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Flirting With Mac OS X
An anonymous reader wrote to us with an article on Byte from Moshe Bar about flirting with using OS X. Taco and I are both strongly considering beginning to use OS X as a primary laptops - anyone else looking at doing this? And anyone from Apple that can get me a good price on super TiBooks? *grin*
Kernel Programming Mach Overview
For example, he may think he was editing /etc/hosts, but reality is somewhat different. He may copy files with "cp" and discover that some important bits didn't make it. Cocoa looks really nice and descriptive (and I really like Objective-C's named arguments and object model), but it also has its dark sides, for example in the areas of resource management, error handling, and type safety. He'll also discover that there are two different kinds of path names that don't quite mesh and three different sets of APIs, no single one of which gives him complete access to the machine. Carbon and Cocoa applications take different key bindings and handle text differently. A "ps" and some graphics benchmarks will show him that Aqua really has a very hefty footprint and isn't all that speedy. He'll also discover that the Apple file systems (HFS+, UFS) are not all that great compared to what he can get on Linux (ext3, ReiserFS, XFS, ...).
Don't get me wrong: I think it's great that Apple is using a UNIX base, and I think they have done a great job with migrating from OS 9 to OS X. There are some really great programs on that platform. And I think there are quite a number of things Linux would do very well to copy from OS X. But the suggestion that OS X is the heavenly integration of UNIX and GUI that the world has strikes me as not realistic.
You should check out fink.
Excerpt form the start page:
"The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X. We modify Unix software so that it compiles and runs on Mac OS X ("port" it) and make it available for download as a coherent distribution. Fink uses Debian tools like dpkg and apt-get to provide powerful binary package management. You can choose whether you want to download precompiled binary packages or build everything from source."
I guess that`s pretty much what you are thinking about.
How many times does this have to be pointed out for OS X newbies? There is an open-source, community-driven package manager for the Unix underpinnings of OS X: It's called Fink. It's a port of the Debian tools, including apt. It currently has 1452 packages at various levels of stability, including many of the major applications required for development. It works very, very well, from a command line or via happy little Aqua app called Fink Commander. If you do use Fink, use the CVS tree: the maintainers are very conservative about adding apps to the stable tree, so most of the interesting action is in unstable.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
Really? I just bought a Dell Latitude x200 last night... for my brother-in-law who isn't interested in "switching".
I did some shopping around first - and I just simply couldn't find a laptop as nice as the Mac titanium laptop... light, thin, big screen, built-in DVD. The Latitude was the closest I could find for the money.
But unlike the Mac, the Latitude has no built-in-DVD and a much smaller display. The performance of the Dell by no mean screams over the Mac (The Dell is a 800mhz P3... not even a P4).
And the price of the Dell with the DVD/CD-RW and the other basics isn't any better than the Mac price. Really.
For a laptop, I like thin & light... I don't want to lug around a big thing on business trips. Unless the market changes radically in the next month, my next laptop purchase will be a Mac. For the first time.
I tell people that you don't care about speed benchmarks. The only thing you REALLY care about when using the computer is response time. I define that as the time it takes for the computer to execute the command you just gave it (i.e., file saves, close window, open application, etc.). There are too many other variables that figure into designing a computer too pay attention to, even for engineers.
When I compare the amount of time I spend waiting for my Dell to do something versus my TiBook, I feel it is worth the price difference in saved time (BTW, I am a lawyer and make my living charging for time - less time waiting = more productive lawyer = happier clients). You can always make more money - you can never make more time. I am grateful for the time the TiBook has saved me.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
I used Linux (RH 6.2, RH 7.1) for over 2 years, and I think it's a great OS. But it's not an OS that regular users can use like OSX 10.1.5 and 10.2. It's harder to be productive in Linux than OSX. I've said it before, but the fact remains that OSX is significantly easier to set up and use on a daily basis than Linux.
Want some reasons that regular people like OSX better? All the control panels are in one place and follow a consistent design. You can get Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash MX, and AOL for it.
Want some reasons that many geeks like us like OSX better? Excellent free development IDE (ProjectBuilder & InterfaceBuilder) that makes native apps with an audience of 5 million paying customers. Great commercial tools like BBEdit, Oracle, Sybase, SQLGrinder, and JBuilder Enterprise, that make developing for production systems as easy as developing on Linux.
The DVD issue is really a money issue. With Linux, there's no one willing to pay the money to legally play DVDs. When I worked at ZapMedia, we had a software-only DVD player working under Linux. We had to pay for it, but it can be done. With MacOSX, a small portion of the purchase price covers the R&D and licensing required to have this feature.
I have a 600MHz iBook/DVD that I carry to work every day. The office is all-Windows, but thanks to OSX's built-in SMB browser and CUPS printing support, I can do everything that the Windows machines can do. I might be able to make that happen with Linux using a compiler and a lot of free time, but my experience with Linux in the past is that it's not nearly as simple or obvious.
- Vincit qui patitur.
You'd be surprised. The 12.1" iBook is a pretty good bargain for a small laptop. I'll use Canadian prices for comparison, since that's what I have to deal with myself.
Most Windows-based slim laptops are actually quite expensive. The closest I've really found to the iBook is Sony's Superslim Pro, which is a full $300 more than the iBook 700 - and it's debatable whether the Sony is faster. CPU arguments aside, the iBook has dedicated video (a Mobility Radeon); the Sony has a chipset with shared video memory, and I can tell you from personal experience that nothing kills video performance like needing to use system memory.
What's more amusing is that the Toshiba Portegé 2000 is actually a popular laptop, but it's $900 more than the same iBook 700... and it's not only slower, it doesn't even come with a docking station. You're paying for chic alone, and really the iBook does a better job of that.
I won't deny that Apple is expensive, but they can make a convincing case in the portable world. I'm looking to replace my clunky Toshiba with an iBook, but heck - if I weren't in university, I'd probably be considering a Powerbook!