I was there for the year 2002-3 - I don't know how long the limitations had been in force before then.
But it didn't matter. There was always a decent amount of...errr..."content" available via SMB, and those of us with the technological savvy found other ways of getting more.
It was the only way out of my university's network (probably still is) - it provided a decent-enough way of getting unrestricted Internet access when the only useful open port we had was SSH. No IPSec, no PPTP, just one big excuse to get one's hands dirty.
RISC OS is based more around function than form. It won't look as pretty as your Mac, but it'll be one hell of a lot more responsive.
The Macintosh user interface has traditionally always placed function before form, and even today, it is one of the premier operating systems in this regard. Mac diehards continue to argue about the Human Interface Guidelines and lament Apple's more-than-occasional failure to adhere to same. It goes without saying that this never happens in the Windows world.
That said, I'm sure you've got a point about responsiveness (although I can't help adding that Tiger has, belatedly, improved things in this regard). But there are certain features (like Exposé) where the Mac's comparative added horsepower become essential.
This thing will appear as fast as a high-end system on the desktop.
Whilst you have a point, this is somewhat bogus. If I (could) run Windows 95 on my Athlon 64 3400+, I'm sure it would fly, but fact is I don't - I want/need the added functionality and ease-of-use enhancements that later releases have brought. And with Mac OS X, Apple's done a pretty good job of keeping old hardware (like my 400Mhz iMac) useful with, even with all the eye candy.
If you think Windows 95 or KDE come even close to RISC OS then you've been smoking crack.
I've not used RISC OS as much as I'd like, and I know it had a following in education for a while (certainly over here in Blighty anyway), but I think its spartan style means that there aren't going to be many more users coming to the fold these days. For that reason, I think the Windows 95/KDE analogy is at least partially valid (in that they both look ugly as shit).
I had a look at the article and then the web site (scary, I know, but I'm British. "In Britain, nerds read TFA!"), and what immediately struck me was how unbelievably marginalised this little segment is, making Mac users (of which group I am a member) look a relatively mainstream bunch. Part of me - the obstreperous adolescent within that screams out to be different - almost wants to run join them? Isn't being marginalised the whole reason I use a Mac?:P
I was trying to work out why these people continue to use this platform, and it can only be a manifestation of that sadistic quality that is present in so many geeks - the one that leads us to defile a beautiful Mac mini with the installation of, say, Slackware 7 or Red Hat 5.2, just to be difficult, or why we tunnel PPP over SSH to create VPNs (because IPSec and PPTP are for lusers). I looked at a few screenshots, read some articles - one which particularly amused me was that which opined the lack of full and decent internationalisation (it seemed so prehistoric) - but it was somewhat reassuring.
There is still a group of individuals who run scared from the Macintosh, and who belittle those that use it, although their numbers are declining, and rightly so, because the Mac's superiority in all fields bar gaming is so resplendent ("Que le flamewar commence!"), but I like to think that having seen this, Mac users' choice seems a little more rational - at least their OS-du-jour is better than the standard (i.e. Windows). RISC OS just sucks.
So I really can't bring myself to coo over the specs of this machine. It's about as big as the Mac mini, yet:
it lacks an optical drive;
the processor is about as powerful as modern-day PDAs;
it's fucking expensive for what it is;
less RAM, VRAM, disk space, etc. but on the plus side you do get an RS232 serial port...
Call me a philistine or a cynic, perhaps, but what's the point? There are plenty of us who've got a Windows 95-era machine somewhere, and for those of us that don't but still want the same "feel", there's always KDE. So why am I going to fork out five hundred quid for this...?
...In spite of the [strength of the] pound, shurely?
(I know what you actually mean of course - the inexplicably higher prices the British always pay, the take-off-the-dollar-sign-and-stick-on-a-pound-sign price conversions, but that's something which happens in spite of the pound's strength, and is instead directly attributable to British weather and the mustn't-grumble mantra.)
I just tried that. Oddly enough it would not hide finder.
It won't hide the Finder if it's the last application "visible". Make another app visible and you can hide the FInder.
And the Finder isn't that bad. It's not great, and I wish they would get rid of all the Carbon cruft so that it would perform a little better, but for most people it works alright.
(That said, since when is "alright" good enough for Apple? And whilst I'm bashing Carbon holdouts, I can't resist a poke at QuickTime Player, which is possibly the most dire piece of software on the Mac. And iTunes, love it though so many do, pisses me off with its Carbonness too.)
Let's just hope they made it so the mouse moves faster, I like a really fast mouse.
Have you tried tweaking the speed in the Mouse System Preferences? It's not that slow is it?
I must say, I've never quite got used to virtual desktops. I know they work well for those that use them, but for normal users they would be, quite simply, too confusing. I don't count myself as a "normal user", but even so, I've managed fine for ten years or so without them, and the last three - on the Mac - have been by far the most efficient, especially now that I use Command+H. Exposé has its uses too, of course.
That said, there are plenty of utilities for the Mac that do virtual desktopping, such as CodeTek VirtualDesktop Pro and Desktop Manager, the latter being open source too! So you can get that virtual deskopping buzz even on the Mac...
OS X power uses like myself don't use minimise, except when showing off the pretty visual effects. In normal use, it is slower and there is often no mouse-free way of extracting the window from the Dock. Instead, we Command+H to hide windows, which reappear when Command+Tabbed back to. Hiding has no animation - it is a holdout from the NeXTSTEP days - and it's incredibly efficient and tidy.
Sometimes us geeky types like to use a computer to do other stuff other than tinker.
Exactly. We have lives and stuff to get on with too.
My gripes lie with iPhoto
Yeah, it ain't perfect. I'm lucky, in that I have the Kiss Digital/300D/Digital Rebel, which works fine, but I can see that it's a right bugger if it doesn't, and, from what you say, the lack of support is rather inexplicable. And I've got over 15,000 photos in my library, so it's not the fastest thing in the world.:P
...Dell...notebook...for gaming...
Yeah, it makes sense. I'm no fan of Dell's more recent kit (we used to have Dell machines back in the day when they built expensive, quality machines, rather than the cheapo stuff they churn out today), but for the most part it works, and the games point is inarguable - the right tool for the job. It'll be a fair while (if ever) before developers start taking Mac gaming seriously again.
The thing that pains me about Windows is the maintenance. I am just about to go and do a complete reinstall for a friend. He is pretty cautious with how he uses his machine because of my persistent badgering, but his other friends when using it less so, and as a consequence now, no sooner than you connect to the Internet and it is saturating upstream bandwidth with what I presume to be spam-sending. It's painful how an Athlon 64 3400+ can be reduced to molasses-like speeds...
The aforementioned friend is the kind of guy that would make that sort of mistake - he has a little knowledge, but not a lot. Doubtless the need to be root (by whatever means) to start Apache escaped him - and why it didn't then work.
I'm not aware that the Caller ID thing is built-in, but then, I'm not that familiar with Bluetooth - it's my brother's setup that has the Bluetooth phone and adapter, and whilst I've played with it a bit, I was under the impression that you had to install something for CID to work. Proximity monitoring - for the screensaver and such - likewise. But then I don't really know.
iqu:)
Re:expect... No, they DO ask it all the time
on
Mac OS X Tiger Goes Gold
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Hear hear!
I was in a vaguely similar boat, though I can't ever claim to have been a Linux sysadmin - certainly not outside the home anyway. All our machines at home were Windows XP, mostly self-built, and we had Linux for NAT, etc. But all the machines were a constant hassle. The only thing I can be thankful for is that this was before spyware and its ilk got really big, so I never had to deal with much of that.
Anyway, I got an iBook in 2002, after playing around on a very sexy PowerMac G4 server (it had 1.25GB RAM, which was not unimpressive at the time). Looking back now, it was quite crude - Internet Explorer for the web browser, no X11, no Quartz Extreme - but I still switched, and haven't looked back.
Granted, it's a little weird if you're coming from a Linux-centric background - each UNIX has its own ways of doing things and Darwin is no different in this respect - but you can still get down to the nitty-gritty and write your own ipfw configuration if it floats your boat. And, though Fink seems slightly stagnated of late, running KDE on your Mac is just plain cool (from a "because you can" point of view, anyway).
Keep an open mind - I know a friend of mine was a little upset at first because he couldn't start Apache with apachectl start. I was a little terse with him in reply, pointing out that Apple, champion of the GUI, could hardly expect a horde of headstrong OS9 GUI diehards to open up a Terminal to start a web server. Once I pointed him towards the Sharing tab, all was fine.
The wireless implementation is unparalleled. Having taken my first steps in the WiFi world on a Mac, it pains me to use Windows' or Linux efforts (the latter I am having particular trouble with at home). Bluetooth is beautiful - you will, I am sure, find BluePhoneElite and Salling Clicker amusing if not essential toys. iPhoto is really, really nice; iMovie HD is just totally cool...
You almost take it for granted in fact. I installed iTunes on a friend's Windows XP machine the other day, and she was almost bowled over (she has rather poor balance) by the simplicity of iTunes. I now think of it as nothing special, but to someone who has suffered under WiMP for so long, it is truly refreshing.
In the end, all the machines at home now are Macs, save for one Linux server which still does NAT, mostly for my amusement so that I can continue to hack when I want. But I really think you hit the nail on the head with this...
I mess around with things enough at work and home. When I want to play, I have plenty of things to play with. But I want something that I don't have to think about unless I want to. I don't want to have to edit a single god damn configuration file to accomplish the above tasks.
I think I can sum it up succinctly with a line that is sure to appeal to at least the more mature and competent (i.e. less l33t t33n h4x0r) type that reads/. "Hack 'cause you want, not 'cause you have to." Hacking actually becomes fun again. And surely that's something quite hard to put a price on?
And to think, all those CPUs could actually be doing something useful instead. If it's just about taxing your processor once a week (or maybe more frequently; I've never had the dubious pleasure of a Gentoo install) then surely Folding@Home or SETI@home can provide more than enough exercise for even the most voracious CPU/geek combo.
But, no, of course, that's not l33t enough. I half wonder that if SETI and/or Folding had their clients scroll dummy compile messages across the screen whilst they run, all these die hards might run them instead.
(Though I suppose not a few of them are specifying -O8 just so that they can run SETI at supposedly "breakneck" pace...)
It's a bit of a rant, but it is beautiful, and after coming across this...
Some of the most utterly evil things about the Windows UI are those diabolical multi tabbed preference windows, where each time you click on a tab that is not in the front row, the whole set of tabs shifts, leaving them all in a different position.
...I found a warming affinity with the writer. Microsoft Word is one of the biggest offenders - the tabbed dialogue box is so difficult to use because of this. Utterly, utterly appalling design.
I'm sure there'll be many who will try to defend Windows or, God forbid, some such Linux GUI on here (although GNOME is pretty damn good in some ways), but I doubt they've used Macs for any length of time, simply content to dismiss them out of hand. I laugh at you for the fools you are! Hah!
It's very rare these days that I have to endure a Windows machine, but it is always a painful experience when I do. Don't defend Windows until you've properly used the alternative - those of us who have decent knowledge of both will invariably choose Apple.
For starters, you probably don't need to take the grandparent's rant too seriously...
To answer your question, OS X includes a lot of UNIX server software out of the box - Apache (with mod_ssl, IIRC), PHP, Postfix, OpenSSH and an FTP daemon (the name escapes me). These are enabled and disabled by ticking boxes - laughably easy. (And for the technical, you can still hack around in httpd.conf to customise your setup.) MySQL is also very easily installed. For the rest, use Fink - it's apt-get for OS X.
OS X Server is a somewhat different beast. It includes all of this UNIX goodness and more, plus a slick interface (Server Admin) for configuring it all. But if you're buying a Mac mini, I can't see you needing this - it's a computer for home use, and Server is enterprise-grade stuff. Kinda like running Windows 2003 Server on your Shuttle, but even weirder.
Even so, I'd hold off on buying the Mac mini for the moment. 10.4 is not far away and will bring a host of new additions to the already-impressive OS X feature set.
hope this will be treated with caution until it can be ascertained to be fully legitimate.
Oh yes, because the world does this with all proprietary offerings, like, er, say, Windows and Office and, well, most software one might care to mention.
This is good software. It doesn't need idiot scaremongers like you detracting from it.
At the outset, we might also wryly observe that Britain is at least outperforming the States in education*, certainly in the field of accurate article summary and extracting statistics therefrom, although, at the risk of starting a flame war (and why not?:D), that American education is bettered by most is more or less accepted fact here anyway. In any case, as someone else has pointed out, TFA states that Blighty's worldwide contribution to TV downloading in fact stands at the rather more diminutive (though still not unimpressive, if considered per capita) 18.5%.
The reason is simple. We are made to wait. And if we don't want to wait a really long time, we have to pay cable or sattelite subscription fees on top of the TV Licence. We have cable TV at home, through which pipe our broadband connection also comes, so there is little/no guilt derived from downloading something off BitTorrent instead of waiting months or years to be granted permission to watch something which is by then passé.
In closing, whilst I will grant that our weather is rather mediocre (it is the ever-grey skies that are the root cause of the dark British character), I note that as the story's submitter hails (as far as I can tell, anyway) from a land whose premier contribution to world cuisine has been the Big Mac and the waistlines of whose people** are testament to a general consensus that it is quantity rather than quality that matters, I would reject the accusation - however jocular - that our food is anything less than stellar. Britain - London in particular - as any fule no, has an incredibly diverse array of foods to delight the most discerning palate, as anyone who has spent more than a little while there would know.
Oh, and our chocolate rocks.
iqu:D
* American viewers of Little Britain are advised to note that whilst many of the depictions are accurate, we are not normally as ungrammatical as Tom Baker's narration might suggest.
** That this includes the supposedly fairer sex (ostensibly those more easiy on the eye, although...) serves further to undermine the submitter's comments on British totty, although perhaps he is merely speaking from experience.
So you spend all that money on a PowerBook - and I presume that you're a Brit, so it's an awful lot of money - and can't find the SSH server. One assumes because Apple didn't make it easy enough to start up - a tickbox in Sharing is challenging, but hacking around in/etc/init.d is so much simpler...
As another post notes, your inability to find the SSH server and prompt dismissal of Exposé rather undermines your credibility, and anyway, from the rest of your gripes, I can only conclude that you didn't actually want a Mac, save for for its exterior looks, and wonder why you didn't save the money (Macs are so expensive, right?) and buy an x86 box and put your belovéd Linux on it instead...?
I'll grant that it wasn't the most inspired humour ever, but that's not the point - the fact is that the unwashed masses on here will read what you've written and conclude as they always do - "Ach, Mac users, bunch of reactionary twats." (Actually, as far as I know, the Yanks don't use 'twat' (somebody correct me if I'm wrong), so that's inaccurate, but...) Anyway, all I'm saying is that it's not the best advert for the community.
More precisely, a point-by-point explanation of the "inaccuracies" in the "article," is not helpful. It made me think of how the (great) Angophile writer and American emigré Bill Bryson winced as he wrote about American attitudes to humour, and how sometimes they felt an explanation of why a joke was or was not funny was necessary. Hint: it's bad. It takes the fun out of it. And, as the inebriation continues and I note that neither of us should be up at 2am, I must insert a jibe here about you being a programmer and thus not having a sense of humour.
In any event, perhaps your "Windows weenies" will take the "article" at face value, but they will then, unfortunately, laugh derisively at your attempts to defend the Mac in such a way. It's just like the people who respond to Kottke trolls. I love the Mac, but it really hurts to see them beating themselves up over it.
Trolls are trolls for a reason. They are there to provoke, and geeks are really easy to provoke. So why not drink some of the Koolaid, slip on the RDF glasses, and Think Different?:P
Hmmm. I'm inebriate right now, and pissed off at a lot of people, but I'm going to make you bear some of the brunt.
I'm a Mac user. A Mac lover, in fact. A hardcore evangelist too. But pricks like you taking "anti" Mac humour even semi-seriously do not help the cause. It just makes us all look stupid and gives the idiots using Windows fodder.
The article is written by someone who quite possibly loves Macs - at the very least s/he is a user and appreciator thereof - and is of sufficient intellgience to employ sophisticated literary devices such as sarcasm and irony to convey his point to individuals similarly sophisticated and intelligent. (And, I will had, tongue only half inserted in cheeck, that those that don't "get" his humour are not really eligible for Mac use anyway.) This article is funny.
And as for real trolls - don't respond to their provocation - not even the Kottke troll. It lets the side down.
Read my post history and you'll realise you got off likely.
Anyone still following this will doubtless have reached the same conclusion as me by now: sir, you are a fool. My reference to graphics cards was, as was and is patently clear, in response to this comment of yours - it has nothing to do with their power, but rather, as your comment states, in relation to using graphics cards to speed GUIs up.
And returning to bang for the buck for the umpteenth time:
speed - most users will never need a 3Ghz processor
reliability - Mac OS X vs. Windows - I need not say more
value - unless you are one of those particularly arseholish (to coin a term) types who considers only the sale price and not TCO, Macs work out very economical. At $499, the Mac mini is a steal. Consider iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie - how much would you pay for their non-existent Windows equivalents.
In any event, I see little point in pursuing this further. You are obstinate and, moreover, stupid. Consider that as you masturbate over Bill Gates' next ejaculation.
Slashdot Mirror
IIRC, Britain has not yet been blessed with the facility to enable class action lawsuits. And I, for one, pray that it stays that way.
:|
iqu
I was there for the year 2002-3 - I don't know how long the limitations had been in force before then.
:D
But it didn't matter. There was always a decent amount of...errr..."content" available via SMB, and those of us with the technological savvy found other ways of getting more.
iqu
It was the only way out of my university's network (probably still is) - it provided a decent-enough way of getting unrestricted Internet access when the only useful open port we had was SSH. No IPSec, no PPTP, just one big excuse to get one's hands dirty.
:P
iqu
RISC OS is based more around function than form. It won't look as pretty as your Mac, but it'll be one hell of a lot more responsive.
:|
The Macintosh user interface has traditionally always placed function before form, and even today, it is one of the premier operating systems in this regard. Mac diehards continue to argue about the Human Interface Guidelines and lament Apple's more-than-occasional failure to adhere to same. It goes without saying that this never happens in the Windows world.
That said, I'm sure you've got a point about responsiveness (although I can't help adding that Tiger has, belatedly, improved things in this regard). But there are certain features (like Exposé) where the Mac's comparative added horsepower become essential.
This thing will appear as fast as a high-end system on the desktop.
Whilst you have a point, this is somewhat bogus. If I (could) run Windows 95 on my Athlon 64 3400+, I'm sure it would fly, but fact is I don't - I want/need the added functionality and ease-of-use enhancements that later releases have brought. And with Mac OS X, Apple's done a pretty good job of keeping old hardware (like my 400Mhz iMac) useful with, even with all the eye candy.
If you think Windows 95 or KDE come even close to RISC OS then you've been smoking crack.
I've not used RISC OS as much as I'd like, and I know it had a following in education for a while (certainly over here in Blighty anyway), but I think its spartan style means that there aren't going to be many more users coming to the fold these days. For that reason, I think the Windows 95/KDE analogy is at least partially valid (in that they both look ugly as shit).
iqu
I was trying to work out why these people continue to use this platform, and it can only be a manifestation of that sadistic quality that is present in so many geeks - the one that leads us to defile a beautiful Mac mini with the installation of, say, Slackware 7 or Red Hat 5.2, just to be difficult, or why we tunnel PPP over SSH to create VPNs (because IPSec and PPTP are for lusers). I looked at a few screenshots, read some articles - one which particularly amused me was that which opined the lack of full and decent internationalisation (it seemed so prehistoric) - but it was somewhat reassuring.
There is still a group of individuals who run scared from the Macintosh, and who belittle those that use it, although their numbers are declining, and rightly so, because the Mac's superiority in all fields bar gaming is so resplendent ("Que le flamewar commence!"), but I like to think that having seen this, Mac users' choice seems a little more rational - at least their OS-du-jour is better than the standard (i.e. Windows). RISC OS just sucks.
So I really can't bring myself to coo over the specs of this machine. It's about as big as the Mac mini, yet:
- it lacks an optical drive;
- the processor is about as powerful as modern-day PDAs;
- it's fucking expensive for what it is;
- less RAM, VRAM, disk space, etc. but on the plus side you do get an RS232 serial port...
Call me a philistine or a cynic, perhaps, but what's the point? There are plenty of us who've got a Windows 95-era machine somewhere, and for those of us that don't but still want the same "feel", there's always KDE. So why am I going to fork out five hundred quid for this...?iqu
Because of the pound and all.
...In spite of the [strength of the] pound, shurely?
n price conversions, but that's something which happens in spite of the pound's strength, and is instead directly attributable to British weather and the mustn't-grumble mantra.)
:P
(I know what you actually mean of course - the inexplicably higher prices the British always pay, the take-off-the-dollar-sign-and-stick-on-a-pound-sig
iqu
As I understand it, to replace crond, Apple has introduced Automater...
:P
Then you patently don't understand it, although judging by your spelling, you are of limited intellect in any event.
iqu
I just tried that. Oddly enough it would not hide finder.
:D
It won't hide the Finder if it's the last application "visible". Make another app visible and you can hide the FInder.
And the Finder isn't that bad. It's not great, and I wish they would get rid of all the Carbon cruft so that it would perform a little better, but for most people it works alright.
(That said, since when is "alright" good enough for Apple? And whilst I'm bashing Carbon holdouts, I can't resist a poke at QuickTime Player, which is possibly the most dire piece of software on the Mac. And iTunes, love it though so many do, pisses me off with its Carbonness too.)
Let's just hope they made it so the mouse moves faster, I like a really fast mouse.
Have you tried tweaking the speed in the Mouse System Preferences? It's not that slow is it?
iqu
I must say, I've never quite got used to virtual desktops. I know they work well for those that use them, but for normal users they would be, quite simply, too confusing. I don't count myself as a "normal user", but even so, I've managed fine for ten years or so without them, and the last three - on the Mac - have been by far the most efficient, especially now that I use Command+H. Exposé has its uses too, of course.
:)
That said, there are plenty of utilities for the Mac that do virtual desktopping, such as CodeTek VirtualDesktop Pro and Desktop Manager, the latter being open source too! So you can get that virtual deskopping buzz even on the Mac...
iqu
OS X power uses like myself don't use minimise, except when showing off the pretty visual effects. In normal use, it is slower and there is often no mouse-free way of extracting the window from the Dock. Instead, we Command+H to hide windows, which reappear when Command+Tabbed back to. Hiding has no animation - it is a holdout from the NeXTSTEP days - and it's incredibly efficient and tidy.
:)
iqu
Sometimes us geeky types like to use a computer to do other stuff other than tinker.
:P
...Dell...notebook...for gaming...
:D
Exactly. We have lives and stuff to get on with too.
My gripes lie with iPhoto
Yeah, it ain't perfect. I'm lucky, in that I have the Kiss Digital/300D/Digital Rebel, which works fine, but I can see that it's a right bugger if it doesn't, and, from what you say, the lack of support is rather inexplicable. And I've got over 15,000 photos in my library, so it's not the fastest thing in the world.
Yeah, it makes sense. I'm no fan of Dell's more recent kit (we used to have Dell machines back in the day when they built expensive, quality machines, rather than the cheapo stuff they churn out today), but for the most part it works, and the games point is inarguable - the right tool for the job. It'll be a fair while (if ever) before developers start taking Mac gaming seriously again.
The thing that pains me about Windows is the maintenance. I am just about to go and do a complete reinstall for a friend. He is pretty cautious with how he uses his machine because of my persistent badgering, but his other friends when using it less so, and as a consequence now, no sooner than you connect to the Internet and it is saturating upstream bandwidth with what I presume to be spam-sending. It's painful how an Athlon 64 3400+ can be reduced to molasses-like speeds...
iqu
The aforementioned friend is the kind of guy that would make that sort of mistake - he has a little knowledge, but not a lot. Doubtless the need to be root (by whatever means) to start Apache escaped him - and why it didn't then work.
:)
iqu
I'm not aware that the Caller ID thing is built-in, but then, I'm not that familiar with Bluetooth - it's my brother's setup that has the Bluetooth phone and adapter, and whilst I've played with it a bit, I was under the impression that you had to install something for CID to work. Proximity monitoring - for the screensaver and such - likewise. But then I don't really know.
:)
iqu
Hear hear!
/. "Hack 'cause you want, not 'cause you have to." Hacking actually becomes fun again. And surely that's something quite hard to put a price on?
:)
I was in a vaguely similar boat, though I can't ever claim to have been a Linux sysadmin - certainly not outside the home anyway. All our machines at home were Windows XP, mostly self-built, and we had Linux for NAT, etc. But all the machines were a constant hassle. The only thing I can be thankful for is that this was before spyware and its ilk got really big, so I never had to deal with much of that.
Anyway, I got an iBook in 2002, after playing around on a very sexy PowerMac G4 server (it had 1.25GB RAM, which was not unimpressive at the time). Looking back now, it was quite crude - Internet Explorer for the web browser, no X11, no Quartz Extreme - but I still switched, and haven't looked back.
Granted, it's a little weird if you're coming from a Linux-centric background - each UNIX has its own ways of doing things and Darwin is no different in this respect - but you can still get down to the nitty-gritty and write your own ipfw configuration if it floats your boat. And, though Fink seems slightly stagnated of late, running KDE on your Mac is just plain cool (from a "because you can" point of view, anyway).
Keep an open mind - I know a friend of mine was a little upset at first because he couldn't start Apache with apachectl start. I was a little terse with him in reply, pointing out that Apple, champion of the GUI, could hardly expect a horde of headstrong OS9 GUI diehards to open up a Terminal to start a web server. Once I pointed him towards the Sharing tab, all was fine.
The wireless implementation is unparalleled. Having taken my first steps in the WiFi world on a Mac, it pains me to use Windows' or Linux efforts (the latter I am having particular trouble with at home). Bluetooth is beautiful - you will, I am sure, find BluePhoneElite and Salling Clicker amusing if not essential toys. iPhoto is really, really nice; iMovie HD is just totally cool...
You almost take it for granted in fact. I installed iTunes on a friend's Windows XP machine the other day, and she was almost bowled over (she has rather poor balance) by the simplicity of iTunes. I now think of it as nothing special, but to someone who has suffered under WiMP for so long, it is truly refreshing.
In the end, all the machines at home now are Macs, save for one Linux server which still does NAT, mostly for my amusement so that I can continue to hack when I want. But I really think you hit the nail on the head with this...
I mess around with things enough at work and home. When I want to play, I have plenty of things to play with. But I want something that I don't have to think about unless I want to. I don't want to have to edit a single god damn configuration file to accomplish the above tasks.
I think I can sum it up succinctly with a line that is sure to appeal to at least the more mature and competent (i.e. less l33t t33n h4x0r) type that reads
iqu
Amen to that.
:P
And to think, all those CPUs could actually be doing something useful instead. If it's just about taxing your processor once a week (or maybe more frequently; I've never had the dubious pleasure of a Gentoo install) then surely Folding@Home or SETI@home can provide more than enough exercise for even the most voracious CPU/geek combo.
But, no, of course, that's not l33t enough. I half wonder that if SETI and/or Folding had their clients scroll dummy compile messages across the screen whilst they run, all these die hards might run them instead.
(Though I suppose not a few of them are specifying -O8 just so that they can run SETI at supposedly "breakneck" pace...)
iqu
Panther needs 40 megs of patches after first install (and a reboot). Jaguar needs to download over 100 megs.
:|
Actually, it depends on the version of Panther. Apple always ships the latest version with new machines.
As to rebooting for updates, I'd say that you were being slightly reckless with hyperbole, although there is a valid point there...
iqu
It's a bit of a rant, but it is beautiful, and after coming across this...
...I found a warming affinity with the writer. Microsoft Word is one of the biggest offenders - the tabbed dialogue box is so difficult to use because of this. Utterly, utterly appalling design.
:D
Some of the most utterly evil things about the Windows UI are those diabolical multi tabbed preference windows, where each time you click on a tab that is not in the front row, the whole set of tabs shifts, leaving them all in a different position.
I'm sure there'll be many who will try to defend Windows or, God forbid, some such Linux GUI on here (although GNOME is pretty damn good in some ways), but I doubt they've used Macs for any length of time, simply content to dismiss them out of hand. I laugh at you for the fools you are! Hah!
It's very rare these days that I have to endure a Windows machine, but it is always a painful experience when I do. Don't defend Windows until you've properly used the alternative - those of us who have decent knowledge of both will invariably choose Apple.
iqu
For starters, you probably don't need to take the grandparent's rant too seriously...
:)
To answer your question, OS X includes a lot of UNIX server software out of the box - Apache (with mod_ssl, IIRC), PHP, Postfix, OpenSSH and an FTP daemon (the name escapes me). These are enabled and disabled by ticking boxes - laughably easy. (And for the technical, you can still hack around in httpd.conf to customise your setup.) MySQL is also very easily installed. For the rest, use Fink - it's apt-get for OS X.
OS X Server is a somewhat different beast. It includes all of this UNIX goodness and more, plus a slick interface (Server Admin) for configuring it all. But if you're buying a Mac mini, I can't see you needing this - it's a computer for home use, and Server is enterprise-grade stuff. Kinda like running Windows 2003 Server on your Shuttle, but even weirder.
Even so, I'd hold off on buying the Mac mini for the moment. 10.4 is not far away and will bring a host of new additions to the already-impressive OS X feature set.
iqu
hope this will be treated with caution until it can be ascertained to be fully legitimate.
Oh yes, because the world does this with all proprietary offerings, like, er, say, Windows and Office and, well, most software one might care to mention.
This is good software. It doesn't need idiot scaremongers like you detracting from it.
iqu >:|
At the outset, we might also wryly observe that Britain is at least outperforming the States in education*, certainly in the field of accurate article summary and extracting statistics therefrom, although, at the risk of starting a flame war (and why not? :D), that American education is bettered by most is more or less accepted fact here anyway. In any case, as someone else has pointed out, TFA states that Blighty's worldwide contribution to TV downloading in fact stands at the rather more diminutive (though still not unimpressive, if considered per capita) 18.5%.
:D
The reason is simple. We are made to wait. And if we don't want to wait a really long time, we have to pay cable or sattelite subscription fees on top of the TV Licence. We have cable TV at home, through which pipe our broadband connection also comes, so there is little/no guilt derived from downloading something off BitTorrent instead of waiting months or years to be granted permission to watch something which is by then passé.
In closing, whilst I will grant that our weather is rather mediocre (it is the ever-grey skies that are the root cause of the dark British character), I note that as the story's submitter hails (as far as I can tell, anyway) from a land whose premier contribution to world cuisine has been the Big Mac and the waistlines of whose people** are testament to a general consensus that it is quantity rather than quality that matters, I would reject the accusation - however jocular - that our food is anything less than stellar. Britain - London in particular - as any fule no, has an incredibly diverse array of foods to delight the most discerning palate, as anyone who has spent more than a little while there would know.
Oh, and our chocolate rocks.
iqu
* American viewers of Little Britain are advised to note that whilst many of the depictions are accurate, we are not normally as ungrammatical as Tom Baker's narration might suggest.
** That this includes the supposedly fairer sex (ostensibly those more easiy on the eye, although...) serves further to undermine the submitter's comments on British totty, although perhaps he is merely speaking from experience.
So you spend all that money on a PowerBook - and I presume that you're a Brit, so it's an awful lot of money - and can't find the SSH server. One assumes because Apple didn't make it easy enough to start up - a tickbox in Sharing is challenging, but hacking around in /etc/init.d is so much simpler...
:s
As another post notes, your inability to find the SSH server and prompt dismissal of Exposé rather undermines your credibility, and anyway, from the rest of your gripes, I can only conclude that you didn't actually want a Mac, save for for its exterior looks, and wonder why you didn't save the money (Macs are so expensive, right?) and buy an x86 box and put your belovéd Linux on it instead...?
iqu
Oooh right. It just sounded rather British.
:P
iqu
I'll grant that it wasn't the most inspired humour ever, but that's not the point - the fact is that the unwashed masses on here will read what you've written and conclude as they always do - "Ach, Mac users, bunch of reactionary twats." (Actually, as far as I know, the Yanks don't use 'twat' (somebody correct me if I'm wrong), so that's inaccurate, but...) Anyway, all I'm saying is that it's not the best advert for the community.
:P
:P
More precisely, a point-by-point explanation of the "inaccuracies" in the "article," is not helpful. It made me think of how the (great) Angophile writer and American emigré Bill Bryson winced as he wrote about American attitudes to humour, and how sometimes they felt an explanation of why a joke was or was not funny was necessary. Hint: it's bad. It takes the fun out of it. And, as the inebriation continues and I note that neither of us should be up at 2am, I must insert a jibe here about you being a programmer and thus not having a sense of humour.
In any event, perhaps your "Windows weenies" will take the "article" at face value, but they will then, unfortunately, laugh derisively at your attempts to defend the Mac in such a way. It's just like the people who respond to Kottke trolls. I love the Mac, but it really hurts to see them beating themselves up over it.
Trolls are trolls for a reason. They are there to provoke, and geeks are really easy to provoke. So why not drink some of the Koolaid, slip on the RDF glasses, and Think Different?
iqu
Hmmm. I'm inebriate right now, and pissed off at a lot of people, but I'm going to make you bear some of the brunt.
I'm a Mac user. A Mac lover, in fact. A hardcore evangelist too. But pricks like you taking "anti" Mac humour even semi-seriously do not help the cause. It just makes us all look stupid and gives the idiots using Windows fodder.
The article is written by someone who quite possibly loves Macs - at the very least s/he is a user and appreciator thereof - and is of sufficient intellgience to employ sophisticated literary devices such as sarcasm and irony to convey his point to individuals similarly sophisticated and intelligent. (And, I will had, tongue only half inserted in cheeck, that those that don't "get" his humour are not really eligible for Mac use anyway.) This article is funny.
And as for real trolls - don't respond to their provocation - not even the Kottke troll. It lets the side down.
Read my post history and you'll realise you got off likely.
iqu >:@
And returning to bang for the buck for the umpteenth time:
- speed - most users will never need a 3Ghz processor
- reliability - Mac OS X vs. Windows - I need not say more
- value - unless you are one of those particularly arseholish (to coin a term) types who considers only the sale price and not TCO, Macs work out very economical. At $499, the Mac mini is a steal. Consider iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie - how much would you pay for their non-existent Windows equivalents.
In any event, I see little point in pursuing this further. You are obstinate and, moreover, stupid. Consider that as you masturbate over Bill Gates' next ejaculation.iqu