I am a longtime mac user, and I do consider Linux, just not for a desktop. For a server, however, I chose Linux. A sub $500 1U rackmount from colomachines and Linux serve my (admittedly meagre) server needs very well.
While I admin a couple of XServes for other people, and they're great, they are overkill for my needs by at least $3000. I have to say, though, I love the OSX Server admin tools.
At least they don't pull out the old "The devil can quote scripture to his own ends" line. That one really drives me up the wall. You can prove things out of your magic book, but I can't?
Apple makes keyboards with accented characters, they may only be available in their respective markets. I live in Canada, and the Canadian Apple store has 2 keyboard options: US English and French Canadian
I have found out a few things that might interest you:
The release version of the compiler (gcc) feels significantly slower than the equivalent version of gcc on an Intel-based Linux Box (I am running 2 or 3 year old hardware, a single-processor 400MHz tower, so it feels even slower for me whilst compiling big nasty things, but a seriously non-scientifically conducted "compile mySQL" race between my Mac and a Celeron 300 had the Mac faring rather poorly in comparison the the Celeron) This will change with Jaguar. Apple is moving to gcc 3 and has done *a lot* of optimizations to it for better PowerPC code generation and faster compiling.
Objective C is addictive (and free as in beer), it's amazing how easy it is to slap together a simple GUI app in a half hour.
I will reiterate what everyone else has said, -MORE RAM- (and don't buy it from Apple, I've had good luck with Shika and Kingston ValueRAM sticks), I have 704MB on my home machine and it's still not enough when you have 12 or 14 broswer windows open, are compiling in the background and messing with Photoshop whilst listening to MP3s and leaving any number of other apps open in the background. The entire GUI is double buffered and is an utter RAM pig, but it sure is purty and RAM is cheap.
I don't know how GCC compares to Metrowerks' Compiler, or what Apple is using for different parts of their code (I dunno if MW does OBJ-C, so Apple would likely use GCC at least for that).
Apple uses their build of GCC to compile all of OS X. This is according to the WWDC videos online at Apple's developer site (free login required).
I have to say that I have been more than impressed with my new iBook.
I run it mostly in OS 10.1 for work (Sysadmin at a Linux-based ISP), but for my vacation last week, I set it up with a USB audio input, a USB MIDI interface, a good mixer, a big fat Firewire Drive and some multitrack MIDI/Audio software.
It was running OS 9.2.1 with all this stuff for the whole week and performed impeccably, My friend and I got hours and hours of stuff recorded during the week and had no trouble at all.
It was fast enough to handle real-time effects, the hard drive was fast enough to handle about 10 simultaneous audio tracks. Multiple MIDI tracks are no problem even for a C64, so there was no thought of a problem with that.
My little iBook has turned out to be a very good portable recording studio, and it only took about 4 hours of configuration (including wiring everything and installing all of the software) to get all of the hardware and software working together.
I just want all of this stuff to work under 10.1. My external hardware does, I just need software. Logic Audio [www.emagic.de] is apparently being released in early January, and I'm saving up my loot for that.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a longtime mac user, and I do consider Linux, just not for a desktop. For a server, however, I chose Linux. A sub $500 1U rackmount from colomachines and Linux serve my (admittedly meagre) server needs very well.
While I admin a couple of XServes for other people, and they're great, they are overkill for my needs by at least $3000. I have to say, though, I love the OSX Server admin tools.
The Minister
At least they don't pull out the old "The devil can quote scripture to his own ends" line. That one really drives me up the wall. You can prove things out of your magic book, but I can't?
Apple makes keyboards with accented characters, they may only be available in their respective markets. I live in Canada, and the Canadian Apple store has 2 keyboard options: US English and French Canadian
The release version of the compiler (gcc) feels significantly slower than the equivalent version of gcc on an Intel-based Linux Box (I am running 2 or 3 year old hardware, a single-processor 400MHz tower, so it feels even slower for me whilst compiling big nasty things, but a seriously non-scientifically conducted "compile mySQL" race between my Mac and a Celeron 300 had the Mac faring rather poorly in comparison the the Celeron) This will change with Jaguar. Apple is moving to gcc 3 and has done *a lot* of optimizations to it for better PowerPC code generation and faster compiling.
Objective C is addictive (and free as in beer), it's amazing how easy it is to slap together a simple GUI app in a half hour.
I will reiterate what everyone else has said, -MORE RAM- (and don't buy it from Apple, I've had good luck with Shika and Kingston ValueRAM sticks), I have 704MB on my home machine and it's still not enough when you have 12 or 14 broswer windows open, are compiling in the background and messing with Photoshop whilst listening to MP3s and leaving any number of other apps open in the background. The entire GUI is double buffered and is an utter RAM pig, but it sure is purty and RAM is cheap.
Good Luck
I don't know how GCC compares to Metrowerks' Compiler, or what Apple is using for different parts of their code (I dunno if MW does OBJ-C, so Apple would likely use GCC at least for that).
Apple uses their build of GCC to compile all of OS X. This is according to the WWDC videos online at Apple's developer site (free login required).
I have to say that I have been more than impressed with my new iBook.
I run it mostly in OS 10.1 for work (Sysadmin at a Linux-based ISP), but for my vacation last week, I set it up with a USB audio input, a USB MIDI interface, a good mixer, a big fat Firewire Drive and some multitrack MIDI/Audio software.
It was running OS 9.2.1 with all this stuff for the whole week and performed impeccably, My friend and I got hours and hours of stuff recorded during the week and had no trouble at all.
It was fast enough to handle real-time effects, the hard drive was fast enough to handle about 10 simultaneous audio tracks. Multiple MIDI tracks are no problem even for a C64, so there was no thought of a problem with that.
My little iBook has turned out to be a very good portable recording studio, and it only took about 4 hours of configuration (including wiring everything and installing all of the software) to get all of the hardware and software working together.
I just want all of this stuff to work under 10.1. My external hardware does, I just need software. Logic Audio [www.emagic.de] is apparently being released in early January, and I'm saving up my loot for that.
Select the disk and hit Cmd-e, out it pops.