I Want a Mac
Last December, I upgraded my Mother's iMac to have a bunch more RAM, and MacOS X. I've been spending an unusual amount of time in Colorado of late, and I've gotten an opportunity to get to know MacOS X to a certain degree.
It is awesome. Were I in any position to purchase a new computer, I would without doubt buy a Mac. I have all my UNIX based favorites, and a graphical environment that does not suck, and which is well integrated. It is hardly perfect, but Apple has done an amazing job of putting together a beautiful chimera. They've also resurrected an old 400 MHz iMac, which is not a particularly fast or fancy machine, and made it not just useful, but snappy. I can run iTunes, the DVD player, numerous apps, and it all just works without a hitch. By comparison, the Win98 laptop with the 700 MHz processor feels like it's mired in mud half the time, and we won't discuss A/V performance.
This is the way computing should be: a pretty, integrated environment, with all the knobs and buttons underneath the hood. I can have iJournal (which I'm using to edit this post, and which is a pretty decent tool, to the point of automagically querying iTunes for what's on) or I can use Charm, which is hard core Command Line. All the tools are available, they all seem to work, and the mortar between the bricks isn't a complete nightmare.
Bravo Apple.
By the way, for anyone who owns a Mac but for whom MacOS X is just too slow, get more memory. Get a lot of memory, half a gig of RAM at the least. Crucial sells iMac memory for less than $70 for a 512 mb DIMM, and I haven't seen this iMac swap since I installed it.
It is awesome. Were I in any position to purchase a new computer, I would without doubt buy a Mac. I have all my UNIX based favorites, and a graphical environment that does not suck, and which is well integrated. It is hardly perfect, but Apple has done an amazing job of putting together a beautiful chimera. They've also resurrected an old 400 MHz iMac, which is not a particularly fast or fancy machine, and made it not just useful, but snappy. I can run iTunes, the DVD player, numerous apps, and it all just works without a hitch. By comparison, the Win98 laptop with the 700 MHz processor feels like it's mired in mud half the time, and we won't discuss A/V performance.
This is the way computing should be: a pretty, integrated environment, with all the knobs and buttons underneath the hood. I can have iJournal (which I'm using to edit this post, and which is a pretty decent tool, to the point of automagically querying iTunes for what's on) or I can use Charm, which is hard core Command Line. All the tools are available, they all seem to work, and the mortar between the bricks isn't a complete nightmare.
Bravo Apple.
By the way, for anyone who owns a Mac but for whom MacOS X is just too slow, get more memory. Get a lot of memory, half a gig of RAM at the least. Crucial sells iMac memory for less than $70 for a 512 mb DIMM, and I haven't seen this iMac swap since I installed it.