March 26, 2005
The Mac Attack Has Begun - Part III
Part III of my journey to embracing the famous Apple Mac.
Please read Part I and Part II if you haven't already.
Mac OS X had the Unix element giving me access to all the reliability and command line glory that Linux provided, it also seemed to have the effort in design on behalf of the user. It even had support from companies like Palm to officially support the use of their hardware on that plaftorm, only since I started seriously using Linux did I realise the importance of this. It looked like a perfect solution, so I placed a request to get one from work.
I waited and waited. There was a shortage of PowerBooks at the time as Apple had just released the new hardware upgrades on the PowerBook specs. After around 4-5 weeks, it finally arrived.
I went down to the Apple Store, Next Byte, on Elizabeth Street in Melbourne to pick it up. I've noticed a few things about Apple Stores in comparison to your everyday computer store, firstly, cool people seem to frequent Apple Stores. It seems that the regular customers in small computer stores selling the usual beige PC, seem to attract geeks or people after the cheapest, nastiest hardware they can get. Apple Stores on the other hand, are full of normal, everyday, intelligent, cool kind of people. It was an interesting observation.
In fact, when I originally was talking to a salesman in the Apple Store, I was inquiring about the 17" PowerBook model. The salesman asked, "are you using it for design, or film?" I laughed and said "No, I'm a Linux Systems Administrator, my need to a high resolution screen is for more terminals!" I'm not sure he'd ever met anyone like me!
The whole experience reminded me of being a young boy in the Commodore shop, when my Dad bought our Commodore 128D. This was a store that was serious about delivering a quality experience to its customers. To me it was a high contrast to my experiences with small beige PC computer stores, they're just after a quick buck, and the Linux crowd seem to like coding but don't really care about usability much.
So, I took my PowerBook and started to learn how to use it. It is quite different from a PC, but I'm not getting the hang of it after a few weeks, and I've fallen in love with it. Luckily there was a guy in the office who had used Macs for a while, so he helped me out bit in getting started.
I'm very happy with my Mac, and I wouldn't go back, never. The extra cost is worth it, Apple really take care to deliver an excellent quality product. The Mac even have a quite healthy shareware scene with great, innovative software being written. I'm very. very happy.
Posted by Dan at 01:34 PM | Comments (0)
The Mac Attack Has Begun - Part II
Part II of my journey to embracing the famous Apple Mac.
Please read Part I if you haven't already.
Last year I bought an IBM ThinkPad R50, with a Pentium M 1.6GHz, 1Gb RAM, and a high resolution screen. It was black and mean, and when I say black, it was very, very black, if not a bit ugly. But it performed well.
As far as operating systems go, I've progressed from whatever came with the C64 and C128D then onto MS-DOS 3.3, 6.22, Windows 3.1, Windows 95a, 95b, Windows 98, Windows 98SE. After forming the habit of re-installing my computer every 30 days or so due to slow downs in Windows 98SE, I decided to switch to Linux.
Linux was a great friend. It was open, it was free, and most of all, it was geeky. A perfect fit! Even the new IBM ThinkPad is running SuSE Linux 9.2, one of the best Linux distributions that I've ever used. But, in the end, I started to find all the shortcomings of a Linux desktop. In the early days, there used to be hardware problems, which were eventually overcome by recompiling something, upgrading something, or switching a small piece of hardware over. But, near the end, I just couldn't get my Palm Pilot to reliably sync with anything, Evolution, Kontact, you name it, it worked, but was quickly followed by a data corruption.
I also found the lack of consistent design in software designed for Linux. I'm not sure what causes this, in the old days of shareware, software was generally good quality, with innovative features and consistent designs. It was like thought went into the design of the software. Unfortunately in the Linux world, this same level of thought is not generally put into software design. Keyboard compatibility is inconsistent, general user interface design is poor, useful and innovative features are missing, the software is designed for a developer, not a user. I think that overall, I hold usability as a high priority in the software I use, if software I use distracts me from working because I have to think for the software developer, then that is bad, and in the end, it got unacceptable for me. I couldn't take it anymore, I needed to switch.
Now, I'd fallen in love with certain parts of Linux, and I really couldn't go back to Windows, so Mac OS X looked promising. Little did I know just how enjoyable a Mac would be.
Posted by Dan at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)
The Mac Attack Has Begun - Part I
A little while ago, my work bought me an Apple Powerbook 12". I've been a computer geek for many years, but I have never owned, or really used to any great extent an Apple computer. But, after a matter of weeks, I'm now converted, so much so that I feel that I need to write about it.
My experience of computing has been so affected by this little silver item of beauty that I've actually decided to devote a whole site to share my new obsession.
I suppose a little bit of my background and experiences in platforms would be helpful. I started using computers when I was a young lad, my weapon of choice was the old, faithful, Commodore 64. That eventually grew to a Commodore 128D, a model that was not widely known, but came with a Z80 microprocessor that allowed the system to perform as a 80 column word processor. The 128D was a boring piece of equipment from my perspective, I generally booted into the C64 mode, and pined after the amazing Commodore Amiga 500.
From there came the great XT IBM Compatible. My particular model was a turbo, 8GHz from memory, with a suped-up 640kb RAM. It had a very clear, although uninspiring, orange monochrome screen. It played Prince of Persia great, and I enjoyed the Microsoft Paint program, Word 5.0, and DOS 3.3. It was my first of many PCs that I either owned or interacted with. As a side note, it had nothing on my C64, no real sound, no real graphics, a real step backwards, but it did get me good marks in high school as I could write up my assignments in Word.
My next beast of computing was the 486 DX 33, originally it had 4Mb of RAM and a SVGA monitor. I realised how much fun Doom was, and eventually upgraded to my first Sound Blaster card and 8Mb of RAM. A great machine that now gave me a smooth Doom experience. After a going through a few CTRL keys, I also ended up upgrading various bits and pieces like a DX4 100, CD drive, and an additional 800Mb hard drive alongside the original 200Mb.
I then went to a Pentium 200 MMX, then a Celeron 366. My main desktop computer these days is a highly modified version of the original Celeron 366 upgraded to a 1.8GHz on a BX motherboard using a great little adapter that enabled the conversion.
Posted by Dan at 03:13 AM | Comments (0)