While all these comments about re-using PC cases, chips, and the like are interesting, what do you do if the computer you want to recycle is a bit larger -- like a VAX 11/780 perhaps?
You turn it into a VAX BAR!
You can see it here. I've really not heard of anything that can top that, in terms of the size and quality of the conversion...
Apple sticks with the one-button mouse because the broadest target audience for Mac OS X is not people like you or me -- it's Aunt Tilly who just wants something (relatively) simple that she can use to surf the Web, write letters, send and receive photos, etc. I can't tell you how many Aunt Tilly-type Windows users I know who are utterly confused by right-clicking versus left-clicking.
The problem in Windows is that there are operations that are very hard to do, if not impossible, without being able to right-click. On the other hand, there is no function in Mac OS X that requires right-clicking. It just makes those things easier for experts.
I look at the Mac UI as being like an onion: It looks very simple and limited, and indeed can be used quite effectively by only learning a very small handful of operations, and with a very uncluttered UI. It's approachable. It's friendly. It's not intimidating the way Windows and the Windows-like Linux GUIs can be to newbies.
The apparent superficial simplicity of OS X, however, belies the power and capabilities that lie underneath. Thus, as a new users gain experience and confidence using it, they can learn more of the shortcuts and more sophisticated features. In effect, as you peel back layers, you discover more and more things that let you work more effectively. I've been using Mac OS X since version 10.0, and Macs in general since 1986, and I still discover new hidden nuggets about the interface.
And of course, once they've mastered everything there is to know about the GUI, there's the whole UNIX universe under the hood just waiting to be discovered.
Yes, I sound like one of those blathering Mac evangelists. On the other hand, I've used an awful lot of computers in my 30+ years of dealing with them. Everything from 110-baud Teletypes connected to a DEC PDP-8/e to TOPS-20 to VMS to various UNIXes (with and without GUIs), plus CP/M, DOS, Windows, and Mac.
The really funny thing about all this? If you asked me what my favorite OS was from a usability point of view, I'd definitely say Mac OS X. However, if you asked me what my most favorite UNIX variant was, my answer would be Tru64 UNIX. I won't elaborate on the reasons here, but most of them have to do with how well designed and implemented are its filesystems, clustering, and other high-end features. No other commercial UNIX OS comes close.
It also turns out that if you install a 3-button mouse (or a 2-button-plus-scroll-wheel model, for that matter) Mac OS X will happily use it.
Left-click is normal Mac click.
Right-click is the same as Control-click (brings up contextual menu if available at the spot under the cursor
Moving the scroll wheel does what you'd expect -- scrolls in most apps (but not ones running under Classic unless a 3rd party extension is installed).
Clicking the scroll wheel (as if it were a mouse button) will do "middle-button click" in X11 apps. (So you can use the "select-middle click" paradigm in xterms, etc that you might have beamed to your OS X system from other computers or running locally...
The shortcuts for the various apps included in OS X are documented. Open Mac Help (from the Help menu) in the Finder, and type "shortcuts" into the Search field.
By the way: have you discovered Exposé yet for dealing with highly-cluttered screens?
But there is an 'up' button: Command-click on the title bar of any Finder window and it will show the hierarchy, where you can select the enclosing folder, or any folder up to the root. Also, if you have the Finder set to "open folders in the same window" mode, there's a browser-like set of "forward" and "backward buttons.
Also. the Panther Finder lets you customize the button bar in each window to include a "hierarchy" drop menu icon that lets you get at this feature without having to reach for the Command key.
In addition, Command-Up Arrow will show the folder containing the current folder if that folder is being displayed in List or Icon view. Command-Option-Up-Arrow will open a new window with the contents of the enclosing folder and will close the current window.
There is the question of a person who gets all flustered in interview situations -- and only interview situations -- yet does quite well both in everyday work and in a real pressure situation. But they don't necessarily "test well" in an artificial interview situation without access to man pages or references.
The big problem is that often-times the interviewer is trying to determine how much minutiae the person knows, including nitty-gritty details on commands and processes that are used perhaps once a year in a stable environment.
In other words, they're testing to see whether the candidate has uploaded the entire contents of the reference manuals into their brains. It's far more useful, however, to find out if the candidate
(1) knows the everyday stuff cold
(2) in an emergency (or sporadically-occuring situation) knows that there are tools and procedures for the obscure stuff, and knows how and where to find them, and is confident enough and knowledgeable enough to use them safely and effectively
When faced with an unfamiliar situation, it's vitally important that the candidate has enough insight gained from experience to figure out what is going -- even if it's an informed version of "trial and error".
It's vitally important to be not be "afraid" of someone in your user community who has some (or perhaps more!) knowledge about what you're doing. Don't put on airs, or act superior simply because you're the Big Shot IT person. These people are your potential friends. More likely than not, you'll learn something useful from these people. You want them in your corner.
To be more explicit, it's important to be humble. To know that you don't know everything. To know when you've reached your limits and need to look for outside help, be it elsewhere in your organization, on the Internet, or calling in an expert.
Time to end the post -- it's beginning to turn into a ramble...
There's a whole 'nother flock of emulators he could be running -- there are a bunch to emulate most of the DEC architectures: PDP-11 (which allows you to run such OSes as RT-11, RSX-11, RSTS-E, etc), PDP-10 (ITS, TOPS-10, TOPS-20), VAX, PDP-8, etc. You can find them all at the DEC Emulation Webpage. These run on many different UNIXes, including Linux and Mac OS X (in Terminal windows, since these OSes are all character-based.
An IBM System/370 hardware emulator for Linux, Windows, and OS X can be found at the Hercules Emulator page.
One site for good Mac emulators is emulation.net. Check out the PDP-8/e emulator -- Mac OS X native, with a spookily accurate virtual reproduction of the PDP-8/e's front panel!
Betwixt and between all of these, and many of the others out there, he could easily double the number of OSes he can run on his PowerBook!
Slashdot Mirror
You turn it into a VAX BAR!
You can see it here. I've really not heard of anything that can top that, in terms of the size and quality of the conversion...
The problem in Windows is that there are operations that are very hard to do, if not impossible, without being able to right-click. On the other hand, there is no function in Mac OS X that requires right-clicking. It just makes those things easier for experts.
I look at the Mac UI as being like an onion: It looks very simple and limited, and indeed can be used quite effectively by only learning a very small handful of operations, and with a very uncluttered UI. It's approachable. It's friendly. It's not intimidating the way Windows and the Windows-like Linux GUIs can be to newbies.
The apparent superficial simplicity of OS X, however, belies the power and capabilities that lie underneath. Thus, as a new users gain experience and confidence using it, they can learn more of the shortcuts and more sophisticated features. In effect, as you peel back layers, you discover more and more things that let you work more effectively. I've been using Mac OS X since version 10.0, and Macs in general since 1986, and I still discover new hidden nuggets about the interface.
And of course, once they've mastered everything there is to know about the GUI, there's the whole UNIX universe under the hood just waiting to be discovered.
Yes, I sound like one of those blathering Mac evangelists. On the other hand, I've used an awful lot of computers in my 30+ years of dealing with them. Everything from 110-baud Teletypes connected to a DEC PDP-8/e to TOPS-20 to VMS to various UNIXes (with and without GUIs), plus CP/M, DOS, Windows, and Mac.
The really funny thing about all this? If you asked me what my favorite OS was from a usability point of view, I'd definitely say Mac OS X. However, if you asked me what my most favorite UNIX variant was, my answer would be Tru64 UNIX. I won't elaborate on the reasons here, but most of them have to do with how well designed and implemented are its filesystems, clustering, and other high-end features. No other commercial UNIX OS comes close.
Left-click is normal Mac click.
Right-click is the same as Control-click (brings up contextual menu if available at the spot under the cursor
Moving the scroll wheel does what you'd expect -- scrolls in most apps (but not ones running under Classic unless a 3rd party extension is installed).
Clicking the scroll wheel (as if it were a mouse button) will do "middle-button click" in X11 apps. (So you can use the "select-middle click" paradigm in xterms, etc that you might have beamed to your OS X system from other computers or running locally...
The shortcuts for the various apps included in OS X are documented. Open Mac Help (from the Help menu) in the Finder, and type "shortcuts" into the Search field.
By the way: have you discovered Exposé yet for dealing with highly-cluttered screens?
Also. the Panther Finder lets you customize the button bar in each window to include a "hierarchy" drop menu icon that lets you get at this feature without having to reach for the Command key.
In addition, Command-Up Arrow will show the folder containing the current folder if that folder is being displayed in List or Icon view. Command-Option-Up-Arrow will open a new window with the contents of the enclosing folder and will close the current window.
Hope all this helps...
You can just go here to read it on Apple's developer web site.
The various documents spell out how the Package Manager works and how to create your own installers.
There is the question of a person who gets all flustered in interview situations -- and only interview situations -- yet does quite well both in everyday work and in a real pressure situation. But they don't necessarily "test well" in an artificial interview situation without access to man pages or references.
The big problem is that often-times the interviewer is trying to determine how much minutiae the person knows, including nitty-gritty details on commands and processes that are used perhaps once a year in a stable environment.
In other words, they're testing to see whether the candidate has uploaded the entire contents of the reference manuals into their brains. It's far more useful, however, to find out if the candidate
(1) knows the everyday stuff cold
(2) in an emergency (or sporadically-occuring situation) knows that there are tools and procedures for the obscure stuff, and knows how and where to find them, and is confident enough and knowledgeable enough to use them safely and effectively
When faced with an unfamiliar situation, it's vitally important that the candidate has enough insight gained from experience to figure out what is going -- even if it's an informed version of "trial and error".
It's vitally important to be not be "afraid" of someone in your user community who has some (or perhaps more!) knowledge about what you're doing. Don't put on airs, or act superior simply because you're the Big Shot IT person. These people are your potential friends. More likely than not, you'll learn something useful from these people. You want them in your corner.
To be more explicit, it's important to be humble. To know that you don't know everything. To know when you've reached your limits and need to look for outside help, be it elsewhere in your organization, on the Internet, or calling in an expert.
Time to end the post -- it's beginning to turn into a ramble...
An IBM System/370 hardware emulator for Linux, Windows, and OS X can be found at the Hercules Emulator page.
One site for good Mac emulators is emulation.net. Check out the PDP-8/e emulator -- Mac OS X native, with a spookily accurate virtual reproduction of the PDP-8/e's front panel!
Betwixt and between all of these, and many of the others out there, he could easily double the number of OSes he can run on his PowerBook!