OT: The new iMac!

Jiva DeVoe plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
Tue, 08 Jan 2002 02:53:28 -0700 

Yep, I am the other Linux zealot who is also a new mac user Jay speaks of
below.  A month or so ago, I was checking out Jay's TiPB, and was pretty
impressed, so I went down to the apple store with my wife, and after much
investigation, wound up buying 2 Apple iBooks and an Airport station.  (Yes,
I still have all my Linux boxes, and I intend to keep them, trust me. ;D)

For me, I would say servers are the undisputed territory of Linux.  Spending
gobs of money on a Mac server to run OSX seems like a horrible waste.
Better to buy an x86 box and run Linux for free.

For workstations, I'd say the Mac has some coolness to it, but it's a bit of
a tough sell vs the inexpensive clones.  Nonetheless, my Mac investigations
has finally gotten my wife off her Windows box for a workstation (ROCK!) and
I would say that vs a windows box from a purely political standpoint, the
Mac is pretty cool.

For notebooks tho, I REALLY liked the iBook.  I'd been looking at notebooks
for several months.  It seemed that every notebook that came into my price
range either had some kind of issues running Linux, or just plain sucked.
My target price was somewhere around $1000.  I saw the iBook at $1199, and
checked out the specs, here's what I get with that:

12.1in active matrix display
128 MB ram
15GB HDD.
OSX
g3 @ 500 mhz
2 USB ports
1 firewire port
1 external video port
1 stereo out + tv out port
1 10/100 ethernet port
1 56k modem port.
1 cd-rom (dvd-rom in my wife's for $200 more)

All that with a great unix core.  I was pretty impressed.  For an extra $100
I had them add an airport card for 802.11b networking.  Which made it a
complete package.

I justified it by calling it "an expensive toy" and "a wireless web pad".
In either case, it filled a very specific niche quite well.

As Jay describes, it's "just works"'iness is quite amazing.  Specifically,
with the airport, I can put my ibook to sleep at home after surfing the web,
and when I get to the office, if I open the lid, by the time I can click on
my browser to type in a url, it has reconnected to the network at the
office, and gotten a new IP addr and the works.  It rocks!

I may try Linux on it.  I hear debian works very well on it.

It has some notable warts, including:

Printing sucks.  It's easier to setup in Linux(!!)
Believe it or not, I find kde slightly more intuitive (for me) than Mac OSX.
The OSX GUI is kinda poorly designed for users of other OS's.  Things don't
act like they do in Windows and Linux.  A lot of it is designed around this
media/artsy-fartsy thing they have going on.  Sometimes tho, I just wanna do
business.
The buttons on the windows are stupid.  They mean nothing, and only show
icons when your cursor is over them.

All that said tho, it's a real unix underneath.  I have compiled a crapload
of linux tools on my machine and it rocks.

On 1/7/02 10:58 PM, "Jay" <jay@kinetic.org> wrote:

> 
> 
> A couple points...
> 
> * I used Apple products exclusively from 1979 (Apple ][) through the late
> 80's. Then Apple got boring and fell behind the pack.
> 
> * I have been a Linux zealot since 1995 and have used it exclusively for
> both servers and desktops since (although I do have VM Ware for a couple
> of Windows apps, but only run it once a month or so). I have mainly used
> Slackware, although relatively recently I've started using Mandrake.
> 
> * About three or four months ago, I just couldn't resist the Mac OSX
> "urge" any longer and went to the Apple Store in Chandler and bought a
> Titanium PowerBook G4.
> 
> * In a matter of HOURS, I was instantly re-converted to an Apple zealot
> for the desktop. I'll still use Linux and *BSD for servers, but ANY
> desktop/portable products I buy from now on will be 100% Apple and OSX.
> 
> The early OSX releases were kinda' slow sometimes (OSX loves RAM, but hey,
> it's cheap these days). However, current OSX releases absolutely 100% KICK
> ASS - no question about it. I know of at least one other long-time Linux
> zealot, now OSX-on-the-desktop/portable zealot, on this list. In reading
> online forums, mailing lists, etc... it is quite clear that GEEKS LOVE OSX
> and I couldn't agree more.
> 
> The system is just so perfectly seamless and beautiful. Everything always
> just works. No drivers, no hours of obscure configs, no library problems,
> no muss, no fuss. I can't stress this enough - everything just works -
> period.
> 
> A couple of examples...
> 
> * I bought a new 802.11b base station. Getting my TiPB online with it -
> easy - turn on the laptop. That's it. OSX auto-finds the basestation,
> reconfigures the OS's networking configs, all instantly and automagically.
> 
> * I took a bunch of pictures with my Sony digital camera and I needed to
> get them onto my computer. How do I do that with OSX? It was pretty tough
> - not only did I have to turn on the laptop, but I also had to plug in the
> camera's USB cable (I know, horribly complicated, eh? :).  That's it - OSX
> recognized the camera, mounted it as an external drive, placed an icon on
> my desktop, launched the Image Capture app, and downloaded all my pics to
> my Pictures folder - all automagically (remember, all I did was turn on
> the laptop and plug in the camera).
> 
> * I'm sitting at Coffee Plantation the other day and thought to myself,
> "Self, wouldn't it be neat-o if I could get online with my cell phone
> right now?" The obvious answer was "yes, that would be neat-o." What did I
> have to do to accomplish this mess (my cell phone came with a PC data
> cable). I plugged in my cell phone to my laptop. THAT'S IT! OSX recognized
> the device and automatically figured out that it could act as a modem. I
> clicked on the network connection icon, typed in my ISP's phone number,
> typed in my username and password (OSX can't quite guess those things
> automagically :), and clicked "Connect." A few seconds later, I'm
> connected. No muss, no fuss.
> 
> * Uh oh, someone emailed me a MS Word/Excel/PowerPoint document... now
> what. Oh! I know! I double clicked it...that's it! Yes, like it or not, MS
> Office controls the business world. And yes, MS Office runs NATIVE in OSX!
> 
> * Now I want to "get my hands dirty" and open a Bash shell, launch Vi
> (or Emacs, but I'm not into self-mutilation) and hack up a quick
> shell/perl/python/ruby/whatever script and make it a cron job. Hey, no
> problem! OSX is built on a FULL COMPLETE FreeBSD system. Not only that,
> but you have total access to it. Bash? Yup. Cron? Yup. Python? Yup.
> Sendmail? Yup. Apache? Yup. Vi? Yup. Pine? Yup. ls? Yup. grep? Yup. Bind?
> Yup. MySQL? Yup. SSH(d)? Yup. I could go on forever...you get the point -
> IT IS ALL THERE.
> 
> * Although OSX has tons of commercial apps support (and more every day),
> let's say I prefer Gimp to Photoshop. No problem there either. I can run
> XFree86 at the same time (even interleaved with) the OSX GUI (Aqua /
> Quartz). That's right - I can run almost all the XFree86 apps right there
> NATIVE on OSX. Gnome? Yup. Abiword? Yup. StarOffice? Yup. Xeyes? Yup.
> XTerm? Yup. GNUCash? Yup. TuxRacer? Yup. You get the point - they're all
> there. Additionally, just like any other XFree86 implementation, I can run
> XFree86 apps from my Linux box over the network on my OSX XFree86 server.
> 
> * Just a side note, if you have used Linux for a while, no doubt you've
> seen the "less than readable" fonts that some XFree86 apps like to
> produce. Personally, I absolutely LOVE a good looking screen with
> excellent fonts and readability. OSX borrowed an incredible point from
> NeXT here - the entire GUI and rendering engine is all PDF. Everything is
> antialiased, sharp, and super clean looking. Using OSX is great on my
> eyes and REALLY is FUN and ENJOYABLE (is that sadistic?) to look at. It
> really is a great experience to read documents/web
> sites/email/usenet/etc... on OSX. Everything just looks georgeous.
> 
> Did I mention that IT IS ALL THERE (full UNIX and seamless GUI and killer
> apps) and that EVERYTHING just simply works?  :)   (Of course, the UNIX
> system gives you the ability to do everything manually and "break" it if
> you want to. All the power is there.)
> 
> No question about it; OSX is geek paradise. Period.  :)
> 
> ~Jay
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, 7 Jan 2002, Kevin Brown wrote:
> 
>> Don't know much about Macs either since almost all my exp is with Intel based
>> hardware.  I guess you wouldn't, but then again, I like a box where I can.
>> 
>>> Maybe I just don't know anything about Macs, but, do you really upgrade them
>>> that much?
>> 
>>>> Very weird looking IMO.  Probably runs OSX.  Guess the nice thing is the
>>> lack of
>>>> wires coming out of it, but would probably not much in the way of internal
>>>> upgrades do to the oddly shaped case.
>>>> 
>>>> http://www.apple.com/imac/
>>>> 
>>>>> If you haven't seen the new iMac check it out... very cool!
>>>>> 
>>>>> http://www.apple.com
>>>>> 
>>>>> You maybe asking why I posted this on a Linux list. I run Debian Linux
>>>>> on my powerbook along with Mac OS (Occasionally I do graphic design and
>>>>> I'm too attached to all my fonts, Photoshop filters, and other personal
>>>>> stuff that I'm not ready to deal with because I can't afford psychiatric
>>>>> help... he he) Linux on a mac is very cool cause of the speed and
>>>>> performance and I'm dying to run it on a G4...
>>>>> 
>>>>> I also think OS X is not too bad either... but it's super slow and
>>>>> crashes... but fun to play with...
>>>>> 
>>>>> Anyways check it out or don't...
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