life = hell => mac
Since God is intent on fucking up my life, I’ve decided to give him a hand - I’m going to fuck up my finances.
I will be buying a 12″ Apple notebook, specifically the iBook. Apple Malaysia is running a great promotion on the iBooks until the end of the month (see here). The 12″ G4 iBook (with built-in 802.11g) is now retailing at MYR3999 and it now comes with a free Airport Express Base Station! It’s a fabulous deal considering that the Airport Express Base Station would normally set you back by about MYR600. You can even pay with a 12-month 0% installment payment plan, if you have the appropriate credit card, although the retailers all insist on a surcharge of betwen 2-4% for this.
Now… I come from an almost strictly Windows background. I’ve never used a Mac before, unless you count the Apple computer of the late 1980s. While I understand that at the very abstract level both operating systems do essentially the same things and have theoretical similarities, I’m quite sure that at the practical level, there are significant differences in how one uses the machines.
Therefore, I would appreciate any hints/guides/pointers that anyone can give me on how a Mac OS X 10.3 works, what practical differences there are between the Mac OS X 10.3 and Windows XP, what if anything I need to look out for, what I need to bear in mind, what useful/fun applications I would want to install, how to “tweak” the machine etc. Basically, any advice that will ease my learning curve and adoption of the Mac would be most welcome. For instance, I learnt yesterday that the Mac OS X only supports FAT32 on its hard-drives and not NTFS. Therefore if I am to use the same external HDDs on both my Windows XP and Mac OS machines, I will need to ensure that the HDDs are formatted in FAT32. About.com has a number of links to some very useful and enlightening information for the novice.
Please spare me the polemics (like the which is better argument) and any condescending remarks. Down to earth, practical advice is all I need, or want.
Thank you.
Posted on December 16th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: Uncategorized
i saw promotion is running for the apple store in 1-Utama. i guess it is different from this macasia rite. i think they have better offer for this xmas month promotion. you might want to check it out.
brucetct: the promotions are standard at all Apple stores. as with many consumer products, prices are “regulated” country-wide by the distributors to prevent retailers from under-cutting each other and killing themselves in the process. furthermore, if you delved into the MacAsia site, you’ll notice that the 1-Utama store is a branch of this company - they also have stores in Great Eastern Mall and Bangsar Village.
Something that helped me with the transition from windows to OSX, the 2 button mouse.
I hated the fact that the apple mouse(though beautiful) did not have a scroll wheel or the right button to shortcuts.
I am happy with the mac. I keep wondering why I did not use it before.
For practical uses, there is essentially not much difference between windowsXP and the mac OS. But we all know you’re not practical…
I think some of the apple stores do run workshops - there’s one in GE Mall. You also get free wireless there (at least that’s what I was told).
As Najah said, Windows XP and Mac OSX are very similar. I made the transition a couple of years ago, and it’s been completely painless. Bear in mind that Mac is designed to be very user friendly (everything’s point/click/drag) so, as a Windows user moving into Mac, you’re going to have less trouble than someone moving in the other direction.
As for hardware issues… I don’t know anything about stuff like partitioning and FAT32 or NTFS. But I have both an iMac and a Powerbook and have never needed to know anything beyond the basics. Of course, don’t let that stop you
Anuar: Pressing CTRL while clicking the mouse brings up several options, but you’re right - it’s a lot easier to replace it. But it kinda spoils the look though.
Speaking as one who is straddling both camps…
Windows.
For given $$$ you get more bang for buck. Whatever is said about microsoft, they are quite practical, adopting or imitating what is useful, and to some degree improving it. If you’ve used the Mac OSX aqua GUI and compared it to Windows XP as it stands, IMO there is no competition. Nothing left to be said about windoze. Caveat emptor - and everyone knows its strengths and weaknesses. It’s a shitty OS in terms of idiosyncracies and less stable than OS X, but the GUI’s not bad, and by and large I think PIV’s have the edge over G4’s in terms of integer performance and memory bandwidth. G5’s are a slightly different story, and while I have no feel for them the general feeling from the more objective crowd is that a 1.6 G5 roughly equals a 2.6 - 2.8 Ghz P4 (see anandtech). P4’s are probably easier to program as well.
Macs - the negative:
I ABHOR the mac UI. I think I have stated it before.
1. WHY the @#!@$@#% #@ has apple stayed with single button mice and trackpad (OS X is actually compatible with 2 button - and probably 3 button mice given its BSD ancestry - but most mac apps make a dogs dinner out of implementing it).
2. For FLIP’s sake, this is the 21st century, get with it, put the menubars in the windows where they belong NOT on the flipping top of the screen.
3. Mac OSX is a memory hog. 256Megs (standard on ibooks) is NOT enough. Personally I would recommend 1/2 gig AT LEAST from personal experience.
4. I’ve found that MacOS X tends to try and dumb a lot of things down. I LIKE looking at task manager to see what went down and what’s still running. You got to go to bash to do this on OSX.
5. A lot of software I use on the PC is not up to par on the mac. For example SurfOffline… you got to go use curl which is no bother really (it’s free too since it comes with the BSD) but surfoffline is soo much easier to use at least till I get a GUI front end written for curl (another thing on my ‘list of things to do’).
6. IE is crap on the mac (well, it’s not fantastic on the PC either but when you’ve run the mac one you’ll crawl back to the PC IE and kiss its feet)
7. The Mac Finder is …. shocking. Shockingly bad.
8. There is no nice readalbe bar which displays all your open windows and aps ie the bar at the bottom of the screen ala xp/2000/nt. You got that nextstep thingy instead which isn’t bad as an ap launcher but as a device to manage where your windows are… it’s shocking. Plus again, that blasted menu bar at the top of the screen - it really disorientates you. Even openstep or nextstep was better.
9. the FSB’s 133 Mhz. I don’t know if it’s the layers upon layers on top of BSD or this or bad coding that makes almost all browsers crawl on the mac. Safari included. My PIII 700 makes a dog’s dinner of a PowerPC 74xx series running at 1.33 Ghz in an ibook.
10. OS X is SLOWER than BeOS. Bastards at apple should have given BeOS a decent chance. For most users, BeOS is more than sufficient.
11. Lack of software… well kind of… not really if you’re a unix head. But you know what I mean. The ability to run openoffice in X cannot be understated, however and there’s a java version as well. and it’s all free.
To be honest, people say OS X is responsive etc.. Personally I’ve found 2000 more responsive on my PIII 700 than a 1.33 Ghz G4. I think it’s probalby because OS X has too many tasks running in the back ground though I could be wrong. To be fair OSX is more stable.
In favour:
1. The build quality is EXCELLENT. I have NEVER come across better built notebooks.
2. Because the PowerPC does not have to deal with a lot of baggage Pentiums have to, it has less transistors, hence power consumption is less. Power dissipation in terms of heat is also considerably less. I think the G4 dissipates less heat than my PIII 700. Burnt bollocks aren’t funny.
3. G4 Risc Processor again. Looks fun to program. (But it’s got a shitty lame FSB and not enough cache) Should really have a low power G5 in it but what the heck….
3. Hey, OS X is unix. Along side a modern-ish risc processor this are the MAIN TWO reasons I would buy a mac. It’s bloody stable. Comes with everything built in. All manner of the usual UNIX niceties built in. Whether or not they’ve cobbled on too much onto it is a big question, but it’s tastefully very tastefull done. Best UNIX in the world.
4. Few or no viruses.
5. Java runs really well.
6. Nice optical drive mechanism (no moving external bits). WARNING DO NOT Stick in Mini CD’s.
7. Languages integrate VERY VERY well. I can write in Appleworks in jianbizi. This may be a VERY important factor in some peoples choice. It’s just so easy to do this on a mac.
8. Free software… Gajillions of titles. Unix of course. YOu got to build it yourself.
In summary: Rob’s opinion: If you’re a hacker and want something different, macs are great because of the EXCELLENT underlying unix and risc processor (despite it being slightly crippled).
Be prepared to put up with its idiosyncratic UI, IMO it’s just not up to the mark compared to Windows. I prefer windows UI hands down.
If you like and can’t bear to live without Windoze software, don’t get a mac. If you’re a gamer don’t get a mac. You’ll probably curse a lot.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, the ibook 12 inch current edition is based upon a 1.2 Ghz G4 and has airport built in. Make sure you are getting this if you buy.
Some people are having ‘discounts’ but what they are actually doing is offloading their old dstock of 1.0 Ghz G4’s which is not a bad machine really if they give you a good price. No airport built in.
What may be a good deal is if you get a 1.0 14inch… at a good price - the screen is better at the cost of a few hundred extra grams to lug around. Again the older 14 inches have no airport.
One other thing: the 12 inches come with 30 gigs HD (at least in this country). With the whole load of OS X and the usual suspects you’ll probably have about 22 gigs free space. If you’ve tons of MP3’s you’ll need to think of more….
FAT32 is extremely inefficient in dealing with large volumes (ie into the tens of gigabytes). If all your files are large, this may not affect you that much.
And I’ll say this again. I love using 2 button mice, macintosh apps just aren’t as well written to take advantage of ‘right clicks’, even if you plug your own proper mouse in, you find you’re going back to the menus which are STUPIDLY put at the top of the screen another irritating thing. Don’t underestimate how irritating this can be till you use one for a long time.
FOR GOOD MEASURE, I’ll say this yet again. I love using 2 button mice, macintosh apps just aren’t as well written to take advantage of ‘right clicks’, even if you plug your own proper mouse in, you find you’re going back to the menus which are STUPIDLY put at the top of the screen another irritating thing. Don’t underestimate how irritating this can be till you use one for a long time.
If you’re like me you’ll probably go and buy one anyways… Congratulations (I had good reason, a tax break to take advantage of but that’s an aside).
Take it from me, you will need more than 256 megs of ram. Take it from me too, the apple guy will charge you a bomb for ‘APPLE’ ram. Find Apple compatible 3rd party ram PC2100 DDR 266 SODIMMs (ie crucial on the web) and get it cheaper that way.
You only have one SODIMM slot. Get the biggest value for money SODIMM. half a gig seems to be about the sweet spot.
Oh, and you will probably want this: OS X the missing manual
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596006152/102-2751009-3762563?v=glance
BTW, allegedly OS X can read NTFS but cannot write to NTFS volumes, so you may not need to reformat your NTFS external drives, unless you want to write to them as well.
I know OS X machines can do firewire transfers amongst themselves (ie the way we used to hook PC’s up years ago via serial/parallel cable ala laplink) but I don’t know will it do windoze/OSX firewire. The other option is wifi. Put both machines on the LAN, OS X has smb in it somewhere - it well may be transparent and easy, I got to look this up as I’ve never done this. Another solution could be to get a 512mb or 1 gig memory key and use this to transfer files. These are usually FAT32. Or DVD-RW’s.
And I don’t know how easy it is to get software the PC way (another big plus for windoze) but if you can’t get MS-Officez for the Mac thru’ the usual suspects you can try NeoOffice/J. It’s FREE. Basically OpenOffice in Java (save you messing with ‘make’ing open office for X), all you do is download and run. It’s alpha at this stage and is in java so there are speed and stability issues - mainly speed I would think. It opens word docs from the PC with no hassle. I’ve yet to test drive the ppt + excel equivalent.
http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php
If you like visual basic there’s real basic. Can’t say anything more - never tried it.
http://www.realsoftware.com/
The truth is I use the machine to mess with unix and PPC.
Most of my essential day to day computer tasks (ie wordprocessing, spreadsheets, internet browsing, mail etc) on the PC - because it’s just easier for me, if you can put up with all the BS using a windoze PC is all about. It’s unlikely that I will change. There is just much better commercial software available for it, and a lot more too.
For example, one useful piece of kit I have for windoze that just doesn’t exist on OS X is mind manager from mindjet. (http://www.mindjet.com)
Palm stuff - BE WARNED!!! I run Bonsai Outliner on my tungsten
http://www.natara.com/Bonsai/index.cfm
Have a look at the requirements for the desktop conduit. See OS X mentioned anywhere?
http://www.natara.com/Bonsai/Requirements.cfm
Other things like NS-Basic, POSE etc…
And don’t even think of asking me to get virtualPC - OS X is slow enough as it is, let alone chancing it to emulate windoze.
Buy a mac for what it is, Jikon, but be aware of its touchy feely limitations - if you limit yourself to what’s available for it at the very high level (ie the GUI Aqua Carbon and Cocoa apps as they stand now) you may find yourself very frustrated at the lack of software… And if you’re like me, the horrible UI.
BUT never forgetunderneath it lies an industrial strength unix - if you want to get your hands dirty, it is INDEED a great machine indeed to get your hands dirty with.
okay got to get to work. will shut up now.
OMG! Rob!
You really went to town on that one!
In reply:
(1) Yes, the iBook I want to get will come with 802.11g (Airport Express) built-in. And yes, it only comes with 30GB HDD. And this is the 1.2GHz G4 processor. I believe the specs are standard throughout the world for the Apple products.
(2) I don’t want anything bigger than 12″. That’s big enough, thank you. For my small frame, I can’t handle anything bigger. It’ll hurt far too much… oo..er… what are we talking about now…??!!
(3) I have plenty of spare two-button mouse with scroll wheel - apparently these work. So good.
(4) Yes, you can find software for Mac at the usual suspected places. All very reliable, although admittedly the range isn’t very wide, but that’s not the “distributors” fault.
(5) Yes, I will go buy one anyway. The decision is the result of an “if… then” argument. I’m going to “christen” the iBook “Anu Mac”.
Now QUESTION: Thanks for the tip on third party RAM. Aside from Crucial, can I also use Kingston or Corsair? I’m not sure what I will find in the Malaysian market…
Also, from what I could find on the internet, I gather that the 1.2 GHz G4 would perform “similarly” with a 1.5/1.6 GHz Pentium M… is that not so? If it is true, then the iBook would do no worse/better than my Dell.
Finally, can we “upgrade” the HDD ourselves? Is this a “user upgradeable” component? How easy is it to do?
Have you thought of asking Dell Customer Support for a discount on your apple purchase? *grin*
Tips:
1. Bring along favourite 3 button+scroller USB mouse. Better still get a nice sexy one to match the mac. Do not even TRY the single button apple mouse. Even if it’s the sexy transparent one with no button but the whole mouse is pressed down.
2. Download Firefox + Thunderbird immediately. Don’t even get started with IE Mac. You’ll probably want Yahoo Messenger too. I’m not sure if you get MS-Office for the Mac but grab openoffice anyway. Since you’re starting fresh, and the UI of the MS-Mac stuff is not exactly the same (and neither are the file formats), you might as well SWITCH.
3. Do some research on treo + mac. There was some talk about palm dropping mac support or something like that. There are third party solutions, but do some research.
4. Plan to junk the dell soon…
btw: If you end up with an extra airport express you want to get rid off …
One of the things I love best about the OSX is the F9, F10 and F11 keys. Sweet.
james: ooo… what do they do?!?
dotsha:
(1) noted
(2) hmm…we’ll see.. what’s wrong with safari?
(3) + (4) doesn’t really matter. don’t plan to abandon Windows. The Dell Inspiron 700m will still be the primary machine for the “stuff that matter”, at least for quite a long while yet. I am more familiar with the OS and I can confidently manage it - don’t need to port all my data over to something I don’t quite know and risk losing everything accidentally… BTW, must find similarly appropriate name for the Dell…
all that techie talk, am a bit lost.
“BTW, must find similarly appropriate name for the Dell…”?
How about Hell with Dell, or in short Helly Delly?
jim: that IS a GOOD one! Helly Delly it is!
Yes Jikon I’ve gone out to town
Call me a fanatic, yes, but NEVER EVER call me a mac fanatic or evangelist 
I’ve met too many, they really get my gall up. I have a mac yes, but I am well aware of what I have. A computer not a jewelled idol that cannot be spoken ill of. I am a fanatic who hates mac fanatics 
Jikon, safari is slightly faster than IE Mac but seriously, the netscape type browsers IMO are better (ie firefox,camino etc)…
One thing I can’t stand about mac browsers is the missing drop down selections for prev visited links around the text field where you input your URL.
A G4 may be MUCH faster than a Pentium M in SIMD (it’s got a way better set up) or FPU performance, but remember SIMD is very seldom used (well okay, some pentium compilers cheat with FP by using the faster SIMD SSE instructions instead of the legacy x87 FPU type instructions).
But remember this a G4 has a 133 Mhz FSB and small cache 256, and the Pentium M has a 400Mhz FSB and 2 Mbytes of high speed on chip cache(dothan anyways)
It would depend on what code you’re running ultimately.
Although I have a nasty feeling that the pentium M’s will trash a status quo G4/ibook given the lack of bandwidth in most of its innards in most real world tests (those involving SIMD notwithstanding)…
rob: hmm… apparently this iBook has 512K L2 cache at 1.2GHz. And yes, my Dell has a dothan processor, so 2MB L2 at 400 MHz. so… what does this mean? what does this mean????
not that i really care. i just want it. the jewel looking white tablet is so very attractive and rather seasonal at the moment.
I stand corrected. 512k it is.
Firstly size is one thing. with 2 megs of on chip cache the dothan can afford to have more data and program code close to it, running close to 1.x whatever Ghz it runs at.
So it potentially could have a lot more of the raw data you’re reading off a DVD you’re ripping in that fast area of ram. I have to double check this - but I believe cache issues with most pentiums are you get a bit of a penalty if your code is anywhere near read/write data that is cache (as code just needs to be cached to be read). Code which separates read/write data from actual code itself is said to benefit most.
I have yet to read more about the caching on a G4. it may be more efficient with write/thru’ caching but I think 512 may not be enough given a measly 133 Mhz FSB - ie bandwidth to main ram The other thing to note is that x86/Pentium instructions are variable length, which are anything from a byte to several. G4 instructions like most risc instructions are 32 bits (4 bytes) fixed. You also need 3 or 4 instructions to load a 32 bit word into a register with G4 (that’s 12-16 bytes), with the pipe line optimally fed that could take about a cycle (ideally depending on ram speed and whether it’s in the cache). A similar instruction on the P4 is only about 5-6 bytes I think… again, pipeline well fed should take about a cycle to execute..
The G4 pipeline is shorter I believe 1/3 shorter than a P4, so while that limits how fast you can ramp it up, it also limits the ‘badness’ of flushing the pipleline during stalls. So P4 code really has to be written well on the other hand, ie try and avoid branches etc…
What I am saying is that properly written G4 code is going to be bigger than properly written P4 code probably by a factor of 2, and that effectively means for the same result assuming similar cache efficiency you probably need a bigger cache.
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