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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?"
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
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.
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.
-- Isak Ben.
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.....
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
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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.
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!)
'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes'
...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 ?
Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
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.
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.
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).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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.
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.
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.
Sorry to butt in, but thought I'd throw in a couple cents:
There are a few virtual desktop managers for OS X (a few of which are free):
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.
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.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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! (:
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.
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?
...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.
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.
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.
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.
-=gabe2=- macbook dual 2.0
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".
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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
Careful with that.
/etc/ files directly) can lead to inconsistent results.
Because Mac OS X uses the netinfo database for a lot of config data, doing things like ifconfig by hand (even modifying the
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.
Clear, Dark Skies
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!
hoser: Slashdot reader since 1987.
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.
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.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
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).
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.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
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. :-)
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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?
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.
Isn't it interesting that research no longer seems to include asking experts.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
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.
. html.
/. 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.
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
I'm finding myself becoming more and more frustrated with
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.
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?
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.
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
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
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 $400 worth of plastic on a smaller case, maybe? Maybe you're expecting the dollar to make a huge comeback.
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
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Nobody says that OSX can't be "just another Unix" -- it just hides it by default
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my next desktop machine will also be a Mac because I love the UNIX base
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a unix OS with a nice consistent GUI AND the ability to run X11 apps
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I'd say if you want a unix workstation, OSX is by far the best
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As an operating system, Mac OS X and Linux are very similar; Unix was designed to be.
And apparently Apple itself thinks OSX might have something to do with Unix.hilarious! this is the attitude!
you consider it stable when "every once and a while AQUA" crashes? isn't that like arguing that windows is stable but it's the explorer that crashes and as such it's not a biggie?
Humm, Once and awhile means monthly not weekly like windows. And aqua doesnt take down the OS when it crashs, just aquadock. I havnt seen a bouncing ball or complete crash since 10.1.
Most crash I've seen are games exiting back to normal desktop, doesnt happen often, but its also the same crash type on windows.
I find running WoW in window mode easier now, so i can run chat/webbrowser/IM without issues, Uptime for weeks now.
And for explorer on windows, theres a registery tweak to have explorer shell and explorer browsers to run different instances, so a explorer browser wont restart your gui. That has made windows more stable on a day to day basis, and I wish M$ 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.
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
You are correct that it requires more than adding a line to
1. Add a line to
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
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
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.
http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/
and fink. I don't really pay for any software
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.