A convert to Apple needs friendly advice

Hi,

Sorry about the length of this. If you can answer even *one* of
my queries, please please do so without feeling you have to
answer them all. I'll be hugely grateful for any help. Thanks.

I am a London based Linux and RISC OS user who is in need of a
new laptop and I've heard good things about MacOS-X. I've never
owned an Apple machine before, and my experience of playing with
other people's machines is limited. The few Apple owning friends
I have are not technically savvy enough to troubleshoot for me,
or even guide me in the right direction, so I'm really hoping I
will find a mentor or two here in this group. If I am to convert
to Apple, I want to be reassured of a few things before I take
the plunge. I am also helping and advising a friend in the same
situation as myself, so there are two possible converts here.

Which is the biggest and/or best Apple specialist in London where
my friend Susie and I can play with the full range of machines
and get plenty of one-to-one expert advice on any necessary
peripherals or additional software? (I'm in Fulham but can travel.)

Am I correct in thinking that there are just four models in
the current range of Apple laptops: 12" iBook, 14" iBook,
12" PowerBook, and 14" PowerBook? Am I correct in thinking that
the innards of the lowest spec. machine can be upgraded to those
of the highest? If not, which aspects cannot be upgraded, and how
much would I miss them?

Susie wants to be able to play DVDs (from various regions).
Will an iBook allow that, or is it limited to just one region?
Can it play them at full screen and full frame rate?

What level of USB is supported? Is it always possible to
connect with any camera, printer, scanner, MP3 player, or
other storage device, or do you have to choose the device
carefully based on a list of known to work USB devices?
Is there such a list?

What is the Bluetooth support like? Is it stable and mature?
Has anyone experienced difficulties getting the Mac to talk
to mobile phones, cameras, printers, or the like? Is there
a list of known working devices?

What about wireless ethernet (Wi-Fi)? Which 802.11 standards
are supported? Is there anything proprietary or even just quirky
about MacOS Wi-Fi? Can I assume 11g frequencies and speed are
fully supported, or is it still only 11b? Are the 11X
authentication mechanisms supported, and the 11i encryption
protocols such as TKIP and especially CCMP (AES)? If not, how
soon can I expect these standards to be supported?

Are Bluetooth and Wi-Fi fitted as standard? If not, what are the
costs involved in getting them fitted? Can they be fitted
internally without the need to use up PCMCIA slots? Will fitting
them take up expansion space that limits my options for later
expansion? Are there different versions of software drivers to
worry about? What is the impact on battery life?

The printer on my home office LAN is currently connected to my
Linux box and is accessed via IPP (Internet Printing Protocol).
My RISC OS machine just prints to a postscript file which is sent
via IPP to the Linux box which then converts it to the HP PCL
format required by my laser printer. Does MacOS-X support the
IPP protocol? If not, what is my best bet for network printing?

We would like to get into using Voice over the Internet (VoIP)
but first we need to know if there are any robust and open VoIP
implementations for MacOS that will work on the laptop when one
of us is away on holiday. Can anyone claim success at getting
VoIP to work, and how tricky was it to set up?

What is the track record of MacOS-X on security matters such
as viruses, worms, spy-ware, email & browser bugs, open ports,
buffer overflows, and application macros? Is it necessary to feel
paranoid and hide behind constantly updated security software,
or is it more like RISC OS where nobody can remember the last
time a virus was even seen? Does MacOS-X have a robust
permissions system that protects system files from modification
by the user or any insecure software the user might be running?

Both Susie and I have been put-off by the shiny white plastic
look of the iBook, which reminds us of a cheap kitchen appliance
(think kettle or toaster). Susie is an incurable aesthete, and
I just want something that won't look tacky in a professional
environment. Matt black would be far more to our taste. The
brushed aluminium PowerBook we saw looked *much* smarter, but
the price seemed way too much to pay for cosmetic considerations
alone. Do Apple produce any better looking laptops at a more
reasonable price?

I am used to a three button mouse on both Linux and RISC OS.
The purpose of the three buttons are particularly well assigned
on RISC OS and greatly contribute to the fluidity of everyday use
and productivity; not just in the OS but in all the applications
too. I am worried that a one button mouse will cramp my
productivity considerably. I've heard that it is possible to get
a three button mouse for the Mac but I imagine that the
assignments of these buttons are not well integrated into the
operating system or applications. In fact, I suspect they may
even be arbitrarily assigned by the driver software supplied with
the mouse and not actually recognised as separate buttons by any
other part of the system. Can anyone offer enlightenment or
reassurance on this matter?

And now for a philosophical question: Coming from a RISC OS
background with some experience of Linux, I am acutely aware of
the importance open source, open file formats, and open protocols.
I naturally *hate* Microsoft and everything their ruthlessly
monopolistic practices have done to the world. As a minority
platform, RISC OS has a culture of supporting open file formats,
and, like Linux, many of the applications are hackable or
customisable in ways the original author never imagined.
My experience of MacOS is that it is a very *closed* system,
ie. it is not possible to look "under the hood" of either the OS
or the applications, and it is not customisable or hackable
beyond what the software authors foresaw and allowed for. This
makes me nervous because I am used to being able to fix problems
by investigating and tinkering under the hood, or even enhance
software by writing programs that convert application file
formats, or by writing glue-code that calls the command line
interfaces (or other APIs) of the applications I use. I do not
wish to place any of my data into a proprietary file format that
ties me to one particular application, and which might crash and
corrupt my data. Has the advent of MacOS-X's BSD underpinnings
brought with it a cultural revolution resulting in more of the
kind of openness I'm used to? Or are the OS and apps all still
very closed black boxes?

The ugly reality, however, is that we live in a world dominated
by Microsoft, its file formats, protocols, bugs & viruses.
Is it possible to read and write the common MS formats (Word,
Excel, PowerPoint, Access) *without* using Microsoft software
or inadvertently letting a single penny slip Microsoft's way?

Finally, I am a web developer and Perl programmer and I want to
be sure that I can do my development work entirely on the laptop.
This means that I would need at least Perl, Apache/mod_perl,
MySQL (or a DBI accessible equivalent), a decent programmer's
text editor, good graphics creation & conversion software, and
a good modern web browser that fully supports all the latest
standards. Are all these things possible? Are they pre-installed,
or easy to install? Are they likely to cost much money?

PS. Is anyone planning to visit an Apple showroom in London
who might be able to team up with us and offer the kind of
power-user insights that sales staff tend not to possess?
It's a long-shot, I know, but it would be invaluable to us.

--
James Taylor, London, UK PGP key: 3FBE1BF9
To protect against spam, the address in the "From:" header is not valid.
In any case, you should reply to the group so that everyone can benefit.
If you must send me a private email, use james at oakseed demon co uk.

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