When Is There a Good Time to "Switch" to Apple?

AllNines asks: "With all the hype of MacWorld and the compelling keynote given by Steve Jobs about the upcoming Tiger and Spotlight, I am thinking about 'switching' (Linux user since '97) but I am not sure the time is right. It seems like the PowerBooks are getting very long in the tooth and the iPods are due for a major rev. When is the right time to jump on the Apple ship? Am I going to get burned by a sluggish overpriced laptop that is updated next month?"

Comments

been there, done that, got the tshirt

[passthecrackpipe]

I switched a year ago. 3 months later, switched back to Linux. the overall impression I came away with is that Apple tries to make up for their gross deficiencies of the OS with stacks of eyecandy. Crashing apps galore, locked up machines, stupid configuration issues, and a crippled GUI. Installed gentoo on all my PowerPC boxes and am a happy boy now....

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[TheAJofOZ]

Funny, that's basically my experience with switching from OS X to Linux - except it didn't have as nice eye-candy....

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[gorim]

After 10 years of Linux, I was happy to finally switch to Mac OSX due to all the Linux deficiencies, stupid configuration issues, and a crippled GUI. I bought more Apples since that time. Now all of my systems are Linux-free and I am a happy boy now.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Llywelyn]

Yeah, I tried Windows XP once too.

More seriously, you might want to elaborate on your comments, because I haven't found any of them to have ever been true. Maybe I'm just used to working around the "stupid configuration issues" and "crippled GUI" (I *do* use the Terminal a lot, after all) and it is just that the apps I specifically use never crash, but...

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[BrookHarty]

I only had OSX crash on me when I trying to do stuff like SMB mount from the command line, but its fixed now. Every once and awhile AQUA will crash, I just ssh into the box and kill -9 the process and its back up.

The only time I reboot is for security patchs, but not all need to reboot.

We currently play WoW on it, and underneath I have irssi/squid/vnc running, with multiple ssh sessions.

Running a dual g4, great box, needs a new gfx card, but speed wise, its great. I'd have to say I miss my native vga font for terminals (im oldschool, i like perfect fixedfonts).. But a xwindows workaround is a vga.bdf and rxvt, even colors are correct then. (iTerm is ok, but not even close to putty or konsole)

I also have a gentoo box, a sparc sunblade 100, gentoo is rock solid on it now, still 2.4.x kernel, but very stable.

I'd say if you want a unix workstation, OSX is by far the best.

Biggest downside, home/end doesnt work on command lines in OSX, and other shortcuts, key combos. I wish they would let you pick or customize your settings.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[BrokenHalo]

I too have been using Linux for 10 years, and my wife has also been perfectly happy with the Slackware boxes I've set up for her. However, when she bought a laptop the other week, she told me she really wanted a Mac, for a couple of reasons which are not particularly relevant here.

On the plus side, most native apps are reasonably solid and stable, and the interface is simple and easy to use.

On the negative side, we both found that interface is so simple there's not much you can do to customise it. As for integrating the Mac into my *nix (NFS) network, that was a real bitch, and it still isn't right. Apple really made it harder for me when they put all the network settings into that binary database rather than applying the simple Unix-style approach.

We were also a bit disappointed by the general lack of basic games, having been spoilt by the great suite that comes by default with Gnome. Sure, I know about Fink, but my experience is that X11 apps don't seem to render that well on the Mac screen.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Anonymous Coward]

*I only had OSX crash on me when I trying to do stuff like SMB mount from the command line, but its fixed now. Every once and awhile AQUA will crash, I just ssh into the box and kill -9 the process and its back up.*

hilarious! this is the attitude!
you consider it stable when "every once and a while AQUA" crashes? isn't that like arguing that windows is stable but it's the explorer that crashes and as such it's not a biggie?

seriously.. "it just WORKS" and you SSH of all things into the box to fix things...

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Arielholic]

You're still trolling.

First of all you can change the default browser in the System Preferences. The list of open Applications is in the Dock, marked by the little triangles. An then, why would you install thousand fonts? Of course, if you want that you should be able to do it, but just imagine the loooooooooooong list in the font selector. Using Linux or Windows is no different in this respect.

I'm not even sure anymore that you have ever used Mac OS X.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[theolein]

In case you missed it in my other post, I wonder how much effort you really put in to the problem of your default browser. You can change the default browser in Internet Explorer as well, and there are at least two third party apps that do this as well.

5 minutes in Google would have told you that.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[kernelistic]

I mount my NFS mounts at the command line, and I have yet to run into any major issues. I didn't bother with the GUI-stuff... :)

The XONX X-server project on Sourceforge works nicely. I switched to the "X11.app" package from Apple and it works even better. For anyone with an OSX machine that wants to install additional software that you have gotten used to on a UNIX machine, I strongly suggest that you install darwinports (From darwinports.org) and let it manage your packages for you.

OSX "UNIX-friendliness" has come a long way since 10.0!

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[angel'o'sphere]

While your storry is of course serious and Apple probably disgraced themselves, I don't really get what you are after.

Let me paraphrase three things:

a) you install new stuff on your machine, after that a application (Safari in this case) mysteriously crashes. You, as an old geek, don't come to the idea to revert the change? (And partialy reapplying it ntil it crashes again to find the particular problem?)

b) Taks bar ... you want a clearly understandable, clickable list of running windows. ?? Well, what about right clicking in the task bar on any app? Does there not pop up a list of open windows of that app?

c) You are unable to change the default browser because the default browser crashes and you need to configure the default browser with the default browser? So why don't you just right click on a ".html" file and choose "open with" and select "make this the default"?

Als there is a CLI command you can google for, to change the default browser with :D

angel'o'sphere

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Ohreally_factor]

Do a search for games on macupdate or versiontracker. You'll find a mess of games, from freeware to commercial. Try Snood.

If by interface you mean skins, there are ways to futz with it, but they caused stability issues for me, so I don't advise them. Google for OS X and "haxies". As for other ways to change the interface, there are numerous programs that replace the dock, change finder behaviors, etc, that many swear by. I've actually grown to love the simplicity, so I'm not using anything anymore, but I'm sure that there are others that will give recommendations.

Sorry, I can't help you on the network issue.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Gumph]

Oh, and how about a ... taskbar!
Errrm, what about the dock?? That looks like a taskbar to me, plus it is more configurable than the windows one and even though it doesn't show child windows within a particular app expose is a good substitute, as IMHO I think it is easier to know which window is which by looking at them as they run even if they are small than the truncated mess that is the taskbar when you have more than 7 or 8 windows open at the same time.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[grahamlee]

Apple really made it harder for me when they put all the network settings into that binary database rather than applying the simple Unix-style approach.

I think someone's trying to dig up the FUD they read in 1998 and pass it off as informed opinion...let's take a look at some configuration settings for the network.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

I'm afraid the lameness filter stopped me from posting a larger chunk of that file, but the DTD is given on the next line and you can indeed download the schema from Apple. Or perhaps we want to observe which nameservers we're using?

search my.domain.me.uk
nameserver 127.0.0.1
nameserver 192.168.124.1
nameserver 192.168.124.28

...and so on. Looks a little, well, plain-text (or at worst XML) to me. Not binary. Perhaps you're thinking of NetInfo, which has got very little to do with network settings but is instead a directory service for name information. That's stored in Berkely DB format; yes it's binary but it's hardly the world's least-understood format.

As for integrating the Mac into my *nix (NFS) network, that was a real bitch, and it still isn't right.

Works for me^{TM} on a production network involving OS X, Linux, NeXT, OpenBSD and Slowlaris. One of the OS X servers is serving a filesystem as is the Solaris box. No problems on the Mac side; the Sun's rpc.rquotad is a bit broken so remote quotaing on the Sun machine isn't good. I expect the problem you're observing is related to using a Linux machine as an NFS server. Linux' support for NFS is not very good and never has been very good; if you're creating network mounts on a Linux machine that need to be read on anything else then you should be using Samba. Linux NFS just isn't good enough.

my experience is that X11 apps don't seem to render that well on the Mac screen.

I work with X11 all the time (on Macs and Solaris mainly), and other admins I work with are Linux/Solaris admins; I showed them some X11 action and we all agreed it looked no different from the rendering under XFree86 on Linux. In fact, that's unsurprising, as it's the same XFree86 code as many Linux distributions; the difference is that because Darwin has IOKit and Linux hasn't, you don't need to write an XF86Config-4 on OS X. Nor, indeed, on Darwin/x86.

A note to fellow moderators: marking something as 'insightful' just because it regurgitates known FUD is wrong. Try at least a small attempt to verify the truth in the statements made before deciding whether they contain any insight. A further note, the parent post did not contain any insight, just old and tired dogma.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Selecter]

maybe if you quit passingthecrackpipe around, you could run your machines right ;)

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[palad1]

Command up / Command down took me a while to figure out...

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[galtsavenger]

I've had my G5 on for the last year rebooting only for updates and it has crashed twice in my memory. It's not a perfect record, but it doesn't crash 'every once in a while'

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Anonymous Coward]

you consider it stable when "every once and a while AQUA" crashes? isn't that like arguing that windows is stable but it's the explorer that crashes and as such it's not a biggie?

Well, lets look at this for a moment. People get pretty defensive both of their purchases and their hardware/software choices. So when ever you hear soemone talking about stability, you have to take it with a grain of salt. Personally I run OSX, Linux, Win2K, and NetBSD. I find Win2k has the most crashes while the others are about the same, which is to say I remember one or two crashes for each system. Back in the early days (beta and some of 10.0) of OSX I remember a few times the window server locked up and I had to ssh in and restart it. I had the same problem with one redhat release. One nice thing is that you can ssh in and fix the window server. On windows it means a reboot and is indistinguishable from a system crash and you have to restart all your applications and services. I have not had to restart the window server on either linux or OSX for at least 2 years though.

Any production machine, where new software is installed on a regular basis will have some bugs. I've noticed that OS X, like the other BSD systems, had a few stability issues in the early days, then became pretty indestructable. The only person I know that had serious stability issues (a crash or 2 every month) eventully traced the problem to cheap, 3rd party RAM and the system has been fine since its removal.

Personally, I am thankful that OS X is so stable and that it has a capable CLI so that if I do something stupid (like hack the UI) I can recover from it without a reinstall. I wonder what OS you might run that would be more stable. I rank OS X 10.3 about the same as NetBSD, maybe slightly more stable than fedora, and better than anything else I have used by a significant margin.

This was typed on Win2k and boy am I missing my spell check service.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[BrokenHalo]

I think someone's trying to dig up the FUD they read in 1998 and pass it off as informed opinion...

Err, if you had taken the trouble to read my post properly, you would have noticed that having just paid out good money (which, incidentally, I did not say I regretted) for a Mac, I had more motivation to make the damn thing work than to spread misinformation about it. I had no preconceptions about Apple other than what I had briefly come into contact with some 20 or more years ago, and I was more than happy to give them a fair trial.

Linux' support for NFS is not very good and never has been very good; if you're creating network mounts on a Linux machine that need to be read on anything else then you should be using Samba. Linux NFS just isn't good enough.

Crap. Linux NFS support works perfectly well with my BSD systems, and I don't know how much closer to the original Unix NFS you're going to get than that. On my network, the nodes have to work both as server and client, and if I find that a Linux, NetBSD or FreeBSD machine takes some 5 minutes to mount an NFS share on an OS X machine (with portmap running on all nodes) then I think that is reasonably good evidence that there's something wrong with the OS X implementation. As for Samba, I hate it, and have absolutely no reason to run it, since I have no Windows boxes.

As for configuration, on any of my BSD or Linux boxes, all I need is a single line in my /etc/exports files to make NFS happen. You cannot possibly make any informed claim that OS X makes it that simple.

This aside, you seem to have interpreted my post as an anti-Mac rant. You misunderstood. The whole point of the thread (go back to the top of the page) was about switching from Linux to Mac. I don't ask anyone to moderate my post as insightful or whatever, since I already have all the karma I need. I was simply raising some issues which might be of interest to anyone who is considering switching from Linux to OS X.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Anonymous Coward]

Biggest downside, home/end doesnt work on command lines in OSX

If you're on the command line, why not just use control-A and control-E? I'm on a PowerBook, so getting home/end requires simultaneously pressing keys on opposite ends of the keyboard.

Or if you really need home/end, just go under the File menu to Show Info for the current terminal. Select Keyboard and set the keys' actions to whatever you want.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Selecter]

Indeed. I have been using my Dual 1.8 since Thanksgiving Day 2003 and just had my first system crash last week when trying to print something and then do something else before it spooled. Before that, my ontime was something like 7 months, the last time I has a power outage I would guess. Since the Deep Sleep actually WORKS on a G5 you dont ever think about turning it off or on.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[denniscpearce]

how has this been modded troll?
are all you mods absolutly positive that he is making this up?
damn you

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[sqlrob]

Oh, and how about a ... taskbar! I don't know how people can work without a clearly understandable, clickable list of running windows. Expose you say? sorry, but that is just a flashy hack to cover up the fact that eyecandy is more important then usability and effectiveness.

I find expose and the doc far easier to use than the task bar. It's easier to think in apps than in windows, especially when there's a pile of windows open.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[BrookHarty]

hilarious! this is the attitude!
you consider it stable when "every once and a while AQUA" crashes? isn't that like arguing that windows is stable but it's the explorer that crashes and as such it's not a biggie?

Humm, Once and awhile means monthly not weekly like windows. And aqua doesnt take down the OS when it crashs, just aquadock. I havnt seen a bouncing ball or complete crash since 10.1.

Most crash I've seen are games exiting back to normal desktop, doesnt happen often, but its also the same crash type on windows.
I find running WoW in window mode easier now, so i can run chat/webbrowser/IM without issues, Uptime for weeks now.

And for explorer on windows, theres a registery tweak to have explorer shell and explorer browsers to run different instances, so a explorer browser wont restart your gui. That has made windows more stable on a day to day basis, and I wish M$ would make it standard.

So, yes, OSX the OS is rock solid, the GUI can crash, but normally when exiting a game, but only once a month, so yes, thats very stable.

KDE and Gnome crash more, but then i use IceWM and Windowmaker because they are reallly stable.

But nice troll, trying to make it sound like I ssh in daily to reset processes, funny troll.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Skinning the interface is so "Mac OS 8". There were a couple themes I liked, but in the end, they were just too much. Mac OS X is already beautiful and simple that I find no need or desire to change it. I understand that some people like to personalize their GUI, but it goes both way: instead of making their interface prettier, some actually make their interface horrid and confusing.

Any changes I do now is just icon changes.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[JQuick]

if I find that a Linux, NetBSD or FreeBSD machine takes some 5 minutes to mount an NFS share on an OS X machine (with portmap running on all nodes) then I think that is reasonably good evidence that there's something wrong with the OS X implementation.


You are mistaken. Those symptoms are evidence that you do not have dns set up properly. A long delay followed by a successful mount suggests that one or both of the systems is timing out on name service queries. Those symtoms are consistent with missing 'A' records, missing 'PTR' records or both.


As for configuration, on any of my BSD or Linux boxes, all I need is a single line in my /etc/exports files to make NFS happen. You cannot possibly make any informed claim that OS X makes it that simple.

You are correct that it requires more than adding a line to /etc/exports. But you imply that that is all you need on linux or bsd (which is false). Export via nfs on Macos X is identical to FreeBSD.
1. Add a line to /etc/exports
2. Send a hup signal to mountd (killall -1 mountd) Or reboot.
How is that harder than BSD or linux? It is identical to BSDs. I admit that I'm guessing about the need to inform mountd to reload configurations on linux since I have not used it in 5 years.

To mount a remote volume manually you can use "connect to server" in the finder, or use mount from the command line. (This seems identical or easier than Linux depending on your approach).

To make volumes mount and unmount automatically, add a line to /etc/fstab like "host:rpath lpath nfs opts...,net -s 0 0". Use the text file, or use combinations of nidump and niload via the command line, or do it all graphically via netinfo or the shareware NFSManager.app from bresink.de.

The automount daemon adds a dynamic mount point for every fstab entry containing the 'net' option (this is equivalent to the 'mounts' domain in netinfo).

After restarting the automount daemon, or rebooting, when you refer to /Network/Servers/host/path..., via either the command line or the GUI, the remote drive will automatically be mounted, and after it has been idle for awhile will be automatically unmounted. If you wish you can create symbolic links to those paths anywhere you want. Traversing them will mount what is needed on demand.

Having administered dozens of Unices both commercial and free, I find that the various ways to get Macos X to work as an NFS client or server is either consistent with other unices, or nicer. Your sweeping claims that Macos X is broken merely reveal your ignorance of basic unix administration.

Don't get me wrong, client side NFS could be improved on Macos X. It handles manual mounts and automount(8) mounts flawlessly out of the box. My only complaint is that the port of amd (which comes bundled with the os for use by experts) is a bit sketchy when using complex map rules. I would prefer to use amd but ended up reverting to automount(8) about a year ago. I believe that Apple will eventually migrate from automount(8) to amd, but it is not ready for wide use yet.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[lrucker]

Oh, and how about a ... taskbar! I don't know how people can work without a clearly understandable, clickable list of running windows

Yeah, like the list I've got now, it says:

E:\ D:\ My Sla Whe Sla My Mee

How could I live without it?

(OK, poster has a point - living with no windows list on my Solaris box is a pain. Are there any good ones?)

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and how about a ... taskbar! I don't know how people can work without a clearly understandable, clickable list of running windows.

Then you obviously aren't talking about the Taskbar in Windows. Once you pass about 8 open windows (not apps, but individual windows) the tabs get too small to be of any real use. You can expand the task bar to more rows, but that only delays the inevitable. Plus, you still can't hide the windows from one app, or all the background apps with one simple keypress.

am sorry to step on all you OSX lovin' toes, but unless you take off the pink glasses, and stop kicking everybody that does not immediately *love* anything Apple, you can never have a constructive dialogue.

Talk about being hypocritical. Sheesh.

Expose you say? sorry, but that is just a flashy hack to cover up the fact that eyecandy is more important then usability and effectiveness.

Oh, you obviously haven't really used Expose either. Unless you've got a tiny monitor, this is the most useful and easiest way to find a window you want. Especially if you have Application, Desktop and All set to use hotspot corners. Expose is far, far from mere eye candy.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there have been docs available for Windows long before they've been on the Mac! Years before.

See this, for example:

http://www.robert.to/reviews/stardock.html

I'm surprised the people at ObjectDock never sued apple!

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[furrywithwings]

I have to agree with at least part of this. The Core OS is very stable. What crashes on my powerbook ALL THE TIME? Microsoft Offive V.x I paid $180 for this turd that was required for .uni and it does nothing but crash and and crash and crash. I've called MS, I've reinstalled the OS, I've 'reset permissions." on it. I don't necessarily blame Apple, but it's a damning endorsement when the major apps for your platform are a crashfest.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[furrywithwings]

I have to agree with the parent. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was that stable. But I get those aqua crashes at least weekly and I have to SSH to kill the session. What causes them? Trying to print to a mixed Windows printing network with AD/4.0 printers. Also printing to printers with an IPP address that also exist in AD. See it's all Microsoft's fault again. The other problem is when you kill the finder, you lose any unsaved work, and basically that means all my running apps are killed too. So what starts out as a minor annoyance turns into at least hours of lost work. It's good but it was miles to go before being considered 'stable'

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[Night Goat]

What makes you think Stardock didn't copy Apple? I seem to remember when this Object Dock software came out, and it was after OSX did.

Re:been there, done that, got the tshirt

[aichpvee]

Funny how if you replace "Linux" in that with "Mac" and "Apple" with anything else (ie, Linux, Windows, BSD, Toaster Oven) you'd get modded like +5 insightful. I thought /. was supposed to be all super biased in favour of Linux.

Come on kids, we can do better than this.

Mac Buyer's Guide

[dendoes]

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

maybe next week...

[mehu]

If you believe Think Secret (page bottom), the powerbooks will be upgraded next week, since the current stock is completely out. I've been looking into one for a while now, and am waiting 'til at least Tuesday. I'm not expecting G5 laptops or Tiger until at least summer, and even then they'll be way more expensive than I'm planning on spending. If nothing happens next week, though, who knows when it will. It all depends on how long you can wait.

Re:maybe next week...

[BoomerSooner]

The only problem with that is even if they are released next week you'll have to wait 3 months to get one. Then you have the risk of the iBook problems (bad mobo) or the initial Aluminium Powerbooks with white spots and a recall on all the screens. As I recall there were heat problems with the 800MHz Ti Powerbooks as well (very hot).

If I were you I'd buy an inexpensive iBook and see if you like it. If you do sell it on eBay (they hold value very well, especially if you keep everything that came with it, box and all) and buy a rev 2 powerbook. (wait for 10.4 Tiger before getting iBook otherwise you'll have a $129 upgrade price).

The OS is the best you'll ever use, just get a 2+ button mouse with a scroll wheel and you'll be fine. You may want to get a Kensington or MS mouse because their drivers allow you to speed up the mouse movement beyond the standard (very slow) maximum speed for an Apple mouse.

These are just my experiences with Macs so take what you can. The one thing that always impressed me about the Mac OS releases is how on the same hardware they speed the machine up noticeably. Going from OS X 10.1 to 10.2 was amazing, then sure enough 10.2 to 10.3 was even better. I cannot wait for 10.4 and the additional tools.

Re:maybe next week...

[njfuzzy]

The PowerBook G5 has been slated for "Next Tuesday" since almost a year ago.

Re:maybe next week...

[furrywithwings]

I have to disagree with the parent about "they recalled all the PB with white spots" My PB has been to apple three times now (g4, 1ghz Aluminum body) to 'replace the white spots' and it hasn't gotten away. Today I am packing it up for it's fourth trip to Apple to attempt to cure this once and for all. I've lost about a month of useful time with this machine with all thetimes it's been back for service. It's also not a recall, because you as customer have to go and complain strenously until they take the machine back and replace the screen. Otherwise they will give you some crap answer. if you brought a used machine without apple care, they will not even correct this issue, so it's far from a recall.

It's never the right time.

[Isak Ben]

No matter what brand you buy or what arch, there will always be another new model around the corner.

But, at least here in Iceland the Mac's hold their reselling price alot better then all the rest.

All that aside.......i'd go for the switch, i've tried alot of OS'es and arch's but it's no contest...my beloved 12" PowerBook is the best yet.

Re:It's never the right time.

[milkman_matt]

No matter what brand you buy or what arch, there will always be another new model around the corner.

100% Agreed, I got my G3 Lombard in Nov '99 and they released the Pismo (which has been said to be one of the biggest tech leaps in powerbooks ever) just a couple months later. That aside, I was using that system without 1 problem until about 6 months ago when I got my 12" AlBook. The only gripe I ever had was lack of AGP since X relies heavily on it for some things.

Was I bummed about the advancements I was missing out on with the Pismo? A little bit, I had just spent a few grand on a killer system when a 'more killer' system came out and bitchslapped it. But it was a good computer and it did its job VERY well for several years, and I couldn't have been happier with it.

All this is just so that I can say, buy it when you're ready, but don't hold out just because "the next big thing" is right around the corner, because once you buy "the next big thing" the "next next big thing" is going to be right around the corner, and you're never going to switch. No matter when you buy, there will be something better, stronger, faster, within a year when it comes to Apple, but what you buy should last you for several years with no problem whatsoever.

All that aside.......i'd go for the switch, i've tried alot of OS'es and arch's but it's no contest...my beloved 12" PowerBook is the best yet.

Hear Hear!!

I will say though, I did LOVE how the old G3 powerbooks felt, the keys, the palmrest and the trackpad were so f'ing comfortable, far more comfortable than the AlBooks (IMO) and at times I really do miss them. But I'm getting used to my 12"er.

PS: If they release the backlit keyboards and self-adjusting brightness on the screens of the new 12" Powerbooks, THEN I'll be mad :P

Re:It's never the right time.

[bahamat]

On the contrary, I think that any time is the right time for the very same reason.

I bought my iBook in April of last year. A few months later they came out with new iBooks, and it would have cost me a few hundred bucks less to get a more powerful model if I had waited 4 months. But the Apple market is no different than any other. There are always upgrades that are not far away and if you're always waiting for the "optimum" time you'll never go.

The release of Tiger is "q2", which means any time between April and July. Panther is $130 as every release of OS X has been since the official release, so it follows that Tiger will be the same price. If you're waiting for the release of Tiger, just ask yourself this question: Am I willing to pay $130 to have a Mac 6 months early?

Just to let you know, my 1.0Ghz iBook is just fine for any task. Some programs take a little longer to open or compile on the iBook but other than that it does everything else just as good as my iMac G5 1.8Ghz.

If you're thinking about switching then I'd encourage you to just go for it now.

Re:It's never the right time.

[Anonymous Coward]

> which has been said to be one of the biggest tech leaps

The Pismo = Lombard + Firewire + 100Mhz - SCSI. Same weight, same shape -- they even take many of the same acccesories.

Compare that to the G4 powerbooks which were thiner, lighter, faster and had larger screens.

When..

[noselasd]

someone drops a bag of money on my head ?

Re:When..

[rinoid]

Mod this troll... or HUB (head up butt) since pricing and Apple has long become less and less of an issue when you actually compare like configurations.

You know it, I know it, the american people know it... you can buy it, use it, and pass it through your lower intestine...

Just stop. Take a breath. Go to apple.com/store/ and check things out, or if you dare, stop by a retail store.

We just ordered six (6) Minis, MSFT Office Academic, AND 3 year warranty on all machines for my wife's museum --- all for the price of my top of the line dual G5 PLUS one of those sexy Apple 23" LCDs. Mind you, I did not buy my dual with the nice monitor but am using an older 17" LCD.

I think you can get over it now and just order a Mini if you really wanted to.

Re:When..

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't buy a PC right now either unless someone dropped a bag of money on my head.

Re:When..

[merdark]

So what are you posting from? A new calculator? Or an old 486?

Just go for it....soon

[nafrance]

I had a similar problem a while back - I jumped in and bought my 12" PB just before they speed-bumped it.
To be honest, it hasn't made too much difference, it's still far and away the best laptop I've ever used. Just get enough RAM!!

The thing is really, there isn't ever a 'best' time to buy anything like this. Look at the PC market - we have new motherboards, cpu's etc. coming out all the time.
At least with Apple its fairly regular that they do major updates, usually at MacWorld time!

I think the best time will be very soon. Wait till they release Tiger, and start shipping it on the Minis (or just get one and pay for the upgrade).
The Mini is the cheapest Mac available, and you can re-use all your old monitor/mouse/keyboard etc. Hell, even if you dont like it as a proper desktop, there's still the media-centre/server thing everyone seems keen to turn these babies into.....

Re:Just go for it....soon

[anothergene]

Just get enough RAM!!
... and don't buy RAM from Apple. Way too over priced. Just buy it from your local computer chop shop. I would just make sure it named brand and warrenteed.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[jessecurry]

Definitely get enough RAM, the OS relies so heavily on RAM that it will literally move at half the speed unless you have enough. Going from way too little(128) to a decent amount(640) even the pop-up menus work more quickly.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mini is the cheapest Mac available, and you can re-use all your old monitor/mouse/keyboard etc.

Sadly, the majority of non-mac user people I know still have PS2 keyboards and often PS2 mice. These will not work in the mac mini without an adaptor.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[greed]

These will not work in the mac mini without an adaptor.

...which will set you back a whopping $20 CDN. One USB A plug, two PS/2 plugs, and you're good to go.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[superflippy]

Wait till they release Tiger

Good advice. If you know a new OS is about to come out, wait until the new system you buy will come with it installed.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[UWC]

The only concern I've heard about Tiger is that since its GUI is fully OpenGL accelerated, graphics accelerators with less than 64MB of onboard memory might have to swap out some textures and such with system memory, degrading performance. The mini's Radeon 9200 chipset is pretty nice, but it still only has 32MB (2 16MB chips on the motherboard) of memory.

I'm hoping that those fears prove unfounded. I would think that Apple would make sure their new systems could run their upcoming flagship OS without problems.

Still don't know why they insist on shipping minis, eMacs, and iMacs with 256MB of RAM by default. Memory swapping to the hard drive gets sluggish while multitasking, especially with the slow hard drive on the mini.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[bjohnson]

$20 CDN? Jeez Louise the exchange rate is bad right now! A simple froogle search found 'em for $2.49 US apiece a few days back...

Re:Just go for it....soon

[MoneyT]

Unless Apple is running a deal. When I got my powerbook, Apple was running a double your RAM for $40 deal. I think 1 Gig of memory for $40 was a steal

Re:Just go for it....soon

[morgue-ann]

non-mac user people I know still have PS2 keyboards and often PS2 mice

I got a KVM that uses PS/2 keyboard & mouse & connects to the computers via USB. (iBook & PC @ home, G4 MDD tower & PC @ work)

If my Expert "Mouse" trackball goes nuts or gets unplugged I can power-cycle the KVM by unplugging it instead of rebooting the computer.

Also, you can use Screen Spanning Doctor to run displays at higher than built-in display resolution from iBooks and eMacs. Now that you can get SuperDrives in iBooks, they look pretty nice.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[milkman_matt]

Also, you can use Screen Spanning Doctor to run displays at higher than built-in display resolution from iBooks and eMacs. Now that you can get SuperDrives in iBooks, they look pretty nice.

This is pretty interesting... It says that it allows you to bump up your screen resolutions for i/eMacs and such, nothing about powerbooks, however I wouldn't mind taking my 12" AlBook up just a little bit. Anybody have any experience with this? I know 12" at anything above 1024x768 would be pretty damned small, but I wouldn't mind looking into it so long as it wouldn't damage my LCD (which I can see happening.) So can anybody else chime in on this?

Re:Just go for it....soon

[DoctorRad]

Wait till they release Tiger, and start shipping it on the Minis

Any word on how much the upgrade is likely to be?

Matt...

Re:Just go for it....soon

[Moofie]

Unless I'm having my crazy-time, your parent poster was talking about increasing the resolution on EXTERNAL displays.

Running a flat panel at higher than its native resolution would render (huh huh) the display completely illegible.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[milkman_matt]

Unless I'm having my crazy-time, your parent poster was talking about increasing the resolution on EXTERNAL displays.

Exactly what I thought, I know that the iBooks and such only support mirroring (not spanning) which was a major hang-up I had on those things and a good excuse (among others) to get the powerbook instead ;) So yeah, I figured it just fixed that issue.

Running a flat panel at higher than its native resolution would render (huh huh) the display completely illegible.

Figured as much, but hey, if someone found a magical pill that changed this, (and can tell me that It WILL NOT harm my display) I'd consider trying it out. As I said, 1024x768 on a 12" LCD, I can't imagine any higher resolutions being useful on it, be way too small for most people. But hey, if you don't ask you don't learn right?

Re:Just go for it....soon

[Moofie]

It's not a function of the display being too small, it's a function of "there's not transistors where I need to put dots that make up text".

LCDs can run at lower-than-maximum resolution by running an anti-aliasing hack that's really ugly. LCDs running at higher-than-maximum resolution would be totally unreadable, regardless of the size of the display.

CRTs can change resolution gracefully, but LCDs simply cannot. Different technologies.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[milkman_matt]

It's not a function of the display being too small, it's a function of "there's not transistors where I need to put dots that make up text".

LCDs can run at lower-than-maximum resolution by running an anti-aliasing hack that's really ugly. LCDs running at higher-than-maximum resolution would be totally unreadable, regardless of the size of the display.

CRTs can change resolution gracefully, but LCDs simply cannot. Different technologies.

What do you think you are? A Rocket Scientist?

(ok, you've probably heard that one enough.)

But yeah, I figured that would be the case with the LCDs, I guess it was just my love for large resolutions combined with my love for my little tiny AlBook! This isn't generally a problem when I'm @home since I can just plug it into a nice big display and get the resolution and screen real estate there. Honestly, I do just fine with my 1024/12" screen, I'm happy with it, just got excited at the prospect ;)

Re:Just go for it....soon

[Moofie]

"What do you think you are? A Rocket Scientist?"

Why, yes! Yes, I am! (I totally fish for that.)

Yeah, it'd be nice to have a higher res screen on my tinylittlepowerbook, but I've been impressed with how gracefully OSX handles the relatively modest resolution. I mean, I can ALWAYS use more screen real estate, but I've been very pleased with how nicely everything scales and renders. With Windows at such a low resolution, I feel like somebody's holding my elbows.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[hunterx11]

Panther already uses Quartz instead of Quartz Extreme if your card can't handle it. They aren't turning up the eyecandy much, just the acceleration. Not benefitting from acceleration != going slower.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[UWC]

Ah, okay. I've only just recently become interested in Macs, so I wasn't sure of the details. Is the general point just to free up main CPU time by offloading desktop rendering to the GPU, then? I'd admired what I'd heard about OS X, but until Mini was anounced, I had no firm plans for the acquisition of one. Now that I have my Mini, I'm definitely impressed. Plus I can ease myself into Unix, X11, and such. I still need to get more RAM, though. And a putty knife.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[Anonymous Coward]

The gui acceleration, as in Panther (and Jaguar), works with just about any card having 16 MB vram or better. What you're thinking of is CoreImage, which speeds up a number of specialized image processing functions and has a bunch of filters that programs can use. This only affects programs that were specifically written to use CoreImage. If CoreImage supports your video card (likely to require 64 MB but AFAIK that's not set in stone), these operations will be done in real time. The demo they did last June was quite impressive, applying all kinds of filters to video in real time. If your video card can't handle it, the program will still do exactly the same things, just not in real time.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[ssimontis]

I would gladly switch any day to a Mac. Heck, I'd be happy with a Mac Mini right now. But I have just about no cash, and a Mac will have to wait until college...

Re:Just go for it....soon

[Juanvaldes]

When Tiger was first shown to developers at WWDC in June of 04 Apple said it would be released during the first Half 2005. At Macworld earlier this month it was still 1H05. I'm calling for July with a slip to "Summer" aka first day of fall still possible.

My Mac buying advice is pick what you want and if it's not recently refreshed wait for the update and then buy that hardware. I don't know if I would hold out for Tiger at this point in time. It looks to be Six months of waiting vs $129. Your call.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[hunterx11]

Is the general point just to free up main CPU time by offloading desktop rendering to the GPU, then?

Basically, yes. Quartz and Quartz Extreme already offload some things to the GPU. Tiger will also introduce CoreImage and CoreVideo, which will be able to offload basically everything to the GPU. (At the WWDC demo, they were doing things like applying multiple filters to live video without any slowdown). If you don't have a good video card, you won't get effects like the spinning box animation for fast user switching, or crossfading if your timed desktop picture changes. I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't be able to do live resizing of QuickTime movies, or see the cool ripple effect from launching new Dashboard gadgets, which Tiger will have. But stuff like transparency works okay even in software if, like you said, you have a shitload of RAM.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[superflippy]

The best place to buy RAM for Macs is datamem. It's inexpensive and good quality, and if they don't have your model listed you can call them and talk to an actual person and figure out what you need. The physics dept. at the university where I work buys all their Mac memory there. Apple charges way too much for additional memory, and you sound like the kind of guy who can install it himself.

Re:Just go for it....soon

[jo_ham]

Also, you only need 16Mb of video ram to have Quartz Extreme enabled (it is either on or off, you can't select it).

32Mb cards and above are way overpowered for QE, but it doesn't hurt to have them!

If a Mac doesn't have 16Mb of vram, it just turns off a lot of the fancy effects without affecting the speed.

My advice? Wait...

[Mark Hood]

The best time to buy Apple hardware is a week after they introduce new equipment... That gives you the longest time between your purchase and the replacement coming out. The week gives you time to check the early adopter's trouble reports too :) Always check the rumour sites, or you'll do as a friend of mine did, and buy a 30GB iPod a week before the 40GB appeared for the same price.

Friends of mine who bought the first model of any product line (G3 towers, Powerbooks, etc) find they get all the teething problems associated with a new release, so if you can, wait for the second revision of anything.

So if you want a Powerbook, check the rumour sites - they are all estimating Q2 shipping. This would suggest a revision anything up to 6 months later (usually just a speed bump, but they tend to iron out the wrinkles too).

If you can't wait that long, buy one now - they're still great machines, even if they're superceded next week!

Following this advice I got a 30GB iPod when it was new (the 2nd rev of the 3G series) and the 17" 1GHz iMac (first of the widescreen ones, but not the first flatscreen), both of which have never given me a day's trouble.

Mark

Re:My advice? Wait...

[elbobo]

Revisions of the Powerbook line are expected in a matter of weeks. The current models have been end of lined and stocks are depleting.

The upcoming Powerbook revisions aren't expected to be G5s, but will have speed boosts, graphics boosts, and a few other rumoured upgrades.

Re:My advice? Wait...

[Shisha]

Yes, it might be better to wait and also the new update to OS X "Tiger" is expected around the end of March. You don't have to get the OS update 100% right, since they usually give them out for free to people who bought a new Mac few weeks before the OS update.

I'm just waiting for Tiger and then I'll try using a mac (after 7 years of running Linux on laptops... I don't have all the time to fiddle with things anymore).

P.S. check out oroborosx.sourceforge.net/ if you want to run X windows apps on your Mac.

Re:My advice? Wait...

[Mark Hood]

Good point, wait for the new OS version, and save $150!

The 'up to date' program usually only applies to people who buy hardware after the OS in announced but before it ships...

Re:My advice? Wait...

[neverkevin]

Why use oroborosx when you can use the Apple X11? (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/) It is 100x better, it has hardware acceleration via Quartz and OpenGL, it plays well with the Dock, etc. Oroborosx is so 10.1.

Re:My advice? Wait...

[KillerDeathRobot]

Always check the rumour sites, or you'll do as a friend of mine did, and buy a 30GB iPod a week before the 40GB appeared for the same price.

2 things:

1) Was there even a 30GB iPod? I thought it was just 15/20/40.

2) If he bought it a week before the 40GB came out at the same price point, which is almost exactly what happened to me when they got rid of the 15GB and lowered the 20GB's price, he should have sent Apple an email or called them, because they'd have given him some of his money back (I recieved $100, the amount the 20GB decreased).

Re:My advice? Wait...

[emelye]

>If you can't wait that long, buy one now - they're still great machines, even if they're superceded next week!

I agree with this totally. I've been on Macs since 1993... and I've only had three of them.

I buy "second revisions," as Mark says, and they run for years. The only glitch is that I can't always play the newest games once my Mac is a year old, but everything else runs fine.

Re:My advice? Wait...

[harrkev]

buy a 30GB iPod a week before the 40GB appeared for the same price.

This type of thing can piss off customers and cause a serious case of buyer's remorse.

Apple (and other companies) should adopt a linear pricing strategy. Product X come out now for $500. Drop the price by 3% this month. Another 3% in another month, and so on. By the time a new model comes out for $500, the old one is going for $400 or so, and you don't feel so bad for missing out on the new model, because you spent less money. Obviously the 3% might need to be 2% or 2.5% or something else. Apple could work the numbers so that they still make a good profit.

There are only two problems with this:
1) You can annoy the retailers who keep a sizable amount of stock on hand.
2) You can loose revenue if you are late shipping a product.

But here are the bonuses:
1) You do not annoy customers by making them wish that they had waited.
2) You get constant sales. When a product gets long-in-the-tooth now, people hold off. If the price were to drop, customers might choose to just go ahead and buy, figureing that they are getting a little bit of a bargain.

Just my $0.02. Feel free to shoot me down.

Re:My advice? Wait...

[bsartist]

Apple (and other companies) should adopt a linear pricing strategy.

Apple just posted the best quarterly numbers in the history of the company... so they should change their pricing strategy? I fail to see the logic. You change your strategy when it isn't working; when it's a spectacular success you leave it alone.

Re:My advice? Wait...

[milkman_matt]

But here are the bonuses:
1) You do not annoy customers by making them wish that they had waited.
2) You get constant sales. When a product gets long-in-the-tooth now, people hold off. If the price were to drop, customers might choose to just go ahead and buy, figureing that they are getting a little bit of a bargain.
3) You generate marketing hype because people see "Uh-oh, price is dropping, that means they're going to announce something new!

Very big bonus IMO. Especially if you drop the price 2% per month and release on the third. If people can set their watches to it the Mac Rumor sites will be packed the day a product announces a price drop with anticipation of what's coming. And if you drop the price BEFORE anouncing what's coming, that'll generate a serious buzz and pique people's curiosity, they'll be ready to buy before they even know what you're selling.

Re:My advice? Wait...

[Mark Hood]

1) Was there even a 30GB iPod?

Yep, I have one myself... (as my original article stated)

he should have sent Apple an email or called them, because they'd have given him some of his money back

Perhaps they do this as a goodwill gesture for those who complain - it's not a policy as far as I know (and I doubt it will continue if everyone does it!)

Re:My advice? Wait...

[KillerDeathRobot]

It is policy.
Excerpt:
Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 calendar days of shipment, you may contact Apple Sales Support at 1-800-676-2775 to request a refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. To receive the refund or credit you must contact Apple within 14 business days of shipment.

Re:My advice? Wait...

[Mark Hood]

I didn't mention, but he's in the UK and the UK Store Policy doesn't have that clause.

Perhaps he could/should have complained, but on the face of it, he gets nothing...

Mark

Re:My advice? Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has a 14 day return/exchange policy, i.e. if you buy any equipment now and within one fortnight a newer model is released, you can have your purchase exchanged for the newer model at no cost to you.

Good question

[theolein]

It's not that easy to answer. Generally, the only way to have any idea of when Apple will be releasing new hardware is by following the rumour sites (Thinksecret, Appleinsider etc) and using large pinches of salt. Of those, Thinksecret, the one with the best record on accuracy, is being sued by Apple, so the chances of their being "in the know", in future are slim.

The register is no good as they make all sorts of wild claims which almost never come true.

Usually Apple releases new hard- and software on two regular occasions: Macworld (just past, this january) and the Mac developer conference, in the middle of the year. Buying a new Mac just before then is usually not the best of ideas.

The only way to do this, if you're seriously interested in wasting a lot of time, is to spend time on the Appleinsider forums, noting occasional leaks before Apple C and D's them, and keeping up with current industry trends.

That means, at present: The chances of an Apple G5 Powerbook being released soon are very slim, as far as I can see. The chances that Apple will first release upgraded G4 Powerbooks with the new Motorola G4 and "Freescale" processors is much higher, since those would take the G4 above 1,5GHz.

If you have the patience, wait until the developers conference is over in the middle of the year. I'm sure Apple will have announced something by then.

Re:Good question

[d_p]

Don't forget. Hardware releases always happen on Tuesdays for some reason.

Re:Good question

[Johnathon_Dough]

I'm sure there is a good reason for this, but I have no idea what it is but it seems to cross industries, records, cds, movies, comics seem to be on wendsdays, but that could be that they arrive on tuesday with UPS and get put on the shelves for wed. morning.

There is probably a good sound business reason for this....or it might just be inertia

Any time really!

[Gumph]

My first answer would be wait until 'Tiger' comes out, that way you will more than likely get Panther installed on the box and Tiger on CDs. At least that is what happened when I bought my Imac last year (cept of course it was Jaguar-Panther). I got two Oses for the price of one. Bargain.
on the flip side of that, you may as well upgrade now as every day on windows is a day when your PC can crash and die and get infected with malware etc etc. (Bit dramatic I know, but hey that is what too much time spent on billyware does to you!)

Re:Any time really!

[Gumph]

ooops, just re-read your question and saw you are a linux man, please ignore my last sentence, but for anyone else thinking of upgrading to a better OS - the time is now! *Gets ready for the barrage of Mac zealot lines*

Re:Any time really!

[harrkev]

Ok. You are a Mac zealog. Boooo Hisssssss.

Seriously though, I have found XP to be rather stable. And XP can be insecure, if you do not know what you are doing. Put XP in the hands of a geek, and it can be incrediby secure. If you add a hardwar NAT protection, a software firewall, anti-virus, and anti-spyware, you can sleep well at night.

I do admit that some of the software costs a bit, and it takes time to install/maintain this stuff. Those are negative points. Macs are definately better in this regard, no doubt about it. But Windows machines are not as bad as you make them out to be if you know what you are doing.

Now, WPA and the general behavior of Microsoft is a much better reason to switch to Mac. But as a side note, M$ wants to control all software (and maybe the world). Apple wants to control software and hardware. The ONLY hardware that can run an Apple OS has is made by Apple. They booted the 3rd party hardware comanies years ago. Except for the occasional mouse, keyboard, and wireless networking stuff, Microsoft is not in the PC hardware business.

Re:Any time really!

[Moofie]

When I get home from work, supporting 500 Windows 90/2000/XP workstations, the last last last thing I want to do is "need to know what I'm doing" to keep my home computers from going all wonky.

That's why I have a Powerbook...because I know what I'm doing, and I know better. Good technicians are lazy technicians, and I'm a very lazy technician.

Re:Any time really!

[Anonymous Coward]

WPA is either a 1930s public works program or a wireless security protocol. What are you talking about?

Do you mean...

[pdoucy]

...that a laptop becomes sluggish the very moment the next revision comes out ? I didn't know about that, and my 3 year old iBook doesn't know either.
As usual when you want to buy a computer (or quite anything technology-related), you have to know what you need, and jump and buy it... Of course it will become outdated shortly, but do you really need the new one ?

Re:Do you mean...

[Brian Brian]

Here here. How correct you are. I am on a 12 inch iBook G3 @800 running 10.3.7 and love it. Now I don't play games and I don't edit movies. But for real work, iTunes, iPhoto, scheduling, web browsing, email, programming, and so on, this machine is more than acceptable. Plus it only cost me $500. Beat that with a stick. Oh, and there is that *nix thingy too! I guess the only reason to wait now would be to get Tiger for free instead of paying for it.

Re:Do you mean...

[BlueCodeWarrior]

Plus it only cost me $500. Beat that with a stick.

Okay.

Re:Do you mean...

[cpct0]

I got a PowerBook G3 (Pismo) ... Got it almost when it went on the market... so it's very old.

Never upgraded the CPU, still have 512MB of ram, upgraded the internal HD for a 18GB. Other than that it's all legit.

And I am still running latest rev of Mac OS X, with adequate performances for everyday usage.

Wait for Rev B

[Anonymous Coward]

The best time is to buy Apple hardware is shortly after the Rev B version of whatever you want comes out. This means you get something that won't be replaced for a while and which has most of the bugs removed. A good example is the 12" PowerBook which ran very hot when it first came out and also suffered from warped cases and the pads on the base falling off. The Rev B model had none of these problems.

Re:Wait for Rev B

[DiscoOnTheSide]

however, this isn't alwayas true as I bought the Rev . B Powerbook Titanium G4 (550Mhz). It was the worst performing powerbook g4 ever. the 500Mhz with a 100Mhz bus speed was faster than a 550Mhz with a 133 bus speed. The Powerbook G4 wasn't fully realized until it hit the Aluminum series. I never liked the hinges of the titanium. It all seemed too fragile... My 1.25Ghz AlBook feels like it could stop a truck...

Re:Wait for Rev B

[Jerry Smith]

Correct: the revision A eMac had defective idap-cables (fixed in B), the revision A iMac had dodgy modem and ethernet software/firmware (fixed in B), the first few iMac G5's had noisy 220V-psu's, fixed in later machines.
Warranty still applied, but have it working perfectly out of the box is nicer IMHO.

Why?

[Ogerman]

When is the right time to jump on the Apple ship?

If you've really been a Linux user since '97 (but I'm thinking this is just bait), you really don't have much incentive to "jump ship" to Apple err.. OSX. You certainly don't need the user-friendly config tools if you survived back then. The slick eye-candy? Not likely.. Your use habits are more CLI-centric than most people. Furthermore, you would know that X.org + KDE/GNOME will have caught up in another 1-2 years but that really doesn't add much value anyhow. (composited window transparency, which is available today, is the only notable exception)

I've been using Linux since '96 and I could care less about OSX, besides adopting a couple of its neat GUI ideas into the Free desktop. I can understand Windows users wanting to switch -- for them it's a huge leap forward in all aspects. But for us long time Linux users, it's just another mildly interesting member of the Unix family tree.

Re:Why?

[@madeus]

I've been using Linux since '96 and I could care less about OSX, besides adopting a couple of its neat GUI ideas into the Free desktop. I can understand Windows users wanting to switch -- for them it's a huge leap forward in all aspects. But for us long time Linux users, it's just another mildly interesting member of the Unix family tree.

Speak for yourself! :P

I've been running Linux on Macintosh hardware since 1996 and I use Mac OS X as my primary system (even though I develop solutions/software on Debian, FreeBSD and Solaris systems for a living).

May of us see the virtue in having a system which 'just works', and as good as it Debian and GNOME don't quite do that for me (and KDE doesn't delivery the funtionality I'm looking for, I prefer the GNOME style of implimentation). I'd much rather have Debian as a server, but I can't say the same about a desktop.

I agree that KDE/GNOME and x.org will catch up within a couple of years and with the better performance of an accellerated window manager and an even better (but already very impressive) GNOME/nautilus driven environment I'll be tempted to switch back.

Re:Why?

[BenjyD]

I've been a Linux user since 2001 and am also currently thinking about jumping on the Apple ship. I think I'm just getting fed up with all the fiddling, really.

Example: wireless card on my laptop kind of works, but causes a kernel panic in FC3, suspend-to-disk kinda-sorta works after a lot of fiddling, nautilus CD burning kind of works, but seems to burn a lot of coasters on my brand-new burner and there's no way to change the burn-speed, YAST2 is kinda nice, but slow and clunky.

I spend a lot of time reporting and dealing with annoying bugs in distros. I like all the polish I see in MacOSX, the nice configuration tools. I'd like to just be able to use my computer.

I use Linux because the x86 alternative (Windows) is *so* awful. I mean, I'm a free software developer and even I can see good reasons for switching.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you've really been a Linux user since '97 (but I'm thinking
> this is just bait), you really don't have much incentive to "jump
> ship" to Apple err.. OSX. You certainly don't need the user-
> friendly config tools if you survived back then

Depending on the type of person you are. I've used Linux since late 1998, and switched last year to using OSX full time.

For me, it wasn't that I got to know Linux well enough to use it without the gui tools and convenience of OSX, it's that I got to know it despite the lack of those. I didn't find OSX much more interesting than another nice looking window manager on linux, until six months in and I found myself just using the Mac to do everything, and realised I was dreading the little annoyances I'd managed to get used to and work around when I went back to my Linux machines.

But that's just me, and not anyone else. I'd recommend getting a mac as a 2nd machine for starters. If worst comes to worst and you hate it... hey, sell it. They hold their value well and you haven't lost much.

Re:Why?

[peragrin]

That is one reason why I bought a 12" Powerbook at the end of Novemember. Tiger is due out in April. If your looking to buy , hold off until then. If you buy close enough to the release date you do get a free upgrade.

G5 powerbooks won't be out until at least June, if not even August. Though I must admitt I haven't had a speed problem on a 1.3ghz G4 yet. I run Fire, iTerm, Firefox, iTunes all at the same time. Add Photoshop, X-Chat Aqua, and force the Powerbook to run two displays(lcd, and 19" flat screen) and I can force the fans to turn on. Sluggish nope, it still responds quickly, unless I have photoshop doing a large image manipulation.

What's better, it's small and light. Want to sit in front of the fire place? go for it, for light web surfig the fan won't come on, it stays that cool. My only wish is that Apple would build the Newton 2.

Re:Why?

[jellomizer]

I have been using Linux since 1994. Then I decided to switch 2002, I wanted a good laptop and at the Time the 667Mhz powerbook was the best laptop for the price. Linux is a good OS for servers, OK for desktops, but not the best for laptops. Linux wireless interface seems needlessly complex, some of the drivers are picky, and laptop centric features like enabling and disabling the tap click on the glide pad. Handling many of the extra keyboard features like volume control. Yes I am sure someone will give me links on how to fix these issues. That isn't the point sometimes our time is a little more valuable to spend hours downloading, and configuring all these little patches to make linux work good on your system (If they don't work then you need to do some cleanup work). Apple makes the hardware and the OS. The OS recognizes the hardware and works well with it out of the box. It also handles 3rd party devices cleanly and easily. Most of OS X eye candy actually is designed for a reason, and quite well, the shadows help the eye recognize which window is on top when they are next to each other, the transparencies are just enough for a person to notice movement behind an object but not mess up your ability to read it. The fancy minimize and maximize graphics help the eye follow where the windows went and let you know that you haven't just closed the window, and if something did happen when it was minimizing you would know that it happened, some color throbs to show that the application is still responding, All the eye candy is respectfully done vs. say Clippy, and actually rather out of the way and unintrusive.

Re:Why?

[GiMP]

I've been using Linux as my primary OS since 97 and I've been considering getting a Mac -- and leaving OSX on it.

In 2000, I bought a Powerbook Pismo (g3/firewire) with the intention of running Linux. It runs Linux marviously, and there isn't an application (other than Macromedia flash) which it cannot handle fine -- even with the (now) older 400mhz processor. I extensively use the airport adapter , so the only cable I use with it is the power adapter, and I keep the machine in my living room.

Now, I'm afraid when I decide to replace that laptop, I won't be able to use the new machine in the way I used the old one. ACPI under Linux is awful, so I can't buy x86 -- and the Airport Extreme cards don't work under Linux.

What is a geek to do? Run OSX, kill the Dock, run an X11 server, and compile your own apps (or use something like fink). It isn't pretty, but its the friendliest Unix laptop -- even if it isn't Linux. Nobody says that OSX can't be "just another Unix" -- it just hides it by default.

Re:Why?

[rjamestaylor]

I know why I use my iBook G4 (12" screen) instead of the Dell 5150 (15" 1600x1200 screen; 3.06 GHz proc) running Debian testing, and it's not just the OS/GUI: it's the whole package Mac offers.

• Hardware / OS integration: nigh perfect.
• Battery life: amazing.
• Mobile networking support: awesome -- switch between RJ45, 802.11b/g with ease and no fiddling with supplicants, ifconfig, ifup, ifdown, etc.
• CLI: open source iTerm is my favorite Terminal.app replacement; feels like home (BASH as default shell nice nod GNU users) Default apps: very good and improving; the only place I don't use Thunderbird as mail client (in a GUI) is OSX, where I use Apple's Mail.app. Great support for multiple accounts, lists, GPG, etc.
• Open source apps: use the Fink, Luke.
• Closed source apps: instead of Wine there may be native versions of Windows apps (or VirtualPC, but I've not used that recently)
• Clipboard sanity: Linux/X clipboard functionality is so much better than 2 years ago but is not as consistent and useful as Mac OS X's. Sounds tiny, but I copy/paste between terminal sessions all day long.

I got tired of thinking about the computer when I just need to use it. That's the main reason my Dell sits idle. It's not that Linux can't do enough, it's just not fully fleshed out for a Desktop OS nor especially as a Laptop OS. Linux remains my absolute preference for a server OS.

Did someone say, "What about Windows?" Yeah, that's the OS my kids use on their non-networked machine for edu-tainment. Otherwise, I have no use for it.

Full disclosure: I switched temporarily in 2002 to a TiBook G4, but switched back to Windows/Linux as my Laptop OSes due to work requirements and the immaturity of Mac OS X in a Windows environment at that time. With OS X 1.3, I have none of the problems with printers, really networked resources in general, that I had previously. I wrote about "Switched Back" at that time. Things have improved so much I *know* I won't be switching away again. Not unless something insanely great comes along...

Re:Why?

[Cro Magnon]

Here's my reasons:

Hardware support! On my x86 desktop, one Linux distro doesn't set up sound, another one sets up sound, but not my printer, and another freezes on shutdown. On my iBook, all the above work, with zero effort on my part.

Also, the hardware is better than most PC laptops.

Re:Why?

[porcupine8]

I'd been using Linux since 98, and I switched to OS X in 2002. My fiance's been using Linux since 97, and he's planning on switching to OS X as soon as he can afford a new computer (which might be a lot sooner thanks to the mini). Why? I think theolein covered most of the main reasons. Plus, I like having things "just work," as Apple advertises. I had to have my machine dual-boot windows b/c I couldn't find Linux drivers for my digital camera. I'm guessing that's less of a problem these days, but still - I'd have to download drivers. With my Mac, I just buy something and plug it in. Other than price, I can't see many reasons *not* to switch. You still get a command line, etc - but you get a much wider range of high-quality software, including whatever you used in Linux if you want it.

Re:Why?

[valmont]

i don't mean to troll but remind me how you get digital still cameras, DV camcorders, bluetooth mobile devices, bluetooth headsets to work in Linux? Assuming you do ... what do you do then? Where's the Linux device synchronization strategy, like, you know, iSync?

What does the digital music marketplace and music device market look like for Linux?

What's a decent document authoring tool in Linux? vi, emacs, and Open Office do not count.

the post author just might be interested in doing niftier things with his computer. you know, like when you have a girlfriend ... then a wife ... then kids ... and you like to take pictures and videos, and perhaps easily author DVDs

sure ... he could stick to Linux. Linux is nice. I've used it for a while. but today, why bother? OS X is hands-down a far superior operating system. And that's precisely because it not-only draws from the open-source community, but also adds a whole layer of innovations targeted at fulfilling the needs of, you know, mere mortals who don't spend their time compiling kernels all day long.

you've obviously got a lot of learning to do about OS X.

Re:Why?

[Ash-Fox]

Instead of isync, you use the linux kernel modules.

Re:Why?

[commodoresloat]

What is a geek to do? Run OSX, kill the Dock, run an X11 server, and compile your own apps (or use something like fink).

That's exactly what to do (though I recommend darwin-ports over fink). If you really want to run your own window manager just install it and then log in with ">console" to enter darwin without the GUI, then start x in your favorite way after you log in. Then you pretty much have a pure BSD system and you can install and run whatever you used to run under linux. Of course, you won't be able to run OS X apps (except command-line apps) without starting the OS X GUI. You'll probably want to run the X11 server on top of the OSX GUI even though it's a little kludgy.

Chances are, you will eventually learn to love the OS X GUI as much as the rest of us, and a lot of commonly used linux apps have been rewritten to take advantage of Apple's GUI which means you won't have to run them under Apple's X11 server anymore.

Why did this troll get modded up?

[theolein]

This is so plainly a troll or flamebait that modding it up as interesting can only be done by the opposite of a Mac zealot; a Windows only person, or a Linux zealot. I'm guessing its a Linux fanatic, due to the Gentoo comment.

OSX has its faults, but none of them are show stoppers, the apps definitely do not crash wildly and the GUI is most certainly not crippled and there is no way in hell that configuration is anywhere as difficult or problematic as in your average Linux distro.

Re:Why did this troll get modded up?

[passthecrackpipe]

something does not fit your worldview, so it must be a Troll or flamebait? Great thinking there, Einstein! It is my own experience with OSX, got no axe to grind or anything. I really wanted to give OSX a try - just as the article poster, and found it did not work for me. Please see my other post elucidating a bit on the issues I encountered. If you are happy with OSX and can live with it, good for you. I on the other hand, speaking from personal experience, think it sucks.

Re:Why did this troll get modded up?

[burns210]

It isn't that I see 'this doesn't fit my view, it must be wrong" it is that I see, "this guy is making claims that I, my friends, and the machines my friends work on, have never had, ever, so what is the deal?"

OS X isn't perfect. I have never, ever, ever had any 'configuration issue with it, though that is somewhat vague. Apps have crashed, normally third-party apps that were the release-early-and-often type... it happens, but not often...

As for your other posting that was linked to... That is a lame ass bug and it should be fixed, furthermore, Font Manager should be made 'non-sucky'... I fully agree.

I also agree that Safari is not the place for the Default Browser setting, it should be in System Preferences.

Expose I do find useful, not just as eye candy. And I am in an interesting mix of liking the dock, and disliking that its scale-out setting makes motor memory harder to build, and that its snapshots of windows(minimized) are hard to differentiate.

I am not a fanboy, I see your complaints and, in my case, I have experienced and agree with you. I hope you take another look at OS X when Tiger comes out, because, overall, I do see it as the best system out there... Then again, I am also looking to learn more (Ubuntu) Linux and Solaris better, so, what can I say... Open minds never hurt anybody.

Re:Why did this troll get modded up?

[theolein]

I just read your other post, and I think I'll stick with my comment that you are trolling. You installed "thousands of fonts", some of which were obviously corrupt, and then Safari started acting up, which begs the question whether you replaced system fonts with your own. And you blame your corrupt fonts on the OS? Not bad, and even better from a supposed technically inclined user.

As to your Taskbar comment, that indicates a) you have a preference for it, whihc is your good right, but your comment about Expose being a flashy hack immediately brings you down to troll level. Expose allows you to see, as you might know, the current application's windows (F10 by default), all application windows (F9 by default), or the Desktop (F11 by default). All of those can be changed if you like. Added to which there is added functionality such as being able to hide or quit apps from Expose and the Task switcher, drag and drop to the Expose windows etc.

If you don't like that, it's your preference, and mine to disagree, but calling it a flashy hack is simply asking to get flamed as there just as many people who hate the task bar.

Now, if you said you prefer virtual desktops, as is implemented in most Linux GUIs, then I would understand.

As it is, it just makes you look like you don't like the OS works, which says nothing about how good or bad the OS is.

(And please, how is the Font manager in the OS bad? Which other OS has a better built in Font manager?)

Re:Why did this troll get modded up?

[passthecrackpipe]

Hey cool - this is the kind of dialogue I was hoping for!

As for the configuration issues - that is a bit deeper, as it is a combination of things. X11 integration was not good, limiting OpenOffice usage, and the J/ OpenOffice stuff (name slipped my mind) was crashing all the time, so I could not use it for my day to day work - I used this machine as a day-today office machine, you know, office apps, mail browser, etc. - so none of the core apps required for my work worked nicely - browser crashing, other browser not integrated, no good office app, fink was hard to deal with and set up.

So my alternatives were to either pony up a lot of money for Microsoft Office for OSX - something I did not want to do (but a collegue of mine did, only to find it crashing all the time when opening word documents) and spending a lot of time getting comfortable with fink.

All in all, the time, effort and money involved did not lead me to a significant better user experience. In fact, from my perspective, I spent a lot of money on OSX, was having to spend more money on office, had loads of issues, and found my productivity dropped. I reckoned to be fully conversant and productive, I would have to spend a lot of time, effort and money, just to get to a level of productivity where I already was before I started with the whole OSX experience. For no appreciable, calcuble or noticable gain. (I have tons of eyecandy already). On the other hand, I am now the proud owner of a G4 and a qube, and they are by far the best pieces of kit I own. They both run Gentoo (the only Gentoo machines I have - Debian is pedantic, YDL is out of date (you see, I can kick linux distros as well)) and are top machines.

Re:Why did this troll get modded up?

[theolein]

At last you're actually posting something like dialog yourself.

I'm not a heavy X11 user myself in OSX, but I'll take your word for it, and will agree that you'll have a more unified experience using Linux with OpenOffice.

However, I still have to wonder how much time and effort you put into the default browser problem. 5 minutes on google would have told you that you can change the default browser through myriad other means, one of which, simply opening up Internet Explorer and changing the http and https helper apps, would have done the trick, and there are also at least two third party apps that do the same thing.

But anyway, if you're happy with Gentoo, then all the power to you. I still use Debian on my x86 machine and I'm happy with that too.

Re:Why did this troll get modded up?

[porcupine8]

Your experiences sound a lot like what happened when I got my eMac... Turned out to be a faulty stick of RAM. Took the RAM back to the apple store, they handed me a new one, problems solved! Great customer service. And in the 2.5 years since then, my computer has not once locked up - Safari crashes now and then, but other than that not a single issue.

Funny question

[bw5353]

It depends on what you do with your computer. I would say that any model out there today runs well enough for web-browsing, e-mail and word processing. If that's all you do, there is no need to wait for better machines. I'm typing this on a two year old G4 laptop, and in spite of the fact that I have enough money, I can see no excuse to upgrade to a faster model.

If you do (or intend to do) a lot of editing of big images or video editing or compiling big applications, then you are probably more concerned with speed. Check out the benchmarks, or try a machine out with your nearest Apple dealer. It could be that the present machines already beat your current linux box.

Re:Funny question

[gl4ss]

but if all he does is web-browsing, email and word processing surely he could just keep his current linux box and spend the grand of dough on hookers and have more ROI?

he's maybe trying to figure when would be the time to buy a mac so that it would not sink in $$$ value instantly after a week(or just a mac guy pimping in drag).

When? Depends what you want

[Grab]

If you're a sucker for things that look cool, you've got deep pockets, and you don't care if it doesn't perform, then by all means go for it.

Alternatively, if you have any kind of budget, or if you want a computer that actually *does* stuff instead of just sitting there like an artist's doorstop, you might want to stick with PC-based stuff. Without exception, anything PC-based is faster and cheaper. If you really need something that looks cool, shop around for a nice-looking laptop or a fancy desktop case.

Grab.

Can't help you out . . .

[zo219]

. . . never had a sluggish Powerbook, and that's all I've owned since 1992 and - hang on! - the 170. 16MB RAM, that baby was hot!

A smart way to save bucks is to buy new the next-to-newest model. I'm writing this on a 17" 1.33 with max third-party RAM (never pay for Apple RAM, oh nooo) and it is an immensely cool tool.

i just switched

[ralinx]

My iMac G5 arrived yesterday. I haven't had much time to play around with it but so far i'm very impressed with it. OS X is a bit weird at first, but after a short while you'll feel very comfortable with it.

You're probably gonna get a lot of "wait for the new product announcements" or "wait for Tiger" comments, but seriously, why should you wait? New products might be announced next week... maybe the week after that, maybe the month after that, hell you might end up waiting until June. Or you could just buy one now, and you'll be sure that whatever you buy will most likely still run the latest versions of OS X and other software in 4 years time.

Re:i just switched

[Guy Harris]

OS X is a bit weird at first

"Weird" is in the eye of the beholder. I find its ifconfig less weird than Linux's, for example,, but that's because I used BSD-derived versions of ifconfig, which is what most UN*Xes use.

I.e., for any given pair of UN*Xes X and Y, there's probably something in Y that users of X will find weird. You can substitute "Linux", "FreeBSD", "NetBSD", "OpenBSD", "DragonflyBSD", "Solaris", "AIX", "HP-UX", "OS X", etc. for "X" and "Y" - and you can probably even substitute particular Linux distributions for "X" *and* "Y" (e.g., "there's probably something in Slackware that users of Gentoo will find weird").

Personally, I think that if there's any purported flavor of UN*X that can't be substituted for "X" for any value of "Y" that corresponds to a flavor of UN*X other than the value being substituted for "X", that purported flavor of UN*X isn't actually a flavor of UN*X. I.e., an inherent part of being a UN*X is that it has to do something differently from all the other UN*Xes.... :-)

Of course, you could be referring to the GUI rather than the UN*X layer, in which case the OS X GUI might be considered "more different" from the other major UN*X GUIs then those others are from each other - or maybe not; GNOME 2/GTK+ 2 seems to have lifted some of their feel from OS X, at least in recent versions (the GtkFileChooser looks a bit OS X-influenced).

Re:i just switched

[Winterblink]

My girlfriend just bought herself a 12" iBook, and to be honest I was a little skeptical of the thing (seems like the screen would be too small). But the OS and application's use of screen real estate really makes the smaller screen size a complete non-issue. That and the Expose functions really make managing multiple windows and multiple applications a total breeze.

I'm actually considering picking up either the iBook or an iMac, I'm just torn on whether I want to be tethered to my desk or not. :)

Good reasons.

[theolein]

Ease of use: The OS is very stable, as stable as anything in the Linux world. The apps are generally of better quality than stuff found in the Linux world, although you can use those on OSX as well. The GUI and applications all use the same user interface, which means that you don't have wildly differing interfaces such as is the case of GTK+ and KDE apps. (Think GIMP and OpenOffice and tell me why most apps don't even follow the GNOME HCI guidlines).

The OS is incredibly easy to configure compared to the various competing KDE/Gnome distros (which is exactly the problem there). And if you need the terminal and wish to do stuff by hand, it's there, and you're free to do what you like with the system's innnards as it's OSS and well documented.

The OS, apps and hardware are tightly integrated, which means that problems like hardware compatibility don't exist.

The software and hardware are both of high quality, which really means something if you've used Dell or no name brands.

It goes way byond things like Eye Candy, which says to me that you've never actually used the OS for a period of time yourself.

Re:Good reasons.

[gl4ss]

you might also just plain not like the osx. it's a possibility. there are annoyances in it, you just don't hear about them that often.

but anyhow.. you're missing the thing you're replying: if he really is a linux user from '97 none of the stuff matters, really. you just gave the standard macster response as to why it is soo perfect.

how about a spotlight mention in there too?

basically the reason for why a linux head, who uses it as the desktop beast as well, would be the hardware and the possible switch to mac osx. first, the mac hardware is not exactly cheap and they like all other manufacturers have had quality/design problems every now and then(it's made in china like everything else too).

so the question to ask would be: does he really need a new computer and does he really need it to run macosx - in which case the right time to buy a mac would be now(if you want a mac you want a mac and it doesn't really go further than that.. you're already paying premium no matter when you're buying it anyways and the reason why the hardware is 'better' is purely because it runs macosx).

Re:Good reasons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Think GIMP and OpenOffice and tell me why most apps don't even follow the GNOME HCI guidlines

Maybe you should try openoffice on OS X before making these claims. I wouldn't call it Apple guidelines, do you?

Re:Good reasons.

[Paladin128]

I'm going to be making the switch sometime this year myself. Still going to be using Linux serverside, but I'm sick of getting a new piece of hardware, like a Firewire drive, and having to hack /etc/fstab or automount, or whatever. My digital camera took hours to get working. OpenGL apps stopped running without crashing the OS, and I don't have the time to make it work again. I'm also getting into pro audio/video editing, and after playing around with ProTools and Logic, I don't see any Linux equivalents. The ONLY thing I'm going to miss from the switch is OpenOffice.org -- a Mac port exists, but it sucks royally. I actually prefer OO.o to MS Office (I use Win2K at work -- I find myself WAY more productive in OO.o)

As I said, my servers will still run Linux -- they don't need to support an array of removable USB and firewire devices, OpenGL, advanced audio/video stuff. Maybe someone will put together a distro someday that will be as smooth of a user experience as OSX, and pro audio/video apps will be available for the platform, but it's not there yet. The fact of the matter is, I'm more comfortable in a *NIX environment than Windows, and for your average consumer, that means Linux, *BSD, or OSX. When I was a college student, any of the above would be an option, but now my time is a lot more valuable.

Re:Good reasons.

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to miss OO.o. I personally prefer NeoOffice/J, but you can always put run OO.o in the X11 shell. That's how I ran it for a year and a half until NO/J.

The install's very straightforward, startup time acceptable, and the only quirks you'll see are the things you would in Linux anyways - comapability with MS Office, particularly the fonts.

Re:Good reasons.

[Golias]

I jumped from Linux to OS X for my web server and will never look back.

Why? Not ease of use... Ease of maintenance!

OS X checks weekly for security patches, and installing them is a matter of a few clicks. It's slick, easy, and fast.

I used to run Red Hat 9, and security updates were a major headache. The first time I tried to run the updater, I had to first update the OS (manually) to support the current updater. Even after that, I often had to do all kinds of sick hacks to keep it working. Then, a few months later, Red Hat dropped support entirely and asked that I migrate to Fedora or buy their "Enterprise" level package. That was the last straw.

Sure, you are about to tell me how much better Debian or SuSE or some other distro is about automated revisions, but I don't trust any of them to not pull the carpet out from under me the same way Red Hat did. After all, if it's a "Free" OS, I have no right to complain if some company providing sercices for it wants to stop spending resources on making my life easy, do I?

There's a huge difference between knowing how to mess with the Linux CLI, and wanting to do so. Administrating a Linux box is a terrific learning experience, but once you've learned what you wanted to know the "fun" of maintaining it wears off quickly, and you just want a server that works with a minimum of farting around.

That, my friend, is the time to move to OS X.

Re:Good reasons.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a lot of you are missing something major here. You don't really have to "switch" from Linux to Mac at all. I was a Windows/Mac user for 10 years before switching to Debian and Slackware for my personal use. Once OS X became mature I got a Mac laptop and have been really, really happy with it. It works great with my Linux boxen and even talks OK with my single Win2K machine. It's a really good commercial *nix, with great hardware, good looks, steady development and a fanatical user base. Look at it as a BSD that you don't have to configure. Start it and it works. No "switching" is necessary.

Re:Good reasons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are pretty much the same reasons I've been using debian for a couple of years now. It's a pain to install compared to things like RH, sure, but it's an absolute breeze to admin. (My point is that if you're happy with OS X, be happy. :) But if you have to go linux at some point, maybe take a look at debian.) I think hell would freeze over before debian pulls a stunt like you mention RH doing (which was precisely when I migrated the ~20 servers at my last workplace away from RH).

Re:Good reasons.

[Ogerman]

There's a huge difference between knowing how to mess with the Linux CLI, and wanting to do so. Administrating a Linux box is a terrific learning experience, but once you've learned what you wanted to know the "fun" of maintaining it wears off quickly, and you just want a server that works with a minimum of farting around.

What you say here is a quite valid perspective. However, do you quite realize that if everybody just threw in the towel and bought Macs, the situation would never improve? And then we'd all be stuck paying outrageous prices for hardware and still buying proprietary software. Maybe you don't care about the success of Open Source. Fine.. go buy a Mac for now. But you'll be back. Apple is enjoying a temporary market for *nix enthusiasts while the Open Source community wakes up again and realizes that easy-of-admin is now a much bigger demand than it was in the past.

Re:Good reasons.

[Ogerman]

The apps are generally of better quality than stuff found in the Linux world.

What apps are better quality? Your warez copy of Photoshop vs. Gimp? Sorry, that doesn't count. You can't just make generic statements like this. There is both good and bad software for every platform.

The GUI and applications all use the same user interface, which means that you don't have wildly differing interfaces such as is the case of GTK+ and KDE apps.

Most people generally use either GNOME or KDE apps, so that's not a fair comparison. There is also a trend towards unifying the GUI, such that it won't matter. I could just as easily complain that Apple chose to use a wildly different interface than KDE and GNOME. And worse, their interface is proprietary such that OSX apps can't be easily ported to other platforms.

The OS is incredibly easy to configure compared to the various competing KDE/Gnome distros.

This is a given, but what if all the people who had thrown in the towel and bought Macs had instead contributed to a project aimed at fixing the problem instead.

The OS, apps and hardware are tightly integrated, which means that problems like hardware compatibility don't exist.

It also means the hardware is more expensive and less diverse. Again, this is no excuse for jumping ship instead of fixing the problems.

The software and hardware are both of high quality, which really means something if you've used Dell or no name brands.

Half of my tech-savvy buddies use Macs and they've had no less frequency of hardware problems. Also, the comparison to budget PC brands is unfair. Yes, Macs are better than the "average" PC in terms of quality. But if you know what you're buying, you can get the same quality in a PC.

In the end, Apple is enjoying a temporary boost in the consumer sales due to the Open Source community falling asleep at the wheel in the area of GUIs. But it won't last. And PCs running Linux have far more future potential in the business world..

Re:Good reasons.

[Golias]

What you say here is a quite valid perspective. However, do you quite realize that if everybody just threw in the towel and bought Macs, the situation would never improve?

Yes I do. Please continue to choose less attractive alternatives, so it will drive the one I've chosen to fight for their position. :)

Re:Good reasons.

[SlamMan]

Its not my job to fix distro's problems. Its not my job to fix Microsoft's problems. its not my job to fix Apple's problems. Its my job to have computers that work for my staff.

Huh?

[theolein]

What makes you think you can't "do stuff" with a Mac? Or Linux, or Windows, for that matter.

It's an excellent, well designed, stable, powerful OS coupled with excellent quality hardware and all the applications you need are there unless your definition of doing stuff means playing Half Life.

Linux and OSX are both good

[GreatDrok]

I have been a UNIX user since 1990, Linux since 1994 and I got my first Mac just over a year ago when the G4 iBook appeared. The main reason I bought the Mac is that I use my laptop for almost everything I do, it is my portable office, and I decided to give Apple a chance after my third Intel based laptop in as many years keeled over.

I always ran Linux on my laptops and with a bit of care an x86 laptop for Linux is a great tool but to get the best compatiblity I couldn't really go for the budget machines and ended up spending £1500 last time on a Toshiba. It was dead after a year. The surface finish (silver paint) rubbed off and scratched, the case cracked and chipped, the battery stopped holding any charge (just after the guarantee ran out) and the backlight died. The Mac was £500 less, and with OS X, the OS it was designed for, it is more than powerful enough.

Learning to use OS X has taken a bit of time but I have made a decision that my next desktop machine will also be a Mac because I love the UNIX base, the interface, the fact I can use X11 apps too. I also like having the menu bar at the top and also like the dock. Some others in the Mac community laugh at me because I do my development using vi in an xterm but what they hey, it works for me! At least I have syntax colouring turned on :-)

The hardware is well made, it has already outlasted my last three x86 laptops and shows no signs of failing. It doesn't run hot, the battery life is excellent, the performance is also good. Having played with the new iMac G5 I can't say I notice it being blazingly faster than my 933Mhz G4 so I think the desire to jump into a G5 laptop is misplaced, the G4 is still a pretty good chip and excellent for mobile applications. Sticking a G5 in is going to increase the heat output, shorten battery life and probably not really increase performance all that much. Just get a lot of RAM for the Mac, I have 640MB in mine and that makes it a very smooth experience.

Would I run Linux on my Mac? Possibly, but to be honest I like OS X, I like the fact that most open source software is also available for the Mac. Sometimes I choose to use the Mac native app, other times I use open source. I like NeoOffice but have MS Office X too. When NeoOffice becomes fully aqua (widgets and all) then I will use it all the time. I certainly won't be buying another copy of MS Office, I'll just keep the one I have for compatiblity but do new docs in NeoOffice. Firefox is better than Safari. I tried using Safari but the slow page rendering annoyed me so I switched back. I have changed from Thunderbird to Apple Mail which I like a lot.

All in all, I think there is a lot to be said for the Mac. Does it mean I don't like Linux? No, I still have a Linux desktop (at least until my next machine) and I will keep Linux on my servers and continue to use open source apps on my Mac.

Re:Linux and OSX are both good

[Michael.Forman]

I agree with the parent post. I've been a Linux user since 1992 and I'm slowly being weaned from Linux (although I still use it as a server) to MacOS. I too started with a 17" Powerbook which runs like a dream and is showing no signs of age.

I think the one thing missing from the description is, that with the use of "fink" and "FinkCommander", one can instantly download just about any application for MacOS that exists in Linux. I spend quite a bit of my time working in a terminal and using vi and X11 applications. It is quite nice. With the edition of CodeTex VirtualDesktop, one can even have multiple desktops just like in Linux.

My wife also just purchased a new Mac Mini as well.

Michael.

Re:Linux and OSX are both good

[nortcele]

Agree with all of the above. I use Linux exclusively at work (to the distress of our mostly Microsoft IS dept). I have refused to buy anything Microsoft since Win98se. Back when Apple stock was $19, I bought $2500 of it with the goal that when it reached $40, I'd sell it and buy a PowerMac. Finally the stock reached my target. I sold and bought a PowerMac with the profit. So I'm a loser for not holding out longer and selling at the current price of $73. But... My family has been enjoying a PowerMac. No regrets except that I could have also gotten a 30" flat panel with the profits had I held out longer . I just believe that anything *nix is better than something that is not. I'm a convert. And I'll be getting a Mac Mini when Tiger comes out (so that I can use the PowerMac in the evenings when I get home).

My recommendation as to when to switch... now. You'll always find something better to wait for. When you buy, you'll always have something to regret... but leaving Microsoft forever won't be one of them. Enjoy OSX!

Re:Linux and OSX are both good

[Anonymous Coward]

True, the G4 is still a fine processor. I have a CPU meter in my menu bar and the CPU is rarely pinned, and the load averages are quite acceptable. Of course, my only wish is that it would be faster, but it's never overloaded.

Spotlight

[tolan-b]

I'm sure it's not the only reason that you want a Mac, but Beagle is quite similar to Spotlight and likely to be realeased at a similar time...

http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/

Re:Spotlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Was that supposed to be a joke?

Re:Spotlight

[tolan-b]

No..

Haven't seen search folders implemented yet, but they're hardly rocket science. Apart from that what does spotlight do that's so special that's not done by Beagle / BEST?

Re:Spotlight

[tolan-b]

also..

Beagle is still in development, but here's a couple of demos of it working:

http://nat.org/demos/

Re:Spotlight

[OmniVector]

unfortunately it has no plans to be included default in gnome 2.10, which means adoption is going to be really low from integrated application support. that's the deal breaker for something like this i believe. what good is it if no one else uses the APIs because they can't guarantee it will be installed with every gnome desktop?

Re:Spotlight

[Steve Cowan]

Spotlight has its hooks into the OS. Any app that saves a document automatically updates the spotlight metadata store. Every app gets access to search this database via a spotlight API. It seems to use Apple's own high-performance v-twin search algorithm.

Also, software developers are welcome to develop their own data types which will automatically be indexed by Spotlight.

From a UI and functionality perspective it seems Beagle is trying to do something similar. But under the hood they are very different. Check out Apple's developer info for this at http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight. html.

I'm finding myself becoming more and more frustrated with /. because while it's a pretty intelligent community, nobody has a clue about usability. GIMP is not yet a viable alternative to Photoshop. You can't just put translucency and shiny rounded buttons on KDE or XP and say that you're achieving the UI of OS X. Ogg is great but only as useful as its acceptance. You can't piece together a $500 Dell system and achieve the elegance and functionality of the Mac Mini. openoffice sucks on os x not just because it's ugly, but because it is practically a platform unto itself with its own UI and fonts. OS X is usable with a 1-button mouse. iPod is great because it's small and sexy, so even if it doesn't play format x, it actually fits in my pocket! In the real world intangibles like productivity outweigh tangible specs like processing power.

Until geeks can wrap their heads around these concepts, people like you will continue to post links to 'version 0.0.5' open source projects (which depend on other packages to do stuff like indexing) and say that it's going to be just like something that Apple will put out in a few months.

I'm not knocking Open Source. But let's call a spade a spade here. When it comes to underlying OS features and UI enhamcements, Apple these days is innovating at a pace that OSS (and even Microsoft) is having trouble keeping up with.

Re:Spotlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't seen search folders implemented yet, but they're hardly rocket science. Apart from that what does spotlight do that's so special that's not done by Beagle / BEST?

I cannot seem to find information about whether Beagle can search on and sort by metadata content ("find all photographs shot at aperture f/16 in Boston after December"). If Beagle cannot do that, it's not doing what Spotlight can. Spotlight does not simply search data!

Re:Spotlight

[Gob Blesh It]

You're talking about the kernel and other low-level things. The rest of us are talking about user-space software.

Re:Spotlight

[tolan-b]

I'm afraid that you don't know what you're talking about. That or you're being wilfully obtuse.

Spotlight has its hooks into the OS.

Beagle doesn't need them, it uses inotify which informs it when there's a file change.

Any app that saves a document automatically updates the spotlight metadata store.

Ditto, see above.

Every app gets access to search this database via a spotlight API.

Yes there's a Beagle API you can query.

It seems to use Apple's own high-performance v-twin search algorithm.

I'm sure that's great. Beagle returns results in under a second. Fine for me. Maybe you have super-fast fingers of typing +1!

Also, software developers are welcome to develop their own data types which will automatically be indexed by Spotlight.

Ditto. Anyone can add a filetype plugin.

Until geeks can wrap their heads around these concepts, people like you will continue to post links to 'version 0.0.5' open source projects (which depend on other packages to do stuff like indexing) and say that it's going to be just like something that Apple will put out in a few months.

Well let's see...

1. We have two products, neither of which are 1.0. So?
2. Did you know that lots of Apple programs rely on 'other packages' to 'do stuff'. Amazing! Perhaps you could do a little reading up on the principles of Unix, which incidentally OSX is based on.

I'm afraid I skipped the virtually content free ranty parts of your post, because frankly life is too short..

Re:Spotlight

[Moofie]

here is Apple's open-source code.

Why would they try to develop their own *nix if there's one sitting there at Berkeley saying "Hey hey hey! Use me use me use me!"

Re:Spotlight

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll have to ask Apple, becuase the fact is they did try for 10 years and failed at it.

But I suspect their reasoning was the same as Sun's and Microsoft's. BSD UNIX was considered obsolete in the early 90s, basically only useful to pick over for spare parts like networking.

Re:Spotlight

[Moofie]

Your understanding of history is flawed.

Apple tried to develop an OS that had nothing to do with *nix, other than being "posix compliant" (you know, like NT allegedly is).

Re:When? Depends what you want

[hexdcml]

whoa. a troll. Macs aren't expensive - comparison's been done over and over again, they are roughly on-par with PC's, what's more, the intangibles - things like the user experience, iLife apps and OS are worth a lot more. Please, grow up.

Tiger pre-installed

[Chancha]

Whenever Tiger is out, it will come pre-installed on all the new macs, and thus save you 100 bucks to upgrade from Panther if you get a mac before that. It is scheduled to be released within 2005 Q2. As far as Powerbooks are concered, the new update is long due and supposedly will happen within 10 days (according to rumor sites).

At the workplace, when Apple introduce Mac "Metro"

[NZheretic]

I have been looking at a friend's Mac Mini, and if it has 512 Meg of memory installed, it is a suitable replacement for Win9x/NT/Win2K and XP for a business desktop for the next five to seven year hardware upgrade cycle. However, IT management wise, there is no real signifcant advantage to deploying Mac Mini as networked desktops in bulk, incomparison to switching most the existing hardware over to a combination of diskless thin and slim ( running most programs on the client ) systems running Linux.

If Apple were to introduce a Mini like diskless slim client, it would probably blow both Windows and Linux away. The diskless Mac "Metro" clients would connect via Gigabit ethernet to a Mac "Metro" Station, the latter performing the role of a raided iSCSI/Fileserver with an inbuilt network switch to directly connect each client.

Sample Mac "Metro" client specs:
Using the Mac Mini as a starting point
Ditch the DVD and Hard drives,
Make one to two Gigabtyes memory as standard,
Upgrade the 100/10 Mib network to 1Gig,
Boot using PXE,
Run all programs on the client in ram, using iSCSI read only access for a common system partition, and dedicated zones server side for each client for swap and read write disk space,
Cheap price, these diskless systems should be well under $100 US

Mac "Metro" "Station" specs:
Combination fileserver and high speed network switch,
Sell four, eight to forty eight ( plus one/two uplink ) port variants, each can support the same number of Metro clients that connect to their own dedicated port,
Raid array as standard, scaled to the number of clients supported,
Filesystem versioning ( Revision tracking and control ) as standard for all document directories and intergrity checking for all filesystems,
A DVD R/W ( or better ) drive for upgrade nd backups.

At a low/suitable per client price, such a system could blow Microsoft out of the business desktop market.

Right and wrong

[theolein]

I agree that the reasons I gave look like your average Mac zealot, but the guy asked why the original would prefer OSX over Linux.

Those reasons, cliched or not, are real.

I should have put in a disclaimer that OSX is not perfect and that there are occasional hardware problems, but my experience on the whole over 15 years of using PC's (from Windows 2.11) and Macs (System 6) is that Apple's hardware is among the best there is overall.

I've had PC hardware from no name chinese brands that fail rapidly, Dell stuff that fails often enough to be a real problem (I used to be a Sysadmin for Windows and dell machines) and IBM stuff that is as good as or better than Apples, but really, only HP and IBM are as good as Apple in terms of hardware quality in my experience.

And your comment about a Linuc head only going for the hardware is simplistic, don't you think. OSX has a lot of features and gimmicks that are nowhere to be found in Linux (and vice versa, of course) and those could be valid reasons for wanting to use it as well. It's not just the hardware.

Re:Right and wrong

[ottothecow]

In the realm of laptops, apple is the way to go (if you can afford it).

As a linux user, he probobly has at least a desktop on linux and I would suggest he keep it that way. The desktop can be fiddled around with, adjusted, etc. Now for his laptop, he probobly wants something that just works and works well. No settings to mess with if the wifi hotspot isnt working, no problems you cant deal with on the road. Apple laptops are great machines in all respects (the only PC laptops that come close are IBM) and when you are using it as a portable system, OSX is going to present less problems.

Re:Right and wrong

[Ogerman]

The desktop can be fiddled around with, adjusted, etc. Now for his laptop, he probobly wants something that just works and works well.

I would tend to agree on this one.. If I was ever to consider an Apple machine, it would be a laptop.

On the desktop, cost and flexibility reign supreme.. For *nix power users, it's really hard to beat a custom-built $600-700 PC running Debian Linux or FreeBSD. At that price, you're looking at a 2.5Ghz. Athlon 64, 1Gb. RAM, 120Gb. hard drive., and DVD burner. And if something breaks on a PC desktop, it's an inexpensive opportunity to upgrade. With a Mac, you'll pay through the nose for direct replacement parts from Apple.

Of course, the PC laptop market is also improving. Many of today's OEM (Acer, ASUS, etc.) Pentium-M models are cost-effective, reliable, and ACPI-friendly in Linux. I don't think there's a hands-down case for PowerBooks anymore..

Re:Right and wrong

[Moofie]

(if you can afford it)

Is the $999 iBook that expensive?

Re:Right and wrong

[bgoss]

Could you elaborate on these "direct replacement parts from Apple" that you'll have to "pay through the nose for"? Say.... you're not dragging out that tired old wives tale about Apple using "proprietary parts" - are you?

Re:Right and wrong

[Ogerman]

Say.... you're not dragging out that tired old wives tale about Apple using "proprietary parts" - are you?

If the power supply, motherboard, or CPU in my desktop Mac dies, where precisely, other than Apple, can I get replacement parts? Yes, those are, in fact, still proprietary parts.

No crashing, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a toshiba laptop and used it for a yr, it was a very expensive model £2000+ but I needed it for analysis of large data files. It was fine, the best computer experience I had EVER had. Then my friend got an ibook which she was used to at work, I tried it. I was disgusted that PCs have ANY market share at all. I just didn't beleive that you didn't have to be prepared for crashing all the time, you have to tiptoe around windows machines, if I do this now whilst that program is connecting to the printer it will crash, the number of security updates, the list goes on and on. Okay, if you are a dunce and you don't want to take the time to learn a new OS then that is your stupid fault. How anyone can even say that a PC comes close to the mark goes beyond any semblance of sanity. I now have a G4 powerbook, it was cheaper than my old toshiba was ~£1500. And it is also better than my Toshiba at running the windows software I need for my analysis using virtual PC. People who sing the praises of PCs really get my goat, are they really that stupid?

Re:No crashing, what?

[Ash-Fox]

Use linux.

depends on your needs

[idlake]

Whether it's a "good time" depends on your needs. Do you need a laptop, a web browser, and MS Office, but little more? The mac is the machine for you. Do you need a particular commercial software package that runs on mac and windows only? Buy a mac.

Other than that, don't expect too much: macs have their share of installation and management problems, the hardware is pokey, and battery life of the laptops is not competitive anymore either. Fink is supposed to give you many linux packages, but linux software still feels out of place on the mac. And OOo is at best an emergency solution on the mac, given its poor x11 performance.

On the desktop, it' not even a question really: installing something like SuSE is so easy and gives you so much great software that the mac really pales in comparison.

So, unless you have a specific reason to get a mac, like software that runs nowhere else and that you have to have, I think you are better off buying a laptop with linux preinstalled: you get far more software and it all just works out of the box; no installation or fiddling required. Whatever you do, be prepared to pay a big premium in hardware and software merely to match what you get with linux.

Re:depends on your needs

[stebe]

The original poster was asking *when* would be a good time to buy a Mac, not *if* they should buy a Mac.
That being said, lets clear some things up- for one, a laptop with Linux pre-installed is not going to be any better a value than a Mac laptop. Price them out. Dollar for dollar, the iBook is one of the best laptop values out there, compared to comprable Linux, or Wintel, rigs.
As for Linux having more available software, I am not convinced. If you find Fink to be lacking pre-built binaries of your favorite Linux software, you always have the option of building from source, or even harnessing the power of X forwarding and running the apps. remotely from your Linux machine(s).
I bought a Powerbook a couple of years back. It worked flawlessly out of the box, no installation or fiddling required. The Powerbook has had a couple of problems over those two years, though I am sure my less than gentle treatment is partially to blame. (who knows though, a Linux laptop might like it rough) Despite the minor troubles, I still feel as if the Powerbook was the single best purchase I have ever made in my 30+ years as a consumer, though please do not tell that to my Beanie Baby collection.....

Re:depends on your needs

[Anonymous Coward]

The original poster was asking *when* would be a good time to buy a Mac, not *if* they should buy a Mac.

I guess the answer then is "not yet and not in the foreseeable future".

If you find Fink to be lacking pre-built binaries of your favorite Linux software, you always have the option of building from source,

What a shining example of Macintosh intuitiveness: "just compile from source". Thanks, but I want an easy-to-use and easy-to-maintain laptop; Linux gives me that, Macintosh doesn't.

The Powerbook has had a couple of problems over those two years, though I am sure my less than gentle treatment is partially to blame.

Every Powerbook I know of has had serious hardware problems. They just don't seem to be particularly well made (they aren't made by Apple anymore; all their hardware manufacturing is outsourced to PC manufacturers in the far east).

Re:depends on your needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Every Powerbook I know of has had serious hardware problems.

To clarify what I mean by that: everybody at work or at home who has had a Powerbook, about a handful total, has had serious problems with it at one point or another. Of course, I see people use lots of Powerbooks around the world, and I assume some of them must have worked flawlessly, right?

Re:depends on your needs

[Moofie]

"macs have their share of installation and management problems,"

Really? Care to elaborate?

"the hardware is pokey,"

More than fast enough for anything I want to do...

"and battery life of the laptops is not competitive anymore either"

If by that you mean "No longer lasts five times as long as Windows laptops", you're right. Centrino does a very good job of managing power better. They've caught up...almost.

Buy what works for you. You'll never get my Powerbook away from me.

Re:depends on your needs

[Anonymous Coward]

If by that you mean "No longer lasts five times as long as Windows laptops", you're right. Centrino does a very good job of managing power better. They've caught up...almost.

My Centrino laptop has a battery life of 7h, and is actually lighter and higher resolution than any of the Mac laptops. Newer ones have a battery life of 10h.

The powerbooks are due to be updated

[antifoidulus]

this Tuesday if the rumor sites are correct(probably nothing major like a g5 powerbook, but a g4 speed boost more than likely, though they are pushing the limits of that chip). I personally would wait until at least next Tuesday to make the decision. If new powerbooks don't come out, you may just be better off with a top of the line iBook. The price difference is too great as it stands for the bit of extra power you get with a powerbook(unless you like big screens, the iBook max rex is 1024x768)
I think you will be glad you took the plunge!

Re:The powerbooks are due to be updated

[valkraider]

One of the best things to check before an Apple hardware purchase is the Mac Rumors Buyers Guide because it doesn't speculate about what or when, but basically gives you data on how long it has been since the last update and what Apple has done in the past.

It has never steered me wrong.

Virtual Desktop Managers for OS X

[kiddailey]

Sorry to butt in, but thought I'd throw in a couple cents:

"Now, if you said you prefer virtual desktops, as is implemented in most Linux GUIs, then I would understand."

There are a few virtual desktop managers for OS X (a few of which are free):

Desktop Manager Alt

Virtue Alt

Virtual Desktop Pro Alt

Virtual Desktop Alt (not the same product as above)

You Control: Desktops Alt

Virtual Screens Alt (not quite a VDM, but it works)

Re:Virtual Desktop Managers for OS X

[alan_dershowitz]

Do you (or anyone else) have a recommendation on which free one is the best? I just bought a Mac Mini and am trying (for once) to be very cautious with what software to install. I'm attempting to move from Linux to MacOS as my primary desktop, but lack of features such as virtual desktops, sloppy focus and windowshading has been...painful.

Re:Virtual Desktop Managers for OS X

[kiddailey]

They are all very decent, but the first one -- Desktop Manager -- is by far my favorite. My only beef being that you cannot (yet) move a window from one desktop to another by dragging it in the panel - though it does have quick-key configuration to move windows via the keyboard.

Virtual Desktop Pro is very nice as well, though not free.

Virtue is similar to Desktop Manager, but it seems a lot more buggy to me - I can't get the pager to show up for some reason. I haven't tried the other two yet, mostly because Desktop Manager does such a good job.

Hope that helps.

Re:Virtual Desktop Managers for OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

In all seriousness, I suggest trying things the "Mac" way for a while. There's a learning curve, but you might actually find you like it better.

BTW, if you insist on sloppy pointer focus, you can often fake it by command-clicking inactive windows.

Re:Virtual Desktop Managers for OS X

[alan_dershowitz]

Expose has reduced my need for virtual desktop considerably...but lack of sloppy focus is *almost* painful.

Crap

[kiddailey]

I didn't mean to include Virtual Desktop from AWOL Software, which is for Mac OS Classic... sorry.

Just switched - very impressed

[technogogo]

I just got a bottom of the range iBook. It was for my wife who wanted a cheap laptop for email and surfing. We already had 3 PC's in the house - main one and kids have one each. I built these PCs myself. I also run Linux and have 15yrs IT experience (unix sys admin.)

Basically did not want another XP system in the house. I spend too much time updating XP, zonealarm, adaware, spybot etc etc etc etc on the 3 existing PCs. Then checking no nasties have sneaked past. Simply did not want a forth system to hassle me.

I did consider a cheap laptop with Linux but the windows tax put me off. Also from playing with employers laptops and linux I know that not everything works - like power management - without tinkering. I know how to fix that kind of thing but did not want to have to, if that makes sense.

For my wife I wanted a simple appliance. Zero admin overhead. The iBook fitted the bill. All I can say is that it is fantastic. Its only the 12inch lowest spec (with a 60Gb drive.) Not even put extra memory in it yet. But its plenty fast enough for everyday use. Battery life is amazing. The iLife programs are a lot of fun. No registry. Whole apps are single files. Not files spewed all over the system. Mac OS has proper multi-user with fine user privilege controls. So no worries about the kids accidently resetting the wep key - even if they are using an admin account (it prompts to re-enter passwd.) Lots of interesting and useful features that are so easy to find. I felt at home with Mac OS immediately. I was pleasantly surprised to find there is no shortage of software out there - for example, I found a great DVD ripper within 5mins of looking. I love it. Now we fight over who gets to use the iBook! I did not expect to be even using it.

Re:Just switched - very impressed

[white1827]

I bought a new 14' iBook this week. I was absolutely amazed by how much I love this machine. Not just for it's ease of use and security, but for the amazing software that comes on it. Even as a programmer it's great to use. I'm totally in love! --- IT Manager

Re:Just switched - very impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply did not want a forth system to hassle me.

Then don't ever press Command-Option-O-F while you start up your Mac.

Re:Just switched - very impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

You get it. Any extra cost associated with the acquisition of a Mac will be repaid to you in saved time.

Re:Just switched - very impressed

[sleepingsquirrel]

Simply did not want a forth system to hassle me.

But you have to admit, concatenative languages are pretty interesting, even if the syntax is a little bit of a hassle. There also a newly released online book that might help.

Re:Just switched - very impressed

[gozar]

Whole apps are single files

FYI, those are actually directories. The finder just makes it appear as a single file. To look inside control-click on the app and select "Show Package Contents".

Re:Just switched - very impressed

[Johnathon_Dough]

Maybe I will get modded of topic too, but I find it interesting that the above poster made not only a joke on a typo, he made a joke with some relevance, as well as adding sme links. Now granted it is not about whether to switch but it is slightly amusing.

My only guess is that whomever moderated this comment had no idea what Forth was.

Re:Just switched - very impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahaha. Good one ;~)

(For those of you who didn't get it - Open Firmware is Forth-based.)

Re:Just switched - very impressed

[nbvb]

Funnier yet is that with a Mac, he's got forth running under the hood.

OpenFirmware is based on forth.

OS X is about the *apps*

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point. A useful computer is not one with a stable OS or one with a GUI interface (computers have had those for ages, even back to Windows 3.1. Well, maybe not the stable OS bit.)

The main benefit of Mac OS X is the quality (and integration) of the applications. You can drag-and-drop any file onto any application, and (if it understands the format) it will open it. You can use any application's print command to get a PDF, which can be searched in the same preview window. Hell, in Tiger, you'll be able to look for a phrase anywhere in any document of the system. Want to know the signature of the Runtime.exec() method? Type in 'Runtime.exec()' in the spotlight bar, and it will bring up the JavaDocs and PDFs that have that phrase on your system.

All Cocoa apps have access to text-to-speech synthesis (thus; it's easy to use a remote phone to dial up and have it read your e-mail contents over the phone, which is very useful if you're a road warrior) via the built in services. You can open a URL in any application with a single keystroke, or send a file to a bluetooth device.

It syncs with your phone, your printer is discovered automatically, and if you've got a SlimServer running on your network it's already in your browser's bookmarks.

Oh, and you can get hardware that works. No, you don't have to google across multiple websites to find supported hardware, or see what the initialisation string you have to hard-code in a config file. You plug it in. It works.

Problem with your system booting up? Boot it and hold down Command+T, then plug another Mac box in with a firewire cable; you can browse the mac as a very large and expensive firewire disk.

And for those of you that love multi-button mice; yes, they work out of the box. No config file changes, no having to configure apps for each key combo. It just works.

As an operating system, Mac OS X and Linux are very similar; Unix was designed to be.

As a user experience, Macs Just Work.

Re:OS X is about the *apps*

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem with your system booting up? Boot it and hold down Command+T, then plug another Mac box in with a firewire cable; you can browse the mac as a very large and expensive firewire disk.

You don't need to hold down Command-T. It's just T. Reboot with just the T key held down.

Re:OS X is about the *apps*

[alan_dershowitz]

FYI, I just tried dragging and dropping a MPEG into Quicktime app, and finder just sprung the mpeg icon back onto it's window. That REALLY surprised me.

I started playing with Mac OS X when Panther came out, and it's pretty neat. However, Apple has not been up to snuff lately with their app development. I've had all kinds of problems with network sharing, from random disconnects, to refused connections, to kernel panics. iTunes has bugs relating to network files, and popup windows that make it so you have to force the app shut. Preview gets "stuck", so that you can't zoom or change the window size, and using it to open many files is excruciatingly slow.

I just moved from a B&W G3 to a Mac Mini, so I can say for sure it's not the machine. The networking has been getting better with each update (haven't had as many problems on the Mac Mini) but the app problems persist.

How About Now?

[eRondeau]

The best time to switch to Mac is before some new virus attacks and kills your PC. So how about now? Honestly, until you've run with a Mac and with no worries about viruses and spyware and IE popups and all the annoying little things that make using any PC frustrating...... The best time to switch is when you're ready to stop worrying about your computer and start enjoying it again.

Apple meeting their own expectations...

[rollthelosindice]

It is a real testament to the progress that Apple has made in the past few years that a post like this could be made and digested as accurate. Let's look into things....

iPods are only about 3 years old. They have had multiple generations already with different wheels, button configurations, and improvements. Why would they be in need of a MAJOR revision? Probably because in such a short amount of time they have achieved HUGE market penetration and its hard to image what life was like with those crappy pre-iPod mp3 players. What other product has had so much success in such a short amount of time? Perhaps sliced bread... Powerbooks are getting long in the tooth? Do you mean just the fact that they still use a G4 or the design? The current model of Powerbook was introduced 2 superbowls ago, IIRC, replacing the titanium models. Do you want a G5 laptop? Well you'll have to wait. Intel doesn't launch a new processor and have a laptop immediately available. Why should the expectations be different for Apple/IBM. Speaking of IBM, has the thinkpad design changed drastically at all over the past TEN years? Maybe a little lighter, but I would say that laptop is much longer in the tooth.

Now, how about the fact that you are considering migrating from linux and an MP3 player is one of your major deciding factors. Who deserves that credit? Would you be paining over a Creative 64MB rio mp3 player?

Apple has changed the way people consider their computers and accessories so much over the past 3-5 years, that sometimes people lose track of time and perspective. If you want to migrate to apple here is my advice. Do it today. If it doesn't go well, you can go back immediately. That way you won't lose another night sleep pondering what life would be like in OS X vs. KDE/GNOME (yes I know OS X runs X11, I use it.)

Re:Apple meeting their own expectations...

[John Harrison]

Speaking of IBM, has the thinkpad design changed drastically at all over the past TEN years? Maybe a little lighter, but I would say that laptop is much longer in the tooth.

I have had five IBM laptops over the past seven years for work. A 530 (not sure about the number on one), 770, 600, T21, and T40. Each one has had significant improvements over the previous ones, though I will admit that they were all black. IBM's product line is certainly different from Apple's, and it evolves more constantly. In contrast Apple makes occasional drastic changes. Saying that Thinkpads are "long in the tooth" is indicative of your lack of knowledge rather than any fault of the Thinkpad line. In case you take this as an anti-Apple rant, I ordered a Mac mini ten days ago.

Re:Apple meeting their own expectations...

[HeghmoH]

The G5 will have been introduced two years ago in June. A G5 PowerBook is not late, but neither would it be early if it were to be released in the next few months. The PowerBook G4 followed the Power Mac G4 by less than a year and a half.

May 2004

[ctar]

Personally, I made the same switch in May of 2004 - it was the perfect time for me. OSX had become much better as version 10.3 - OSX allows me to keep from completely losing my unix skills - and the app I use for work started providing a Citrix solution over the web, which worked flawlessly within Safari. And, the powerbooks had just had a drop in price for the G4's.

I'd read the previous Slashdot story, where it suggests the G5 laptops will come out soon. Usually, Apple will upgrade specs, but keep prices fairly similar to the existing lines, so for the same prices as G4's, expect G5's within the next few months.

The only other thing I could think of waiting for is a higher-capacity DVD, but that sounds like its gonna be about 8-12 months out before it ends up in laptops, etc. Good luck!

Re:At the workplace, when Apple introduce Mac "Met

[and by]

You said business desktop, right? Really, Linux on the desktop is fine and dandy for us nerds, but it's not OK for business-at-large. Your average office worker knows Word, Excel, etc., not OOo or gnumeric.

In other words there is a *huge* advantage to the Mac in your example, even in terms of IT management: namely, you won't be getting helpdesk calls all the time about how to use a word-processor.

You can net-boot the Macs and run them diskless.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can net-boot the Macs and run them diskless.

The NetBoot service in Mac OS X Server enables multiple Mac systems to boot from a single server-based disk image, instead of from their internal hard drive. This allows you to create a standard configuration and use it on all of the desktop systems in a department or classroom -- or host multiple images customized for different workgroups. You can even create server configurations and run all of your servers from one image. Updating the disk image on the NetBoot server updates all of these systems automatically the next time they restart.

The functionality is built-in to pretty much every Apple system.

now is not a bad time...

[jxyama]

...if you want a Mac desktop.

however, even if you are in a laptop market, it's never a bad time to switch, i think. next-gen PB will be a speed bump, most likely. rumored dual-core G4 or G5 are highly unlikely, and even without those, i wouldn't call current PBs "sluggish." i have a two year old PB - 867 MHz G4. it's been doing great because CPU speed is one thing but OS X is quite another. (the difference, however, will be perhaps less "shocking" for you since you use linux, not windows.)

if you were thinking of Mac mini/iMac, go for it now. otherwise, if you can afford to, might as well wait a few months at most for PM/PB update/price drop. i imagine something will happen with the iPod (since you mentioned, even though it's not a Mac, per se) by the two year anniversary of iTMS in late April.

Whenever.

[yardbird]

My PowerBook is over three years old. I keep trying to convince myself it needs replacing, but it still does the job great. The differences between the Mac you get today and the one you get in three months are purely incremental. Plus three months of lost productivity/fun.

Re:Whenever.

[galtsavenger]

Well said!!

Re:Whenever.

[ckelly5]

totally agree. I'm typing this on my 3 year old Powerbook G4/ 667. It's running 10.3.7 with absolutely no problems, and as much as I *want* to put down for a new PB, in reality, I don't need to, as this still does everything it needs/ I want it to, and still feels fast and responsive.

This little baby will probably be running Tiger in about 6 months as well. :)

Re:Whenever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind that PowerBooks are way way behind Moore's Curve. Doubling in speed in 3 years is pretty pathetic.

If Apple had 2ghz G5 PB's on the market, your upgrade lust would be much stronger.

Wait for Tiger

[indianropeburn]

Waiting for Tiger will give you a good chance to see if they are updating any of their hardware systems soon as Apple usually makes various boosts to other products along with major releases. Even if hardware updates aren't in close sight, Tiger has a lot of promising features and it's nice to stay up-to-date on an OS without having to pay for it. If you are really worried about loosing a chance at a top of the line machine, buy a refurbished one. Recent Macs have excellent resale value and you can be sure that you will make back most of your money selling it in trade of a newer computer for when they arrive. Also, not having a top of the line Apple isn't a huge deal as they have a long shelf life. I used a 400MHz G3 for six years and it was still extremely useful for graphics/ sound/ video editing (although far from the best). Of course, more power is drool worthy and since two months ago I own a 2x2GHz G5 :) Jump into it whenever you are comfortable, my only suggestion of avoidance is to not buy a brand new machine a month before the next Macworld.

Linux on the Desktop at work and worth it

[NZheretic]

Read Linux on the Desktop at work and worth it.

Yes, NZheretic is David Mohring.

Dropping the Client HD to take advantage of RAID

[NZheretic]

At least in terms of reliability, a multi RAID server + Gig ethernet setup is better than imaging drives across each client system. The Mac Mini has athe slower 2 1/2" Hard drives, I think that a common shared RAID array could deliver better performance as well.

Not until you really need to!

[maximthemagnificent]

The simple truth is that hardware and software will always get faster and cheaper, so don't upgrade until there's something you need to do that your current syhstem just can't handle. And then don't look at the adds for 2 months, or you'll wind up feeling bad! (:

Post smells suspiciously...

[Corpus_Callosum]

Why would this be a post of a "Linux" user switching? This, like many articles on slashdot since Ballmer beat his chest about attacking the OSS community where it lives (uhum... here?) looks to me like a psychologically tuned meme designed to undermine Linux users' pride in their choices...

Let's stick to windows users switching to OS X. We all know that Linux users love it too, but it is highly unlikely that they would "switch" - just buy a mini or a laptop to augment their collection of hardware.

Re:Post smells suspiciously...

[finkployd]

Actually most of the people I know who switched to OSX are hard core Linux/Unix users.

Better power management for laptops (Linux's power management is still a sad joke), a unix OS with a nice consistent GUI AND the ability to run X11 apps, and a larger selection of quality commercial software available (if or your workplace are in to that kind of thing) are all pretty good reasons to consider the switch.

I still have a Linux desktop but I will probably never go back to a Lintel laptop.

Finkployd

Re:Post smells suspiciously...

[hoser]

looks to me like a psychologically tuned meme designed to undermine Linux users' pride in their choices...

You think Microsoft's strategy is to sow doubt in the minds of Slashdot readers? I really doubt MS is quite that desperate.

And you wanna hear a psychologically tuned meme to sway slashdotters to OS X? Okay, here's one:

"I have never once had to edit a config file, look at a command line window (unless I wanted to) or search the Net for drivers."

As for your question, AllNines, you outta at least wait til OS X 10.4 comes out if only to avoid the cost of upgrading the OS should you buy a Mac before it's released.

It seems unlikely that the next round of hardware upgrades make a huge difference in terms of performance (In my case, I'm running an almost two year old 1GHz G4 Powerbook with 512MB of RAM and I have no trouble running OS X 10.3, Office, Safari, iTunes, etc.) so as soon as Macs start shipping with Tiger pre-installed, go get one. You won't regret the switch!

Re:Post smells suspiciously...

[slartibart]

I think the post that smells is your own.

I am about to replace my linux thinkpad with an ibook. I love linux and still use it at work (at IBM, where we're allowed to choose linux for our workstations if we choose). But I could never get the suspend/standby to work properly with linux on any thinkpad. I've searched everywhere for the solution, and nothing has helped. I am sick of my laptop not waking up and having to risk disk corruption (which has happened) every time I close the lid.

I'm tired of this fruitless tinkering and I just want a laptop that works. My girlfriend has an ibook and it just works! So that's what I'm getting.

Re:Post smells suspiciously...

[cathyy]

Not so. I have been a happy Linux user since 1999, but my Mac mini is ordered. Why the switch? The current condition of the 2.6 Linux kernel, and the attitude of the kernel developers that the distros can fix the mess. I remember when a stable kernel was...STABLE.

Re:Post smells suspiciously...

[Frumious Wombat]

Actually, I am a Linux user (and Solaris user, and AIX user) who switched. To quote His Steveness (cue chorale of relaxed sysadmins) It Just Works. OS-X is clean, efficient, unobtrusive, comes with a real CLI, X, and you can get IBM's Fortran for it. With minimal pain I've built a cluster from G5 Xserves, which are also more power efficient than their competition. What more do you want in a computer? I would still run linux servers for specialized configurations (IBM Power5 or HP Itanium-2), but on the desktop there is no competition. All of the pain and randomness is just gone. The funky config files, uncertain power management, inconsistent interfaces, and "never quite finishedness" of linux, gone. My visualization and simulation apps, right there, and running clean and fast. I'm not going back unless His Steveness is hit by a bus, and Gil Amelio takes over again.

Re:Post smells suspiciously...

[gstoddart]

Why would this be a post of a "Linux" user switching? This, like many articles on slashdot since Ballmer beat his chest about attacking the OSS community where it lives (uhum... here?) looks to me like a psychologically tuned meme designed to undermine Linux users' pride in their choices...

Well, for one, they're not switching to MS. So Balmer gets nothing out of this.

For another, I suspect (and you pointed out) that a lot of people (myself included) are planning on adding a Mac Mini in addition to the other machines I already have.

My XP box will be used for the software I need it for. My FreeBSD box will be used the same way it is now. My Mac will be used for handling of my media and the other cool shiney features which seem so well integrated into it.

I don't see this as taking away from Linux (or any other open source OS) in any great droves. But, to be honest, why not? It's a UNIX OS which can run most of the stuff you do on Linux, and you get all the niceties Apple are rumoured to have.

Worrying about wether this is some secret meme-conspiracy might be a little much though.

It always amazes me

[Mr. Cancelled]

how many people decide to ask Slashdot these tpyes of questions, rather than do any research themselves.

Not that there won't be some good replies to this question, but who do you want controlling your financial decisions? Yourself, based on research, and personal needs/wants, or a bunch of nameless people who really have no incentive to give you accurate and unbiased information?

Again, I'm not saying that there won't be any good responses or anything, but it seems that these "what should I do" questions come up an awful lot, for a geek-based forum, and people tend to take the responses as gospel, rather than verifying the information, or doing any research themselves.

The article yesterday about possibly moving to China, and wondering about censorship was a great one! Where else are you going to easily find out that kind of information from people, but these "what should I buy", and "what's best for me" questions... Go to Google, search previous discussions here, go to pricewatch and do some comparisons, and go to your local CompUSA, or Applestore, and try one yourself.

Only you can determine what's best for you.

Re:It always amazes me

[b-baggins]

how many people decide to ask Slashdot these tpyes of questions, rather than do any research themselves.

Isn't it interesting that research no longer seems to include asking experts.

Re:It always amazes me

[Gumph]

The Original poster is obv a geek, otherwise he would not be on here, so he logically wants the opinions of his geek peers as to how good an apple switch would be.
I imagine if he is savvy this will just be part of his research and not the totality of it (hopefully at any rate).

switcher!!!!

[s/nemisis]

I switched to an iBook G4 1GHz back in August 04. I got my ibook about 5 weeks before they were upped to 1.2GHz. Will i notice that 200MHz? nope. hell my printer probably has a 200MHz processor in it. I won't miss it. I can tell you that i would have missed this iBook. I've run Debian, RH, windows 2k, xp, 98, 95, 3.1(1), and I use a lot of different systems and operating systems at UM and i can tell you that this was the best purchase i've ever made. I'm actually happy that my dell laptop died and made me buy this machine, that i (by the way) bought simply because with my education discount was less than a grand. I have read above that you should wait for tiger to come out, and if its not an emergency, then wait for tiger, but otherwise.... just do it. i was angry and unhappy at first that i wasn't using kde and that there wasn't a start button, but once i get it configured nice for me, i don't even like sitting at a windows machine. makes me uncomfortable. I'm really disappointed that Matlab still runs in X11. it makes things less easy for me than windows, but good thing is i don't have to deal with that very often. I'd say, plan on sitting there for a week getting used to it, and you'll love it. I've come a long way since my days of making fun of apple supporters, and apple has done nothing but put their best foot forward.

On Switching

[droleary]

When is the right time to jump on the Apple ship?

In general, the time to switch platforms in any direction is when you've finally got everything running smoothly on your current platform of choice after some major disaster. I'm sure that seems illogical at first, but it stems from the fact that you do not want to switch when you're in the middle of an emergency. If things have always been smooth, there's no need to switch at all. If things are becoming a reoccurring mess, resolve to switch, but then still clean up the current mess! It'll make the switch that much easier when you're not trying to transition all the mission critical stuff a once.

Am I going to get burned by a sluggish overpriced laptop that is updated next month?

Only if you're a fucking idiot. If you think a Mac is sluggish today, why the hell would you buy it? It doesn't matter if a vendor is updating their systems next week or next year. Either what they're offering today meets your needs or it doesn't, and if it doesn't and you still buy it, then you should probably be fired (or beaten by friends and family). The march of technology still guarantees any purchase you make is an expense, not an investment. Stop pretending you can wait to "buy low" because you will never, ever be able to "sell high".

Re:On Switching

[Insightfill]

In general, the time to switch platforms in any direction is when you've finally got everything running smoothly on your current platform of choice after some major disaster.

Excellent point. In our house, my wife's laptop (P3@750) was getting to be a pain, and the wireless network connection was flighty, even after changing cards and WAPs. Her brother had given her his old iMac a month before, but we hadn't even powered it up yet. Once the network was going fine, she took the initiative in moving to the iMac (G4@450 with 1GB of RAM).

Dumped everything across the LAN from the notebook to a share in the basement. Laptop power kept dropping out for no reason. Wired up the iMac to the house net (found the broadband connection instantly), downloaded Quicken from Intuit, installed NeoOffice, and there's been no looking back. Just got a new digital camera - plugged it in and it was there. The iPod mini needed no help either.

Maybe soon.

[PythonRules]

If you are dead set on a laptop then you should wait. Buying a G4 just doesn't make a ton of sense to me right now. But for a little perspective lets look at the big picture and take it from there.

By the end of '05 we will see the extension of Apple into the movie distribution business. Think NetFlix without the mailers. All you will really need for this is a Mac Mini next to your HDTV either on a ethernet wire or connected wirelessly. Buying a Mac Mini now and learning the ropes of OS X and the iLife apps wouldn't be a bad thing or a waste of money.

Then when the rest of the Apple product line is upgraded to G5's (portables and eMacs) you can get a desktop or portable to anchor this system (personally I'd get an iMac or PowerMac). Hang a big firewire based HD off of it and you've got an entertainment hub. Throw an Airport Express or two by your stereos (not the one next to the TV since the Mini will hadle that) and you can now beam music and video around your house. Or show your photo on your TV set.

Don't forget to load the free Xgrid on the Mini and any other Mac you might have to create your own cluster. Once you get hooked into editing your home movies and making DVD's you'll appreciate the distributed computing.

I think with the big picture in mind, rigfht now is a fine tine to buy. Get a mini and learn the ropes or an iMac (or PowerMac if you just have to have dual processor and a FSB that won't slow it down) and start on that end and slowly build out your digital home entertainment system where music and video can be accessed and viewed when and where you want it.

Re:You can net-boot the Macs and run them diskless

[BurntNickel]

And you can neetboot from linux: http://frank.gwc.org.uk/~ali//nb/

ifconfig warning

[porkchop_d_clown]

Careful with that.

Because Mac OS X uses the netinfo database for a lot of config data, doing things like ifconfig by hand (even modifying the /etc/ files directly) can lead to inconsistent results.

Use system preferences and the net info manager wherever possible. There are command line variants for most of them, but they aren't well documented.

I'm not saying don't use ifconfig - just be sure you know what you're doing.

Re:ifconfig warning

[Guy Harris]

Because Mac OS X uses the netinfo database for a lot of config data, doing things like ifconfig by hand (even modifying the /etc/ files directly) can lead to inconsistent results.

By "use ifconfig" I meant "use ifconfig to report information about interfaces", not "use it to set interface information".

That's one of the places where OS X (and the NeXTStEP from which much of it comes) differs from other UN*Xes, although AIX might still outdo it in terms of "stuff gets configured differently here" (do you run similar risks doing this outside of SMIT?).

Re:ifconfig warning

[theolein]

This is true, but it's becoming less so over time. Apple is moving away from netinfo these days and there is a lot less usage of it moving from 10.1 to 10.3. To be fair, files that are maintained by the system, such as hostconfig, have a warning in them to that effect:

##
# /etc/hostconfig
##
# This file is maintained by the system control panels
##

I'm not a pro in all the config files in the system, but I'm glad that Apple is moving away from netinfo. Stephan Somogyi, the guy who helped write BBEdit and MacPerl and who used to have a column on ZDNet, warned in the beginning that netinfo was a single point of failure similar to the register when OSX 10.0 first came out. Other people must have taken this to heart because there is definitely less reliance on it these days.

NOW

[mosb1000]

I forget which rumor site says it, but the best time to buy a computer that fits your needs now is now. I don't see any reason not to buy today. Products scale incrementally except for processor change like G4-G5, which don't come along very often. Even if Apple released a G5 PowerBook today, it'd be better to wait a few months for Apple to work out the issues. They won't leave you out in the cold if you buy a computer with problems, but it's annoying to have to get it repaired, even if you don't have to pay for it.

I find that it's best to wait until a product comes along that makes you want to upgrade. Anticipating specific future products leads to long waits and disappointment when the final product isn't what you expect. If the PowerBook is compelling to you now, you should buy it now. You won't regret it. If it's not, then wait until Apple releases something you want to buy (if you're waiting for a PowerBook G5 specifically, you could be waiting a long time).

Re:NOW

[cyfer2000]

my $.02 is that from the data I have collected, the low power consumption G5 may not really more powerful than G4+, especially the new 7448. I am not an expert on the performance issue. If you think I am wrong, let me know. Because I am also trying to figure out which one is better.

But if you are looking for something like 64bit mobile computing, wait for pbook G5.

Re:NOW

[lachlan76]

TIGER

That is a good enough reason to wait, IMHO.

Re:At the workplace, when Apple introduce Mac "Met

[gl4ss]

*Make one to two Gigabtyes memory as standard,*
* these diskless systems should be well under $100 US*

you know the old robot saying "DOES NOT COMPUTE"? you aware that apple thinks 425$ to be a fair price for 3/4 of a gbyte? or does the calculation just assume that prices will drop in which case you could just as well keep the specs as same..

Right now!

[keiferb]

The Mac mini makes it very cost effective to switch... see sig for details.

try something used

[jessecurry]

Hop on e-bay and look for something like an iBook G3, I got a 12" model with an airport card for $600. $100 later I had a 512 MB DIMM and a very useable laptop.
Unless you are doing a lot of video editing a G3 should be enough of a computer to allow you to get used to OS X and see if you like it without spending too much on a new box. You can also pick up a B&W G3 on e-bay for around $100.
I am definitely an apple user, so my advice will be a little biased, but I think that you should try out the Apple world before you make a serious commitment. There are sure to be some differences in the OS and a small learning curve, but if you get used to all of those before you spend $2k I think that you'll be much happier. Also, by starting with a slower machine you'll be able to gauge what speed machine will really suit your needs in the future.

depends: function or bragging rights?

[anothy]

if you're looking for a really solid system which will last you for quite some time, the answer is "now". Apple hardware remains useful for a good stretch longer than hardware in the PC world. anything you buy new from Apple today will still be totally respectable two years from now, and still comfortable well beyond that. that aside, Apple is always "about" to come out with some great new something-or-other. that's the thing, that's why people love Apple: they actually continually innovate. they're always going to update or upgrade something a few months after you buy. would it be better if they just sat still?

if you're looking for bragging rights, simply wait until a product announcement (usually at one of the semi-annual shows). buy that day.

the only thing that's worth waiting for at this point is Tiger: the OS advances at a bit more of a steady state, and we have a pretty good idea what's going to be in it (and let me tell you, the dev previews of things like Dashboard look pretty sweet). of course, you can buy a mac now and buy Tiger later if the new features are useful to you; you get to start using a mac now (a big win!), and can upgrade or not as you see fit.

Am I going to get burned by a sluggish overpriced laptop...

no. Apple does not make any such thing. their current lowest-end laptop comes stock with a 1.2Ghz and 256 MB of ram (okay, you're going to want a bit more than that, but it's not ludicrous); nothing that qualifies as being in the same neighborhood as "sluggish". it also starts at $999, which is a far was from "overpriced" for anything with similar performance (not to mention usability, reliability, &c.).

Buy.. and don't look back

[acomj]

When you buy your exquipment, the best advice is not to look and second-guess. There will be someting better/cheaper coming out soon, there always is. So what?

Don't buy it then scour the web for new stuff/ better prices for the next few months, you'll drive yourself nuts..

If the equipment does what you need when you buy it you'll be happy with it.

We have an old 600mhz ibook that keeps running. It does what it did when we bought it. Very light usefull machine for surfing, video playing, even coding.

One thing to note, if you can get a computer with the new OS, thats great. Ususally apple gives a discount on the New OS to those that bought a computer with the old OS close to the Newos release. But if the computer ships with the new OS its free. (those major OS upgrades run >100$)

My vote

[porcupine8]

I doubt you're ever going to get burned by a "sluggish laptop" assuming you're not buying a five-year-old one off eBay. But my vote is to wait til Tiger comes out. It looks to be a great update to the OS, and you don't want to waste an extra $100 when you could just wait a couple months. I bought my eMac right before Jaguar came out, and then kicked myself, hard. (Bought it like a week or two too early to get the "If you bought your computer in the past month" discount on Jaguar.)

Buy a new computer when you want a new computer

[csoto]

There will alway be something cheaper/better/smaller/cooler/etc. in the future. If you really like what's offered today, get it.

big disappointment

[jeif1k]

I found the Macintosh laptops to be a big disappointment. First of all, there were hardware problems: one died within a few weeks, the replacement didn't play DVDs properly. The processor is pretty slow, too: even in its heyday, a G4 wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and today it is really not competitive anymore. And it's not true that the thing never crashes; it's not bad, but the GUI will hang on occasion, and I have had it crash, too.

Then, your only real choice for an office suite is Microsoft Office. If you want a laptop just to run Microsoft Office, I suppose it is better than a Windows laptop. OpenOffice has too many limitations on the Mac (among other things, forget about using it for presentations) and it requires you to fiddle with X11, which isn't well integrated (and also needs to be installed). iWork isn't a serious academic or business tool either: no spreadsheet, no math, limited drawing.

The iLife applications are useless toys: iPhoto doesn't let you fix even gross problems with images, iMovie has limitations on what you can important and export (looks like they are deliberate). You probably need to upgrade to expensive commercial packages if you want anything that's more than a toy.

I thought there were going to be a bunch of nice outliners and brainstorming tools for Macintosh--lots of them are advertised with great fanfare and colorful ads, but they were pretty much a disappointment, too: proprietary formats, complex UIs, and limited functionality. There are better open source tools available than that.

Fink is supposed to be the way to install more of a real UNIX/Linux environment on Macintosh, but I had no end of trouble. Worse, for many packages, there are two versions of it: the Fink version and a non-Fink version. Some Mac applications assume one, some the other, and if you install both, you run into conflicts. Cygwin on Windows runs more reliable than Fink on Macintosh.

Macintosh network configuration is supposed to be really well done, but it's pretty cumbersome, no better than Windows. Yes, you get a pull down menu of wireless basestations in your surroundings right on the menu bar. But if you use anything other than the default network settings, you still need to dig into the network configuration dialog, which matches Windows in its obscurity. Software like Switcher-X shows that you can do better--why can't Apple at least ship decent network configuration tools with the Mac?

Macintosh also promises to integrate well into Windows and UNIX networks, but that's an unfulfilled promise, too. Yes, it sort of speaks SMB and NFS, but actually getting automounting and name services to work is at least as much of a pain as on other UNIX systems, and there is a lot of non-standard stuff you have to do on Mac.

And then there is the GUI. It's slow. It's non-standard, in look-and-feel as well as in its APIs. It has a theme that you either love or hate, but you can't change it very much (at least not out of the box).

Coming from Linux, where all the UNIX and GUI tools are integrated, self-updating, and everything just works, and where there is a wide choice of toolkits and programming environments, and at least three different free office suites, the Macintosh was a big disappointment and a money pit.

So, if you are asking when you should switch, my answer is: not yet, not until Apple fixes some really fundamental problems with the Macintosh operating system and GUI, until they actually get serious about making it a competitive UNIX workstation (which means, among other things, decent X11 support), until the hardware is up to modern standards, and until there is more decent application software available for it. If you do switch now, I expect you'll come back to Linux again. I did, as did several other people I know.

Re:big disappointment

[Anonymous Coward]

What planet do you live on? The iLife applications are useless toys? Please.

Re:big disappointment

[skroob]

There is so much misinformation here it's astonishing. You may have had bad experience with Apple hardware, but the vast majority of people have had no problems. I've had a Mac Plus, a Quadra 605, a Duo 2300 and an iBook G4 800 and they have all been solid machines and in fact still run to this day with no hardware problems at all.

OpenOffice does suck pretty hard, but good things have been heard about NeoOffice. As for Microsoft Office, it may not be great, but remember, it is what most of the world uses, and Linux users have been playing catch-up to try to develop something that works with Office files. I personally have not used Pages or Keynote yet, but I think you're wrong about it not being acceptable for business or academic use; the only thing it really lacks for the average business user is a spreadsheet. What kind of average user needs serious math and drawing tools in their normal business life? Does MS Office come with that on Mac or Windows? I've never needed any of that stuff.

You seem to want Photoshop for free out of iLife, and that's not what it's for. iPhoto is a great cataloging tool for digital photos, and lets you do the simple stuff home users want to do, like fix redeye. You're not going to be able to clone out that thumb over the lens in that picture or do otherwise complicated things, because it's not meant for that. I've never had the need for iMovie so I can't comment on that.

Outliners and brainstorming tools, I'm not sure about. I mean, there are wonderful things like SubEthaEdit that allow you to do online collaboration on documents that save in a large variety of formats. OmniOutliner is supposed to be excellent. Where's the problem?

Fink sucks. Just because MacOS CAN run linux software doesn't mean it SHOULD.

Never had problems with networking. It's a breeze. I can't see what you could be complaining about here. Doing anything wireless on MacOS is infinitely easier than on Windows or Linux, and I've had the experience to back that up. Both wired and wireless connections just work, simple and easy. And it's not just the basic default network, I've changed all kinds of settings, including WEP, with ease.

SMB could be done a little nicer, but for the most part it's pretty simple. The trouble is more with a lousy protocol and spec than with a lousy implementation, but there could be improvements made. And if you want to make Linux and Macs talk nicely, install AFS on your Linux machine. I did it on my Ubuntu machine and it was easy and now they talk to each other very nicely.

As for your comments on the GUI, I don't think I've ever seen anyone be as wrong as this in one sentance before. Slow is a comment I've only heard from someone trying to run Panther on an old slow machine, and if you tried to run XP on a machine at the low end of the compatability spectrum you'd say it was slow too.

"Non-Standard" deserves its own paragraph. I can't imagine how you could tell a Linux user that the MAC INTERFACE is non-standard. Apple INVENTED the standard GUI interface. The Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines are still the best ways for people to interact with a computer short of plugging it directly into your brain like Data from Star Trek. It is THE most standardized user interface out there, and the only one where you're SURE that Cmd-S will save your document in any program, every time.

The MacOS is NOT a Unix workstation! Why would you think it is? When has it ever been put forth that way? The hardware is about as modern as it gets; remember who made the first 64-bit desktop available. There's plenty of applications available, and they all have the same interface and you'll be sure they will work when you install them (as in, you won't need to make sure that your python libs are >=1.23.06; if you have 1.23.05, the program WILL NOT INSTALL).

I swear, if you didn't have specific complaints I would think that this was just some badly formed joke about Linux, because a lot of these complaints are the exact problems people have with Linux, and the problems that the MacOS actually SOLVES.

Re:big disappointment

[grunherz]

.. until Apple fixes some really fundamental problems with the Macintosh operating system and GUI...

You're joking right?

Windows and Linux (and every other platform on the planet for that matter) have perfect OSs and GUIs I suppose or by your logic you should never buy anything until it's perfect.

Seriously, sounds like you played around with OS X once and decided that because it wasn't what you were used to it has "fundamental OS and GUI problems."

Quark XPress users who spend their whole day in the program laying out newspaper pages tell me often that Photoshop has "fundamental GUI problems" too.

Poor bastards don't know the joke's on them.

Same could be said for your point of view too IMO.

But hey, 6 Billion people, 6 billion opinions.

Re:big disappointment

[jeif1k]

There is so much misinformation here it's astonishing.

Well, you yourself just said:

• "The MacOS is NOT a Unix workstation!"
  
• "Fink sucks. Just because MacOS CAN run linux software doesn't mean it SHOULD."
  
• "You seem to want Photoshop for free out of iLife,"
  

So, the Macintosh is not a UNIX or Linux workstation, it is a pain to get the FOSS to run on it that Linux users are used to, and Macintosh users need to buy expensive commercial apps for a lot of basic functionality. None of the other things you say matter in the context of this question (wrong as many of them are) because you yourself agree on the core issue: the Macintosh is not a substitute for a Linux machine.

Re:big disappointment

[jeif1k]

Windows and Linux (and every other platform on the planet for that matter) have perfect OSs and GUIs

I didn't say any of that. In fact, Windows and Linux have lots of problems. But Macintosh doesn't fix most of them and it creates lots of problems of its own, so there is no point switching to Macintosh. In different words, I have been on the Macintosh side, and the grass is no greener. That's why trying Macintosh was a disappointment.

I suppose or by your logic you should never buy anything until it's perfect.

No, my logic is much simpler: if you are a Linux user, don't bother with Macintosh; Linux is at least as good, comes with tons more software, and will cost you less.

Seriously, sounds like you played around with OS X once and decided that because it wasn't what you were used to it has "fundamental OS and GUI problems."

Actually, I have used it much more than that. But even if I had "just played around with it", Apple's claims for it are such that that should have been enough to convince me how intuitive it is. In reality, it's just another GUI that does things slightly differently from everybody else.

Re:big disappointment

[Anonymous Coward]

Some good points.. but:

I found the Macintosh laptops to be a big disappointment. First of all, there were hardware problems: one died within a few weeks, the replacement didn't play DVDs properly.

That's too bad. As with any product, there are always a few duds. This is the exception in the case of Apple, certainly not the norm.

And it's not true that the thing never crashes; it's not bad, but the GUI will hang on occasion, and I have had it crash, too.

Sure, system crashes are part of computing. The argument in the case of OS X is that it crashes far less frequently than most other mainstream systems. In my 2 years of OS X I've experienced only two major systems crashes, and these were only when running Win2K under VPC - go figure.

The iLife applications are useless toys: iPhoto doesn't let you fix even gross problems with images...

iPhoto 4 was never marketed as an image manipulation tool. Its organizational features are its selling point. iPhoto 5 offers much greater editing featuers with real time preview options. I consider it a stripped down Photoshop Elements.

I thought there were going to be a bunch of nice outliners and brainstorming tools for Macintosh--lots of them are advertised with great fanfare and colorful ads, but they were pretty much a disappointment, too: proprietary formats, complex UIs, and limited functionality.

Hmm. Check out www.versiontracker.com for a start. Further, the Omni group produce a magnitude of excellent brainstorming and charting facilities which, to me, do not suffer these complex UIs you speak of.

Fink is supposed to be the way to install more of a real UNIX/Linux environment on Macintosh, but I had no end of trouble. Worse, for many packages, there are two versions of it: the Fink version and a non-Fink version. Some Mac applications assume one, some the other, and if you install both, you run into conflicts.

Agreed. Fink can be a bit of a whore at the best of times, especially to those who have no experience with command line interfaces. The Fink GUI is quite useful though. But I really dont think the average Mac user will bother with this.

And then there is the GUI. It's slow. It's non-standard, in look-and-feel as well as in its APIs. It has a theme that you either love or hate, but you can't change it very much (at least not out of the box).

Slow? Hardly. The key to enjoying OS X is having sufficient RAM, however. At a very minimum 512, the more the better. The 'non-standard' argument doesn't mesh with me. The Mac made the GUI popular in the first place, so we could rightly argue that it is the 'generic' OS's which are not standard. Further, OS X apps are generally more compliant in their UID than other OS' due to Apple's developer GUI guidelines.

Re:big disappointment

[MoneyT]

I found the Macintosh laptops to be a big disappointment. First of all, there were hardware problems: one died within a few weeks, the replacement didn't play DVDs properly.

Sounds like you got some bad hardware. Unfortunate but not representative of the whole.

The processor is pretty slow, too: even in its heyday, a G4 wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and today it is really not competitive anymore.

Slow for what? It's well maintained that most home users will have a hard time maxing a 1 ghz processor let alone anything faster. I've not come across anything yet where I felt the processor was the bottle neck and not say the hard drive.

And it's not true that the thing never crashes; it's not bad, but the GUI will hang on occasion, and I have had it crash, too.


I don't think I've ever had the GUI hang. Invidual applications, yes, but not the entire GUI. I suspect that's what happened to you as well. As for crashing the system, unless the last time you played with this was sometime arround 10.1 or 10.2 on an old G3, crashing the whole system has been in my experience someting very difficult you use, and usualy involving mucking with something like AFS.

Then, your only real choice for an office suite is Microsoft Office. If you want a laptop just to run Microsoft Office, I suppose it is better than a Windows laptop. OpenOffice has too many limitations on the Mac (among other things, forget about using it for presentations) and it requires you to fiddle with X11, which isn't well integrated (and also needs to be installed).

Well, really your only real choice for an office suite anywhere is MS Office. As much as I hate to say it, they are the standard. However, there's also NeoOffice (OO without X11).

iWork isn't a serious academic or business tool either: no spreadsheet, no math, limited drawing.


No it's not. Not yet anyway. Though keynote does fine for presentations.

The iLife applications are useless toys: iPhoto doesn't let you fix even gross problems with images, iMovie has limitations on what you can important and export (looks like they are deliberate). You probably need to upgrade to expensive commercial packages if you want anything that's more than a toy.


They're hardly useless, but it looks like you're looking for something more akin to the GIMP or something like that.

If that's the case, you can get the GIMP

http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/

Or you can get a nice little app I found called PhotoLine

And most macs should still come with graphic converter, which while not GIMP or Photoshop does more than iPhoto does. iPhoto is more management than editing although that has supposedly changed considerably with the new version. But iPhoto was never meant to be an editor.

iMovie is purposefuly restricted on import and exports that's true. It's designed for the purpose of pulling video from your DV Camcorder and doing home movie editing and then exporting. If you're looking for Professional level editing, is it really a suprise that you need professional level programs?

I thought there were going to be a bunch of nice outliners and brainstorming tools for Macintosh--lots of them are advertised with great fanfare and colorful ads, but they were pretty much a disappointment, too: proprietary formats, complex UIs, and limited functionality. There are better open source tools available than that.


What exactly where you trying to do that OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner didn't handle? And as a further question, did you search to see if your favorite apps had been ported yet?

Fink is supposed to be the way to install more of a real UNIX/Linux environment on Macintosh, but I had no end of trouble. Worse, for many packages, there are two versions of it: the Fink version and a non-Fink version. Some Mac applications assume one, some the other, and if you install both, you run into conflicts. Cygwin

Re:big disappointment

[sleepingsquirrel]

The hardware is about as modern as it gets; remember who made the first 64-bit desktop available.

Ahh... Reminiscing about the good old days with the first 64 bit desktop.

Re:big disappointment

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple INVENTED the standard GUI interface.

Invented it a pretty strong word. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present as exhibit "A" the Xerox Alto.

Re:big disappointment

[sleepingsquirrel]

The MacOS is NOT a Unix workstation! Why would you think it is? When has it ever been put forth that way?

I count about 10 people in this article alone, that are busy proclaiming that their undying love for OSX is mostly due to is underlying Unix core, hidden below a nice GUI. Here's a sampling...

• Nobody says that OSX can't be "just another Unix" -- it just hides it by default
• my next desktop machine will also be a Mac because I love the UNIX base
• a unix OS with a nice consistent GUI AND the ability to run X11 apps
• I'd say if you want a unix workstation, OSX is by far the best
• As an operating system, Mac OS X and Linux are very similar; Unix was designed to be.

And apparently Apple itself thinks OSX might have something to do with Unix.

Re:big disappointment

[Anonymous Coward]

remember who made the first 64-bit desktop available

I'd suggest some quality time spent with google and the keywords "alpha" and "DEC". :P If you're feeling particularly diligent, try "multia".

Re:big disappointment

[Anonymous Coward]

The argument in the case of OS X is that it crashes far less frequently than most other mainstream systems.

The guy is switching from Linux; OS X doesn't crash less than Linux.

iPhoto 4 was never marketed as an image manipulation tool.

And I merely point out that he will need a lot more software, expensive software at that, to match the functionality he is getting with Linux.

But I really dont think the average Mac user will bother with [fink]

The guy is switching from Linux. I'm pointing out that either, he'll have to bother with Fink (and it's a big bother), or he won't be able to use a lot of software that he may be used to.

Slow? Hardly.

Quartz text and drawing operations are slow compared to X11.

Further, OS X apps are generally more compliant in their UID than other OS' due to Apple's developer GUI guidelines.

Every platform has UI guidelines. Linux ships with a complete set of powerful desktop apps that follow its GUI guidelines while OS X ships only with a limited set of limited applications; what you install beyond that is up to you on either platform.

As with any product, there are always a few duds. This is the exception in the case of Apple, certainly not the norm.

It wasn't an exception. Apple hardware is mostly made under contract in China and quality has been variable over the last few years, worse than a good PC manufacturer in my experience. Apple service has been stellar, though.

Opps. typo should be $300 US

[NZheretic]

1 Gb Ram runs from $150 to $200 US Retail. I assume that Apple purchasing in bulk should be able to get a much better deal than that.Sans the HD, DVD and IDE/SATA interfaces, it should be quite do-able from Apple.

The best time to switch is on days ending in "y".

[tverbeek]

(see subject line)

Depends on who you are...

[lpangelrob2]

I suppose there's two camps you can go with here.

First, my parents. They have a Sony VAIO (poor unfortuante souls) that they don't really know how to maintain. They run IE, despite my putting Firefox on it, and some version of Windows XP, which I haven't updated since I haven't been home since I got married. All I've heard about it are complaints that it runs extremely slowly, which is odd for a 1.66 GHz processor running the OS it came with. So it's probably spyware-laden, and possibly virus-laden. They should switch ASAP.

For anyone that has any inkling of how to run and maintain a computer, which would any of the people reading this... getting older models right after the newer ones come out would be a good idea, just as it's a better value for your money to purchase a manufacturer-certified 1-year old used car instead of a brand new one. That is an entirely economic decision that's based on your needs and the weight of your wallet. :-)

Don't try to optimize. Market-based explanation!

[dpbsmith]

Every computer company and technology progresses. They all introduce new products at six month intervals or thereabouts. There is no exactly right time.

This is a case where the marketplace actually sort of does operate, and is reflected in the street prices of the gear you buy. If you wait for the hot new product and buy it immediately, you'll find that you will likely a) pay full list price, b) experience unpredictable but significant and annoying shipping delays--including changes in promised ship dates, and c) suffer from various teething pains in the first run of the product.

Those teething pains can vary from serious (high failure rates and product recalls) to cosmetic (Apple Cube "cracks") to trivial but still annoying (on a G5 Tower purchased immediately when first available, when the CD ejects it sounds cheap and clunky and you have the feeling that the door-opening mechanism may fail--although it hasn't yet. They made some kind of improvement and later models are much smoother and confidence-inspiring... that sort of thing...)

Meanwhile, in the runup to the new product introduction everyone is trying to clear out old inventory, and you can get a fire-sale price and all sorts of deals with "free" extra RAM and bundled printers and so forth.

When you buy in is a personal matter, but the actual price you pay and the deal you get tend to reflect the marketplace judgement of the current value of the gear.

If you're waiting, that means you don't have enough money to just buy a new computer every year or so. Personally, I get at least four years out every computer. Four years from now, your computer is going to be four years old. Depending on how clever you are about jumping in just after the leap in technology, it may feel like it is effectively three-and-a-half years old or four-and-a-half years old. It doesn't really matter.

Besides, over the last ten years an amazing thing has happened: performance has been levelling off AND hardware has started catching up to software. These days, you can spend a thousand bucks and get "enough." Whatever enough means. I use a 1.8 GHz G5 at work. My home machine is a 400 MHz G4. Is there a difference in speed? Sure. Is my home machine "fast enough?" Yes.

Not a bleeding-edger? Then the time is now.

[momus_radar]

When is the right time to jump on the Apple ship? Am I going to get burned by a sluggish overpriced laptop that is updated next month?"

I'm going to answer the questions that were actually asked.

1. The right time is when ever you are ready to jump. Before jumping, though, I'd suggest that you do some research on which one of Apple's currently shipping system meets your needs.

2. If you are the type that MUST have the latest and greatest all the time then the answer is yes. Apple has an unofficial policy that they should introduce something new every 90 days. Now that you know that time schedule, you will only get burned if you allow yourself to be.

Now to address your previous comment: It seems like the Power Books are getting very long in the tooth and the Ipods are due for a major rev.

Since it was the first Apple product to receive the, now ubiquitous, minimalist industrial redesign, I suppose the Powerbook is getting long in the tooth. I'm certain Apple is aware of this and is working on something.

As for the iPods, their current hardware designs, and software, are fairly new and they work as advertised. What more do you really need from a portable digital music player that is so incredibly easy to use?

switch when they finally...

[michaelbuddy]

It's time to switch when the apple interface allows you to resize your document windows from all four sides and corners. Currently you can only resize from that lower right hand corner.

I need to reposition my programs all the time because the interface puts them wherever the hell it wants, mostly hidding the bottom of the windows beneath the screen.

So you can't resize it without much hassle. Not very user friendly to me. I hear a lot of things about mac that are good, but honestly this is extremely lame.

The right time

[CokeBear]

The right time to switch to Apple is Tuesdays, between 2 and 4pm, unless its the second Tuesday of the month.

Another Theory

[dwightk]

You seem to want the cutting edge, but another buying idea is to wait until there is an update and buy the last generation new when they slash prices to drop inventory... You get a really good price, and Macs tend to be usable longer. I bought a new computer my first three years in College, and now I've had my PB G4 867MHz for almost 2 years. I'm perfectly happy with this computer now, and if I buy a computer any time soon, I'll probably get a desktop and keep this laptop until it falls apart.

Re:Another Theory

[lux55]

This is a good point. Depending on the type of work you do (most peoples' needs are quite minimal), even older Macs are just fine. Based on my experience with a 3-1/2 year old PB 667 (which I have no intention of selling any time soon), even compared to my new 20" iMac G5, I'd say that older Mac users feel the age of their machines a lot less than users of other OSes. This is true especially of Windows, but slightly less so with Linux -- I do have a Windows and a Linux desktop at the office here.

With that in mind, plus the usability difference (I never have to administer my Macs, the others are a PITA at times), it's a no-brainer for me.

I'm actually demoting our Windows desktop to a remote-connections-only test machine (and ONLY for IE) and replacing it with a new Mac Mini whenever that arrives (I'm in with the "3-4 weeks" orders, since I didn't make the purchase in time to have it sooner).

When? - As soon as you get the money

[DebianDog]

I switched about 3 years ago. At the time I had (2) Linux boxen and (3) M$ boxes. Now I have (1) Windows system running 98, for my old PC games. (1) Linux firewall and (3) Macs!

I freaking LOVE them. I work on XP all day and look forward to going home to get on the "good" systems. ;-)

you are going to get burned by...

[doorbender]

You are going to get burned by warranty fees and support.

I have heard a story similar to this one from a number of people in real life.

http://www.megatokyo.com/?strip_id=512

search on page for
"I'm a little irritated with Apple right now."
and you'll be at the begining of the apple story.

build it myself support it myself. if something goes wrong my wife can bitch at me until I fix it

Re:At the workplace, when Apple introduce Mac "Met

[cowbutt]

You said business desktop, right? Really, Linux on the desktop is fine and dandy for us nerds, but it's not OK for business-at-large. Your average office worker knows Word, Excel, etc., not OOo or gnumeric.

I dispute this. most of the 'average office workers' neither know nor use enough of the esoteric functionality of Word, Excel etc. to make any difference what application they use, as long as it has the basic functionality and buttons/menus in roughly the same place.

Now, Word/Excel power-users are a different kettle of fish. Which is why the better-planned migrations seem to be keeping such users on MS Office (for now, at least).

With apologies to Spaceballs

[LordNimon]

I think this little clip will help you decide when to buy a Mac:

[Watching "Spaceballs: The Movie". They reach "now" in the movie.]
Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
Colonel Sandurz: You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.
Dark Helmet: What happened to then?
Colonel Sandurz: We passed then.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now. We're at now now.
Dark Helmet: Go back to then.
Colonel Sandurz: When?
Dark Helmet: Now!
Colonel Sandurz: Now?
Dark Helmet: Now!
Colonel Sandurz: I can't.
Dark Helmet: Why?
Colonel Sandurz: We missed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now.
Dark Helmet: When will then be now?
Colonel Sandurz: Soon.

That was yesterday, Sir

[Anonymous Coward]

The best time to switch would have been yesterday. Last Wednesday would have been a good day too. Or you could decide to switch on the 17th of the month, that would work well. Switching in a month with a 'R' in it is also a well-known switchers ploy.

Just get on with it and quit prevaricating - it's not like being hit by a tsunami, you know?

X11 Windowing!

[oharagdude]

I've been a Mac fan since 1987. I love graphical user interfaces, and Mac OS (any version) is great. I'm not too much of a command line/Unix/
Linux user, but I think the control that this allows is intriguing.

Well, MacOS X is UNIX! It's BSD. I would think that this would excite all Unix/Linux users.

Also, not too familiar with Unix, but X11 windowing is included with OSX. It's supposed to be fairly easy to recompile or run Unix apps ontop of MacOSX with X11. This is amazing! Trillions of apps written for Unix can be run on the Mac! Anyone excited about this?

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-981495.html

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/

Switch *when* Linux no longer does what you want..

[ElitistWhiner]

only then will you find your switch is for a reason and purspose. Then you won't need marketing hype and /. to stiffen your resolve to make some leap of faith switch.

various strategies...

[bitingduck]

I tend to buy my apple stuff right after they introduce new stuff, but I snag the old stuff at steep discounts.

I use an 800 MHz TiBook at home that I got as a refurb about a month after the faster ones came out. I got it because it would still boot into OS9 for some legacy stuff, and had a graphics card that works with an old game that I was addicted to.

I use a 1 GHz TiBook at work that I got a while later, and I honestly don't notice any real difference between the two machines' performance (and I use both daily).

I also have some sort of high end WinXP "workstation" at work that I use for running FEM software (and really not much else). It's only a few months old, so it really screams, but because I trust windows so little, I don't use it for much else. It solves transient models really fast though, and the most significant thing about it is that it's really quiet, despite the speed. I've heard older machines that sound like a jet landing in your office.

also consider the OS

[IronyChef]

One more tip: Tiger (10.4) is due out 1H05, so waiting a few months until it's included with new hardware will save you a ~$100 upgrade (price varies with rebates & education discounts.)

Re:also consider the OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and waiting 18 months will save you even more money, because 10.5 will probably come out around then.

Or better yet, wait another 54 months and you can have 10.8! Think of all the money you will save on upgrades!

Did it five months ago, had lots of reasons

[raider_red]

I switched to an Apple at the beginning of September. The tipping point was when I figured out that the ammount of time I was spending in maintaining my Windows and Linux boxes exceeded the amount of time I was spending doing real work with them. I've got several entries in my Slashdot jouranl about my early experiences with my PowerBook. I had one glitch when I unboxed the thing, and that's it.

The verdict so far: it just works. I have MS Office for the Mac installed, so I have compatibility with the office computers. I put Apple's development suite on the machine, so I'm able to write software. (I'd recommend getting the "Building Cocoa Applications" book off of eBay.) Most of the Linux programs I used have OS X ports, and I don't have to fuss with keeping the system running. I can also count the number of system crashes I've had so far on one hand.

Re:At the workplace, when Apple introduce Mac "Met

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheap price, these diskless systems should be well under $100 US

Excuse me? How on earth do you think that just by removing the hard drive and DVD drive and then adding much more RAM and upgrading to Gig-E, they can get the $500 Mac Mini down to "well under" $100?

Re:You can net-boot the Macs and run them diskless

[o-hayo]

The functionality is built-in to pretty much every Apple system.

As long as it is a "New World" Mac running Open Firmware it will boot.

Wait for a Sale

[Beeman]

During event at the Apple Retail Stores for the past two operating system releases (Jaguar an Panther), systems have been 10% off. You can also check out the special deals on refurbished equipment at the Apple Store online.

Switched from Linux and never looked back

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using Linux since 1998 as my primary OS. What I've need out a computer in my last few years as a college student have been these five things; Web Browser, E-mail, Word Processor, SSH, and X11. We have Unix labs at school (which run Debian Linux) and I need to have a macine with ssh and X11 built in so that I can do my work remotely. I decided in June of 04' to sell my dated Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop. It was the greatest little Linux laptop, everything worked, even my Proxim wireless card! After much research I bought a iBook G4. It has taken a lot of abuse since then. The thing gets abou four hours of battery life and I've never had it lock up once. Mac OS X is very stable and well integrated. It does everything I need it to do that I use to do in Linux just fine. I do get a little sentimental and miss my Linux sometimes. OS X though is just so slick. Everything works when you plug it in, you get to use things like iPods (The second best investment next to my iBook), and you get the comfort of a Unix base underneath. Depending on how much money you want to spend. If you want to go on the cheap, buy an iBook G4, and I'd do it now, it will be a long time until those are upgraded. If you want to buy a Powerbook, wait until the G5 comes out.

The downside

[skinfitz]

Am I going to get burned by a sluggish overpriced laptop that is updated next month?

This is the down side to being a Mac user. Unless you order a PowerBook the day new models come out, it WILL happen to you.

Cue a raft of posts saying "but it happens to PC's".

Ok - lets make it simple here - there are a LOT less portable Macs than there are models of PC laptops, and PC laptop models get updated all the time. Mac's get speedbumps occasionally, but then will make a big leap; usually three weeks after you buy one.

Short answer: Now. Long answer....

[javaxman]

When Is There a Good Time to "Switch" to Apple?

Well... actually, I guess it depends on what you mean. I find it's a *little* odd that so many people ask this question, since it is like any other hardware purchase: you know for a fact that what you buy today will become obsolete in a remarkably quick timeframe. Even if it doesn't become obsolete, you'll be able to buy your same hardware for less money, again in a remarkably quick timeframe.

With the quick devaluation of hardware as a given, I understand what the question is about: how do I avoid the pain of buying hardware right before an update is announced ? Other than buying right after an announcement ( which presents the possible pain of buying before a price drop, of course ), there's no *really* good way to know what Apple has ready to go.

I understand the PC user's issue with that- usually you see Intel or AMD is announcing a new chip or chipset, etc, well before you can buy a PC with those parts, but you don't have quite the same clues with Apple. Sure, maybe IBM is developing a new chip, but will Apple use it? You almost never know.

Maybe think about it like you think about getting a new graphics card... then realize, you either just take your chances and buy what you need or can afford, or don't buy something that hasn't been updated in a while, or buy only after something's announced. Take your pick from one of those three methods.

Right now, I wouldn't buy a PowerBook ( unless I just have plenty of spare cash ), I'd wait, those are due for an update. I _would_ buy a dual G5. Or a iMac G5. Or, if I wanted a small, simple machine, had a monitor, and wasn't editing DV, I'd get a Mac mini. I would consider getting an iBook- they're actually a damn good deal right now, and were updated not long ago.

But really, is there a good time to NOT switch?

Re:Short answer: Now. Long answer....

[shumacher]

Really great post. I would add that buying right after and announcement is a good idea, but waiting two weeks after an announcment is even better for BTO configurations. If you're going to have Apple build it for you, waiting is good because they often tweak the options and their pricing during the first two weeks. When I bought my Key Lime Firewire iBook SE, Key Lime was a BTO option, and you had to take the expensive memory upgrade with the hard drive upgrade. I wanted the hard drive upgrade, but skipped it because they were bundled. Apple unbundled them about the time they were putting my box in the FedEx guy's hands. The Mac Mini options were repriced early this week, to significant savings.

The other nice thing about waiting is knowing more about the hardware. If I'd bought the Mac Mini after the keynote, I'd not have known how easy opening it is.

I would suggest, if the concern about timing is just not buying before an upgrade, is to wait for an update, and then until the geek community starts blogging about their experiences with the product.

Re:Short answer: Now. Long answer....

[javaxman]

buying right after and announcement is a good idea, but waiting two weeks after an announcment is even better

Very, very insightful. I wouldn't have thought of that.

Frankly, for my own purchases, I wait until there's a refurbished unit I can buy. It's significantly cheaper, and ( at least with Apple ) the factory warranty is exactly the same. But I just do that because I'm cheap/broke, and have ( through lots of pain ) have learned that I don't have to have the latest great thing _right_ away...

I wouldn't want to suggest to a bunch of slashdotters that they wait before buying the newest gadget, that's blasphemy around here. It's a very brave thing you've done.

Really great post.

Thanks!

Switching and Buying.

[tu_holmes]

It seems to me that anytime is a good time to switch.

I know people worry about any computer getting too old too soon, but I've got to admit, I just played with a 1.42Ghz G4 and it's quite fast. I would think it would last me at a minimum of 3-4 years.

After that, of course the G6 might be out, and I might be ready to finally buy a G5!

Don't worry about getting a G4... They are plenty fast. If you go for an iMac or PowerMac in the G5 realm, you get even more bang.

Just do what I did if you have fears, find the nearest apple retailer and just sit in front of their computer for an hour or so.

That's what I did, I shut it down, restarted it, opened lots of programs at once and just pretty much put it through the paces.

Try one out and see how it works for you... That's the best test there is.

Been using Mac's for over a decade...

[doneWithMyTattoo]

I bought a IIci in '87 (second from top of the line at that time) and had it for 8 years. I bough a first release iMac in (when was that, 96 or 97?) and had it for 5 years. I bought a refurbished 400 Mhz G4 two years ago and would not have considered getting a replacement except that these mini's are so amazingly (for apple) cheap. (even so, I will probably wait) My point is that, even with technology's march, Macs keep being useful for longer than PCs. I have kept useful Macs for 5 to 8 years and watched my windows PC buddies need new PCs every 3 or 4 years. So don't stress out so badly about the timing of getting in. I promise that you will feel sad when the next release comes out. But we all get over that. And your Mac will survive. PS: 2 notes. 1) I do not game much... that may have changed my ROI history 2) Linux is (much) better at running on old PC hardware than new MS OS releases.

Taxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I did consider a cheap laptop with Linux but the windows tax put me off.

But the Apple tax didn't faze you?

Re:Taxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

not a tax if you use what you pay for. but if the first thing I do with a laptop is zap xp with linux, when xp was part of the price, then this is a tax. its paying for something that I won't use.

Re:Dropping the Client HD to take advantage of RAI

[John Harrison]

The Mac mini also lacks the gig ethernet. It is only 10/100.

Re:At the workplace, when Apple introduce Mac "Met

[clickster]

DUH!!! Make the CALs $1000/apiece. Sheesh. Do I have to think of everything around here? :) (NOTE: For those of you out there without a sense of sarcasm - this is an example of such)

Re:At the workplace, when Apple introduce Mac "Met

[corporatemutantninja]

How do you figure taking a $500 machine, dropping the optical drive and hard drive, then quadrupling (or octupling?) the RAM and upgrading to gigE is going to lower the price "easily" to below $100? Because they'll save $400 worth of plastic on a smaller case, maybe? Maybe you're expecting the dollar to make a huge comeback.

If you can wait until mid-year, wait for Tiger

[SteeldrivingJon]

If you wait until Tiger is released, and until new Macs are shipping with it, then you won't have to pay the $129 for the new OS.

Plus, if you buy a Mac before Tiger comes out, you won't quite know how well it will take advantage of Tiger features like CoreImage.

If Tiger comes out first, you can check the hardware requirements for various features before buying, so that you won't be disappointed.

Re: no, wait for The Last Rev

[Anonymous Coward]

The best time to buy, but only if you can wait, is at the end of a given model's life cycle. By then, the design is truly tried and tested, and any improvements that can be made have been made. But the largest advantage can be price. When it's the end of the line, all eyes are on the replacement model, so resellers are essentially dumping the old stuff. At the end of 2000 there was a very strong sense that the PowerBook G4 was coming out, and I started looking hard at the PowerBook G3 (Pismo) line that was at the end of its life. When Apple offered a $200 rebate, I bit. Then, after I bought, Apple lowered the price another $300. I read the fine print on the back of my receipt and saw that I was clearly within the price protection period, so I talked to Apple and they credited me the difference. Finally, Apple annoucned the PowerBook G4. While the rest of Mac Userland was off on one of their Steve Jobs-induced blind stampedes for the first (and therefore worst) version of the PowerBook G4, I saved $500 on a model that was in many ways superior to the newer one.

My bad.

[porkchop_d_clown]

I'm twitching on the subject of ifconfig at the moment because I'm in the middle of writing device drivers for Mac.

Re:At the workplace, when Apple introduce Mac "Met

[Gob Blesh It]

Mac "Metro"? Surely this is an Apple-is-gay troll?

I switched...then switched back!

[Anonymous Coward]

I burned up a lot of money switching, only to have to switch back!

My problem was the development tools on Apple are just plain lousy. Most of their tools are just GUIs slapped on top of GCC/GDB, and crashy. The Objective-C language is dated (for example it's missing first-class support for accessors, and lacks good exception handling) and slow (for a compiled language, almost everything is bound at run-time). It lacked fundametal features like "namespaces" that made it hard for our shop to integrate our software.

If you just want a pretty box to browse the web with a non-standard browser, go right ahead, but if you're looking for serious performance, or a software development platform, you may want to look elsewhere.

--
Skip
http://www.callipygian.com/

PC competition for I-Mini MAC?

[Anonymous Coward]

When MAC announced their "I-Mini" McIntosh, it caught my eye. Wanting to buy/build a small computer for my already cramped breakfast bar, I started pricing out similar hardware. The results startled me. Most of the configurations I found were more than the humble US$499 of the "I-Mini" McIntosh. To match price I had to configure with a much bigger shuttle-style case.

My question is this. What PCs are currently on the market to compete with this? When my wife asks for the "cute little MAC", what real computer can I buy instead?

Re:PC competition for I-Mini MAC?

[valkraider]

I-Mini is dying.

Go copy your 17MB file and leave us alone.

Re:PC competition for I-Mini MAC?

[Anonymous Coward]

marvelous! good show!

Re:PC competition for I-Mini MAC?

[slaker]

Try a Via EPIA-based system. $165 for a fanless 1GHz C3 + board (plus video, NIC and sound), $35 for 256MB RAM, $60 for an 80GB hard disk, $50 for an appropriately tiny case, $35 for a decent CD Burner.

Add $70 to upgrade to 512MB RAM and a 16x DVD Burner, and it's still $80 cheaper than the base config of the mini, and only VERY slightly larger, plus the C3 can handle 6 channel sound. Spend the $50 on a low-profile bt878 PCI tuner, and have an absolutely marvelous little theater appliance.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

This is tricky, but it can be done. Regularly grab the latest prices of the gizmos n doodads that you want from Apple. The right time to "switch" is when you see them on eBay for 75% of their retail cost.

It may seem scary @ first, but you've got to believe in yourself. Good luck.

Here's how you know when it's the right time

[Anonymous Coward]

When you see this cartoon and it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, you know it's time to switch.

Window shading and software install

[kiddailey]

For windowshading, try WindowShadeX. I haven't used it myself, but it gets great reviews.

As far as being careful with software - it's not so bad :) Most apps are drag/drop install with a single file. The apps you really have to be cautious with are the ones that require your admin password to install or have an installer app that you must run.

With drag/drop install, to uninstall all you need do is delete the app, and the associated files (if any) that were created in ~/library/application support/appname and ~/library/preferences.

Of course, application stability is a whole 'nother discussion ;) In regards to Desktop Manager, I've had no problems with stability.

Mouse tracking speed

[valkraider]

You may want to get a Kensington or MS mouse because their drivers allow you to speed up the mouse movement beyond the standard (very slow) maximum speed for an Apple mouse.

MOUSEZOOM does the same thing for any mouose/trackball type device.

Re:Mouse tracking speed

[BoomerSooner]

Thanks, wish I had mod points (wait I do I just cannot mod this topic since I posted!)

Tried a Mac

[codepunk]

Work gave me a obsolute mac and we put osx on it and I ran if for a couple of days. It is ok if you want email and a browser. It reminds me of a linux desktop that you have to pay for all the software. It was about as good as a boat anchor because I cannot bring myself to buy software for it.

Not thanks a linux box gives me anything I ever needed in software without forking out a dime.

Re:Tried a Mac

[norkakn]

http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/
and fink. I don't really pay for any software

Re:At the workplace, when Apple introduce Mac "Met

[Ash-Fox]

Apple charges insane prices on their RAM, HDS, CD/DVD ram/roms/writers. Which is a really good reason why it would cost alot less.

don't forget the protection plan

[bodrell]

If you're waiting, that means you don't have enough money to just buy a new computer every year or so. Personally, I get at least four years out every computer. Four years from now, your computer is going to be four years old.

That about describes the way I buy computers. I did about a year's worth of research, compared prices of the top contenders (IBM Thinkpad, Sony Vaio, Apple Powerbook G4) and the Powerbook was actually the best deal. I got the AppleCare Protection Plan, and it's been more than worth the money. Not because of the phone help (not usually too useful for a knowledgable user, but I did need some help resetting my P-RAM in Open Firmware) but because of hardware repair. After about 2.5 years of reliable service, my laptop started freaking out, freezing a la Windows. That was very disturbing, since I've come to expect smooth sailing with OS X.

I sent my laptop to the shop (free shipping) and they replaced the hard drive. Stupid, because I had mentioned to an Apple rep. that this freezing problem occurred even when booting off an external hard drive. Anyway, I sent it back again, and when it was returned they had replaced the mainboard, CPU, the part around the edges where all the paint chips, and a couple other parts. It feels like I have a new laptop.

That was not the first time I used AppleCare. Previous, the insulation on the power cord cracked, and Apple sent me a new one promptly. I just stuck the old one in the same box and sent it back (again, free shipping!)

Anyway, in spite of getting my laptop back to normal, it was time for a new machine. Got a dual 2.5 GHz PowerMac G5, since it has to last for the next four years.

The Mac Buyers Guide

[dark_lotus]

The MacRumors.com buyers guide is an excellent resource and I have used it many times to pick the right time to buy.

when to buy powerbook g5s

[commodoresloat]

Just wait until I buy a PowerBook G4. The G5's are certain to come out within the next couple weeks.

Re:when to buy powerbook g5s

[ptomblin]

I beat you to it. I bought a 17" Powerbook last week at a special Apple discount they offer to employees and friends of employees when they want to clear out old inventory in advance of a new product announcement.

But chances are the announcement is only a small speed ramp-up, not a switch to G5s.

Another log on the bonfire...

[smoon]

I got a powerbook 667MHz a while back and it's still going strong. Best laptop I've ever had. Sure the 1.2GHz or faster models are a bit snappier, but it's totally usable.

The difference between a 1.2/1.3GHz today vs. a 1.4/1.5GHz in a month or two (which is what it'd be given the inevitable shipping delays for the newest gear from Apple, even if something happened next week) will be minimal at best. Of course if they 'bump' includes more RAM or a bigger hard drive...

Anyway, main point is it doesn't much matter. Even when a G5 laptop ships it's going to be a new model and the existing ibook/powerbook series has been around for a while so expect more bugs to work out. I'd recommend waiting for the second model to sport a G5, so you're not stuck working out Apples overheating, loud fan, poor battery life, failing mainboard first attempt at a G5 (not that any of that has happened before :)

Also, for those who question moving from *linux* to a mac, even when you have the skill to get something working doesn't mean you have the patience or time to devote to it. Having stuff "just work" without any trouble is a very nice selling point for Mac hardware and OS X. Much better even than Windows, the nominal target market for most add-ons. Besides, it *is* unix, despite the eye candy. I was sold when I shut the lid on my powerbook at work, it snoozed, I opened it at home, and it automatically figured out it was on a different network, switched from the cabled connection to wireless, and was up and running within seconds of opening the lid. Compared to an IBM thinkpad/XP pro machine that takes 45-50 seconds to 'wake up', plus gets easily confused about network connections... It's nice to have stuff just work, and do it unobstrusivley in the background.

Yesterday...

[CTO1]

is the best time. I've been using a Mac at home for almost two years, but I've only recently been able to stop dealing with Windows problems at work (moved from tech support to network admin/cisco stuff). My sanity is no longer in jeopardy.

.NET

[Karma Farmer]

Can anyone tell me how far along Mono has come on OS X?

You forgot one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

....No matter how you edit the database, always, always, always make a copy of it before you start.

On getting "burned" by Apple hardware updates

[lgw4]

Of course you're going to get "burned" when Apple releases updated hardware with better specs at the same (or lower) price. However, you must consider the value of the increased productivity you will experience between the time of your initial purchase and the release of the upgraded hardware. I really debated my purchase when I bought my first OS X computer almost 2 years ago -- and finally decided that I'd waited too long. Sure, I'd purchased a better computer for the money than if I'd just gone out and purchased an OS X computer when I first decided I wanted one, but the time I spent trying to create a comparable environment on various Intel-compatible machines I time I can't get back. Had I just purchased a OS X computer sooner, I'd have just been doing the things I wanted to do, rather than trying to make my computer do the things I wanted to do.

If you have a USB keyboard and mouse and a good monitor already, buy the $599 Mac mini (add wireless and DVD-R if you need them) and put a 1GB DIMM in when you get it. Get a 20GB iPod with it. For under $1000, you've got a good selection of Apple products. Try them out. Try not to use Windows or Linux -- use OS X as your primary computing environment. Don't try to make OS X behave just like Linux (or whatever other UNIX you prefer). Installing Fink does not count as trying to make OS X just like Linux (Fink is good!). Don't partition the HD. Use one partition. You may remove Classic (I don't have Classic/OS 9 on any of my Macs -- who'd want it?). Use OS X on Apple's terms and see if you like it.

Alternately, you could do what I do -- wait for the hardware updates, then buy the discontinued models on closeout for substantial savings. I got a previous model $999 eMac for $600 with AppleCare included when Apple last upgraded the eMacs. My wife loves this machine. She doesn't even know that I use it to serve my Subversion repository and as my MySQL server!

Re:On getting "burned" by Apple hardware updates

[superpulpsicle]

It must play games to be a home OS. You are paying so much for a hardware and OS that has literally just 40 games in its gaming library. Windows does this better.

It must scale well to be a server OS. Any linux will make a better server box than mac OS. Linux does this better.

So Mac is stuck smack in the middle in limbo.

Re:You can net-boot the Macs and run them diskless

[myov]

One of the macworld keynotes demoed netbooting among other things. First Steve used one iMac pulling data from a server, without a local hard drive. (even going as far as to show he removed the drive)

Then, after saying "1 client, 1 server - you would never do that... Why don't we bring out 50?". The room went nuts as a rack of 49 iMacs rolls out.

Now, if it was Microsoft, we'd see 50 BSoD's... :)

FYI

[iroll]

There really are no Motorola G4 processors anymore; Freescale is the manufacturer of G5 processors and is Motorola's direct successor (i.e. Motorola spun off their processor division which became Freescale).

Just switch now

[frodo527]

...assuming of course that the Mac available now do what you need and will continue to do so for a reasonable time.

I've been using Linux seriously since 2000, before that used DOS and Windows, and before that used a Mac Plus. In December I bought a 12" G4 iBook when my old Compaq Presario 710US laptop started having problems keeping the battery charged.

I've been very impressed with the iBook. It's fast enough for what I use it for -- email, web, light office stuff, logging into servers and routers. The keyboard is pretty good for a laptop, although I wish it had regular up and down keys that didn't require you to press the fn key and arrow keys simultaneously.

Configuring the Airport Extreme card was a piece of cake. Reception of the signal from my Netgear 802.11g WAP is excellent.

OS-X is extremely nice and has been stable, and the peripherals that I've plugged in work with little effort. E.g., I needed to download the software for my Epson USB scanner but other than that it didn't require tweaking.

Having used the iBook for a couple of months now I am _sold_ on Apple's line of computers. I continue to use and love Linux, but my next desktop may very well be a Mac.

Re:At the workplace, when Apple introduce Mac "Met

[chibimagic]

Under $100? A gig of ram by itself would be $100 at least. Never mind the CPU, case, CD drive, and ports. Plus the market for this would be so small they'd make no money on it.

In the morning...

[Anonymous Coward]

...right after you've finished your business in the restroom.

absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Reductio ad absurdum

NOW!!!

[arska]

now or never: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/31/ 1351214