Convert Me! (to mac)

[enigma]

I figured theres a windows, and a linux, so Ill make a mac one too. Does mac use jaguar? I dont know anything about macs, and Ive never used one. Why should I? Personally i think they are big etch-a-sketches, but i will hold no bias agianst them because i only have stereotypes about them. Does it have open source programs? Is it a major open source os?

Its kinda hard to upgrade it, do you toss it out the window and buy a new one? CONVERT ME!!

[psyjax]

quote:Originally posted by Got Root? / Bob:
I figured theres a windows, and a linux, so Ill make a mac one too. Does mac use jaguar? I dont know anything about macs, and Ive never used one. Why should I? Personally i think they are big etch-a-sketches, but i will hold no bias agianst them because i only have stereotypes about them. Does it have open source programs? Is it a major open source os?

Its kinda hard to upgrade it, do you toss it out the window and buy a new one? CONVERT ME!!

Mac's currently run a UNIX derivative called OSX. The current version is often refered to as Jaguare or Jawyre, it is considered to be the first TRUE version of OSX. It's totaly stable (has crashed on me once in the entire year I owned it, and I caused the crash thrugh some bad programming).

OSX has several "layers", the largest most important component of the OS is Darwin. This is the core layer of the OS, it is based off of BSD UNIX and is fully open source (there is even an x86 version). Because of Darwin a huge amount of open source software has been ported over to OSX, including X11. This allowes one to run alternate desktops environments like KDE and GNOME right over Aqua/Quartz seemlessly.

Aqua/Quartz is the next major layer. This is the eye candy of OSX, Aqua is the UI name, Quartz is the powerful rendering engine that powers Aqua. Quartz employes OpenGL and graphics acceleration to produce one of the most well designed and good looking GUI's. Simply put, OSX is beutifull. On a powerfull computer (400Mhz+) with plenty of Ram (Id say anything above 128MB is great), it run's seemlessly without a hitch. RAM is the key to OSX (if you decide to run Aqua), it hogs RAM like a bitch, but when you got enugh it manages it perfectly so you can't really complain.

Folks often complain that OSX is not true open source because the GUI is not open source. If this is a problem, download Darwin and install X11 and KDE if you want. None the less, Aqua/Quartz is incredibly pourus and easely customizable, nearly all aspects of the GUI are in reach. as sites like www.resexcellence.com are testament to.

While the GUI bears the trademark Apple quality as far as desgin and ease of use that even a first time computer user could get used to, the UNIX core is never out of reach. Just boot up a terminal window and your in darwin. At startup you can type >cosole as your username and you enter full darwin mode. There are several otherways of bypassing Aqua into Darwin.

As mentioned before, project's like Fink amongst others are porting Open source software left and right, but aside from the software form the Linux/*NIX world which is rapidly coming to OSX, there are plenty of OSX only Open source and freeware stuff coming out all the time!

This is largely due to the fact that OSX comes with a wonderfull suite of free development tools from the gcc compilers, to apples spectacular Developer Tools. Objective C (OSX's prefered language for creating COCO applications) is incredibly easy to use and learn.

COCO, Carbon, and Classic are words you will hear often. Because the MacOS was not allways UNIX, apple preserved many of the origional API's in OSX's API's. These API's manifest themselves in a Carbon and Classic set. Classic API's are only related to the older Mac OS and programs that use them must be run under classic emulation within OSX (Rather seemlessly implimented BTW), Carbon programms are those that have been modified to use the Carbon API calls, these API's are virtually identical to the Classic API's but are "translated" internaly into OSX API's. This makes Carbon and Classic programms run a bit slower than they could (not usually a noticable speed hit). COCO is the incredibly fast OSX only API's. I am currently typeing in Chimera, a fully COCO OSX implementation of Mozilla's Gecko engine. It is the fastest browser in the universe    .

Mac's aren't hard to upgrade at all. Processor upgrades, vidCards and all maner of other hardware exist (perhapse not as many choices as the PC world) but MORE than enugh. Now, if you get an iMac or one of the other all in one unit's upgrading can be a pain. But all the towers etc. are fine. This is a huge Mac myth.

Also, Mac's are long lived. You will keep a Mac far more than 3 years, and it will be fully usable .

Let's see what elese...

Oh, you can run Linux on a Mac. You can dual boot with YDL, Mandrake, Debian, amongs't other popular distros. Right now my comp has 4 OS's. YDL, OSX, OS9, and Win98SE. Win98SE? Yes, I run VPC to play old DOS abandonware    .

IMHO, Mac's are excelent computers! I would never switch to PC.

EDIT: One more thing about Mac's, they have a plethora of main stream Apps and Games which Linux lacks. You have the choice of running GIMP or Photoshop on OSX, as well as M$ Office or OpenOffice.

[ November 11, 2002: Message edited by: psyjax v6.9 /Dave ]

[hm_murdock]

lemme say this. OS X is beautiful, it's the future, it's everything you've ever dreamt of in a UNIX.

It's still got a few rough edges, but less and less with every update.

But, the classic Mac OS is more like a friend, IMHO. OS X is friendly, but the old OS just seems like a charismatic old friend that you're always at home when you're around.

but guess what... once you use X, YOU AIN'T EVER GOIN' BACK

[HighLamb]

Beside the softwears of Mac, the hardwears are very cool! I am not saying the look of the mac. I am saying is the PowerPC CPU. The PowerPC CPU emit less heat than the Pentium at the same clock speed and consume less power than the Pentium. I have a iBook(G3 700Mhz) and a Sony vaio R505 (P3 800Mhz + speed step ). iBook can run 4 to 6 hours on battery but the vaio can only have 3 hours life when use with battery (clock speed will drop to 550Mhz). Also, the noise of the cooling fan inside the vaio is very annoying. The iBook is so cool and don't need a cooling fan at all.

[Pantso]

quote:Originally posted by psyjax v6.9 /Dave:


Mac's currently run a UNIX derivative called OSX. The current version is often refered to as Jaguare or Jawyre, it is considered to be the first TRUE version of OSX. It's totaly stable (has crashed on me once in the entire year I owned it, and I caused the crash thrugh some bad programming).

OSX has several "layers", the largest most important component of the OS is Darwin. This is the core layer of the OS, it is based off of BSD UNIX and is fully open source (there is even an x86 version). Because of Darwin a huge amount of open source software has been ported over to OSX, including X11. This allowes one to run alternate desktops environments like KDE and GNOME right over Aqua/Quartz seemlessly.

Aqua/Quartz is the next major layer. This is the eye candy of OSX, Aqua is the UI name, Quartz is the powerful rendering engine that powers Aqua. Quartz employes OpenGL and graphics acceleration to produce one of the most well designed and good looking GUI's. Simply put, OSX is beutifull. On a powerfull computer (400Mhz+) with plenty of Ram (Id say anything above 128MB is great), it run's seemlessly without a hitch. RAM is the key to OSX (if you decide to run Aqua), it hogs RAM like a bitch, but when you got enugh it manages it perfectly so you can't really complain.

Folks often complain that OSX is not true open source because the GUI is not open source. If this is a problem, download Darwin and install X11 and KDE if you want. None the less, Aqua/Quartz is incredibly pourus and easely customizable, nearly all aspects of the GUI are in reach. as sites like www.resexcellence.com are testament to.

While the GUI bears the trademark Apple quality as far as desgin and ease of use that even a first time computer user could get used to, the UNIX core is never out of reach. Just boot up a terminal window and your in darwin. At startup you can type >cosole as your username and you enter full darwin mode. There are several otherways of bypassing Aqua into Darwin.

As mentioned before, project's like Fink amongst others are porting Open source software left and right, but aside from the software form the Linux/*NIX world which is rapidly coming to OSX, there are plenty of OSX only Open source and freeware stuff coming out all the time!

This is largely due to the fact that OSX comes with a wonderfull suite of free development tools from the gcc compilers, to apples spectacular Developer Tools. Objective C (OSX's prefered language for creating COCO applications) is incredibly easy to use and learn.

COCO, Carbon, and Classic are words you will hear often. Because the MacOS was not allways UNIX, apple preserved many of the origional API's in OSX's API's. These API's manifest themselves in a Carbon and Classic set. Classic API's are only related to the older Mac OS and programs that use them must be run under classic emulation within OSX (Rather seemlessly implimented BTW), Carbon programms are those that have been modified to use the Carbon API calls, these API's are virtually identical to the Classic API's but are "translated" internaly into OSX API's. This makes Carbon and Classic programms run a bit slower than they could (not usually a noticable speed hit). COCO is the incredibly fast OSX only API's. I am currently typeing in Chimera, a fully COCO OSX implementation of Mozilla's Gecko engine. It is the fastest browser in the universe       .

Mac's aren't hard to upgrade at all. Processor upgrades, vidCards and all maner of other hardware exist (perhapse not as many choices as the PC world) but MORE than enugh. Now, if you get an iMac or one of the other all in one unit's upgrading can be a pain. But all the towers etc. are fine. This is a huge Mac myth.

Also, Mac's are long lived. You will keep a Mac far more than 3 years, and it will be fully usable .

Let's see what elese...

Oh, you can run Linux on a Mac. You can dual boot with YDL, Mandrake, Debian, amongs't other popular distros. Right now my comp has 4 OS's. YDL, OSX, OS9, and Win98SE. Win98SE? Yes, I run VPC to play old DOS abandonware       .

IMHO, Mac's are excelent computers! I would never switch to PC.

EDIT: One more thing about Mac's, they have a plethora of main stream Apps and Games which Linux lacks. You have the choice of running GIMP or Photoshop on OSX, as well as M$ Office or OpenOffice.

[ November 11, 2002: Message edited by: psyjax v6.9 /Dave ]

Wow! Psyjax said it all in just one post! All I have to do is agree and also add that Macs are really stable computers either OS-wise or hardware-wise. Mac OS X is also stable as a rock and really secure compared to other OSes.

I will also agree with Jimmy James and Highlamb. Finally, I don't think that you'll find a disappointed Mac user easily, ever.  

[Master of Reality]

quote:Originally posted by HighLamb:
iBook can run 4 to 6 hours on battery but the vaio can only have 3 hours life when use with battery (clock speed will drop to 550Mhz)

I would be afraid my powerbook would explode if i left it running for over an hour. And it doesnt have a battery. its a powerbook 180 monochrome  

[avello500]

im not a pro mac user, im in the process of converting to linux, but i have to say a friend gave me a apple classicII. i accidentally droped it. when i powered it up everything worked just fine. i have a old compaq that was giving to me, of course it didnt work so i opened it up to find an incredibly poor job of design. the cards were bolted to the chasis and by that they were all twisted to the point that some broke, this comp was never droped.

[Pissed_Macman]

quote:Originally posted by avello500:
im not a pro mac user, im in the process of converting to linux, but i have to say a friend gave me a apple classicII. i accidentally droped it. when i powered it up everything worked just fine. i have a old compaq that was giving to me, of course it didnt work so i opened it up to find an incredibly poor job of design. the cards were bolted to the chasis and by that they were all twisted to the point that some broke, this comp was never droped.

Uggh, something must have happened to it. Are you sure it wasn't dropped or sat on by star jones or something? I refuse to believe that Compaqs are that shittily put together.

[ November 23, 2002: Message edited by: Macman: Mac Commando ]

[avello500]

this was one of the first presario comp's.
i always thought they were of high quality and maybe i got just a fluke. what i found internally was all the cards were attached to the mobo  and attachesd to the chassis, unfortunatly all the holes didnt line up so some cards were twisted inside. i think the fall is what caused some cards to break, it gave that little extra stress. i have been able to open another compaq pres..  and didnt find the same problems so maybe it was a fluke?

[Annorax]

I dunno... maybe the first Compaq was put together by a duMba$s? when i was in high school, they ran a lab of Compaq 486DX4/80's that i was in charge of supporting... every time i set up a new one, it didnt look like that, but after some of the teachers made their own "upgrades" (I dont like the way that looks, is that the board that has all the porn on it? and takes all the nics out), SOME dumbshit would krazy glue all the cards down so i couldnt fix it... i eventually said FUCK the extra credits, FUCK the $200 a month paycheck, and FUCK THE STRESS of keeping those things in one piece and running Win3.11...

[hoshi]

the best reason to switch to mac
mac isnt spyware

'nuf said