Powerbook Setup

[Dick Davies]

* Paul Robinson <paul at iconoplex.co.uk> [1006 23:06]:
> On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 11:34:08PM +0200, Andi Scharfstein wrote:
> 
> > I was wondering if there was any advice you'd want to give an Apple
> > newbie. 
> 
> Yes, of course. My advice is that you sell your over-priced
> fashion-victim toy with it's Fisher Price Unix installed, and use the
> money instead to buy yourself a top of the range Thinkpad .

Panther is the best UNIX I've seen in a long time. I cant' think of 
anything I need it to do that it has trouble with, and the bundled apps are
surprisingly unshitty.

RAID, crypted filesystems and IPSEC are all a doddle to setup with a few mouse clicks
and it is UNIX enough to interoperate with all my BSD kit without a grumble.

For anything with quirks there are now enough OpenSource developers using it that
someone has usually ported or homegrown something for it
(subversion support in the Finder being a big win for me).

And there are a good few OSX apps that once you've used you'll really miss on other
OSes (off the top of my head: Mail is amazingly the least crappy GUI mail app I've ever seen,
Quicksilver is very RSI friendly, and the Confabulator saves you buying a second monitor).

Oh, and SCUMMVM works out of the box on it, as opposed to current where I have spent
three nights so far trying to coax SDL out of its cage with a lump of raw meat.
So I finally get to kick Purple Tentacles ass.


*Laptop* wise I'd agree with the price issues (although it's worth comparing like
for like - I got a 1000 quid centrino laptop from work lately and while it's nice
and lightweight with good battery life it is built with various flaky hardware that
I've wasted a good couple of weeks sysctling my way around, and the fan is ridiculously noisy). 

I got an eMac for 550 quid direct from Apple last month and it's the best value
computer I've ever bought. GarageBand, while having the gayest name of any software
ever (I'd be happy to take other opinions onboard here) has a shitload of amp emulation 
built in that means my girl can try out amps with her new guitar without having to endure
the pimply wankers at our local Richer Sounds. With any luck she will do with a software amp
in which case the Mac has already paid for itself.

> you won't get any more snide e-mails like this when you post to a
> FreeBSD list for help with your hardware.

'Ridicule is nothing to be scared of', as a man with a stripe painted across his face
once said :)

-- 
Oh how awful. Did he at least die peacefully? [pause] To shreds you say, tsk tsk tsk.
Well, how's his wife holding up? [pause] To shreds, you say... - Prof. Farnsworth
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns