[TriLUG] Macs ... I just don't get it

[Bill Vinson]

On Saturday, July 6, 2002, at 10:10 PM, Chris Hedemark wrote:

> I know there are a number of Mac fans here, so I'm hoping they might
> tell me what I'm missing.
>
> I'm in the market for a laptop pretty soon, and will have about $1500 to
> $2000 to spend.  I went to the Apple Store today to check out the
> various portable Mac offerings and left very disappointed.  The fastest
> one I saw was only 800MHz.  I know, I know, 800MHz on PowerPC cannot
> directly compare to 800MHz on Intel.  Or so the argument goes.  I left
> tonight feeling like an 800MHz Duron (which I do have here) is a faster
> processor than an 800MHz PowerPC.  Nothing scientific, just the
> seat-of-the-pants-ometer.

Well as this is somewhat off topic, I will be somewhat brief.  I 
personally have an iBook 600 and a Duron 900 (which has run Windows, 
Linux, and OpenBSD) out of my computer room just to give you a frame of 
reference.  I do not believe that speed is an issue for 99.9% of the 
things I do.  Application opening speed is useless to me as I usually 
keep all my apps that I regularly use open.  Speed of execution is 
subjective, but for the most part, most apps don't really push your 
processor any way except games and 3d which I use a playstation 2 for 
the most part for games :)  In raw power most Intel/AMD processors are 
going to give more bang for the buck to be sure.  However, I get more 
work done in an hour on my iBook than in 3 hours on my Duron 900 
(irregardless of which OS it is running).  This is because Mac OS X just 
works.  Things work the way I would expect and I don't have to push the 
OS out of my way (in the case of Windows) or deal with idiosyncracies 
and horrific UI design (in the case of Windows and some open source 
apps).  Mac OS X gets out of my way and lets me work (Now this is 
subjective as it depends on the work you are doing).  BTW, Linux on my 
iBook is much faster due to the fact that it doesn't have as much 
graphic intensive windowing as Mac OS X.

> The web browser on the first Mac I touched crashed hard bringing up
> http://www.apple.com

Try either a newer IE (gasp!) or Navigator (think galeon for Mac OS X).  
They probably had a screwy setup.  Apps can crash in OS X of course but 
it isn't often...

> The user interface was unintuitive and in some cases pretty inconsistent
> (like the iMac that was running Photoshop and had no clear way out).
> Yes, a familiar UNIX prompt was available if you dug for it and some
> familiar applications were there.  But all in all this did not feel as
> nice as running KDE or Gnome on similarly clocked x86 hardware.

I tend to disagree with the above assessment.  Apple UI while having 
it's faults is the best I have ever seen.  GNOME and KDE are still very 
much a hodge-podge of sometimes messy UI that has no clear overriding 
organization or structure.  Apple tends to make designs that will follow 
with what most people tend to feel is natural (subjective? yes)  GNOME 
2.0 is starting to get good, but KDE still seems to lag somewhat.

BTW, this is not to say I am not impressed with GNOME or KDE.  I am and 
I have high hopes for the future.  But, I don't think the quality of the 
experience is up to the snuff of the likes of Apple, but hey Apple has 
been doing this for QUITE A WHILE.  GNOME and KDE are still growing and 
maturing and obviously keep getting better.

> I'll never get used to the one mouse button thing either.

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).  It really does work and is very easy, but 
I do have a 3 button mouse hooked up right now, so it isn't much of an 
issue.

> What am I missing?  What is the justification for spending twice as much
> on a computer that is half as fast?  I'm very open minded to non-x86
> hardware, as evidenced by all the sparc stuff surrounding me at the
> moment, but I'm not going to buy it just *because* it is not x86.

You are paying for an experience.  I personally will say that the iBook 
is the best machine I have ever owned.  Mac OS X gets better and faster 
and I can run most UN*X apps easily with fink.  However, if the above 
ideas don't impress you then maybe the machines aren't right for you.  
Apple delivered what I hoped Linux would (I still do hope for a great 
desktop from GNOME, KDE, or something else).  Open Source GUIs are still 
growing up and in many cases seem to be moving in the right direction, 
but for now OS X has filled the niche for me...  If I can get the money 
I want to buy a dual GHz system for video editing and graphics work, but 
that is in the future :)

Bill
-----------------------------------
Bill Vinson
http://www.trilug.org/~billv