !!!
(actually they can't take our code, only *BSD's)
Dual booting with one of the fine stable linux ppc ports, like yellow dog, for your linux needs? Or running xdarwin and the many X apps that have been ported? I found that this satisfied most of my linuxy needs...
I was Mac junkie for years, before finally being converted to GNU/Linux a couple of years ago. I think OS X is cool, but it has the worst GUI to ever come out of Cupertino. It's sluggish, many things don't have keyboard shortcuts that should, and in general Aqua is lacking in places where X Window Managers excel.
For example, why is there no support for virtual desktops? In a perfect world I'd have a monitor bigger than Rhode Island, but in reality I'm often using 15-inch Apple Studio Displays. I'd like to be able to have more than one window open without having a messy pile-up on my desktop.
In general, I find that I just can't work very fast in OS X, so until such work-flow issues get resolved, there's no chance of me using OS X as my primary desktop.
We enjoy learning the ins and outs of our machines, much like my brother the gearhead enjoys rebuilding his 52 Harley.
My mother, on the other hand does not want or need to know how to rebuild her engine, or her PC. She just wants to get her work done.
Clear, Dark Skies
since when is that not a valid reason?
is it not said that porn makes the world go 'round?
(I can't believe my origonal post got modded down as a troll)
remote access CLI with tools is the only friend you'll ever need.
...because other (former) Linux users are doing the job for them. Between Tim O'Reilly, plenty of folks here on / and various others, it would be difficult for geeks not to know that OS X is "Unix Inside (tm)".
you're a troll. there is no ie 6 for mac.
Or is this becoming the new "I'd get a Mac if they had a two-button mouse" troll?
The only thing about this situation is that it is actually even LESS likely to happen! Even if Apple moved to an Intel processor, it will still be set up such that only Apple-Intel hardware will run Mac OS, and it will be a higher quality hardware config that still will cost a premium.
Get used to it, for crying out loud!
Switch? I thought it was Apple that
switched to Unix.
I'm another Linux user switching to OS X. Vice Chair of my LUG, Linux user for five years, and believe it or not it was other LUG members that talked me into taking the plunge.
I needed a notebook for two main purposes.
I ended up going way over budget and buying an 800MHz G4 "Titanium" Powerbook. It was a rocky start because OS X is missing some of the features I love most about Linux. But then I started diving into the applications and (here it comes) it Just Works.
Clients love it when I open my backpack, pull this thing out, and show them the progress of their video on this. Better still, it has all kinds of ports on it. I can hook it up to the SVideo jack on your television set, audio outs to your stereo, and show you your movie the way it will look once it it on a DVD. That feat would be much more difficult on a PeeCee portable running Linux (or even Windows) and would almost certainly require a PC Card adapter with a dongle. This is much cleaner as it only requires two cables plugged directly into the back of the TiBook.
My major gripes are pretty easy to name.
Overall, I am very happy with this purchase. I find myself using the Linux box less and less for desktop stuff, and the OS X box more and more for that purpose. It was a lot of money but I feel much better about it now because it is much better integrated than any PeeCee notebook I've seen.
Maybe it was his pitch about the intuitiveness and femininity of the Mac -- its smooth operating system, its sleek curves, its bouncy icons that enlarge when you touch them, the way the documents slide onto the screen, the glossy surface and undulating pastel screen savers...
I take "bouncy icons" as evidence of OSX.
This person sure does like to whine though. First she is unhappy when the Apple keys are gone in grade school. Then she complains that it never makes sense, but that the Ctrl key gave her a sense of "control"? Notice that she never exactly sings the praises of Windows. I wonder if this article is astro-turfing in action...
Lasers Controlled Games!
That person needs to stop using computer altogether. She wants her floppy drive back?!?!
Somebody give her an etch-a-sketch!
Rennsport
i agree, VLC (VideoLan Client) is great, and being at "Thousands" of colors rather than "Millions" is so inconsequential in OSX - as in OSX does such a good job with color handling - that I have been running with just "Thousands" for weeks without even realizing it until I checked the Displays menu in the menu bar a minute ago!
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
I have been programming on the Mac for about 14 years or so but have become a big Linux fan. When OS-X came out I figured I'd give it a try. I bought a G3 laptop which I use most every day and I have OS-X on my Macintosh at work.
Although I really like OS-X I still find that I use my Linux machines more for day-to-day work. I really like the multiple desk tops that KDE offers and the Linux distributions have more of the low level programming and system tools that I am used to using.
The biggest gripe that I have with OS-X is the ugly way that the underlying unix directory structures are layed out. This seem reminisant of Apples old decision to use <CR> as a line terminator instead of <LF> or <CR><LF> -- why go out of your way to be different? I'm not familiar with other BSD distributions so perhaps Apple followed the BSD standard. I am familiar with Solaris and Linux and I have a bear of a time with OS-X.
The improvements to OS-X that I'd like to see are, multipe desktops, built in X-Windows support, and addition of the wide range of open source tools that I get with SUSE to the OS-X distribution disks.
I do plan on continuing to use the Macintosh and I recently ordered version 10.2.
The big thing with Apple is the HARDWARE, us geeks can't go out and buy tons of parts to build,tweek and update the thing (plus parts cost)
Building your own Box is the best for a geek,we all have different needs, and wallets and can build a box to do what WE want it to do and at a good price (geeks are some cheap SOB's)
We have 100buck box's for lunix firwalls, and can build one he11 of a puter for $500 to $1000
Its the hardware stupid (message to apple) that is how they make much of there money,and untill they let go of that people are going to stay away in groves,killing apple clones was on of the worst things to do (good in the short run since they where going broke)
All these "switched back" stories seem to mention a lack of virtual desktops, but none of them consider that Codetek makes a Virtual desktop solution for OSX. You can tab around desktops, move windows between virtual desktops from the mini desktops, it allows apps to be hardwired to a particular virtual desktop, so they always load into them, and you can have up to 100 of them in a grid style configuration. I don't know how this compares to linux virtual desktops (I've only used them briefly, and without any of the widgets it may have), but it worked for me, since I've always had a thing for virtual desktops.
Also, *nix users who "switch" to mac for a better *nix, or to *only* perform the functions they currently use their *nix box for, prolly aren't going to find any compelling reasons to stay. MacOSX isn't about replacing linux, or BSD, it's about bringing a consumer OS to the masses, with the mass sw compatibility, and quick and easy HW support/integration, along with the stability and robustness of a *nix.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
I have been using macs since the plus, (back when i was an impressionable 8, in 85) and our first home machine after the atari 800 was a dual-floppy mac SE, which we later carded to a ghetto SE/30.
it was 'fun and interesting' but maddening the way the OS worked at times. I experimented with basic, and even smalltalk, but never could get the hang of dealing with windowing (My most hated part of win32 programming, at least until i found c++ Builder).
This was sad to me, because now instead of writing clever sound producing programs and shooters, i was making 'art' and so on. I wasn't much of a zealot, and gladly played doom and quake on the 'other' machines when i had the opportunity.
At some point, i came into possession of a couple intel boxes, and haven't seriously looked back since. I'd been using linux since 96, and various flavors of SVr4 since 94, so naturally linux went on one box, and all of bungie's latest games on the other.
After a -very- short time, i came to think of the machines as appliances, and aquired more of them. Macs, on the other hand, seem more like very expensive toys. I still enjoy using macOS, and plan on snagging the old man's dual G4 500 when i get the chance, but a mac isn't the do-all end-all of computing. I wouldn't use one for my firewall (until i could aquire one for less than $50 that i could replace components in, like ethernet cards). Nor would i use one as a 240GB raid fileserver, as that would just cost too damn much, and my Audiotron wouldn't like it much.
Macs are wonderful, Macs are great, Its just Steve Jobs I don't appreciate.
semantics are everything!
5.2.1 is the latest ie for os x, you lie
when i saw windows users switching, i though "oh great, os x on the i386". but i see that by switch it is meant "great, lets go out and spend thousands of pounds on new hardware."
i believe that the core of os x (darwin?) is available on the i386 platform - but is the whole thing?
personally i'm not prepared to throw out all my old boxes and bring in a ton(ne) of new kit. hello, i have rent to pay!!
personally, i feel, that until apple is able to accomodate open hardware architecture they are going to continue to be a bunch of underachievers.
I am now buying CDs for around 20 cents a pop (and probably spending too much) so I really don't see the cost saving of a floppy that holds 1.5mb versus a CD that holds 700mb. And what program besides a text editor makes a 30k file?
Did you even read the complete article? Did she ever mention wanting to store MP3s on floppy?
That is a size example of how most file formats today are bigger than what a floppy can hold.
Remember, just because something isn't useful to you doesn't mean it isn't useful to someone else.
Yet Salon is promoting this woman as the "common man" in the article which doesn't sit well with your point. Most users have dropped the floppy.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
- No multi-workspace/multi-desktop functionality in Aqua.
- Poor keyboard on iBook (flimsy, and I still haven't found a reliable way to swap Caps Lock and Control).
- Low bang for the buck. Yes, I'm well aware of the "MHz Myth". Unfortunately, it's only partly a myth. Given enough of a lead in clock speed, even the P4 (broken crap design that it is) can be pretty damn fast. The 700 MHz iBook is pretty damn slow compared to a comparably priced Athlon, PIII or P4 laptop. Add that to the slow memory speeds on all but the latest destop machines and, well it isn't pretty.
The speed thing I could probably deal with as a trade off for stability and reliability. The keyboard is a much bigger issue, as is the crippled UI. Fix those things, and I'd be inclined to start using OS-X. I'd still have my *nix, and access to a decent array of comercial software as well (more for my wife, who is a photographer, then for myself, mind you). I probably wouldn't really "switch", but rather add OS-X based Macs to my stable. Perhaps if they are as out of the box funtional as folks say, OS-X could even displace Linux as my primary environment.Rascist, ignorant trash like this is the reason for which censorship was invented
Seeing this post made me feel physically ill.
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
I enjoy programming (and get paid well for it) but I do it all day so the computer at home (win2K) gets mainly used for email/web and games. I dabble in Linux but I don't go the whole hog. I do love open source software - gimp, open office, mozilla, etc but it never works as well on MSwindows, I want to fix things but I'd rather not develop on MSwindows.
Now I'm motivated. The first thing I did was fire up a terminal on my powerbook and start playing with the file system. Open source has got a new developer - more than that it's got a new, big, well financed market. I believe there will be a lot more users out there, providing input as well, because so many of the Linux open source projects port so much more simply to osX and just seem to work better (than on M$ OS's) once there.
Support the switchers
H.
The idea of proprietary hardware is something like what Palladium might end up being, where only approved code can be run on a given platform. Last I checked, Linux ran perfectly well on Apple hardware. And if you open the things up, you see pretty much the same thing you'd see inside a PC, save for a PPC processor for an x86 one, and there's nothing in the G4 that you can't read about in a spec from Motorola (same situation as Intel's chips, for the most part).
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
What about returns?
I bought an iBook, back in November, for the sole purpose of running Mac OS X. After about four months of enjoying the slow responses, lack of hardware accelleration, and a PPP dialer that would hang the system at odd moments. This was tolerable when I was using the laptop at home for odd jobs, but when I decided to start using it at work, instead of my Windows workstation, Mac OS X's poor support for my iBook became a source of frustration.
I spent a week installing Gentoo, and discovered that Linux has better support for my video card, ran faster, crashed less, and didn't freeze up the system for simple networking tasks.
While it is amusing that Linux/x86 often supports a computer better than Windows, I find it more than hilarious that Linux/ppc supports my iBook better than Apple's own OS.
(For those about to hit flame mode, my iBook is maxed out with 320mb of ram, and I've done all the patches, updates and tweaks. Apple's new 10.2 hardware support does not include the ATI Rage chipset in the 1st gen iBooks.)
Weapons of Mass Analysis
CISC architectures are strictly for lightweights.
There's not much difference between "CISC architecture" and "RISC architecture" anymore. Most processors (such as Pentium II/III, Pentium 4, K6, Athlon, Opteron, Crusoe) have an emulator on the front end that translates x86 bytecode to RISC micro-ops, and a regular RISC back end[1]. Some processors from Sun have the same thing for Java(tm) bytecode.
[1] I know Crusoe's RISC is EPIC, but it doesn't change the point of the argument.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What I don't like about it:
The dock. The dock was a cool thing ten years ago, but the start menu/taskbar style of user interface is, IMHO, far better. (Apparently the KDE and Gnome folks think so, too.) OS X's dock is just...bizarre. I've used it for seven months and I'm still wondering why it works the way it does. Yeah, you can resize it, you can hide it, you can change the magnification levels, and it has animated icons. That's all well and good, but all the dock is really good for is *lauching* programs. It pretty well sucks for controlling those programs after they're launched. Want to close a running app from the dock? You have to click and hold the dock icon to pop up a menu, then select the menu option to close the app. Maybe it'll close, maybe not, in which case you have to mouse all the way up to the top of the screen, pull down the Apple menu, and do the Force Quit thing. I'm sure there may be keyboard shortcuts for these things, but the whole point of a graphical user interface is so people don't have to memorize keyboard shortcuts. And we won't even discuss using the dock to keep track of any open windows an app may have...
The menu bar. I hate, loathe, and despise the way OS X always puts the menu bar at the top of the screen. You can have an app that runs in a 320x240 window in the bottom right corner of the screen, but if you want to access that program's menu bar, you have to mouse all the way up to the top of the screen. Change window focus without meaning to? The menu bar at the top changes, which means the menu bar you wanted to access when your mouse pointer finally arrives up there may not be the menu bar you needed to access. Keep the menu bars with the window, not as a separate entity.
File permission strangeness. I have seen cases in OS X where I, as the only administrator of a machine, did not have permission to do things I needed to do, such as, but certainly not limited to: deleting folders, taking ownership of folders, and changing permissions on folders. Example: I run Mozilla nightly builds on my OS X box. After upgrading to a newer build, I was not able to delete the folder containing the old build through the finder. So I popped open a terminal window, did a cd to the directory containing the Mozilla folder, and did an rm -rf Mozilla/. Permission denied. I tried to do an su. Wrong password. (My account has admin privs anyway; I shouldn't need to do an su at all.) WTF is the root password on these OS X boxes, anyway? I tried to do a chown -R. Permission denied. I tried to do a chmod -R ugo+rwx. Permission denied. I do an ls -alF on the Mozilla directory. Turns out the owner of this directory is some obscure number (undoubtedly the UID of the user that did the build on another machine far, far away). So I've got this directory I can't delete. I've worked with UNIX variants for 12 years; this shouldn't be happening.
You can't really customize the user interface. Just because it works for somebody at Apple doesn't mean it works for me. 'Nuff said.
Touchpads and the general lack of a second mouse button. Okay, this really is more of a hardware rant than an OS X issue, but come on. There's a reason almost all modern mice have at least two mouse buttons; that's because a second mouse button improves the usability of the interface. Apparently they don't believe that at Apple, and thus I have to do a lot of clicking-and-holding to open up context menus. And whoever came up with those damn touchpads will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
What I like:
It's based on BSD, and the iBook is very small and light.
IMHO, the cons outweigh the pros.
I found it kind of a pain to run X Windows apps on MacOS X, and it's nice to have the much wider set of open-source apps available on Linux, rather than the smaller set that's been ported to MacOS X. At this point, I only use my mac to run a couple of old MacOS 9 apps that I still need.
Find free books.
Odd, Internet Explorer 5.2 is the newest mac version...
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
That is a size example of how most file formats today are bigger than what a floppy can hold.
Hmmm... I know a lot of teachers who use their computer mostly for writing up lesson plans and tests in MS Word, and they can fit dozens of these files onto one floppy. That's all they need.
Shall we compare the number of users who use Word day to day with the number of users who create mp3s, avis, mpegs, or other formats that (generally) won't fit on a floppy. I think you'll find that Word users are much more plentiful, and for their needs, floppies work great.
Yet Salon is promoting this woman as the "common man" in the article which doesn't sit well with your point. Most users have dropped the floppy. Very few users that I know have dropped the floppy. The ones that have are generally the much more advanced computer users, not the average user.
Dinivin
UNIX/Linux users, rather than Windows users, would be the best target niche for Apple's "switch" campaign
Most linux users use it because it's free (in both meanings of the term). Therefore, I'm not sure they are a good target for Apple.
I switched only because I needed a new video editing PC. After several years of building my own boxes with Windows NT and 2000 and 3rd party hardware, Adobe Premiere is still not easy to learn, nor is it very stable, nor is it very fast. And the 3rd party hardware makes me shudder with revulsion: buggy drivers and a lot of vendor denial.
The cost for the PC hardware I wanted was about 2700.00 USD. Then I looked at my other PCs: one is very stable, one does not work with any version of Windows but runs for 100 days with Linux, another one was sort of flaky until I installed OpenBSD (this is why it's good to have many OS choices; if it's a hardware problem, it should die under ANY OS, like my Thinkpad with a bad motherboard used to do).
When I looked at the Power Mac dual G4 1GHz, I saw the tradeoffs: slower bus, less MHz in the CPUs, and so on. But, I get 2 firewire ports digital video out and OSX all included. I also saw several movies in the past 2 years with a credit to FCP. The price was $200 over what I would pay for a tricked out PC.
I went to the Apple store where they showed me how to download and edit footage right in the store. I have never seen a PC store with a setup like this.
I was surprised at how fast the Mac replaced my Windows PC for everything I do: Office, e-mail, software development. The hardware is not the latest or sexiest, but it works better. The computer _feels_ faster, because I never have to stop working to appease some sudden need the OS has.
I think that the world of cheap commodity hardware and all-compatible software is still a dream; believe it or not, Intel, Motorola, Sparc, they're ALL using proprietary technology that locks you into a vendor's plans, whims, and mistakes. Get used to it. When buying the Apple, I chose a different route: pay a premium for "commodity" hardware with a lot of added value. Dell and Gateway have gotten so big that they cannot afford to lose any money; maybe being the biggest company is not always the best thing to do.
About me and technology: I work in a Windows NT/2000/Solaris 7-8-9 shop. By day I am a systems architect building Solaris, Windows, and OpenBSD systems for security and business automation. I program in python, perl, java, and C++.
My wife runs Mac OS X. She's a Project Manager for a International Medical Informatics project. She doesn't need the CLI but needs WebDAV, SMB, NFS and whatever else the project throws at her. Need to communicate with a hundred people all in different countries with different machines? You can't just send them Word files. I'm pretty amazed that a single platform can cope with both of our workloads.
My good friend runs FreeBSD. He swears by it. He writes little networked apps. He's recently got himself an iBook for development because he figures he can do 90% of the hard development work on any of his machines and then by just adding a pretty little GUI in InterfaceBuilder, he can sell the little apps to Mac people as well. He's not aMac guy but he tells me how much he's spent on hardware upgrades in the last two years and I'm amazed. Sure, PC hardware is cheaper, but is it necessary to upgrade everything every month???
I don't care what platform you use. Just leave me to use Mac OS X. You on Linux? Want to show me a cool app? Recompile and we're there.
What a terrible story! Regardless of what the actual situation is, and who is or is not switching, this guy spun an entire premise based on data that is worse than useless. After soaking up some anecdotal evidence about who is switching, he made just about every mistake possible in conducting a poll (preselected pool, lousy response rate, etc.), then draws conclusions based on a miniscule sample size! He got only 15 responses (quoting from the article):
"The 15 responses were as follows:
* Upgrading from OS 9 (5)
* Switching from another operating system (10)
Where things got interesting was the platform people were switching away from. Despite the implication of Apple's switch campaign, that users are coming from Windows, the majority of the defections were from Linux, or from a combination of Windows and Linux or another version of Unix:
* Switching from Windows only (1)
* Switching from Windows to OS X for personal use, but still using Windows at work (2)
* Switching from dual-boot Windows/Linux, or separate machines for the two operating systems (2)
* Switching from Linux (5)"
And so, from the response of 5, count 'em, *5* Linux-only users, he concludes that Linux is more of a target than Windows users. If only two more Windows users had responded to his "poll", the conclusions would have been quite different. What a worthless article. It remindes me of the old story about the behavioral scientist who, after studying rats, said, "33% of white rats consistently prefer Swiss cheese to Cheddar, 33% prefer Cheddar to Swiss, and 33% have unknown preference, because my third rat ran away without tasting either one."
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Experience - I am currently on a contract at a very large International Law firm. We are migrating from 95 to XP, and we have had a server that has been corrupting documents. The users NOW hate XP because they believe that the problem is the OS and not the server. Note: almost never do their computers lockup, and that WAS A HUGE problem before, but they have since forgotten that.
My point. The users don't care to know anything about the computer that they are working on, but just want it to work. IF, something does not work, they blame it on the computer (whatever there impression of a computer is, to some of the users, the Hard drive is the case, and the computer is the monitor)
PS: now you see my aggression towards attorneys!
www.oobersworld.com - For those that ride.
the only reason u need to fool around w/ config files is to change things from their defaults. occasionally u need to do it because u selected the wrong options on install...but wait, windows doesn't let u do ANY of that. if u are unhappy, reinstall the software just like on windows and it will ask u all the same questions again. where is the config file part? i just set up a debian machine of netinst. it's not mandrake or redhate, so it doesn't have as much autodetection, but as long as i knew what hardware was actually IN the damn thing, i could easily install all the necessary stuff.
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
As a Linux user of 4 years now, I bought a new iMac a few months ago and have to say I have been nothing but impressed. I have a beautifully configured Linux box at work, but the thought of going home to the same thing after a 9 to 10 hour day didn't fill me with joy, plus I was concerned that I would be forever recompiling KDE betas when my wife wanted to check her email, which wouldn't lead to a happy family life. Yet I refuse to have a dull Microsoft box in the house.
The iMac has proved a superb compromise. Both my children are addicted to the various DK educational software the shop on Tottenham Court Road threw in. iPhoto is superb and the integration of Digital Cameras and Camcorders with the rest of the OS is seamless, my four year old can now take the camera and edit photos on the box without much help. And underneath it all is UNIX, it connects easily to my broadband connection, and all my IMAP, LDAP and SSH sessions to my corporate network work fine, making it the perfect machine to use for working from home (and it looks good too).
So I wouldn't described myself as someone who has switched from Windows or Linux, rather Apple achieved a sale where nothing would have been bought in it's place. I am confident I am not alone in this market segment, one of my friends with children the same age has bought an iMac for exactly the same reasons, and I know of others considering it.
My wife, a graphic designer and longtime Mac user, also hates the UI. The finder doesn't feel right to her, and she forgets about the doc at the bottom. iMovie even hides the doc from you. She started using my Vaio laptop, and she's ready to dump her iMac.
Everyone says the Mac "just works", but the iMac DV she has is cursed with the "sleep of death". It hangs at boot about one in every ten times, and it never comes back from sleep states.I just found the fix for it (after assuming it was the hardware controller going out over the last two years), and it's going to involve digging in the extensions and clearing the PRAM. This is no fun, and there's no diagnostic output. I'm just going to have to try a bunch of different combinations that Apple recommends and hope that something works.
My four-year-old daughter cried the first time she saw the new OS and wanted to know what happened to her computer. She still doesn't entirely understand why her games don't work well in OSX, and why she has to reboot into System 9.
I've been a longtime Mac user, and I did a lot of ThinkC and 68000 assembler programming in college. I stopped using Apple machines as my primary desktop when they killed the clones, but I kept maintaining my wife's system. I went out and bought OSX for her when they ported iMovie, mainly for iMovie2. I can't say I'm happy with the interface. I'm a WindowMaker user, so I know where it's coming from, but I constantly forget about the doc and lose my way in the administration app. Aqua looks pretty, but that doesn't make up for the quirky UI. A lot of my Linux-using friends show interest in it, but I can't recommend it to them, especially when Apple charges twice the price of a decent PC for half the computing power.
My guess is that the guys O'Reilly dug up have more money than they know what to do with and really only use their machines to browse the web and fill their iPods. Most were late adopters (though he touts them as "alpha geeks"), which makes me suspicious of their commitment to the platform. My guess is that, a year or so from now the next bit Microsoft marketing campaign will convince them to switch back to the PC.
The mulitple workspaces hack under OS X is just that -- a hack. It just hides apps selectively. You can't have an IE window on two different desktops, because hiding is at an application level.
Lowmag.net
I even checked the version before writing and still got it wrong. Wetware can be amazingly untrustworthy. Ditch me.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
That's it. Whilst I can temporarily live without the video conferencing, I consider the lack of an accounts package on a home machine to be a truly serious ommission. I realise this doesn't affect the US, but in the UK it kills the thing dead as a home machine. Virtual PC won't do by the way - if I'm switching environments I'm switching environments and don't want to run half and half.
Please Intuit. Please. You have an OS X-native Quicken, and you ave a UK Quicken for Windows. Surely it can't be beyond the wit of mankind to combine these products and produce a native UK Quicken?
Cheers,
Ian
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And what program besides a text editor makes a 30k file?
What program besides a text editor is useful for writing a sermon?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Jaguar may be a minor upgrade in name (0.1 increment), but in fact it is a huge upgrade. Compare changes from 10.1->10.2 to changes from Windows 98SE->Windows ME
My other sig is extremely clever...
Funny, when I saw their campaign, I sent apple an email about our switch story. We had moved from a Sun machine running Solaris to an Apple G4 running YDL. There were a number of advantages for us (including a good rep with our Apple dealer). The letter is still here. No response from Apple yet.
I also think that Tim O'Reilly is pretty crazy if he thinks that 15 people on a mailing list is statistically valid in any way. When he gets results like 1500, then we could start looking at the numbers.
And to those folks that say that MacOS X 'just works' as a desktop machine... well, I'm sorry, I have to disagree. For *work* I much prefer Linux . I can actually load and render www pages without the 'click-and-wait' that my colleagues using MacOS X have to suffer, I can compile all the apps I need easily, and can configure the machine the way *I* really want to (plus no NetInfo Manager!).
I find it frustrating every time I hear Linux users (whom I usually expect to have a clue) drool over the sickening and ugly desktop that is OSX.
But its Ok, because Darwin is free and Open Source, right? Right?
Wrong.
Apple are lying to you. Darwin is not free as in freedom. It is more restrictive than any other license, effectively asking you to accept that it covers running code, not just redistribution. Then there's the lack of privacy - any modifications have to be disclosed to a single, monopolistic party - Apple.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html. The FSF boycotted Apple, remember. Apple are not the saviour of the desktop, they are not a wonderful company, and they are not embracing freedom. Apple are just as evil, monopolistic and money-hungry as the rest of them.
"I think he was truly surprised at how little I cared about how big a market the Mac had" - Linus on Jobs
MS Office is, IMO, not evil(TM). If MS had stuck to Office, nobody would have a problem with them.
Say what you will - they have the best Office suite of applications, and there are two platforms you can use it on - Windows, or OS X. I know which I choose.
Think about that the next time somebody sends you a
-- james
My conclusion was different. She wasn't suckered . . . being suckered implies being deceived. She wasn't deceived at all. Her negative experiences have to do with unreasonable and unrealistic expectations about the switching experience. She can't print, she can't talk to her boyfriend, she misses her floppy disks, she doesn't understand CD-RW, she misses her left-clicking Windows mouse, her favorite font is gone, she can't figure out what keys perform what task.
In other words, she expected her new Apple Macintosh iBook laptop to behave _exactly_ like her old Microsoft Windows desktop PC. And when it didn't, she blames someone else for "seducing" her. Suckered, or typical modern consumer? I think the conclusion is obvious.
Last time I looked, neither SMTP nor POP gave a rat's ass what OS was running
Unless you are paying $$$ per month for an online service that doesn't use standard PPP to connect. Examples of such services include America Online, NetZero, and possibly MSN. Of those three, only America Online has a client for the Macintosh platform.
(but Salon, published by MSNBC, would NEVER do that, right?)
You're thinking of Slate, not Salon.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's not freeware (god forbid you have to pay for something), but I've been using it for a couple months and it's roughly a billion times better than the Space app.
Now all we need is focus-follows-mouse...
64 1/2 to 66 only (unless GT500 or BOSS).
67 & 68 are butt ass ugly
If Astrid is having problems with floppies, God forbid you put her in front on nano or vi! AppleWorks is more of her speed.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
to restock. I just bought an Apple Airport Card and they informed me if the box is open it's 10%.
Personally it makes sense to me. I mean have you ever purchased anything from an online store (say fucking buy.com) and when you open your *new* product it's fucked up (ie someone else already crammed the shit back into the box)? Then you email their support and they simply ignore you (note: buy.com avoid at all costs).
They ship the piece back and it is given a once over. In all likelihood it costs apple a lot more than 10% to do this. If you actually ran a company and sold products (hardware) you might be able to understand this. If not go back to asking if they would like fries with that.
I bought my first Apple in April. I got an iBook G3 500mhz in a steal from a local Circuit City that was closing its store. I bumped the memory up to 384MB and I'm currently running OS X 10.1.5 on it. I have to admit that its a little sluggish. I installed Debian on it a while back because, well I just wanted to. Linux and Gnome seemed to be much more responsive, although the mouse trackpad was just a little to sensitive for my tastes. But I've switched back. Why? Convenience. I take my iBook to work and plug it in to the network. When I get home and open it from sleep mode, it immediately recognizes my wireless. In linux, I had to always shutdown networking and restart it.
Why would I not switch to OS X full-time? Its the hardware. The G4 just can't keep up with Intel and AMD. I've noticed on the Mac forums that most longtime Mac users don't have a problem with the performance, but those of us who have come from the PC side feel the Mac is very slow.
The thing I'm interested in finding out is whether Jaguar (10.2) will improve the performance of my iBook. If it does, I'll buy it. Otherwise, I'll stay on 10.1.5.
You overgeneralize. For one thing, there are few people who learned to compute on MacOS 9: it just hasn' t been around for that long. I don't even know any of these "MacOS 9 users" that you speak of.
I, for one, learned on System 7. I had no problem learning DOS, Win 3.1, and the 9x/ME versions of Windows (all the same up to XP, which I haven't learned yet because I haven't had to work with it before.) And although I'm a nerd, my sister isn't, and she also learned Windows with no difficulty, although I doubt she could do anything low-level.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Agreed. If ./ is any indication of the way Linux users think going after them would be a waste of time. They are too caught up in the open source movement. They have more to complain about if you consider that both hardware and software(partially) is proprietary.
Let linux users pitch there agenda and let Apple sell computers that just work.
>Did you even read the complete article? Did she ever mention wanting to store MP3s on floppy?
>That is a size example of how most file formats today are bigger than what a floppy can hold.
38 pages, single space, Word 2K.doc file (written with cxoffice, thanks for asking) = 145k
You can fit a heck of a lot of text files on a floppy, even with Word. Personaly, I think she makes some good points, and it's a little sad to see geeks ripping her up based on her religion of all things.
AppleWorks is more of her speed.
By the tone of your previous comment, you seem to imply that only a text editor can create files under 1.4 MB and that a modern office suite such as AppleWorks will bloat a 30 KB sermon into a 2 MB file.
Not being able to fit a sermon onto a floppy? Please. I don't think even Microsoft Word could bloat a sermon into more than 1.4 MB.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I really think that there aim is really as steve jobs puts it the "windows fortress". Remember steve jobs has never forgotten how bill gates screwed him in the past.
Ever see Wild Kingdom where the two strong male dung beetles, or rams, or sloths, or oranguatans or whatever get into a fight over the female? After they punch the dookie out of each other for a couple of hours they are way too bruised and beaten to mount the female. Then, after all that effort and exertion, some wimply little genetic reject walks right up to the female and POW!
Kinda reminds me of the Linux/MS fight. So much effort and exertion between these two, and here comes Apple and POW!
Kinda makes you wonder about that weak little genetic reject...Maybe he's just *SMARTER*?
Vincit qui se vincit.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
The first point is that there is a very nice X server called Oroborous - the only feature missing is cut-paste between X and Mac apps, but that should come soon. I run a number of X apps including AbiWord under OS X.
But, yes, I have Word and Excel installed. And Gnumeric. And Yellow Dog Linux, but I boot into that less and less.
Between the good look-and-feel, the crashproofing, and the regular apps, my Mac G4 and iBook are my "appliance" computers.
Windows always gets in your way, and it often crashes (the stability is inversely proportional to the usefulness - more hardware and more add on software and something will conflict). But things like stealing focus and locking it - if it is going to take 2 minutes to come up I can shoot off an email, but no... Vmware (or Virtual PC) is great in this regard.
Mac OS X just works. If I want to pull tracks off a CD, it is a no-brainer. I don't have any difficulty doing it under Linux, but it is easy to the point of almost no interaction on the mac for many things. Including iPhoto when I want to print.
But if I want to tinker, I just open a terminal window and I have something very close to Linux. A few hardware hacks and tweaks are missing at the margin (Apple needs to spend a little while with Darwin - sometimes I need to change my MAC address or generate strange packets when I am testing - the Sysadmins love linux point was right on, and I have several Linux boxen including two Zauri).
So there are a few warts on the "linux" face of Mac OS X, but they are rare and the rest work exactly like Linux. And the Macintosh/apple face lets me get a lot more done without any tweaking. It is to the point I use fetchmail procmail spamassassin and mutt for reading and processing my mail but use the mail app to send from URLs.
The hardware might be proprietary (maybe less so, terrasoft makes boxes that run Mac OS X), but it is very cool. The LCD screens are very easy on the eyes, and try pricing large ones for the PC. And it does run Linux.
Linux and BSD were always rivals, and Apple has put it in one very nice package. With an iBook or PowerBook, you get most of the benefits of a unix OS with almost none of the tweaking.
I switched. I run a powerbook G4 as my primary machine, although I work with Sun hardware, Windows 2000 boxes and Linux boxes. My gaming machine is going to be x86 for the forseeable future.
:).
On the desktop, I don't have time to fiddle with things anymore. I like being able to snap in my digital camera and download it's contents in 5 seconds, without a kernel recompile. All of the apps and command line programs I got used to on linux have for the most part been ported - ah, the power of open source. OpenGL works flawlessly, and it comes with a nice set of developer tools and great developer support. Sockets even work right! It is bsd, after all
That said, I still use my linux box under the desk all the time as a server and for more industrial programming jobs. I will say the main reason for that is I haven't been able to justify getting a powermac yet - the new dual machines are very attractive, and if EDA tools became available they would make a more attractive platform for some things than Sun even.
As far as cost goes, the hardware isn't that bad relative to the time and productivity increase. The 10.2 upgrade, for what it offers, is a pittance, and most people in the target market have no problem justifying the expense. Propietary hardware is no big deal either. I use the computer to get work done! If (computer.doingJob()) { happy++; }
Say it with me : Computers are a tool. Tools make work easier. This is a new, novel viewpoint for myself, coinciding with using the mac for awhile. Beware! hehe.
There was a time in my life where I had time and inclination to fight with everything, but I don't have that luxury now. OS X arrived just in time.
My $0.02, you think powermacs are expensive, try it in fake money (www.apple.ca).
..don't panic
The perfect target audience for Macintosh is MS-Windows users, though it's not too bad for development. Most non-tech types are only interested in web, e-mail, word processing and maybe even a spreadsheet or two. The uptime and battery life are additional bonuses. Some people I know try to choose their notebooks based on battery life.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Linux core usage is in Internet servers, compute servers, engineering and scientific applications, embedded systems, and systems research. OS X just isn't quite a replacement for those--not quite as functional, not quite as efficient, not quite as cost effective. And OS X's greatest assets--its style, its ease of use for inexperienced users, don't matter as much in those applications.
Where OS X may appeal to Linux users is as a second machine, to replace that Windows machine they use for MS Word. But the sensible main target for OS X advertising is still Windows users.
O'Reilly also notes that the poll is not accurate due to the nature of the sample group. Proposing Apple target *nix users instead of Windows users is ridiculous on the basis of this admittedly unreliable data (skewed towards *nix users).
Surely Apple are the people to ask about this, especially as they ask people to write in if they make the switch. And since there has been no significant shift in advertising, it would seem that those switching from Windows is greater than the proportion switching from *nix.
Seriously, I really do believe that the age of the user is about the only relatively "constant" factor when it comes to willingness to adapt/change with a new OS/software.
The idea that "Mac users are inflexible." is just as silly as saying "Linux users are inflexible." or "Windows users are inflexible." In any of these cases, some are and some aren't.
Having done nearly 10 years of PC support now - I can assure you that the older PC users, almost without exception, have been the ones most afraid of changes. They come from a world before the personal computer. The devices they used to get tasks done rarely changed much. (EG. They might have gone from a manual to an electric typewriter over the years, but they still worked almost the same way. The changes were very incremental and rather logical, such as the evolution of correction tape and finally correction fluid to fix typing errors.)
Then the computer came along, and threw them a BIG learning curve. Just when they struggled through that and mastered using their mouse, computer keyboard with function keys and all, and a few popular applications - people want to go and change the entire look and feel of everything! Younger folks grew up with the idea that computers are sort of "empty slates, waiting to get painted with whatever strikes the developer's fancy". Interface changes are treated like interior decorating... You do it once in a while just for the sake of freshening up the look of things. Believe me, the older users don't share that belief!
Salon is not published by MSNBC, Salon is an independent magazine that has been extremely critical of Microsoft and very supportive of Open Source Software.
No, what's silly is that you didn't find Fire, which is a multi-protocol chat client that lets you (big drum roll) enter aliases for gobbledygook screen names on IRC. I have never been a big IRC fan, but according to Epicware, Fire supports IRC just fine, and has the aliasing feature you wanted.
Moral of the story really is to ask experienced Mac users before you assume something "can't" be done with the mac and do something drastic like sell it/throw it out the window. A good start is the forum at MacAddict.com. If that particular site doesn't turn you on, you can google for literally thousands of Macintosh discussion bulletin boards. Maybe your friend will sell the Mac back to you?
Who did what now?
Fry's Electronics doesn't charge a restocking fee. I returned my PowerBook last year because it was bending at the corners. They refunded my money and I was on my way.
As much as I like Linux/KDE, I find myself too frequently having to reboot into Windows because of some commercial app that there's no Linux equivalent for as yet.
The biggest problem I would suppose for app developers (aside from Linux market share) is that there's no one standard API for Linux desktop apps because of all the competing distros. At least with Win and Mac the app developers have a clearer API to work with.
If I could get MacOSX for cheap x86 hardware, I'd switch in a second!
No, people are now too smart to waste their time dicking around in pointlessly different config file formats, instead of using the software to get something done. If it makes you feel clever, that's great, but don't mistake memorization of worthless arcana for some moral superiority on your part.
*ahem*
:)
They themselves state that RC5 is a poor overall CPU performance benchmark
"Many other CPUs do not have built-in hardware rotate instructions and must emulate the operation by (at the very least) two shifts and a logical OR. This handicap is why many non-32bit-Intel [1] and non-PowerPC computers run RC5 slower than one might expect based on real-world benchmarks. It is also the main reason why the RC5 client is a poor benchmark to use in determining the speed or performance of a particular CPU."
It also helps the G4 quite a bit that they have an Altivec crunching core for RC5, whilst there isn't an SSE cruncher for those of us living in x86 world
Well actually, I was referring to the Apple hardware itself - more than anything else.
Sure, they have USB now - so that opens up a few more expansion options than before. Still, you have to always use the "Apple approved" hardware, which is quite a limited selection compared to the options available for a PC.
For just one example, look at all the answering machine/voice mailbox type cards for a PC. Now, tell me how many of them you see for a Mac platform? How about TV/radio add-on boards? How about industrial control boards?
No, she's using OS X, but also running at least one Classic-mode application: "Are you sure it says 'error -7531'?" "Yes, I'm sure." "Macs don't do that." "Mine's doing it."
I emailed an offer of free tech support to her about an hour ago. Wonder if she'll reply.It's "Quelle surprise", because "surprise" is female: it is "une surprise" and not "un surprise".
Not to bash you, just the friendly advice of your local frenchie. I get bashed for my english all the time here on slashdot.
I didn't so much "switch" as fall into OS X's loving embrace.
;-) (It's not like they're much, I think the most I've for shareware far has been US$20).
... man, that program *rocks*. I'd "switch" to OS X from Linux just for that. The inbuilt PDF stuff is also very cool, and the fact that I can run Photoshop and the (surprisingly excellent) MS Office brings OS X a suite of much more stable apps than are available under Linux.
;-) I didn't think it would ever come to that, but I've taken the sweet delicious Apple bait, hook, line, and sinker.
Having seen the Titanium PowerBook G4s on display in the Apple shops, that drool-worthy stop outside the display window became a regular pausing point on my way home from Uni. The student discount price made it even more attractive, so after a while of saving up the sweet silvery sexiness that is a TiBook was mine.
A Linux user of 4 years, I used to boot into Windows to play games like Baldur's Gate II, knowing that I would be able to combine the excellence and stability that I'd come to take for granted with Linux with the ease of use and hardware integration that Windows offered, but with a much sexier look and feel, and no hideous Start bar, I was hooked instantly.
I tried for a while running rootless X in order to have my favourite Linux apps (XChat for one - available through the rather excellent 'fink'), but soon gave that up because even with the "Aqua-esque" themes, GTK and the WMs I was using just didn't quite make the aesthetic grade. I've since found an XChat-alike (Snak) and either ports of or apps that are similar to the ones I used to use under Linux. Sure, you have to pay for some of them, but I found that I didn't have a problem with this (I'm not really in the FS philosophy camp, preferring the BSD license anyway) and figured that if the programs I used regularly under Linux were shareware I'd probably pay for them too
There are, of course, plenty of excellent free (and Free, for those who care) apps available for OS X.
However, the best point of OS X is all the excellent bundled software that comes with it. iTunes is simply divine, iPhoto is
Don't get me started on the *hardware*. The networking is as simple as a very simple thing, wander between WLAN and traditional cables and OS X doesn't miss a beat. Not to mention that the Airport cards are seriously kickarse. Great range (due to the aerial being lined up the screen), and fantastic integration with the OS. Under Linux I'd be fiddling around with ifconfig and routing tables and such - not so under OS X.
Turn on Apache with a checkbox, ready to go. FTP? No problem, another checkbox. SSH? Certainly! Check that box too! I hear 10.2 has a seriously nice firewall configuration tool coming with it, I'm looking forward to *that*.
The display is something that has to be seen to be believed. Never have I seen such luscious crisp images on a laptop LCD. And the machine is *quiet*. Unless you're doing something graphics-intensive or spinning up the seriously kickarse combo drive (CDRW/CDROM/DVD), it's virtually silent. A fan kicks in when there's some excitement happening, but in my experience it's only when I've been playing games/watching DVDs or using the combo drive a lot.
And yes, you *can* use a 3-button mouse.
So where does that leave my trusty desktop Linux box? Acting as a local mail server and backup machine
Ever taken a UI course? Multiple choice question:
User Interface design emphasizes:
I used to support a 20-person Mac office in my spare time while running a minor publishing operation. When the Windows folks would move in, they invariably had learned quite detailed, rigid procedures for how to do every little thing, and it was really hard to encourage them away from their patterned behaviors. They'd learned to cope with things in one particular way, the first one they'd managed to make work, and every change was scary trauma to them. In one case a woman had screwed up every extension on her box -- renaming extensions based on the project -- but she knew to open everything from inside her apps, and she wouldn't, couldn't, change. Moving to the Mac OS made her files openable either way -- it wasn't reliant on extensions for file types -- but she never did figure that out. Just kept plodding right along.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
So let's say one is running OSX 1.5 that they didn't actually ...uh...buy. If this certain someone buys the upgrade, are they going to be able to install it or does one have to be a registered owner of the 1.5?
I just checked their page. The latest version fixes this bug, so you can run at Millions of Colors if you want to. I'm not sure what kind of impact this will have on speed (positive? negative? none?) but I at least appreciate the opportunity to run at whatever settings I want.
and pc's aren't? how about nvidia? do you have the verilog or whatever source for you pc mobo's chipset?
Come on. Use that brain for something besides earplugs.
People who can only rarely be bothered to contribute 5-50 bucks to keep open source companies or publications going are the best target niche?
What utter rubbish.
No you don't. The only thing keeping all those answering machine/TV/industrial control cards incompatible with Macs is their manufacturer's failure to write Mac drivers. But since you're "more than the 'average user'" you must already know that.
I will type this slowly so you can get my point, "The Floppy is dead" and its continued promotion is a disservice to the public. It is not a cost effecient storage medium, takes up a ridculous amount of space for its storage ability and environmentally unsound. A 20 cent 700mb CD is far more efficient than a 5 cent 1.5mb Floppy. The only group that still believes in this tech are the floppy manufacturers and their marketing departments.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Well, the linux users may only make up 1% or less of the market, but they tend to be sys admins network admins, and others who have well respected opinions. For them to get the average user to linux is impossible, but if they get into mac osX, and they endorse it. That could make great waves.
Alright, let me set a record straight here, because it seems like with the announcement of the Jaguar pricing, Apple has suddenly become a money grubbing leech. I have been with Apple since system 7 and every time a release has come out that has moved the first decimal place (ie 7 - 7.5, 7.5-8.0, 8.0-8.1) apple has always charged full price for the new system, the only exception being 9.1-9.2 So the full price charge from 10.1 to 10.2 is completely acceptable and consistant with theri business practices. Now let me tell you about getting it cheaper.
1) Are you a teacher or a student or in any way affiliated with a school (do you get a paycheck froma school?) If so, you get Jaguar for the educator price ($79?)
2) Are you an ADC member? Check with your discount benifits, you may be able to get a discount.
3) Can you stand to wait about 2 months? If so, wait till the price drops in the mail order places.
And when you consider that that price includes 2 OSes (they are still shipping OS 9 with it right?) and the developer kit, you get a nice deal for $120
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Fine. I take back all my statements. Astrid the Priestess is a freakin' rocket scientist because she makes the valid point that the floppy is a far more efficient and durable storage medium than the CD-RW. How foolish could I be?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
...
This has been true as far back as I can remember in Mac OS: back to 1986 or so. Apps may be dependent on system extensions, so moving them from one box to another might not fly, but you've always been able to move 'em around on the machine, and to delete them with a simple trashing.
The linking model is simple. The loading model is simple. applescript scripts most apps and is way easier to use than COM or bonobo.
Applescript has been easy and powerful for a long time. That's one reason publishing houses love the Mac OS; Applescripting stuff in Photoshop makes their lives easier in a hundred ways. Similar things could be said about the various linking approaches in Mac OS over the years -- they were thought out, solid designs.
The sad part is, most of what macosx has done could and still can be done on linux.
I agree totally -- but it's easy to undersell the experience and commitment of a company like Apple when it comes to User Interface. Apple's invested in getting it right. The contrast between Windows and Mac has always come down to that for me. You take pleasure from using a Mac box, and you don't from dealing with Windows. I'm not sure Linux is going to catch up any time soon. Partly the development model that goes with Linux is decentralized to the point where any coherent process for UI design is, if anything, deprecated. (Mac users like their interface, but it's only because they're "rigid," and so on.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I was in Target the other day. While the wife was looking for lightbulbs or something I checked out the software. I couldn't help overhearing two teen-aged boys who were also looking at the software, while they weren't kicking and pushing each other. One boy said, "We're getting a new computer -- we're getting a Mac." Often when I've heard teenagers say things like that, they will spit it with venom, but this boy didn't. The other kid said, "Yeah? How come?" and the first boy replied, "Because our PC SUCKS!" I think that if the economy picks up just a bit, Apple could have a real hit on their hands -- I wonder if there isn't a substantial number of people who bought a PC, discovered that it SUCKED and have decided that, if they ever buy another computer there's no way in hell that they'll buy a PC again.
Never pay for something that "must" be included in the operating system. Apple has a long way to go to get a real Unix system on the desktop and not just a system for clowns...
You are stpuid, and must have WAY to much time on you hands. I thank god that I can come home from an office of Linux servers and desktops and use my system that just works.
I find it absurd that you compare an Apple computer to a BMW. Maybe a Honda, but a BMW? Most people that log on to / have more experience with computers than your average Mac user (or Windows user for that matter).
Over priced hardware that is rather slow, and an operating system that is rather primitive doesn't equal BMW status. Do you even own a BMW?
I took a fucking switch to that POS OS people around here call. Linux. The mofo: does security for shit, has to be wanked on, wont can't doesn't seem to enjoy the ode to double click that is my dick up it's mother fucking ass when ever this POS want's to mount a floppy. I took a big ass switch to it and told it: you mother fucker are fired! then found the godess that is BSD oh let me tell you encripting my entire hard drive and my connection to this POS linux box, and then to my other godess: the windows box, runing a quake game is alright but when I want to get something real done and get jacked up 'n good to go is the fucking shit. You fagy ass rump mother fucking rangers won't see the shit till your homosexual parter dumps it in your' face.
http://homepage.mac.com/hackswitch
It looks like the production was cheesy, but funny (especially the clips at the end)
Umm, I hate to burst your bubble but every mac user for quite a while now has dropped the floppy. My mom bought a USB floppy with her (now 5 year old and still running) iMac because she thought she would need it. I think it's still shrinkwrapped in the box.
Oh wait a second, you mean all Mac users are advanced computer users? Why thank you!
=P
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
yes, its called a vertically integrated monopoly.
good thing its the beloved apple and not microsoft though, people dont mind when "good, wholesome" companies like apple break the law
they sell the hardware, the OS, and periphereals.
the non Apple hardware mfg's are getting better now.
but what about the whole clone debacle in the past.
No, it's recomended you use Apple aproved hardware, however it is not nessesary. Believe me, I have a USB card in my old 5400 that has no Apple drivers, I just use the deneric UDB drivers. I have a mouse that has no Apple aproved stickers, but with a nice little program called USB overdrive, it works fine. I have an HD made by western digital. NO MAC DRIVERs (since when were drivers nessesary for HDs? I don't know) Botted it up, the computer said the drive was unformated, formatted and it runs just fine. ANd this was ll on a 5400, the new ones are even more open.
As for the cards, it's not Apple's responsibility to write those drivers, just like it isn't M$s to write them. So if you want a card for your mac, write to the manufacturer and demand your drivers. Or write some yourself.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I'll move this off-topic discussion to my journal.
Will I retire or break 10K?
So let those linux users whose lack of foresight, commitment to true openess, and apparently overstocked bank accounts to pay for all of this OSX "switching" business go ahead and buy, buy, buy. My linux PC is still faster and cheaper...and when it's not anymore, I can just spend the $150 on a faster chip and make it so.
Why bother? I concede. The Floppy is the ultimate storage device. Death to the CD-RW, your efficiency is suspect!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
- drinking two cans of Coca Cola or Pepsi every day
- driving 20 miles per day
- going to the movies (not counting the $1 second-run places) once per week
People who complain about Mac cost, are short-sighted.But there is something to not like.
I admit that part of the reason I switched from Amiga to Linux, is that Linux worked ok. Not great, but Good Enough most of the time. But Linux has one other advantage: I feel safe from corporate madness here.
Linux will never have built-in DRM. Linux will never be killed or perverted by its creators for marketing reasons. Irving Gould will never criminally mismanage something I care about and depend on, Bill Gates will never sell me out to Hollywood, and Steve Jobs will never be able to make me eat something I don't want. With Free Software, the user gets the final say in what they run, and never has to depend on anyone else. Of course, you do a lot better if you do partake of others' efforts, but you get to pick who the others are, and you always have the last say and the ultimate veto. Freedom and personal responsibility: what a match!
I don't trust Apple. This goes beyond mere doubt: I am 100% certain that they will screw users if they ever feel they have to. Steve Jobs may be talking tough on music-related stuff right now, but I also know that MacOS' built-in DVD player is DVDCCA licensed, and doesn't have Firewire output. Think about how mind-bogglingly ridiculous that is, in light of the machine's capabilities. My Linux workstation can't play DVDs to Firewire either (yet), but this isn't on purpose, if you know what I mean.
That said, MacOSX looks like a nice system, and I particularly like Mac hardware (and no, I'm not talking about the Fisher-Price look). Mac+MacOs (not x86+Linux) is still my current recommendation for "casual" users. I wouldn't mind using it myself, as long as I never came to depend on it. I now understand when it's safe to trust, and when it isn't. MacOSX isn't safe, because it isn't Free.
Being Free still isn't a fanatical-value that outweighs all other considerations for me yet, but it's getting closer with every passing month. Every time Congress passes a tyrannic law and every time Microsoft makes their a sweet promise, it becomes a little easier to see what's really important in a personal computer.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
are not loaded & configured by default in Man 8.2
Go see what happens when you log onto a site with 3 different flash menues, you get 3 popups asking you log onto the netscape plugin page. Then you've got to click download, work out it went went into the bloody Uhix tree & then get the bloody plugin working.
Yeah, I'm a recovering MCSE and the only reason I can see to move tools around is to drive revenue in the training division.
My other Win2k gripe relating to Active Directory is that, by design, you HAVE to use their goofy-ass DNS server. Further, said DNS server must be on the domain controller.
Why in the world does DNS have to be on the same box as the domain controller? I mean, if you're running a huge enterprise, having iron to do both functions simultaneously and also buy a redundant box that gets expensive. Tell me how much Dell stock Gates owns, anyway?
Who did what now?
The opinion of anyone who reminisces about the durability and speed of floppy disks is not worth very much.
Any fool who can't figure out how to email a file to herself instead of carrying around an unreliable floppy disk has no business writing about computers. The floppy is dead, long live the networked computer.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Why don't people figure this stuff out BEFORE they get married? :)
I plan on purchasing a Mac in the near future, but I will continue using Linux, FreeBSD and Windows (yes, even Windows). I have been messing around with the iMac and OS-X, and I am really impressed. Not enough to make it my sole OS, but I would like to spend more time investigating the intracies of the Mac and OS-X
No matter where you go... there you are.
is run on any kind of hardware you care to name. If Apple would port OS X to x86 hardware, you'd see a hell of a lot more people switching.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Your statement that you have to buy Apple approved hardware is completely specious. Umh...drivers? Are you saying Apple hardware is proprietary because their OS team doesn't write drivers for every arcane third party PCI card on the market? I don't get the logical connection.
This kind of abuse of the word "proprietary" is really out of control. I recently heard an engineer refer to AppleTalk as a proprietary protocol. LOL! not only is it a well documented published standard, but Apple lets their engineers bug-fix free Netatalk ( a free implementation of the suite).
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
doesn't make it cumbersome. You can't find the terminal? Bring up a finder window. Click on the applications button at the top. Find the Utilities folder (should be somewhere near the bottom, you can always resort the window). Now, find the terminal icon in this window. Drag the icon onto the dock. At this point, it'll always be there for you, one click away. Repeat for any other app you intend to use frequently. If you find that you aren't using one of these apps frequently, drag it off the dock and watch it go *poof*.
Of course, I run XDarwin in fullscreen mode, and xterms are a matter of me pressing ``x'' on the background. cmd-opt-a takes me back to Aqua where I have my web browser and whatever else I don't run under X.
If the screen's to small, get a bigger one, or another one (my powerbook will drive a second head at 2048x1536, although I haven't pulled out the 18" LCD since I bought it).
What you need to realize, though, is that your Linux box isn't as capable. My wife runs KDE on her iBook (under OS X). She also runs iMovie for simple NLE, and processes some of her video with quicktime (as do I, but I'm a twm guy, myself). While gphoto is somewhat nice, it's not iPhoto. I haven't used a lot of gui MP3 players, but iTunes will play mp3s that mpg123 will not, and it makes mastering CDs easy (although the shell scripts on my FreeBSD box were usually easy enough).
There have been a few problems, sure (OpenOffice spreadsheets won't let me add numeric values for whatever reason, so we're stuck with koffice in the meantime), but overall, it's been everything I've been getting out of other systems, plus tons of OS X and OS 9 software (stupid handspring doesn't support OS X yet, so I have to use OS 9 software, which works flawlessly).
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
I'd just like to voice my opinion that if you design a piece of hardware/software and you need to read the manual to get basic utility out of it, then you have failed as a designer. You should *NOT* have to read the manual to get an OS installed and usable. If you want to recompile the kernel or whatnot, I'd sure say that's advanced; but for basic usage, there is no reason you should have to.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
You know I don't read this as a negative story at all. I read this as a tongue-in-cheek diatribe about the advancement of technology. If you'll notice, she points out that she used to love the Mac, she cracks on Windows, etc. I get the feeling she was Mac OS 7 thru 9 user that's been dragged kicking and screaming to the realities of a new, more-stable OS.
blog |
Of course the player is licensed! Did you not pay any attention to what happened to Dell when they put DVD drives in their system without playing "Mother May I"? You can't just run around willy nilly throwing DVD support in things. It makes Big Media get angry and lay the litigation smackdown on you. Apple may have a cash surplus now, but it sure as hell wouldn't be there after they finished paying off the goons for violations.
Merci, mon ami ;)
Le Français n'est pas ma première langue, mais j'essaye.
When people switch to a new desktop(be it Apple or PC), why not put a great free OS on that old PC. I think that's the beauty of Gnu/Linux and is where my Linux boxen have always come from.
In other words, she expected her new Apple Macintosh iBook laptop to behave _exactly_ like her old Microsoft Windows desktop PC. And when it didn't, she blames someone else for "seducing" her.
And you don't think there's any relevance in the fact that Apple's entire "Switch" campaign is based on the principle of "you can do everything you're used to doing on your PC"?
Absolutely. Having been predominantly a MacOS user for 16 years, I've never been freaked by new UI "innovations" in any new itteration of Windows.
More often than not, I find myself saying: "Oh, they finally brought functionality x up to speed" and even more often: "Why bury x settings all the way down there?"
I suspect most of the apprehension a Mac user experiences is due to the fragility and obscurity of the Windows UI - much like a stern schoolmaster - whereas the MacOS (and OS X especially) treats the user like a forgiving parent...
I hate Grammar Nazi's
There are Linux users, and there and GPL Zealots.
Linux users, who use a computer, are optimal for targeting the switch campaign at.
The "blind faith" contingent headed by the likes of RMS, on the other hand, would be wasted ad money. They don't use an Open OS, they live an open OS and revere crazy ol' RMS as some sort of deity. Despite the fact he's a nutball with one hell of a fucked up license.
From Fire's sourceforge.net page that you linked to:
Currently Fire handles AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Jabber, limited IRC, and Yahoo! Pager communications.
I assume you were using 'IRC' to sum all those messaging services into one.
Of losing all ability to communicate with my Euro-traveling boyfriend and PC user ("Look: It's me or that Mac!").
Last I checked, there's MSN Messenger for Mac, several different email clients, and I can print to my HP printer just by plugging it in - didn't even need to install a driver. Did it ever occur to you that your boyfriend is a control freak (or he's trying to find an excuse to dump you)?
Of being exiled into the lonely desert of incompatible files, botched PowerPoint presentations, and gobbledy-gook attachments...
Blame the MacBU. They make PowerPoint for Mac, not Apple.
I'm nostalgic for my dear (not so floppy) floppies, poor things,
My USB floppy drive is recognized in moments. I doubt the PC would be any faster with a USB drive.
Suddenly, Disk Utility has become the most important feature on my desktop
Repeat after me - I can buy Mac-formatted floppies instead of using Disk Utility
Tempus Sans font and always forces me to use this darn Helvetica.
If it's so damned important for you to have Tempus Sans, then buy the font.
Switched in July 2001, and never going back.
... or people talking about "switching to a Mac" seem to have a *obscene* amount of money to spend in computers?
:-)
:-) And one of the reasons I use OSS is because it's free (like free beer). Call me anything you want, but it's just like that :-)
:-) And I'd like to try it with some "Mac geek" around, because if I tried it on my own I'm sure I'd be losing many of the features it has. But til that day, I'm a Mac-skeptic :-)
I don't know exactly what's the cost of a new Mac, but IIRC it's quite more expensive than a PC with the same features. And then, people buying Macs buy gorgeous LCD monitors, and all the latest-and-hippest hardware. That smells like big money to me, too much for a IT proleatrian
Besides, there's the software. I know that now you can use many OSS apps with OSX, and I think it's great; but the case is that, if I'm going to use the same apps that I use in Linux, why switch?
Anyway, I'm getting eager and eager to try a Mac someday. Hey, if everyone talks so good about them, at least it may be worth try it
My weblog in spanish
sudo chown -R
sudo rm -rf Mozilla/
Buy a three button mouse. I did.
And apps usually close fine. I have to use force quit less often than I have to kill an app in Linux, or use task manager in windows.
especially when Apple charges twice the price of a decent PC for half the computing power.
Search for "megahertz myth," astroturfer.
When I originally start with computers, my os was windows 95. At the time, I thought this was the best OS because of the wide ranging support. I could type papers, surf the internet, and pass the time playing games. There was one problem with the os- stability. I soon progress onto win98se with my second computer but the problem never went away. One day, a friend at school introduce me to Linux. I was intrigue by his enthusiasm for the OS, so I decide to give it a try on my old computer. The installation was difficult, there was limited application support compare to windows, and I was put off by altering config file just to get all my computer components to work. Though my experience was limited, I did see the value in the os in terms of stability and cost of using a unix based os.
Then one day, while I was watching a Macworld, SJ introduce "the future of the MacOS" which he said was based on the unix variant BSD. He touted that it would gain stability as a result. I new this to be true from my foray into linux. So, though I had long since dismissed the Macintosh, I decided to give Apple serious consideration when I bought my next computer. The following summer, I purchase a Powerbook. Even without OSX, I was impressed with the design and features of the notebook. Later, I became an early adopter of the OS and never look back. As I did with windows, I could type papers, surf the internet, and even play games. I could also compile open source programs to give the os some extra functionality such as full file sharing with windows computers.
I no longer have to support Microsoft's monopoly just to stay compatible. I can even install Linux in order to enhance understanding about the os.
In my opinion, OS X possesses the best of both Linux and Windows. Since using Apple and OSX, my computing experience has become a joy as oppose to a frustration.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Quite odd..other publications that carry more clout than the moniker "Anonymous Coward" disagree with you, as do I. See the most current Slashdot topic for more information. ..and for the record I find it absurd that you think Apples or Hondas are slow and primitive.
--- What
Nope. I've used the product many times, and was just reporting to the individual in question that it was (among other things) an IRC client that handled aliaees...
Who did what now?
I was looking around for a laptop that met a somewhat pick list of criteria:
The capabilities issue is resolve simply by shopping for new hardware, not used hardware; besides, laptops don't seem to go down in price as much as desktops.
So, I looked around; I looked at Dell, Sony and IBM; all have laptops that meet my size and weight criteria, but they're expensive; or they have laptops that meet my modest performance criteria, but they're heavy bricks.
And after some research, I found that it's actually easier to get Linux going on an iBook with its relatively standardized hardware (except for the radeon mobility video card) that it is to get Linux going on the Sony Vaio of the month with different (linux incompatible) hardware every month or two.
I talked to a couple of people with different models of the sexy little Sony Vaio laptops; they all said they were great computers, but you couldn't get X, Y or Z to work under Linux because nothing else on the planet uses their variety of stuff and they seemed to have a problem with falling apart when dropped (more than other equipment).
So, I ended up buying a Mac because it was cheaper than the proprietary intel based laptops.
(Of course, I've got Debian on there but I've mostly been using MacOS/X which turns out to be quite painless to use; download their devel kit, add fink and it's kinda like Linux with a bit of commercial application support)
I help run a Linux Users Group. There certainly are a lot of people who put together a second computer to use Linux on, but in my experience the *serious* Linux users have their biggest and best machine running Linux. That's certainly the way I have it at work: the newest, best machine with all the hard drive space and CPU and RAM runs Linux and the infrequently uses Windows 2000 box is the older slower one that I mostly access with VNC.
However, amongst gamers you'd be right: gamers use Windows. they might dual-boot to Linux now and then or have a second little box thrown together from spare parts with Linux on it, but their primary OS is Windows because their primary task is games and the primary OS for games is Windows.
Steve Jobs does not need your charity:
Get the full story from Fortune.
Still feel like giving? How about donating to a real 503(c) like the Gnome Foundation.
Hey - she's the one who made her religious occupation / life a major component of the article. It seems only natural people would continue mixing the religious part in with the technical.
The price is a VERY important point. I've also tried to get /.'s attention on the extremely aggressive methodology Apple's beginning to use - buying up Shake and then essentially wiping out all the other ports with a "2 for 1" offer if you go OSX. Combine this with the Pixar/Apple/nvidia destruction of Exluna's Entropy renderer(with NVidia courting Apple to get their cards in the next generation Apple hardware), and this company is starting to play like MS. I guess /. didn't feel that they should have posted either of those stories because they're obviously OSX fans. Apple is going to start repeating the Final Cut Pro/Shake model as a method to *force* user's to go OSX instead of Linux, and I'm baffled that more people here don't see it as a tangible threat to Linux!
I'll never give them my money now...and it's a shame because there are some things to like about OSX(although I still loathe the fat graphic GUI crap).
DT
A floppy doesn't give busy signals or suddenly stop working for causes beyond your control. That's more than I can say for any Internet access I've ever seen.
That was my path. Sure I still have a Win98SE machine around for games but I completely dumped Linux and its no sound, stupid ugly X Server, Gnome on Monday, KDE on Tuesday, nothing the same twice junk.
Look I love the whole Linux thing. I dig the Peguin, the free (as in no payment,) and the community is _mostly_ (screw you RTFMers) helpful and glad to be of help. But it was a pain in the ass. Sometimes I just want to do some work and not fuck with a config file.
Bottom line OS X works, it has Apps, it runs on excellent hardware and dopey teens with DSLs switch to it all the time. (wink)
This
As implied by the subject, I do like PPC hardware, but I'd chose to run Linux on it.
;-) and I can't create new ones to simplify things that I do frequently.
Those that have switched are quick to point out all of the same beautiful aspects of OS X, and before they do I'll say this: I've seen them. I've used it. I know. You don't have to sell me on OS X. I used it for long enough to know about all of the goodies, and I'll still take Linux and GNOME.
OS X, in trade for "just working", does not fit to the user, expecting the user to fit to the software instead.
Keybindings don't "just work"; I never found documentation listing the standard keys (though I'm sure someone will post a URL in reply to this comment
The Terminal doesn't "just work". Actually, the terminal emulator is probably the worst that I've ever used, on any platform.
UNIX source code often doesn't "just work" because OS X's kernel differs from UNIX in ways that are nothing short of bugs, which the developers don't seem keen to fix. (For example, when you try to create an IPv6 socket in 10.1, the kernel returns EPROTONOSUPPORT instead of EAFNOSUPPORT, which it should)
For the same reason I like Emacs, I like Linux and GNOME (especially sawfish): I can make a macro or shortcut of anything. I fit the software to me because I know best how I work. In the end, OS X feels like a pair of too-tight store bought jeans. Linux is more like a tailored pair of pants.
There's a reasonable difference between doing the same tasks, and behaving the same way. Just because I don't have a "Start" button on the Mac doesn't mean I can't launch applications.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
Buy her an iPod. Have her keep a copy of the files on that. That's how several folks I know do things like SneakerNet files to work, or carry that extra copy of presentation if their laptop dies, or whatever. Bonus: it's also an MP3 player.
...which was to fuse Unix and the Mac.
;-)
I'd say we were 60% of the way there. We had decent GUIs (Gnome, KDE (which was really starting to rock when I left)), Netatalk for AppleTalk, Mac-on-Linux (hard to configure but quite good; perhaps a bit faster than the native Mac OS 9?) plus the usual assortment of OSS servers and applications.
When NeXT aquired Apple, I knew something big was going to happen. Years of speculating as to what would happen if Jobs came back to Apple was answered: first the iMac. Then OS X, which at first didn't look too hot.
When 10.1 came out, though, they got me back on the Apple wagon in full effect. Killing cloning was one step. If they hadn't made OS X, and that hadn't become as good as it is, I might not have ever come back.
But they did go to Unix. OS X gives me everything I love about Unix -- the stability, multitasking and multiprocessing from hell, and vi -- and melds it with the Mac in ways I never thought possible. The Mac's back, baby, and so much better than ever, ever before!
Now only if it were free...
But... here I am! I think differently about many, many things. Software's just one of them. (Politics being the other big one. Progressive, non-Democrat activists such as myself may seem to the world much like Linux users did to the rest of the world in 1997. But more on that later. And not here.)
anyway... No, OS X is not 100% open or free, but it's close enough that I'm pretty comfortable with it. (Sorry, RMS.)
And, Apple isn't behind TCPA. [shudder]
-- haaz.
Your OS rhymes with that word closer than Linux.
MacOSXistic
And look at you! for pete's sake. Trashing people like that so easily to make your point. What makes you any better ? Is your beloved OSX really _that_ great ?
Oh yeah, I do admire and respect RMS and Linus. Why ? Because of all their hard work which I, and many others, benefit from. They earned my respect. The system they helped built earned my respect.
No need for ads, computer-case-clad G4 bimbos and all those marketing crap.
=Spike=
nt=no text
The resounding consensus is that most folks appreciate how, compared to these other OSes, Mac OS X 'just works.'
Resounding consensus, my ass. Macs don't "just work" any more than *anything* "just works".
Don't believe me? Believe this.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I don't know what you guys are talking about, the DivX codec from divx.com works extremely well on my PBG4 500MHz, and their translator is very fast, producing files that are about 1-2MB larger than PC files, but play with PC codecs as well for DivX. Really the only problem with playing normal DivX files is that quicktime can't handle variable bit rate MP3s because the data is spread out across AVI frames which is out of spec, thus apple isn't/doesn't support it.
the problem was, that the ad was hardware focused. Blue screens are an OS issue. They were comparing hardware to software, which made absolutely no sense to anybody who knows better.
It would be nice if they had the balls to say OS-X is better than WIndows, and not that it's better than a 'pc'.
http://www.gnufoo.org/macosx/
And the opinion of someone who evaluates another person based of whether they use a floppy drive or not, is worth a hell of a lot less.
I was actually thinking about switching to OS X. I mean, it's
really _cool_. Then reality hit: there is absolutely no way
I can afford it. The cost of the upgrades at $100+ per pop,
the higher cost of Apple's hardware, the need to buy commercial
applications or else spend dozens of hours per app to get OSS
apps working (almost) correctly, the relative impossibility
of keeping the hardware current with small, incremental upgrades,
so that you have to replace the whole system at least twice as
often... I just can't afford it. My annual computer budget is
perhaps at most a few hundred bucks -- not a few *thousand*.
Now, if I made more money, I would probably get a PowerMac (not
that I'd throw out my PC...), but on what I make... it's just
out of reach. Please note that I'm not saying it's not worth
it, if you can afford it. I'm just saying, I can't afford it.
Oh, and one other thing: I doubt I'm alone.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Have you ever used a floppy?
And I have an ADB Wacom tablet - guess what? NO MAC DRIVERS.
And I have an ADB mouse - guess what? NO MAC DRIVERS.
This is hardware that used to work under Classic - but has been obsoleted by OS X.
I just bought an external firewire DVD drive, plugged it in, works great - except - GUESS WHAT?
iDVD and Apple's DVD player don't recognize it, because even though it's the same EXACT model number drive as is found as a built-in in their new models - Apple *disabled* the use of third-party drives for use with this software. That's even WORSE than requiring a special peice of hardware. That's saying: in order to use our software, you must not only buy OUR hardware, but you must buy a whole new system - and not just an ordinary system, you must buy one of our top of the line systems with the built in DVD burner.
I think that's proven that Apple is out to viciously suck as much money out of it's customers as it can now.
I've just about had enough, because I'm pretty much tapped out. I think I can just afford to assemble my own AMD-based Linux box, and I think I'm going to be much happier than having to swipe my credit card for Apple for every frickin little thing I want to do with my computer.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
10.2 has lots of new features, what did WinME have lots of Hype, but you don't hear about Microsoft refunding people the upgrade cost.
Maybe the reason WinME sucked so bad was to encourage people to upgrade to XP when it came out.
My other sig is extremely clever...
ITs worth bringing up Quicktime.
Quicktime is a file format, a libarary to work with the format, and a collection of codecs, most of whom are owned by other companies.
Apple has done all it can for quicktime-- its given it away to the world for free as an open standard as part of MP4. Granted they didn't adopt it wholesale, but all of apples engineering work for the Quicktime file format was given to MP4 and is available to everyone who wants to implement the standard. How can an open source advocate complain about that?
That Apple doesn't give away other people's codecs (That they HAVE TO PAY FOR) for other competing operating systems is not surprising. You expect apple to pay $5-$20 for every linux install that it gives codecs away for? And its not like its a simple port either-- the codecs on PowerPC are altivec optimized, so it would take significant work.
Yes, they PAY to have quicktime on Windows, and there's a strategic reason for that. But apple not choosing to subsidize your operating system is not in any shape "evil"
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
ADB wouldn't matter anyway since that hasn't been in a mac since 1998. If you're using a mac that has ADB ports with OS X then your mac is at the very least 4 years old. It's time to seriously consider getting a new one anyway. Besides it isn't apple's responsibility to support Wacom tablets, that's Wacom's job. Somehow I doubt your DVD drive is the same model as used in the new computers unless it also writes CDs, but even assuming it does, iDVD and the DVD player are fairly new in terms of software. Give it a while and it will support more drives (just like iTunes). OTOH if they disabled the ability to work with other drives, then what is preventing you from re-enabling it? Or looking for a third party hack which I'm sure is out by now? Yo're trying to convince me you are going to build an AMD-Linux box, but you can't hack a simple DVD player and burner to recognize other drives. That's almost unbeleivable.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Why do Gnome and KDE waste their time trying to replicate a second rate system? The user interface on Macintosh is clearly better than Windows. (Windows' organization philosophy: stick everything in the start menu and pray that it works.). Now that they have shown it can be cleanly integrated with unix, is there any reason to follow the footsteps of 'The One in Redmond'?
"..any platform that suits the job."
Replace platform with tool, then you'll understand, the more suited the tool for the job, the easier and better the job is to do.
The kind of rhetoric you're spouting runs the lines of "back in my day all we had was fortran, and we liked it!". It makes me glad we have all these fancy "tools", because I sure as heck wouldn't want to code something like cutting edge games or top of the line office software in f-ing Assembly! Perl is a great language, and I use it extensively, but, dangitt, don't diss the tools!
| - | - |
Sorry, but anyone that has never used Commodore's infamous 1541 disk drives doesn't *even* know what slow is. Quite possibly the slowest rotating disk media ever sold, they required hard sector diskettes (remember those? they used a series of locating holes around the hub to physically determine rotational positoining), and used a serial interface that was P A I N F U L L Y S L O W.
But they were cheap, so we were happy to have them, since they were one reason the Commodore machines were a fraction of the price of the Apples and such, even though they offered equal or better performance in other respects.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
OS X on Intel will not happen. At least, it won't if interviews with Jobs are any indication. I keep seeing this sentiment expressed, but those comments must be coming from people who haven't been using and following news about Apple for the last decade.
There was an interview with Jobs in MacAddict around the time he returned to Apple, where he was challenged on his decision to kill off Mac clones. Just paraphrasing from memory, his response was along the lines that Apple's real strength lies in the ability to control the hardware and the OS, despite the fact that everyone in the industry thinks otherwise. His phrase was the Apple is the last company around who makes the whole widget.
So, I think it's important to recognize that Apple has followed this line of thinking since Jobs returned. You can see it. OS X on Intel just won't happen, and if it ever did, it would be done in such a way that it would make very few PC users happy anyway. Apple would have to make the whole widget. So why would they bother?
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
I have been a Linux user for about six years now. I love the fact that I can look under the hood of my system and see everything that I could possibly ever want to mess with.
.doc files. Yes it's fast (actually damn fast). Yes, to this day it is still riddled with bugs and it has been in development for almost three years now.
This year I return to college and I need an office suite that works. Not one that will do. One suite that will work the way that I work. So I recently switched to win98 and Office XP. I feel like a bastard for doing this, but you know what? Office XP does everything that I need it to. Yes, Abiword will open
So now everybody is "Switching" to OSx because it just works. Of course the Mac's architecture has always just worked. Finally they have an OS that can do the platform some justice. I hate the fact that I can't build a G4 system, and if I could, I couldn't afford it.
Windows is somewhat useable. The nice thing about windows is that it is a standardized product. There are no splinters or factions. Every Windows book will tell you how to do something in the exact same way. Windows has some cool features like DirectX, multimedia codecs and the like. I like the fact that I can buy a reputable piece of new hardware and install it. I hate the fact that Windows is controlled by a money-hungry monster of a corporation that tries to manipulate their customers in to market trends that are completely unnecessary.
Linux is great for developing and as a server. A "good" server needs to run forever and its maintenance consists of a can of compressed air every four months. Linux works great in that department. Where Linux really suffers is the desktop where you are constantly inundated with technicalities that keep you from doing the real work. Things like upgrading Abiword to a newer version that has less bugs can be a real pain in the ass when you also need to upgrade shared libraries. This of course also means that you need to upgrade a whole schlew of other applications because they rely on the older libraries. So when you look at it, it's not really an application upgrade, it's a system upgrade. The Linux desktop sux as a functional productivity workspace. It might make a fine industry specific workstation as in ILM's case, but a swiss-army knife it is not. Gnome and KDE are slick, but they don't have all of the bases covered like OSx does. Gnome (Nautilus in particular) runs like a sick pig on older hardware. In fact, the only way to have a fast X on older hardware is to dumb it down to the bare minimum. And even though I love Linux, it is just not and, after nearly a decade of fracturing, probably never will be friendly enough for my mom to use. I hate having to compile a new Kernel for new hardware and hope that the patch works. I hate the fact that Linux takes forever to boot. I hate the fact that RTFM very rarely applies to what you need to do. I have never read a Linux document or help file that told me how to fix a problem or do something in a step-by-step fashion and have it work. I have ALWAYS had to interpret what I am reading. I consider myself a technically savvy person. I think that I know what I'm doing on a computer most of the time. I can imagine a person who just needs to print a F*CKING report to give to their boss/teacher would go mad trying to install their printer correctly under Linux.
What I don't understand is why everybody is trying to make Linux work on the desktop when BEos was probably the best desktop Os ever invented. It had a great file system. It could multithread EVERY application. It's audio latency was great. Yea, it was kind of ugly. Yea the company went bankrupt. But, it's Open Be project is alive and needs quite a bit of help.
If the open source community really wants a free desktop, why not start from scratch? Why not make a desktop that is targeted for the end user instead of adapting the hardcore computer geek Os? The open source community is not just Linux. Open Be is part of it too and it is better designed for the desktop. Why not let Linux be the best Server on the market and make Be the best desktop on the market?
Correct. Unfortunately 90% of my DivX files (anime fansubs mostly) are encoded using VBR audio. VLC eliminates the need to run the DivX validator on each and every file.
It would be nice if they were encoded properly, or if QuickTime would support VBR audio, but VLC gives me that plus full-screen at no extra cost.
I haven't seen 10.2 yet, but I am very displeased with the server verion of 10.1 and Apple's "macmanager" server app for lab administration.
macmanager doesn't! It brings so many problems to apps that I advocate Macs have no place in general computer labs (and I am a mac support tech/network admin).
I hope they fix this nonsense in their next reincarnation of macmanager they are calling workgroup admin.
Frankly, OS9 sucks on client machines. It locks up more frequent than win 3.1 did. I want my clients to move to OSX and get rid of the 9 support.
It's nice but it's also proprietary as far as the interface goes. Linux is wide open.
:P
I can't get used to the one button mouse. Bleah
Other than that... I got no problem with Mac OS X.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need , not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 10 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
I am a long term Mac user who had an old PC lying around and decided to put linux (Mandrake) on it. I wanted to see what all the hype was about, and I wanted a machine that would serve files to both my Macs, and my girlfriends PCs, serve web pages, and be an FTP server. I figured it was also a good way to learn a little unix without F*ing up my mac. And what the heck, it was free. I approached it with open mind to see if I wanted to maybe switch. Being a Mac user I will try to be unbiased, but as its what I know (I also know Windows well, but won't go there), it will be part of my perspective. I am not a programmer or administrator (just a serious user), so go easy on any misinformation I unknowingly spread. Getting the thing working on a basic level wasn't too bad (considering I knew nothing about it). Not as easy as a Mac mind you, but not bad. I could run applications, change settings from the GUI, etc. Getting the thing to recognize the ethernet card and see the internet took me an extra day, though. Now to add some services. Being a GUI person, the command line was pretty foreign to me (just figuring out to use VI to edit took me a bit). After a couple of days I could get around fairly well, and could edit config files and the like (but not without a manual). After about six days and only one shower, I had SMB, NFS, FTP, and Apache working reasonably well. I still use this server! It runs without complaint 24/7. Then I ran it through its paces as a desktop machine. I wanted to know if I could switch to free linux. After downloading and running every piece of (yes, free) software I could, I tried to see if I could comfortably switch. I use my computers extensively for my business, and would certainly be considered a power user. I have a lot to get done. Would I switch? No. I found nearly every important app to be inferior to what I was using. I found I was totally spoiled by the consistency of the Mac Human Interface Guidelines. Every linux app I used seemed to have an interface unlike any other. Even the OS was inconsistent. Yes, it does everything one would need a computer to do (for the most part), and it is stable, fast, and free. However, in my business, I bill directly for my time. I must look at it like every hour I waste on the computer, is an hour of lost wage (in the week I spent figuring out linux, I could have bought a Ti book fully loaded). The time spent under the linux hood, and the lost productivity from inconsistent and often confusing applications, make linux TOO EXPENSIVE for me to run. I think the open source community is to be respected and applauded, and I see OSX, linux, and unix side by side (by side) as alternatives to Monopoly. However, I also think too many chefs spoil the dish. Without a more singular approach to user design, I don't think linux will ever be a really viable desktop, its too much of a hodgepodge of conflicting ideas and ideals. That said, I think linux has a definite place. Both in the enterprise and in the geek set. As I said, I am still using my linux server. The only problem I have with it, is that when something actually does go wrong, its been so long since I've messed with it, that I have to resort to manuals and notes to figure out what I did to it originally. I understand that full time linux user will know far more about the machine than I ever did. And those whose job it is to tinker with an OS all day will have a far different need and perspective. However, my bottom line opinion is this: Linux as a server? Yes. Linux as a desktop? No.
out of curiosity how do/would you prevent people(like say me with BIND9 compiled on my PowerBook) from using the command line nsupdate tool that comes with BIND9 and maliciously changing hostnames.
jerky
--
--
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
I just had to write a poem titled iSwitch to iMac.
I switched from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X as soon as I could. I've been in the publishing world and using Macs forever, and always preferred to use them over Windows. When Linux got popular years ago, I liked it, and started using it as a server OS, but kept using the Mac as a desktop machine. I wasn't going to buy a new machine and switch to Linux since the Mac did (mostly) what I needed it to do. But with Mac OS X, well, I've got real Perl (MacPerl was good for what it was, but it doesn't compare to /usr/bin/perl) and Apache, and all that gooey *nix goodness beneath the sheets to love...
So I never had to switch to Windows and never attempted to switch to Linux, I just had to wait for the Mac OS to catch up with where I was going...
It's here.
...end of transmission...
but who said anything about PPP? She was complaining about not being able to send/receive e-mail from her boyfriend.
If you cannot connect to the Internet because your online service does not use standard PPP to connect, you cannot receive e-mail from your e-mail account at the online service which does not use standard PPP to connect nor standard SMTP/IMAP to access e-mail. (I'm thinking AOL and MSN here.)
In addition, if you're using an online service that doesn't use standard PPP to connect, I'd suggest getting another one.
When you terminate your ISP access, you generally also terminate your e-mail address unless your ISP offers automatic forwarding for honorably terminated accounts (i.e. accounts that were not terminated because of an AUP violation or unpaid bills). For example, AOL does not. Thus, all your e-mail contacts would be unable to contact you. When you forget your password on a web site, it won't be able to send you a new password (which is what happened to Fascdot Killed My Pr[evious User]).
Will I retire or break 10K?
What a beautiful well written story. It poignantly details the perils of a 486 class user dropped into a G3 learning curve. Her misty eyed description of the sound of a floppy drive, slowly consuming the contents of it's magnetic meal, was almost too much for me. After all, what else could you do while the little dickens was grinding away? Every resource in your computer devoted itself exclusively to listening to the product of that grinding. Sure, it sounds pretty, but, waxing elloquent about the past wont teach our missguided heroine about USB memory sticks, or cross platform software. This shepardess could learn a few tricks from the flock of users that have converted to the one true OS.
I believe the guy was talking about different selection of software for different people, not about where to start them from or how many to start them and run similarly.
Simple case: I use system utilities and my spouse does not, is it cool to just leave the system utilities for her to trample into all the time? If she likes her apps list to contain 'this and that', and I prefer something else should the program/apps list be the same for the both of us?
The same thing irritates me on Windows UI too, since the program listing 'behind' the Start button always lists the same programs even if they cannot all be used by others than the systems administrator. Why the hell are the appstart options even left lying in the lists for those who do not need or have not privileges to use them?
And this had nothing to do with many programs running similarly. Nor did it have anything to do with starting programs from the shell, finder or terminal and since I do not use docks anymore (found them irritating, I simply click right mouse button for the apps list) It doesn't even have to do with a dock applet either...
Just letting the steam out...
- Voice of Ambience -
- Voice of Ambience -
(Abiword)
Yes, to this day it is still riddled with bugs and it has been in development for almost three years now.
You don't know about the bugs on Office XP, since they are generally not yelled about in a crowded room. And how long has MS Office been in developement? I believe the next beta is coming out soon.
The nice thing about windows is that it is a standardized product.
There is no such thing as a Microsoft standard unless it is the "Crippling Standard". MS is notorious in breaking up standards by making up new features noone will use.
Every Windows book will tell you how to do something in the exact same way.
But none of them tell you what has really happened when an Exception 0E or a BSOD occurs, nor do they provide a fix for such situation.
Windows has some cool features like DirectX, multimedia codecs and the like.
And Linux doesn't have multimedia abilities or 3d capabilities? Guess again... What was it SGI introduced to the computing world? Was it perhaps OpenGL?
mplayer and xmms for video and sound... And I'd like to add I find Linux as an intriguing platform for those who like composing music DJ'ing or synthesizing and everything between. Such programs can be found on Linux too.
Even CAD solutions can be found.
Linux is great for developing and as a server.
OK, I admit Linux is neat for servers, but I'd like to add I use it as a desktop and find nothing wrong with it. I Can! (Magic words)
BSD for servers btw.
This of course also means that you need to upgrade a whole schlew of other applications because they rely on the older libraries. So when you look at it, it's not really an application upgrade, it's a system upgrade.
Yes, it can be considered as a problem, but thenagain on the other hand you have extremely bloated programs each created time and time again consuming not only hd space but system memory, then there is the problem of installing new libraries and/or programs due dependencies.
Some of us can live with cruft or bloat, I don't have the resources to buy myself new hd's, ram or processors all the time. I do not need GHz hw to run my software. My software runs on my 486 as well as it does on my K6-III, a bit slower but nevertheless the reliability of the software remains. I wonder what people'd say if they'd have to use my "fastest" computer with a Windows XP as opposed to Linux. (400MHz/256Mb) Wait, let's tumb the computer down and take 192 megs off. Now, let's run XP on 64Mb...
How's OSX with one of the older PPC's with 233MHz and 64megs of ram?
For a simple comparing basis, the best ever desktop OS isn't OSX, it is something that can run a fancy windowed desktop under 4Mb with no slowdowns. (Reminds of something in the early 90's?)
Gnome (Nautilus in particular) runs like a sick pig on older hardware.
Like how much older hardware? Something older than my hardware?
I hate the fact that Linux takes forever to boot.
Ever seen w2k boot? Then you will know how long is "forever".
I have never read a Linux document or help file that told me how to fix a problem or do something in a step-by-step fashion and have it work.
So we came back to the subject of "Exception 0E" and "BSOD". Where can I find a HOW-TO to fix those?
BeOS might be nice, haven't seen it in action, though I don't know if I would be interested enough to actually install it.
If the open source community really wants a free desktop, why not start from scratch?
Why reinvent something we already have? We have an Open Source desktop (in fact we have many). Why bother?
- Voice of Ambience -
- Voice of Ambience -
Don't feed the troll. (nt)
IMHO, you're nitpicking a bit. I do understand your point - but you're taking "proprietary" quite literally. On the other hand, in the world of computers, people typically use "proprietary" to designate the fact that the hardware is developed by a single vendor, using standards they invented themselves.
The Apple computers have always fit this definition, to one extent or another. (As I said, though, this is changing in some ways. You no longer see much happening with, say, the NuBus slot.) I still can't just buy an Apple Cinema display and slap it on my PC and expect it to work properly, though.
As for network protocols, simply publishing the details of how it works doesn't make it a defacto "standard". Appletalk might be completely and openly documented - but it will always be considered more "proprietary" than TCP/IP, just as Novell's IPX or Microsoft's Netbeui protocols are. Appletalk wasn't developed by a vendor-neutral committee - for one thing.
Juiz de Fora IRC fotos
one way would be not to use Aqua at all and rely on xdarwin and GNOME or KDE or whatever WM floats your boat. At the the login dialog you can type >console and it will shutdown WindowServer and loginwindow.app and puts you into a text based prompt login and type startx. No more aqua. hack XWindows to your hearts content. after you exit xwindows and exit the shell. WindowServer and loginwindow.app starts back up and you can go back into Aqua.
/etc/ttys
i nwindow" vt100 on secure window=/System/Libra
ry/CoreServices/WindowServer onoption="/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"
If you don't like Aqua at all you can cause it not to startup at all by switching commented lines at the top of
#console "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" vt100 on secure console
"/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/log
and typing sudo nvram boot-args="-v" will make the bootup more verbose(same effect as command-V upon boot)
--
--
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
Darwin runs on both Mac PPC hardware and Intel hardware. Apple sells Mac OS X to run on DarwinPPC because there is a business model and demand there. Apple does not sell Mac OS X to run on DarwinIntel because there is no business model there. The first major problem is that there is a convicted monopolist selling Intel operating systems.
If you are an Intel user, it is YOUR platform that is sick, not Apple's. Don't blame Apple for not waving a magic wand and making everything OK for you and your shitty hardware.
- wait and calm down
- when you post
- so people don't
- point
- and laugh
- at you
instead of taking a week to relearn the- lay out
.Intel will sell you a book for nearly nothing (or let you download on the web) enough information to clone their chipset.
How do you think vmware emulates the 440bx chipset?
> I still can't just buy an Apple Cinema display and slap it on my PC and expect it
... you're just used to DVI-1, but both are standard DVI cables.
... not good.
> to work properly, though.
Yes you can, but since your PC doesn't supply power to the attached display, you need to buy a power adapter for the Cinema Display. Apple sells them, and so do third parties. Once you plug the adapter onto the Cinema Display, it becomes a typical DVI display like any other. The ADC connector on the Cinema Display is a combination DVI, USB, VGA, and power, which makes it easy to split the cable out to plain DVI, USB, VGA, and power cables. The ADC connector is also known as a DVI-2 as far as I know
Funny that you'd talk digital display connectors. On the Mac, for flat panels we went VGA (1998), DVI-1(1999), then DVI-2 a.k.a. ADC (2000). On the PC, there were a few other kinds of flat panel connectors that haven't survived, and many flat panels still ship VGA, even now. Going from a digital graphics adapter to a digital display with an analog cable
For my part, I have a PowerMac G4 in a rack that travels sometimes, and when I set it up and plug the mouse into the keyboard with one cable, keyboard into the display with one cable, and display into the computer with one cable, I feel pretty happy about the ADC port.
Also, if you use a plain DVI display, you have to make sure to plug the AC power in BEFORE you attach the display to the computer, or else risk a static charge from the computer wrecking the display. ADC solves this, because you can't plug the display onto the graphics adapter without also plugging on power at the same time.
> Appletalk
Talking about AppleTalk within this discussion is disingenuous or at least ignorant. Mac OS 9 (1999) introduced AppleTalk over TCP/IP (Macs speaking AppleTalk over plain TCP/IP networks), and Mac OS X 10.2 (today) does all the tricks that AppleTalk used to do over plain TCP/IP (using Rendezvous a.k.a. ZeroConf, also a standard). In short, AppleTalk is memory. Why don't you complain about the Newton or something?
> You no longer see much happening with, say, the NuBus slot.
That could be because Apple has been using PCI since 1995. Nothing slows down a technology like being discontinued for 7 years. Sheesh.
Instead of talking on about things you don't know, please investigate the incredible list of IEEE and ISO standards that Apple supports. Their firmware (equivalent to PC BIOS) is an IEEE standard that's also used by Sun and others. The high-speed peripheral bus is an IEEE standard. They use PCI and AGP and USB and the same RAM and storage and even the same anti-theft collars. They've included an Ethernet port standard on every Mac for more than five years, and Gigabit Ethernet has been standard on pro Macs (Power Mac, PowerBook) for two years. They were the first company to introduce Wi-Fi (802.11), as well as the first company to build the antennae and hardware inside every system they sell. PowerBooks have typical PC Card slots. Optical drives are the same, TV outputs are S-Video, Bluetooth, yada, yada, yada.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
I wouldn't exactly say AppleTalk is memory either. OS X still supports it, and until Rendezvous printers start appearing, it is still pretty damn useful.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Testing a post with a URL..
www.test.com
People who have never used Macs before and who switch from Windows also don't know that on Macs you don't just push the button on a backpack floppy drive and eject the disk, you have to drag the disk icon to the trash. Sounds stupid, but it is basic basic stuff.
It really is a different way of thinking about things, plus the apple help website doesn't necessarily help newnies who need to learn how to perceive things, or need to learn how to do things. ( I learn about most things by messing around and trying stuff , but after a certain amount of messing around, I want to be able to find out QUICKLY from someone how to really do what I want to do. )
As for printing, there are two different programs out there that claim to support any PC printer, but if you want drivers for your BJC-2000 printer for OS X, forget it. If you got the PowerPrint program, PowerPrint people say to go ask Cannon, and the Cannon people say it's not cost-effective. My husband found a hack somewhere, but it still only works in a limited manner after what seems to me to be too much tweaking. So I save data to a floppy and move over to the PC to print it.
I can't use my iBook to write my computer science homework programs using Microsoft Visual C++. Has to be done on a PC obviously. Wish I could do it on my iBook.
Really, I'm an intermediate computer user who wants to do intermediate things on my iBook, but I don't yet know how and even that big thick book about OS X is vague about particulars. Advice and direction are welcome.
-SheWhoWalksWithToesLikeCobras Please enter any 11-digit prime number to continue...