Re: Initial experiences moving to Mac

Addle Jones wrote
(in article <fc-dnVDGP40coqHZRVn-pg@xxxxxxxxxxx>):

Well I finally took the plunge and bought myself a 20" iMac with
2Ghz Intel Core Duo processor a few weeks ago. Here's a summary
of my initial experience.

In posting this, I'm hoping that there are some people who read
this group beyond the core group of a dozen or two people who
contribute here to the rather bizarre daily discussions.

If you simply skip over every thread that has someone's name in
it, you'll go along way toward avoiding a lot of the clutter.

As some of you may or may not remember, my purpose in testing the
Mac platform is to replace both my Linux boxes (for everyday work)
and my Windows boxes (for music and occasionally other stuff Linux
can't do). Windows will probably stay in my house, though not on my
machines (my wife still uses Windows for now) but Linux will probably
mostly disappear, assuming my Mac experiment continues to pan out.

Very similar to my experience, but I bought over a year ago. My
wife is about to move to the Mac, I'm just waiting for the dust
to settle and a post rev-A Intel Mac to do it with. If I had
realized how quickly the PPC iMacs were going to disappear, I
would have picked one of those up for her to use instead.

For myself, I had a very similar reaction to yours, but Intel
processors didn't have anything to do with it for me. The
processor is a don't care if the OS and software works well.

General impression so far: I've never been able to move to a
new platform and be up and running faster than with this Mac.

Yep.

I was able to basically do everything I could do on my Linux box,
plus a lot more, within days (maybe even hours) of unpacking
the iMac from the box.

I think having a UNIX or Linux background helps a great deal,
particularly if you want to use the Mac for tasks outside of the
normal GUI. The platform is a very, very solid UNIX box under
the covers.

I can also use this machine for music.

Duh. :-)

My Mac music setup is actually quite a bit better than my
Windows setup was (partly because of new investments). I really
have almost no use left for Linux or Windows.

Try playing around with Garage Band. What a blast...

Not everything is perfect yet, but it's been easier than I
expected. A lot of this is no mystery: unix based, so a lot
in common with Linux, commercially and competently developed UI
and system organization, preinstalled OS, ample hard drive and
processor. Nevertheless, I've struggled with Windows and
Linux machines for the past decade, and they ALWAYS find a
way of fucking up, even when pre-installed -- sometimes almost
as if they were designed to frustrate me.

They were. There is a huge (i.e. $$$$) market in supporting
complicated and troublesome products. If Microsoft actually did
something to solve spyware and virus problems, all of those
companies making billions off of those issues would take out
hit-men against the MS execs. Now, Microsoft themselves are in
the business of charging extra to fix what should be fixed by
default.

I unpacked the box during the Oscars, which I watched with my
kids. Plugged it in. Turned it on. First surprise, it detected
my wireless LAN during boot and configured it correctly. This
was totally unexpected, since this is a part of the house that
I've NEVER been able to get wireless with either Windows or
Linux machines.

Funny how things that you expect to be hard turn out to be easy
when using OS X.

Then it prompted me to set up an account. The built in camera
took my picture for the login. My kids got a kick out of that,
and hung around my neck for the picture.
Cool.

Ok, but you can always do that later. That's one of those
"bells and whistles" deals IMO, can take it or leave it. The
cool bit having a built-in camera.

I notice that there are two sub-pixel defects on the monitor.
I hate that. I've bought 4 lcd monitors in a row with sub-pixel
defects (Viewsonic, SGI, Apple). No manufacturer I know replaces
monitors for that. Apple is no exception.
Uncool.

Since everybody has the same policy, it is neither cool or
uncool.

Have you tried out that dashboard widget that is supposed to
help with that problem?

The iMac comes with a Mighty Mouse. It's not as easy to use at
first as my Logitech. The tiny scroll wheel has no detents, and it
tends to roll when I click the middle mouse button. I don't think
the designers had middle clicking in mind, which is too bad.

Just plug in a true logitech and move on. I wouldn't dream of
using any vendor-provided mouse.

I'm getting
somewhat used to it though, and it does sideways scrolling, which
my Logitech doesn't do (and which I've often wanted.)

My logitech laser mouse does, and much better.

I check if I'm networked properly. The iMac has automatically
hooked to my DHCP server and it's fully integrated. I can see my
wife's Windows box and I open up a share. I ssh to my Linux box.
I scp over most of my home directory. The nameserver is connected
and Safari is working. I open the system preferences and click
on the networking icon. I assign a fixed IP to the machine, name
it, open up ssh, ... trivial. Everything works.
Cool.

As expected, but yeah, it's easier than other platforms to get
on the network quickly.

My bash init files hiccup on some minor issues. They're already
broken down to handle about a half dozen platforms. I just add
Darwin to the list and customize. It takes about 2 minutes. There's
not dircolors working yet (but I fix that later without trouble
by downloading the ls from Fink).

What's wrong with ls -G (via alias)?

I use Safari to download Firefox. I didn't find the Intel version at
the Mozilla site, so I download the PowerPC version. This gives me
a chance to try out the Rosetta emulation technology. I have to say
I'm pretty impressed. I've used many emulation technologies over
the years, including that abomination called WINE, but Rosetta is
pretty seemless. The performance and behavior of Firefox are quite
normal.

You should try this one in COLA, they are absolutely in love
with Wine over there. I can't imagine why, other than it's all
they got.

I later located an unofficial Intel port of Firefox called Deerpark.

Deerpark is supposedly the next version of Firefox. You just
must have an unsupported build of it for Intel macs.

It's pretty snappy. But there seem to be memory leaks. I later
find there is unofficial support at Mozilla for Intel. ... It's better.
I have my Linux box and iMac set up side by side. Intel Firefox is
noticeably faster on my iMac than on Linux.

What's the video and processor differences between the two?

None of my Mac browsers can properly display video from the
major news sites (in Windows Media format). I'll need to fiddle with
this later.

google for "flip4mac". Problem solved.

I'm pretty sure this is an Intel issue. Nevertheless, this
is a MAJOR blunder on Apple's part. They should have worked with
the publishers of multimedia renderers before shipping the Intel
Macs. Every form of internet multimedia should "just work" without any
hitch.
Uncool.

Uhhh, is this only an Intel mac issue?

Why doesn't Windows ship with Quicktime by default? Turnabout
is fair play.

One thing I note in passing. The Preview app that displays pdf's is
included with the system. It's quite good and it's fast. I'm sure I'm
not the only one in the world who is sick of Adobe's pdf reader, which
seems to slow by a factor of 50% with each new release. It seems like
a simple thing, but it's really a relief to finally be able to double
click a pdf file and have it load almost instantly.

Yes. And the Mac version of Acrobat sucks BAD. Memory leaks
and spinning threads like crazy, especially when used as a
browser plugin. If you want a good browser plugin for PDF's,
check out this instead:
http://www.schubert-it.com/

I install the developer tools and X Window from the installation
disks. No problem. I ssh to my Linux box and open a graphical
app. It loads. It's seemlessly running on my Mac desktop. (Rootless
X Window.)
Cool.

Yes, I thought it was cool at first too. Then I never use it
for anything. All those linux apps I thought I couldn't live
without? I can live without them just fine.

By the way, there's a Windows version of Unison too, but synchronizing
with Windows is a MAJOR pain in the ass, because Windows doesn't
have symbolic links, and because of issues with locked files ...
Windows: Uncool, OS X: Cool.

Correct. Any OS without symlinks is fundamentally flawed beyond
repair.

I now have native intel Pan on my iMac and XEmacs. Everything seems
to work ok. X11 apps seem slightly unresponsive to my mouse wheel
though. On the whole, support for X11 apps though seems pretty
impressive. In any case, Thunderbird is fine for news and Aquamacs
is better than XEmacs.
OK.

Thunderbird can be kind of strange with font rendering on OS X
if you install *any* third-party fonts and you use anything but
fixed-pitch in emails. A REAL pain in the ass. I've spent
hours and hours chasing down strange font issues as a result.
I'd love to see a CocoaBird product. Yet, anything is better
than Apple Mail.

Now I want to get set up printing. My HP 1012 laser printer is
connected to a Windows machine. The iMac can see the printer. But
when I try to install the driver for the 1012, it's not there.
It turns out, it's supported on a direct connection, but not over
a network. Ack. I've had problems with this printer, because of
the weird way HP implemented. I've NEVER been able to get it to
work remotely from any Windows machine.

It will work. I have the same exact setup here. There is a
printer driver add-on for the Mac that will let you print to a
remote 1012 on a Windows box. I don't remember where I found it
now, but if you google for it, or look through the archives of
comp.sys.mac.printing, you'll find discussions about it, it is a
fairly common problem since it is a popoular printer.

as the weeks pass. But guess what? I go to my iMac and try printing
again. Now the support for the 1012 is there! Apple has integrated
hpijs into their printing system. It must have come with
one of the updates. The iMac has no trouble with the change in
the Windows network. My document prints!
Cool.

Nevermind, they fixed it somehow since I had the problem a year
or so back.

OK, I was warned by some that the Mac UI was worse than Gnome,
that the Mac is not customizable, etc. What's my impression
so far? BULL***. I have suffered through years of that
bloated, bungled, poorly documented, un-standardized, inefficient,
poorly designed, mess called Gnome. It is not better than the
Mac UI.

Yeah, Gnome sucks, KDE is getting worse with each release in the
bloat categroy, you have to run Blackbox or something similar if
you want a lightweight window manger.

I still need to work more with the Mac UI to make a final
judgement, but it doesn't take much to be better than Gnome,
and that it surely is.

indeed.

I fiddle with the Finder. It's okay. I like having a tree pane
to show the directory hierarchy, and Finder doesn't seem to
do that.

Yes, finder REALLY sucks. Rumors of it being rewritten pop up
now and again. Maybe Leopard will do something about it. But,
I've found something even better, making using finder almost
completely irrelevant. Quicksilver. download it. today. Most
stunningly useful productivity app in the last 20 years.
And free.

What's with the .DS_Store files all over the place?

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2005070300463515

Also, what's with it complaining about files that start
with "." and hiding directories? I can't get it to show /usr,
for instance. And I can't see how to get the directories to
list before the files. I don't like some of this stuff.
Uncool.

Yes, it tries to save you, sort of like Windows hiding system
folders unless you tell it to leave you alone.

Some other things about Finder I like. It's quick, and it's
easy to add useful custom functions to the toolbar (like a toolbar
button that opens a terminal in the current directoy -- Windows
choked on that one when I tried it). It doesn't seem to have a
bookmark or favorites folder, but it does allow you to drag
favorite folders to the favorites pane. And those
show up even in file open dialogs, which is very useful.

True.

(Something Windows screws up.) By the way, while I'm making
comparisons, the Gnome standard file manager called Nautilus
is, by miles, the worst, most abominable file manager I have
ever used, seen, heard of, or had nightmares about, on any platform.
It is outstandingly bad. It is unusable. On Mac, I at least have
the benefit of a file manager again.
Cool.

Hmmm. The fact that you can find a worse file manager doesn't
make finder good. :-)

Some of the anti-Mac people have argued that OS X is a simple
minded platform for light weights, that's not customizable.
What's my impression? BULL***. OS X is a power user platform.
I'm a programmer with a PhD and I like having control of my
platform. I like OS X. Decent development tools are distributed
on the installation disks. In particular, the support for a platform
wide scripting technology puts it ahead of Windows and every traditional
Unix platform.

You really should have posted this article in
comp.os.linux.advocacy

I can sense the heart attacks from here, but what you say is
completely true.

The only other platform I've used with good scripting
support was OS/2. Because of the lack of good scripting on Linux,
I have been forced for years to get by with a combination of perl,
bash, command switches, spit, and glue. When the moon is in the
right phase and the wind is blowing North by Northwest, it sort of
works. But it's a pretty barbaric way of using a computer.

Have you played with automator yet? It can kill days with all
the cool stuff you can do with it.

Another thing is the terminal programs. I was warned, even by
Mac advocates, that the terminals are not as advanced as on
Linux. I don't think that's true. Apple's Terminal program that
ships with OS X is really pretty good. Its only drawback is that
it doesn't support tabs. On the other hand, there is a great terminal
called iTerm that does support tabs. iTerm is, in my opinion, better
than Gnome-terminal. The problem is that iTerm is not finished yet.

Last time I tried iTerm it sucked pretty bad. I use the
standard terminal, (or one of several dashboard widgets that
provide the same thing) instead. It's not great (I like konsole
best of all).

The only other customization that the Mac doesn't support is themes.
But here I'm glad. I HATE themes. I have never found any functional
use for themes at all.

they're remarkably good at wasting time.

Nice review, thanks for taking the time to write it.

--
Lefty
All of God's creatures have a place..........
..........right next to the potatoes and gravy.
See also: http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/iProduct.gif

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