20 July 2003

Making the Mac Switch

I'm composing this item on my new toy. After a few days of fuddling with Mac OS X, I am wowed - it is both elegant and functional, even if I am still stumbling with some of the quirky obstacles for someone new to Macs.

I've never enjoyed working on a laptop computer, but this one is pure joy. It weighs less than some frisbees I used to toss around, and even without a mouse that was a requirement with other notebooks I've used, I've found the track pad to be remarkably responsive unlike the Dells and other Win-tel notebooks I've fumbled with.

The mail application included, thus far, seems to be an answer to my epic search for a simple mail client that eloquently performed and included a display presentation that made sense. I loathe all of the mail clients on the market today - MS Outlook, Navigator Composer, Pegasus, Eudora, Emacs, etc. all have their pluses, but are deficient in some key respect. So, I've managed with web mail, or my own python POP mail scripts or simply reading it on the server.

But the big bonus discovery was the ease in which I could get GNU Linux software up and running in short order. Two painless downloads, point and click to install, and then I had the Apple X11 environment operational. From there, I downloaded and installed Fink, a Mac OS X package manager that simplifies software package management by indexing available packages and automatically sorting out the dependencies. Thus, all I have to do is issue a simple command (or use the GUI Fink Commander utility) to install desired goodies like The Gimp, Freeciv and any other Linux/Unix piece of software.

Not all is computing nirvana, as I'm still struggling to decipher the "enhanced" Unix filesystem changes Mac OS X instituted. It seems that applications are bundled into resource collections and content collections and it appears different than my grasp of Unix. And I need to find out how to be able to use the pretty Mac fonts within the X11 applications. It should be possible to port some of those fonts over and turn on anti-aliasing.

Next, I'm going to install the developer tools and multiplatformer games like Warcraft, Shadowbane and Diablo.

Working in Windows makes me feel filthy after messing around on my Mac.

The downside is that I spent my Phoenix Coyote season ticket money on the powerbook, a carrying case and the airport base station. Wireless is wonderous, I can roam about the house and still stay connected to the net. More hours I can be online.

Comments

No comments yet

Add Comment

This item is closed, it's not possible to add new comments to it or to vote on it