Howardism: I Made the Switch

I Made the Switch

I did it. I made the switch … I bought a Macintosh today. Specifically, a Power G4 with dual 1Gig. I upgraded the memory and the hard drive (they had some specials), and now I am waiting for it to ship. I suppose I could have gone down to a store to pick it up, but since my basement isn't completely finished yet, I figured that I could wait a few days. :-)

Why did a die-hard Linux fan make a switch? Well, OS X was a compeling case … it runs BSD (which I like plenty fine), and I won't have to switch to Windows in order to edit my home videos. Point blank, I would probably stay with Linux except for the video editing. But the clincher was the Fink Project to port all my favorite software over to run natively on the Mac.

So, I will probably be making more posts on my response to making this transition … Can I get used to that bulbous Aqua theme? Can I get used to the menus at the top of the screen? (I suppose it is more efficient in screen-estate) … How quickly can I get rid of IE and replace it with Mozilla?

Update 1

Well, like many others, I am just in love with this new Mac. The bulbous Aqua interface is actually very clean and nice looking. I'm even getting used to the menus at the top of the screen. And now that I've seen all that this "Dock" can do, I really like it.

The hardware is very well-thought out. For instance, I needed to add some memory, and grabbed my screw drivers and then realized that there was a latch. Opening the latch brought the computer out of the box, so that instead of trying to fit the card while working inside this "computer bucket," the motherboard was just there, making installation trivial.

The software programs are also well thought out. I put in a favorite CD, and this music player popped up and started playing. I noticed a little "Import" button, and clicking on this ripped the CD and stored it as MP3 files on my harddrive … while playing still playing the CD. That was just too easy.

And Unix? Lovely. I found the "Terminal" program and thought I would shoot for the stars, I typed: emacs … Sure enough, they included Emacs. I'm in love now! I don't care whether you are a geek or not, this is a nice machine.

Update 2

I did it again… I upgraded to a MacPro, and I feel like making ape noises ala Tim Allen. This puppy screams. The application that I live in every day is Eclipse and sometimes, just for fun, I'll restart it just because it starts up so fast on my Mac. This is never something I would do on my Windows box at the office, because it literally takes 5 minutes to start.

Intel obviously tuned these Xeon chips for Apple, and Apple in turn, tuned their OS to work well on the chips… and I wouldn't be surprised if they've been tuning their Java implementation, because every Java app I've run, executes so fast.

Even though I'm quite the geek, I only upgrade my home system once every 4 to 5 years, so I wanted to try to get something that doesn't make that last year or so painful. And since I'm now such a Mac fan, when I upgraded this time, I really pimped out this ride. I even picked up one of their 23" monitors.

Ahwooo! Ahwoo!

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	My Mac Depends on Perl?! 4 out of 5 Geeks Prefer Macs for their Patients Relieving Eye Strain through Better Scripting Cool Software for Mac OS X I Found an Easter Egg Protecting your Software Investment Apache on Mac OS X Mac OS X Tweaks Installing SSH Public Keys Read other entries in Macintosh...	Comment I whole-heartedly agree! I'm trying to convince my wife now that I need another! —wjklos I Made the Switch I did it. I made the switch … I bought a Macintosh today. Specifically, a Power G4 with dual 1Gig. I upgraded the memory and the hard drive (they had some specials), and now I am waiting for it to ship. I suppose I could have gone down to a store to pick it up, but since my basement isn't completely finished yet, I figured that I could wait a few days. Why did a die-hard Linux fan make a switch? Well, OS X was a compeling case … it runs BSD (which I like plenty fine), and I won't have to switch to Windows in order to edit my home videos. Point blank, I would probably stay with Linux except for the video editing. But the clincher was the Fink Project to port all my favorite software over to run natively on the Mac. So, I will probably be making more posts on my response to making this transition … Can I get used to that bulbous Aqua theme? Can I get used to the menus at the top of the screen? (I suppose it is more efficient in screen-estate) … How quickly can I get rid of IE and replace it with Mozilla? Update 1 Well, like many others, I am just in love with this new Mac. The bulbous Aqua interface is actually very clean and nice looking. I'm even getting used to the menus at the top of the screen. And now that I've seen all that this "Dock" can do, I really like it. The hardware is very well-thought out. For instance, I needed to add some memory, and grabbed my screw drivers and then realized that there was a latch. Opening the latch brought the computer out of the box, so that instead of trying to fit the card while working inside this "computer bucket," the motherboard was just there, making installation trivial. The software programs are also well thought out. I put in a favorite CD, and this music player popped up and started playing. I noticed a little "Import" button, and clicking on this ripped the CD and stored it as MP3 files on my harddrive … while playing still playing the CD. That was just too easy. And Unix? Lovely. I found the "Terminal" program and thought I would shoot for the stars, I typed: `emacs` … Sure enough, they included Emacs. I'm in love now! I don't care whether you are a geek or not, this is a nice machine. Update 2 I did it again… I upgraded to a MacPro, and I feel like making ape noises ala Tim Allen. This puppy screams. The application that I live in every day is Eclipse and sometimes, just for fun, I'll restart it just because it starts up so fast on my Mac. This is never something I would do on my Windows box at the office, because it literally takes 5 minutes to start. Intel obviously tuned these Xeon chips for Apple, and Apple in turn, tuned their OS to work well on the chips… and I wouldn't be surprised if they've been tuning their Java implementation, because every Java app I've run, executes so fast. Even though I'm quite the geek, I only upgrade my home system once every 4 to 5 years, so I wanted to try to get something that doesn't make that last year or so painful. And since I'm now such a Mac fan, when I upgraded this time, I really pimped out this ride. I even picked up one of their 23" monitors. Ahwooo! Ahwoo! Tell others about this article:
	2014, Howard Abrams Some rights reserved	Originally written on 11 January 2002. Updated on 8 February 2014.