Mac OSX is not on the list. I know, the article is a joke about how bad Vista is, but I got a chance to play with a newer Apple notebook and was dissappointed. It might be better than Windoze, but it's not as good as KDE and other free software. I did not give it much of a chance, but what I saw was really shocking.
My brother in law bought the laptop because he was fed up with Microsoft. He's a music lawyer and promoter, so you can only imagine what a cesspool of DRM his last computer must have been. The last straw for him was IE 7, which loaded itself without asking him and ruined his system's stability. I got to play with the Mac when he visited for Christmas. The hardware was nice. He got the big one. It's very slim and light but solid feeling for it's size. The screen is bright and beautiful, etch frosted so you don't get glared out. A smaller version would be as nice feeling as my beloved Thinkpad 600 but only time will tell if it's really as rugged. I missed the Thinkpad's three mouse buttons and joystick but was able to navigate well enough. That's something I have not been able to say about a touch pad since 1997. The OS experience was dissappointing. I had high expectations because of Next's excellent GUI specs, Apple's use of GCC and their collaboration with KDE. I was aware that OSX does not have virtual screens, but I've seen how other GUI elements almost make up for it. What really got me was how little of KDE made it through to the non free users out of the box. The real shocker was out of the box begware for a component I've come to expect as embedded. I wanted to share my contact and calendar information with my brother in law, so I set up an account on my homebox for him. When I tried to sftp it with Safari, the Konqueror based browser, I got a pop-up asking me for $25 to buy a program called "Fetch." It was like finding a coin operated sugar dispenser at Galatoires. It was downhill from there. We found and downloaded a GPL'd program called Cyberduck that did the job, clumsily. I did not take the time to see if it would integrate with Safari. Clicking of files would only download them, not launch their associated programs. Holding the metta key might have produced a right click menu, but I did not try that before being frustrated by other behavior. The address book program did not take urls for resources and only sucked in the first virtual card from the file I had downloaded. That was enough for one day, and I did not want to waste more family time overcoming my ignorance of an interface I don't own. To be fair, my brother in law had only been using it for six months but thinks it's great. He is still coming out of the Windoze stupor, and has not have mastered the interface yet. One of the first year Medical Physics students has a similar machine and really knows how to make it sing. The lack of virtual desktops makes it look like a lot of effort, but he gets things done. My brother in law does not miss what he never knew about. He's never going back and that feeling is likely to grow as he learns more. For the money and features, I'm sticking with free software. I've got more than enough computer for a long time, but Debian on a small Mac would might be nice one day. On Tuesday 02 January 2007 17:47, EdsLinuxBox wrote: > http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2074985,00.asp > > > _______________________________________________ > Cajun Clickers Computer Club - http://www.clickers.org > - Online Newsletter: http://lists.clickers.org/newsletter > - Online newsletter & mailing list logon info: > http://www.clickers.org/newsMailing.aspx - Cajun Clickers Calendar: > http://www.clickers.org/events.aspx > _______________________________________________ > LinuxSig mailing list > LinuxSig at lists.clickers.org > http://lists.clickers.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxsig
