My experiences with a Mac:
First, I have two of them.
Dec. 2006 I bought a MacPro 3gh, 2gb ram, 500gb hard drive. 23" Apple
Cinema Display. One awesome machine. Not cheap: $5K+.
June 2007 I bought a Macbook "white" for the house with Airport Express (a
wireless hub). Again, it's awesome. My son loves it, and he has pretty
much claimed it. I discourage him from going to MySpace, Facebook or any
other site a teenager might happen across, with the PC, as I've already
spent $300+ this year on virus, malware, and browser helper object removal.
However, on the Mac - it's not an issue. (BTW, I ended up getting a 30GB
iPod Video for $50 in the deal after the $199 rebate "educator" offer).
On the Macbook, I installed Bootcamp and then Win XP Pro + Office
Professional, so it's my "grab it and go, cross platform development
machine", like when I go to the in-laws to visit - I find a corner and enjoy
myself thoroughly. (Ticks my wife off sometimes though)
My wife works for the local school district, and last year got an offer to
buy Win XP Pro for something ridiculous like $12. I hopped on that, not
knowing what for, and also bought Office Pro, Frontpage and Visio. I think
the total bill was $28. For the Bootcamp install - it was perfect. When
you boot Windows - it's pretty much.... Windows! Since the Mac keyboard is
a bit different, there are a few shortcut keys that are changed. That's
about it though in the differences department.
I thought I would want to use Microsoft Office for the Mac when I bought the
MacPro. (It comes with a 30 day trial.) I opened it once to see what it
looked like - and I've never gone into it again.
My biggest concern in going to the Mac was compatibility with "the rest of
the world". Not.
Now, do people still send me Word docs and Powerpoint presentations? Sure.
And I forward them to my PC. No biggy. Would I rather have a PDF? Sure.
After being on the PC for so long, the Mac does take some getting used to,
of course. The keyboard shortcuts are a bit different, and that frustrated
me at first. But, they are there. Some don't make sense, like having to
hit 3 keys instead of 2 for common tasks. Some are better.
The internet browser that comes with a Mac is called Safari. It works
pretty good. I could download Firefox, but find Safari sufficient. (Plus,
I do cross platform development that requires Safari on the Mac).
Mail on the Mac is "ok". Outlook is more robust. For personal use, Mail on
the Mac is fine.
I run OS X (pronounced OS Ten), also called Tiger. Leopard, the next
operating system, is coming out soon. If you get a Tiger machine, and want
to upgrade to Leopard later, I think it will cost $129 (US) or round abouts.
If you have any experience with Unix, you'll like the Mac. If you don't
like I didn't, it's a great way to learn line commands, the BASH or tsch
(sp?) shells and such.
On Windows, you have Windows Explorer. On a Mac, it's called Finder. I
like them both, but I like Finder better.
Mac comes with a lot of the opensource software already installed - Apache
Web server, Ruby, Perl, Python (ruby, perl & python are scripting
languages).
Also, with a Mac - you get 2 CDs. One is the operating system, and the
second contains an Apple product called XCode. XCode is an IDE ("the" IDE)
for developing software on a Mac. It comes with pretty much EVERYTHING you
need for developing on the Mac - a C/C++ compiler, Java SDK, Carbon & Cocoa
(two Apple frameworks for developing GUI apps), Objective C (the language of
choice for developing with Cocoa), and probably a litany of others.
The laptop won't come with a Mouse. I installed a wireless 3-button optical
USB mouse on mine. The desktops come with what's called a Mighty Mouse. I
haven't used it, as I use a 3-button/wheeled mouse that I already had.
I would recommend them to anyone. There are people that have had issues,
but I haven't.
Todd
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Z Z
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2007 8:27 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Suggestions for New Laptop.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I am very, very interested in the Mac, but I've
never used one B4. How easy/hard is it to set up?. How does it work the M$
applications? Tell me more.
Thanks
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