mac envy

I take computer science courses in my university, and I bring my mbp to class instead of using the school computers (because they all run windows, which I would refer not to use). My computer science professor gave a small talk on the advantages of Unix and used my computer as en example. The whole class crowded around my mac and I was shocked how misinformed all these people were. I let everyone mess around with it after class and they were all impressed. Who knows, maybe we will have some converts.

Envy is a sin

It's the UNIX framework that first interested me in trying a Mac out. I was playing around with Linux and hated it's wireless capabilities (Or lack of. It never would work right with my Thinkpad) and was looking at different distributions to see if any of them had better support. I came upon a site talking about the Unix framework of OS X and realized that it already was what Linux is trying to be. Stable, supported and powerfull, all with a GUI that blows any of the linux distributions out of the water.

It seems that there are plenty of OSX-Windows comparisons out there but rarely any OSX-Linux(UNIX) comparisons.

MikeM

as a student learning programming on a Unix system while everyone else uses windows, I can clearly see the advantage of Unix. I think that people are finally starting to understand how much better Unix is over Windows, and with time Unix companies like Apple will experience equal to greater market share than companies like Microsoft.

I'm lucky, because I work in the deparment where a lot of people use Macs.
But when my husband told at work we got one, he was also surprized at the level of ignorance. some people don't even know what it is.
Some of my friends gave me wait-till-the-honeymoon-is-over looks. Whatever...

I'm a UNIX guy too, and before the Mac my platform of choice was Red Hat. However after a while I

*) Got sick of tinkering with my computer, and building them in the first place

*) Got tired of the constant upgrades required for this security and that new version, oh, and if you want to use the latest chat client you need to upgrade you're whole Gnome environment to something that worked completely different, and not the way you like it.

*) Dinking around with X11. It was fine back when it was the only game in town (heck, I worked with X10 back in the beginning) but eleventy billion different video cards/monitors/GPU got old.

*) Started to get sick of all the different distros, and people telling me to 'use SuSE, no use Ubuntu, no use Debian if you're a real UNIX guy.'

*) Was sick of the Hades of RPM dependencies

*) Tired of enduring he purgatory of apt-get. Yeah, its supposedly easy, but I'd try to use something I'd expect to be included with the install, only to be told "package XYZZY is a part of the PLUGH package, to get this package use 'sudo apt-get PLUGH' in a terminal window" then wait for apt-get to do it's thing.

*) Fed up using Codeweavers Crossover Office to keep up with running necessary Windows apps on my choice of platform at the time. Yeah, it worked, but never 100%.

*) Noted that Mr. Jobs offered an entry level "get 'em to switch on the cheap" Mac in the form of the Mac Mini, so I got one and decided to embark on the Great Mac Experiment of 2005

The experiment was a resounding success. Look under my avatar and you'll see what I'm now posting this on. My wife has an identical one with one less gig of RAM and is black.

I still use Linux and Windows, but it is now firmly in the "work" category. If I'm using a Linux box, whether the one at my desk running Ubuntu, or one of our servers I'm on the clock and getting paid for it.

Oh, and yes, I knew Mac OS X is really a UNIX (and a real one at that, not a clone with all the Gnu stuff thrown in) quite awhile before the switch. Macs were just too expensive at the time for me to consider it then.

I get a big kick out of the windows hardcores that snicker when I pull out my mbp in class, then they slowly stop snickering
and after a few days/weeks i get a, you like that thing?
then a, can I try it out?
wow...
oh you have office/other programs people didnt think you could get on macs,
wow its fast...
wow it plays movies that well?
your macs battery is bearly depleating...

I love the change, the snicker, to an envys gaze as there pos dell causes them to take notes on a peace of paper...

walkerj said:

*) Dinking around with X11. It was fine back when it was the only game in town (heck, I worked with X10 back in the beginning) but eleventy billion different video cards/monitors/GPU got old.

Click to expand...

Wow, I have worked with X11 for a long time and I did not know that X10 existed.

rman said:

Wow, I have worked with X11 for a long time and I did not know that X10 existed.

Click to expand...

It ran on (among others) Sun Microsystems 3/50's, a Motorola 68000 processor based work station with a monochrome monitor, keyboard w/optical mouse (you had to use a special grid mousepad) and some ridiculously (for today) small amount of RAM. I don't even remember, I think it was lucky if you got one with 4 meg. Eighty meg drive in an external SCSI cabinet. Qic 150 tape drives. Ran SunOS 3, a little later (slowly) SunOS 4. Pre-Solaris. BSD based.

You could either run X10 or SunTools. X11 had been released but was slow on that hardware so we would eschew it in favor of the X10/SunTools.

My first Real Job, back when you would buy a Mac 128K for about five grand, and it came with a single floppy (albeit a 3.5" one) that held a whopping 800K or so.

Ah, those were the days. I'd be listening to The Smiths or Siouxsie & the Banshees on my boombox. Yep, I'm old.