I got here a little after 10:00 and the line went well behind the book store. I estimate there were about 1,000 people waiting when I got here, and there were many in line behind me after that.
Here I sit in front of the store, enjoying the free but short range wireless internet access. The line of people still goes around behind the store. This is nuts. You'd think Star Wars: Episode III was showing inside or something.
My gripe is that the Apple GUI isn't X11. It is proprietary. So I have to run one GUI on top of another. If OS X's GUI were X11, then other X11 apps would look like native apps instead of having to use a wm and looking goofy and inconsistent with the rest of the environment.
This addresses one of my major gripes about switching to OS X; there are few apps to choose from, and they all cost an arm & a leg.
I never knew The Kompany was selling OS X stuff so I am definitely going to have to go check them out. If this allows me to standardize on apps between Linux and OS X then I will be a happy man. Also if I get a good QuickBooks alternative (Lord, I hate how they nickle & dime you to death for simple stuff like emailing invoices to your clients) I would be able to permanently power down my sole remaining Windows box.
I'm another Linux user switching to OS X. Vice Chair of my LUG, Linux user for five years, and believe it or not it was other LUG members that talked me into taking the plunge.
I needed a notebook for two main purposes.
Videography - The thought of using Broadcast 2000 under Linux on some flaky PeeCee notebook struck me as an unwise business decision. I needed something that "just works" and it should look very sleek and professional in front of my clients.
Writing a book - I needed something that would run a decent well known word processor or typesetter for writing books with. KOffice and OpenOffice just don't cut the mustard here. Publishers would laugh me out of their office if I used those file formats.
I ended up going way over budget and buying an 800MHz G4 "Titanium" Powerbook. It was a rocky start because OS X is missing some of the features I love most about Linux. But then I started diving into the applications and (here it comes) it Just Works.
Clients love it when I open my backpack, pull this thing out, and show them the progress of their video on this. Better still, it has all kinds of ports on it. I can hook it up to the SVideo jack on your television set, audio outs to your stereo, and show you your movie the way it will look once it it on a DVD. That feat would be much more difficult on a PeeCee portable running Linux (or even Windows) and would almost certainly require a PC Card adapter with a dongle. This is much cleaner as it only requires two cables plugged directly into the back of the TiBook.
My major gripes are pretty easy to name.
No X11 - Apple chose to make a totally proprietary GUI which hurts me in two ways: (1) I can't run X11 apps without installing XFree and (2) I can run remote GUI sessions to my X Terminal that has a Matrox G450 and dual 21" monitors.
Cost of applications - Buying any applications for this box requires taking out a second mortgage on your home. On the upside, high quality open source apps are starting to find their way to native ports on OS X. Audacity runs great here, and a lot of us are looking forward to Open Office (which I would prefer to use for "everything else" but the book writing).
Overall, I am very happy with this purchase. I find myself using the Linux box less and less for desktop stuff, and the OS X box more and more for that purpose. It was a lot of money but I feel much better about it now because it is much better integrated than any PeeCee notebook I've seen.
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I got here a little after 10:00 and the line went well behind the book store. I estimate there were about 1,000 people waiting when I got here, and there were many in line behind me after that.
Here I sit in front of the store, enjoying the free but short range wireless internet access. The line of people still goes around behind the store. This is nuts. You'd think Star Wars: Episode III was showing inside or something.
Did someone say that Apple was a dying platform?
My gripe is that the Apple GUI isn't X11. It is proprietary. So I have to run one GUI on top of another. If OS X's GUI were X11, then other X11 apps would look like native apps instead of having to use a wm and looking goofy and inconsistent with the rest of the environment.
This addresses one of my major gripes about switching to OS X; there are few apps to choose from, and they all cost an arm & a leg.
I never knew The Kompany was selling OS X stuff so I am definitely going to have to go check them out. If this allows me to standardize on apps between Linux and OS X then I will be a happy man. Also if I get a good QuickBooks alternative (Lord, I hate how they nickle & dime you to death for simple stuff like emailing invoices to your clients) I would be able to permanently power down my sole remaining Windows box.
I'm another Linux user switching to OS X. Vice Chair of my LUG, Linux user for five years, and believe it or not it was other LUG members that talked me into taking the plunge.
I needed a notebook for two main purposes.
I ended up going way over budget and buying an 800MHz G4 "Titanium" Powerbook. It was a rocky start because OS X is missing some of the features I love most about Linux. But then I started diving into the applications and (here it comes) it Just Works.
Clients love it when I open my backpack, pull this thing out, and show them the progress of their video on this. Better still, it has all kinds of ports on it. I can hook it up to the SVideo jack on your television set, audio outs to your stereo, and show you your movie the way it will look once it it on a DVD. That feat would be much more difficult on a PeeCee portable running Linux (or even Windows) and would almost certainly require a PC Card adapter with a dongle. This is much cleaner as it only requires two cables plugged directly into the back of the TiBook.
My major gripes are pretty easy to name.
Overall, I am very happy with this purchase. I find myself using the Linux box less and less for desktop stuff, and the OS X box more and more for that purpose. It was a lot of money but I feel much better about it now because it is much better integrated than any PeeCee notebook I've seen.