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All I can say is..
http://sakots.pekori.jp/imgboard/imgs/img20020107162803.jpg
.. it makes a great hat.
http://sakots.pekori.jp/imgboard/imgs/img20020107162803.jpg
.. it makes a great hat.
Very, miserable young b*****d.
:)
:)
Well, you know me.
du -hcs, actually :)
I had the chance (and/or privilege) of messing with some Macs for about 8 hours today. They're very fun. I'd rather have a sweet dual cpu mac box running the latest Mach core and Aqua than Windows, or, indeed, Linux, any day. Just give me a mouse with two buttons and a scroll wheel. Please.
I had my hands on a dual G4 800mhz box running OSX 10.2.1 for a bit.. messed with a console for a bit, it looks (cli-wise) a lot like a standard POSIX Unix system.. without some of the GNU tools I'm used to. However, the most impressive (and thus spoken of) aspect of the system is definately the gui. It's pretty. Like, really, really "sexy" pretty. Aqua is excellent, and flies quite impressively on the dual cpu, although it was noticably slower than Classic (MacOS 9) on the smaller, older iMacs.
On the other hand, as far as functionality goes -- there are definately caveats, which I noticed, even though (or possibly because) I primarily use Gnome (under linux) and explorer.exe.
The "wheee, the icons expand prettily around the mouse cursor when you hover over them" bar.. for lack of a better description.. (it's the bluish thing at the bottom..) is a strange hybrid between "launch your most popular programs" and a taskbar. It looked amazing. I hated it. It took me a few hours to work out that the tiny arrows meant that an app was running (eh?) and that clicking it wouldn't launch a new instance of it but bring the one which is currently "minimized" to the foreground. To launch an application that wasn't on the taskbar, I had to trawl through the harddisk, although this was significantly easier than trying to find a .exe in /win/Program\ Files/.
I guess this can be partially attributed to being used to the concepts that Microsoft et. al. feed us as a culture.. but as a whole it just felt wrong.
There were some other minor inconsistencies.. what you have to do before you can safely pull out a firewire drive. You drag the drive icon, which is bright yellow, into the dustbin. Probably the most "interesting" metaphor I came across in the system. Sure, the dustbin changes to a classic eject icon if you highlight the HDD, but you don't tend to do that before you drag it. Strange.
The lack of a right mouse button and the placement of the menubar is identical to the way the older Mac OSs worked, and these are a few of the concepts Apple started off with in the first place. Getting used to the former happened very quickly for me, and the latter took a bit longer to sink in. Doing basic stuff like finding out how big a folder is doesn't involve right clicking on it and selecting Properties... (or indeed `cd ~/foo; du -sh`.. in the gui anyway..) and there was no obvious way to find out how many files are in a directory recursively (at least `find |wc -l` works.. thankyou, Apple.) It's almost certainly possible with some combination of Apple and Function keys, or using the Finder menu, but it just didn't seem intuitive to me.
The availability of software, however, is more than impressive. "Classic" provides an environment to run OS9 applications.. much as Win2k and XP provide a "compatibility layer" for Win16 and DOS apps.. only quite different. Microsoft Office is available, and powerful, and damn pretty -- much as Microsoft Explorer has been adequately ported. Apparantly AppleWorks is also a good alternative to Microsoft Office.. but what I saw of it only seemed half-ported from Classic and horribly aliased (not anti-aliased) in comparison to the rest of the system, although living up to that is probably challenging -- the rest of the system is beautiful.
As a relative newbie to Apple's offerings next to the rest of the software world, I was impressed. I want one. I like the look of Aqua (and it helps if what you're staring at all day looks nice..) and the crisp, clean feel to the operating system, even if it seems a little unpolished in some places. That's what OSX.II (or whatever quasi-roman/decimal notation they decide to introduce) is for. Having Unix behind the scenes is a definate plus for me, and, among other things, it improves the multitasking infinately as well as the TCP/IP stack and the system's reliability.
And I'd buy one -- if only for the 18" flatscreen :)
And London is fun. Nice baguetes and croissants. But being stuck in a hall with hundreds of head teachers is just scary.
I had my hands on a dual G4 800mhz box running OSX 10.2.1 for a bit.. messed with a console for a bit, it looks (cli-wise) a lot like a standard POSIX Unix system.. without some of the GNU tools I'm used to. However, the most impressive (and thus spoken of) aspect of the system is definately the gui. It's pretty. Like, really, really "sexy" pretty. Aqua is excellent, and flies quite impressively on the dual cpu, although it was noticably slower than Classic (MacOS 9) on the smaller, older iMacs.
On the other hand, as far as functionality goes -- there are definately caveats, which I noticed, even though (or possibly because) I primarily use Gnome (under linux) and explorer.exe.
The "wheee, the icons expand prettily around the mouse cursor when you hover over them" bar.. for lack of a better description.. (it's the bluish thing at the bottom..) is a strange hybrid between "launch your most popular programs" and a taskbar. It looked amazing. I hated it. It took me a few hours to work out that the tiny arrows meant that an app was running (eh?) and that clicking it wouldn't launch a new instance of it but bring the one which is currently "minimized" to the foreground. To launch an application that wasn't on the taskbar, I had to trawl through the harddisk, although this was significantly easier than trying to find a .exe in /win/Program\ Files/.
I guess this can be partially attributed to being used to the concepts that Microsoft et. al. feed us as a culture.. but as a whole it just felt wrong.
There were some other minor inconsistencies.. what you have to do before you can safely pull out a firewire drive. You drag the drive icon, which is bright yellow, into the dustbin. Probably the most "interesting" metaphor I came across in the system. Sure, the dustbin changes to a classic eject icon if you highlight the HDD, but you don't tend to do that before you drag it. Strange.
The lack of a right mouse button and the placement of the menubar is identical to the way the older Mac OSs worked, and these are a few of the concepts Apple started off with in the first place. Getting used to the former happened very quickly for me, and the latter took a bit longer to sink in. Doing basic stuff like finding out how big a folder is doesn't involve right clicking on it and selecting Properties... (or indeed `cd ~/foo; du -sh`.. in the gui anyway..) and there was no obvious way to find out how many files are in a directory recursively (at least `find |wc -l` works.. thankyou, Apple.) It's almost certainly possible with some combination of Apple and Function keys, or using the Finder menu, but it just didn't seem intuitive to me.
The availability of software, however, is more than impressive. "Classic" provides an environment to run OS9 applications.. much as Win2k and XP provide a "compatibility layer" for Win16 and DOS apps.. only quite different. Microsoft Office is available, and powerful, and damn pretty -- much as Microsoft Explorer has been adequately ported. Apparantly AppleWorks is also a good alternative to Microsoft Office.. but what I saw of it only seemed half-ported from Classic and horribly aliased (not anti-aliased) in comparison to the rest of the system, although living up to that is probably challenging -- the rest of the system is beautiful.
As a relative newbie to Apple's offerings next to the rest of the software world, I was impressed. I want one. I like the look of Aqua (and it helps if what you're staring at all day looks nice..) and the crisp, clean feel to the operating system, even if it seems a little unpolished in some places. That's what OSX.II (or whatever quasi-roman/decimal notation they decide to introduce) is for. Having Unix behind the scenes is a definate plus for me, and, among other things, it improves the multitasking infinately as well as the TCP/IP stack and the system's reliability.
And I'd buy one -- if only for the 18" flatscreen :)
And London is fun. Nice baguetes and croissants. But being stuck in a hall with hundreds of head teachers is just scary.
If I had the money i'd definately invest in an iMac. In the design industry they're preety much the standard.
I love it... but then I've worked on them and been a Mac fan for years. They're alway great for innovative design and to be honest, a damn site more powerful and fun to use than a PC!!
I'm still trying to decide if I should go with a G4 powerbook or a G4 desktop?
I'm still trying to decide if I should go with a G4 powerbook or a G4 desktop?