Maybe you guys can help me resolve a couple of things.
* Why does anybody still care what Tom DeLay thinks? Of course he will say outrageous crap. He’s a disgraced, toxic bombast with less personal credibility than most inanimate objects. He ran the Congress into the ground and personally contributed as much as anybody to losing the GOP majority. The only way he will see his name in a headline that doesn’t include the word ‘trial’ is if he says something outrageous. He’s a troll, I say ignore him.
* Blogger’s privilege – I just invested in a Mac laptop to replace the crash-prone Compaq POS desktop that has tormented me for far too long. Our site’s tracking info tells me that 13% of you come via Mac OSX so the odds are pretty good that many of you have useful knowledge about cool widgets, blogging on Mac, Windows on boot camp, whether airlines have enough seats with power outlets to make that adapter thing useful etc. Use this space to share any tips, anecdotes, scoldings for choosing the wrong computer and whatever comes to mind.
* Treat this as an open thread.
Zombie Santa Claus
He’s a valuable resource for spoofing, though. Also, he probably envisions himself as a martyr for future generations of batshit-insane wingnut assholes. 30 years from now, unbelievably stupid jackass conservative morons will speak of Tom DeLay as if he were Barry Goldwater- conservatives’ reputations are always salvaged/whitewashed to a certain extent by history, so he may be onto something there. (If you don’t believe me- everyone though Goldwater was nuts in 1964, and everyone thought Nixon was Hitler II in 1974. Both those guys get treated as if they were rational centrists, nowadays.)
Zombie Santa Claus
everyone thought. “T” is for trouble, which is what comes of thinking.
Don
Boot Camp schmootcamp, Parallels is where it’s at.
Dave
Way to go on the Mac purchase Tim. A few suggestions.
Widgets here
Boot Camp is cool, but Parallels Desktop lets you run Windows apps without rebooting.
I’d recommend Firefox over Safari for the add ons, etc. The rest of the built in apps are pretty good. Mail, iChat, etc. I’d look into mac.com. The integration into the OS is pretty amazing. Having access to a remote volume in the finder is pretty nifty. It’s a bit spendy, but I couldn’t live without it.
If you’re into geeking out on Open Source software: Fink
There’s a few random things, what else do you want to know.
Dreggas
Comedic Value.
Undeniable Liberal
Chimpy got hisself A Purple Heart!!
Bubblegum Tate
Well, compared to the wingnut assholes currently running the executive branch, those guys look a lot more centrist than they did at the time.
Phil
Get Quicksilver.
Dreggas
See there’s a reason Crapaq’s are so cheap…it’s because they’re cheap. Same goes for most HP desktops these days. I myself have an E-Machines that has lasted me around 4-5 years, been through several upgrades with regards to memory, video, and sound hardware but otherwise is still plugging along and playing the latest games as well as multitasking and I have never once had it crash. If you want to go Mac then go ahead but it’s not a Mac vs PC issue so much as the kind of PC you bought.
Tlaloc
“Why does anybody still care what Tom DeLay thinks? Of course he will say outrageous crap. He’s a disgraced, toxic bombast with less personal credibility than most inanimate objects. He ran the Congress into the ground and personally contributed as much as anybody to losing the GOP majority. The only way he will see his name in a headline that doesn’t include the word ‘trial’ is if he says something outrageous. He’s a troll, I say ignore him.”
I don’t know. I like having him crop up in the news. First of all he’s a poster child of GOP corruption. Second of all he says some dumb shit. And third keeping his name/face fresh in the public mind helps for when he gets sent to federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison.
All three seem like winner reasons by exposing just how dumb and corrupt the current GOP has become.
Jon
Parallels is the way to go if you need to run Windows. Coherence mode puts the Windows taskbar at the bottom of your screen and all your apps – either platform – run side-by-side on one desktop. It is extremely slick.
ecto remains the best blogging client; works with most every framework.
Camino is basically the Firefox browser with a Mac face, and is faster and cleaner than FF. OmniWeb costs a little money, but uses an updated version of the Safari engine and does all sorts of neat things.
Adium is a nice little IM client that rolls together 5 or 6 different services and lets you log into multiple accounts of the same type.
NetNewsWire is the best thing ever if you want to keep track of a lot of RSS feeds at once.
And Quicksilver is…well, it’s an application launcher, but that’s like saying that a Shelby Cobra is a vehicle. There’s so much more there if you’re willing to get into it.
That’s about it as far as what I use and can speak to.
tBone
That seems really high. Then again, we do have a lot of dirty hippies here, so maybe it’s not that surprising.
As for widgets, this is one of my favorites in the “cool but utterly useless” category.
Tlaloc
“(If you don’t believe me- everyone though Goldwater was nuts in 1964, and everyone thought Nixon was Hitler II in 1974. Both those guys get treated as if they were rational centrists, nowadays.)”
they *WERE* rational centrists compared to the current GOP. Nixon was a certified criminal paranoid dickhead but he has nothing on the current party. That’s what happens when an entire party gets in touch with their inner lemming.
GOP, you’ve come a long way, baby!
jh
I second the Adium recommendation. I use it on my Mac and it’s pretty slick.
Nicholas Weaver
http://www.seatguru.com
They have nice seating maps for all the airlines, including which seats have the power plugs.
RSA
You want cool but utterly useless? Try this.
Tsulagi
I didn’t know anybody did. He’s sort of a dyke version of Ann Coulter.
Zifnab
I think they’re really just victims of comparison. Like, compare Nixon to Bush, you know? I mean, by that metric, Nixon was a freak’n saint. And Goldwater at least had the balls to drag Nixon aside and tell the man he was going to get his ass impeached if he didn’t declare victory and pull out of the White House. Show me the sitting Republican Senator who would have the balls to say that to Dear Leader?
That’s hardly a Republican phenomenon either. Look at Carter and LBJ. By the time Johnson left office in ’64, hippies and drafted African-Americans across the country wanted to cram a tie-dyed shirt down his fat face. Now he’s the hero President of the Civil Rights movement. Carter left the big Oval with his biggest clusterfuck staring him in the face as the Iran hostages were returned the day his rival took office. Now he’s the American face of the Mid-East Peace Process.
And nobody got a bigger make-over than John F. Kennedy, who bought his way into the White House on his daddy’s dime (sound familiar?), who was banging a supermodel practically on national TV, and who’s bungling with the Bay of Pigs and Cuba Missle Crisis put us as close to Communism as we’ve ever been, but who somehow we remember as the pinacle of prestige.
I’m just say’n.
Punchy
Is this a friggin’ blog or the NSA? WTF?
Can’t wait for Timmy to tell me next how my 4.71 comments/day are read by 42.8% of the people, of which 12.1% find them funny and 1.7 of all 10 lurkers respond with derision to anything I post after 3:48 pm on weekdays not starting with a “T”….
tBone
Which reminds me, I really need to try out DarwiinRemote one of these days.
Stooleo
The imperial GOP
politics.slashdot.org/politics/07/04/24/1735213.shtml
Zombie Santa Claus
Yeah, but that’s because some of their crazy-ass ideas didn’t get to happen. Others looked less menacing in retrospect than they did at the time.
Barry Goldwater wanted to give American generals tactical control over nuclear weapons. He basically wanted a 100% guarantee that some backwater skirmish would blossom into WWIII.
Nixon sabotaged the Democratic party’s nomination process so that the least electable candidate won the nomination; then he systematically sabotaged that candidate’s campaign. This is at least as sleazy as anything Bush has done, and is a fun stab at the Constitution.
Another reformed reactionary: Reagan. Even Reagan gets praised vis-a-vis the guys who succeeded him less than 20 years later. Why?
My point is, these bastards are crazy now, have been crazy for the last 40+ years (probably longer, probably since the Revolution), and the only thing that makes them look less crazy in hindsight is a murky combination of forgetfulness, wistful nostalgia, and the fact that a lot of their shittiest ideas got cockblocked and/or didn’t turn out to fuck the country up as much as they might have due to some other factor or what have you.
To give another example: If America somehow manages to survive the Bush administration (a very, very big if), 30 years from now people will say Bush wasn’t as bad as whoever the fucking insane wingnut leader is in 2037.
UnkyT
Boot Camp? Parallels? Virtual PC baby. Woo! Woo!
Zombie Santa Claus
I think Nixon was almost as bad, but he faced stiffer competition. The Left was pretty strong back then. Compare the 2002 Democrats with the 1972 Democrats. Even losing a national election, the Left was still intrinsically stronger in America. Atrophying unions sapped its strength away. So it goes.
That’s a good point. Of course, now we know that Bush I was negotiating in Paris with the Ayatollah’s guys to keep ahold of the hostages until Reagan’s inauguration, so that exonerates Carter quite a bit on that score.
JFK was an unbelievably shitty President, as far as I can tell. He upped the number of advisers in Vietnam to 14,000. His CIA let Diem get whacked. LBJ inherited his shit-storm. If Kennedy hadn’t been killed, I really think he would’ve been the one vilified for the whole Vietnam debacle. I know people say he wanted to pull our guys out, but that has to be contrasted with the very concrete evidence that he put our guys in there in the first place.
Then again, what do I know? I’m a zombie, for Chrissakes. And I make/steal toys 364 days a year
Quiddity
What was the Compaq model? I’m not defending them, but I’ve had a 5240 since 1999 and it’s been reasonable (“only” one reinstall during that time).
Rome Again
From:
Ummm, to watch the stealing of an election? Just a guess!
Captain Avatar
Resistance is futile.
You must obey your Microsoft Overlords.
Tlaloc
As much as I despise Microsoft you couldn’t pay me to use a Mac. First of all the one button mouse makes it feel like computers designed by, and for, corky. Secnd of all I’ll never forgive them for starting the whole “computers as fashion statements” bullshit with the damn iMac (or at least making it penetrate to the mass market).
Just what we needed another way to get gouged for useless asthetics that detract from actual functionality.
Seriously, fuck you, Steve Jobs.
Tavish
The thing about OSX is keeping its unix logs tidy, the OS will do this its self if it kept on at night, (not in sleep mode) if your shutting it on and off it’s best to use MacJanitor ( a free download), check out Cocktail too, it cleans the logs and can also adjust your GUI and rebuild your “prebinding”, things will open faster. DiskWarrior is a good investment, it creates a new directory , regular use will prevent almost all hard drive issues. for piece of mind, get an external hard drive and use Carbon Copy ( a free download) to clone your entire hard drive onto it regularly so you’ll always have a complete back up.
rachel
Hah! Hah! Hah!
No, they just want you to think that.
Jay C
.
SO true dat, ZSC: but the “atrophy” didn’t just happen – it was vigorously helped along (even by 1972) by Nixon and the Republicans in a sort of North-Of-The-Mason/Dixon-Line version of the “Southern Strategy”. Having peeled off huge swaths of the Democratic demographic in the South (by vilifying the party for defending the vile and disgusting notion that “colored people” were actually human beings with full rights of American citizenship); Tricky Dick and his minions made a full-court press to nab the allegiances of the non-ex-Confederate working class. Basically by tarring the Dems as the party of the dirty fucking hippies, who had the temerity to suggest that -maybe- drafting huge numbers of the working class to go off and die by the thousands in a wasteful foreign war might not be all that great an idea. Sad thing is, though, it worked… even to this day, the USA is one of the few countries the world where “working class” and “leftist” are contradictory, rather than complementary, terms.
“American exceptionalism”, I guess…
Jay C
Huh? “maybe” in my 5:46 comment was meant to have dashes on either side of it, not a linethrough: you learn something new every day…
tBone
Don’t like a one-button mouse (which, for the record, I don’t)? Then plug in a regular multi-button PC mouse and click away. That particular talking point is almost as undead as Zombie Santa.
I, too, long for the days of ugly beige towers. Perhaps someday they’ll come back into fashion and our pain will cease.
guav
Nothing about the Mac aesthetic detracts from their functionality. I’ve been using Apples since 1988 and things like the one-button mouse existed long before the aesthetic did. You sound like one of those elitist sourpusses who stops listening to a band when they get popular because you hate it when things are “cool.”
You PC people just have never understood that Macs don’t require a two-button mouse to do everything PCs do with theirs. If I need to access an additional drop-down menu, I press the control key as I click. It all comes down to what you’re used to.
That being said, I’ve been using a multi-button mouse on my Macs for close to a decade now, so I don’t understand why you PC partisans are still flogging the one-button mouse thing. It’s like me picking on Windows 95.
RSA
The Mac versus the PC, a classic debate. Only outdone by Coke versus Pepsi, Ford versus Chevy, and the Beatles versus the Rolling Stones.
grumpy realist
Any suggestions for security when I run Windows XP on a Mac via Parallel? Or do I have to worry about this? (I have Symatec for the Mac running as well.)
Believe it or not, I ran naked Wintel systems for a long time even while connected to the internet and never had a problem. I attribute this to the fact I was running the Japanese version….
Captain Avatar
The Rolling Stones are so obviously better than the Beatles to anyone over the age of 17. Seriously.
Exile on Main Street. End of discussion. Even a soccer mom has to concede that the Stones rocked harder and longer than Les Beatles.
The Beatles were a decent pop band which morphed into an interesting art-rock outfit. They were very innovative as well (or rather, their manager George Martin was). But as a rock band… they can’t hold a candle to The Stones.
demimondian
Emacs versus Vi, Windows versus Unix, Jobs versus the SEC…
Zombie Santa Claus
It really is amazing, isn’t it? I like what that Thomas Frank guy wrote about it in “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” He basically compared it to a French Revolution in which the sans-culottes poured into the streets of Paris, staging massive rallies and riots and protests in favor of granting the king more power. Fucking utter madness. But, I guess once the Democrats signed up for NAFTA the only thing distinguishing them from Republicans in a lot of poor peoples’ minds were abortion and gun control. They lost those arguments.
Nixon helped crush the unions first, of course. So did Reagan, and free trade helped most of all by shipping decent union jobs out of the country. What’re you gonna do?
BrianM
When you use Carbon Copy Cloner, make the backup bootable. If your disk dies, you can run the computer off firewire, or just pop in the backup disk and continue on. (I also use Synk for more frequent backups, since it uses Spotlight to avoid needing to scan for changed files: it just knows.)
If you want to wow onlookers, consider setting up a “smackbook”.
Bookends is a decent bibliography management program, and it’s much cheaper than Endnote.
Mornington Crescent
One other thing the Beatles had going against them was that they were part of the Communist master plan.
John Harrold
Random Thoughts:
For reading blogs I prefer vienna.
I don’t know if you are into much digital photography, but I’ve just started using Aperture recently and it’s simply amazing. You can get a trial download from apple to try it out. It’s kind of pricy, but I think it’s worth it.
If you’re on a network and want to share files quickly with other people who have mac’s you should check out dropcopy.
I really like menumeters for displaying system information in the task bar.
If you are into command line unix type stuff and you’d like to integrate these tasks into the finder search for onmycommand.
For drawing vector graphics I prefer inkscape (also available on windows and linux)
To rip and compress dvd’s I’d check out handbreak.
If you are looking for a news reader, give unison a try.
I would second comments on both quicksilver and adium.
Rome Again
I thought that was Dell’s fault.
Tlaloc
“Don’t like a one-button mouse (which, for the record, I don’t)? Then plug in a regular multi-button PC mouse and click away. That particular talking point is almost as undead as Zombie Santa.”
Why buy a computer that you have to replace the peripherals right off the bat? Why not just get a real computer to begin with?
Or to put it another way how brain dead is apple that their “computers” can use real mice and yet they still sell them with the other kind?
RSA
Indeed, the three-button mouse is the defining characteristic of real computers.
Tlaloc
“Nothing about the Mac aesthetic detracts from their functionality.”
Except for the part where every dollar spent on it was a dollar they couldn’t spend on making a decent computer. But, you know…
There’s always a limited budget when it comes to making a new product. If 50% of that budget goes to the marketing people who then ask focus groups what color it should be you know the end result will be a really pretty piece of garbage. The iMac was the world’s most expensive paper wieght.
“You sound like one of those elitist sourpusses who stops listening to a band when they get popular because you hate it when things are “cool.””
If the band takes their popularity as license to spend *no time* on their musice and buttloads of cash on their cover art, then yeah, exactly like that (except I never liked macs).
“You PC people just have never understood that Macs don’t require a two-button mouse to do everything PCs do with theirs.”
Macs have never been able to do everything a PC can do. They are automatic transmissions compared to the PC as a manual transmission. An automatic is nice if you don’t know what you are doing but a manual gives you way more control. PCs can be a pain in the ass to start with but after a year or two you really know your operating system (that or you get a lot of help from others). You can use a mac for decades and not have a damn idea how it works. I used to do tech support on both, many years ago.
The Other Steve
The main thing I like about PC’s, is that you don’t have to post messages to your blog asking how to use them.
Seriously, I’m sorry you wasted your money.
tballou
I think the progressive blogosphere pays far too much attention to what Delay and countless other wingnuts. I say we ignore the whole lot and focus on creating an affirmative vision of where this country needs to go in the future.
I know that sounds pollyanaish, and it can be hard to ignore a lot of the stuff these nuts come up with, but ignoring bad behavior can work with children (so long as they are not a danger to themselves or others) so maybe it will work with Delay and friends.
Tlaloc
“The Mac versus the PC, a classic debate. ”
Yeah! :)
Mostly I do it because Mac owners tend to be so pretentious about their crappy computers. Really it’s all meant in good fun as an offering to the god of unending internet flamewars.
Flame on!
pharniel
and of course, you pay exra for all that stylishness.
I still build my own pcs and i always manage to come in waaay under budget vs. store baught and unbelievably under budget vs. the mac option.
some of us have RPG and MIni’s habits to support in addition to our WoWness.
The Other Steve
I hardly agree with that.
I think the computer should be something that you just use. It’s the reason why I don’t use a Mac. I don’t want to spend all of my time trying to find solutions for common every day tasks I do on the PC.
pharniel
It doesn’t help that the two most prominent mac heads in my life are my younger step brother cockgoblin and a right she-bitch who is the pinnicle of 80’s children of hippies, complete with stud group of myspace and livejournal freinds, two eating disorders, a bonno/u2 fetish and a driving NEED to be trendy, hip and above all More Important Than You.
tBone
Oh my. This can’t end well.
I’m a centrist when it comes to technology – I work on both platforms daily, and the intense partisanship and misinformation that flows out of both camps irritates the shit out of me. Can’t we all just get along!?
Rome Again
Not a danger to themselves or others? You’re talking about our current GOP? I think we crossed that bridge a long time ago.
Rome Again
Well, it’s not OUR current GOP per se, cuz if it was, it wouldn’t be doing the things it’s doin, that’s for sure.
Just meant the one we’re currently stuck with.
Rome Again
You waste time on that sort of person?
numbskull
Cost of Mac vs PC? Shit, who cares? If you’re smart, you get someone else to buy your hardware for you. Sheesh! And _I’m_ the numbskull??
demimondian
If you build your own notebooks, you’re a better geek than I. I’ve built my own computers for years, but there’s no reference platform for notebooks, which makes white box notebooks unrealistic. (That’s the reason that real operating systems like FreeBSD are hard to boot on them, if you’re interested.) Of course, I suppose I could start a company which licensed a standard notebook platform…or maybe someday Intel will get around to formulating a case/battery/mainboard standard like AT/ATX.
Either way, I second adium. It’s an implementation of GAIM for OSX, and it rocks.
jake
Mr. Bugcrusher is deathly afraid his new nickname will be Nailed once he’s in the pen. He’s talking tough and scary now to build up his “walk alone” status.
I just want to know if your new computer is the same colour as your favourite Hola Fruta flavour.
Walker
I use both. You can make a single partition that runs both under Boot Camp and Parallels. The reason to do this is that Parallels does not support Direct X accelerated apps (i.e. Games), so you have to run those in Boot Camp.
However, here is the kicker. Even though it is a single partition with one copy of Windows, the activation thinks that Parallels and Boot Camp are different machines (technically, they are). So you need two activation keys. Fortunately I work in a CS department, so I can get unlimited keys.
Pb
Next up: Mac vs. PC, WTF? Newsflash, dudes–the PC is a hardware platform, and it won–Apple caved. But on either platform (and a few others), I’d still be using Linux. :)
Mr Furious
Delay: He will only get more and more obnoxious as time goes by. Without an office, it’s his only ticket to a TV studio…
Computer: All Mac, all the time. Always have been always will be. But, of course, I’m an Art Director, so that’s kind of a given — an in this field there’s not even a debate about platform. Mac beats the shit out of PC. For work I spend my time in Adobe Creative Suite. Nine times out of ten Safari is just fine for me as a browser. I only go to Firefox for the occasional site that requires it (ie: The Gap!?!?)
As for the hardware? My G5 is a thing of beauty. It truly is. I crack the case just to gaze upon it’s lovely innards…oh, and that may sound vain, but it’s also the only reason I’ve ever had to open it up. In fifteen years of uing a Mac every day of my life at work and home, I’ve never had a hardware failure, needed service, tech support or had to replace an apple component — a zip drive here or there — but as far as I am concerned the product is bulletproof.
My monitors have always been third-party (Radius, RasterOps, etc) and I am about to take the plunge on a new Apple Cinema display and I cannot wait… This is another area where people who use Dells or whatever dont even know what they’re missing…I feel Like I’m on a Telstar when I sit down at the Dell in the lobby at work. Ugh.
The Other Steve
You need to get out and see the great big world, lad. Apple charges you twice what everybody else is selling decent LCDs for.
hell, the apple cinema’s still have a 16ms response time, when the rest of the industry is doing 5ms. Don’t think it makes a difference? It does.
Perry Como
Introducing your modern Republican party: Barack the Magic Negro
Pb
This is Jeopardy… I’ll take Republican Stupidity for $400, Alex!
What is: what if Disney was bought by NewsCorp and then did an updated remake of Song of the South combined with Aladdin?
moonbiter
I guess links to useful Mac software are out…
pharniel
It’s more of a “The universe keeps conspiring to make this person still in my life in ways I could not remedy without causing extreme amounts of The Drama and The Unemployment”
I wouldn’t be nearly so down on Apple if they just opened up the OS to third party hardware vendors, because as noted above, aside from the core unit, apple’s hardware is generally trash, or at least sub-par, with the exception of the Peripherial of the Month, which steve jobs is obsessed with so it’s the greatest and best…until the next one comes along, or even more often, the market comes out with something better.
as for no hardware failures, mom’s a teacher. she was pretty much forced to use mac for quite some time…he harrowing incidents of fialure and general issues are legion.
I’ll give props to os x, but the previous os versions had soem serious issues unless patched, but in the days before teh interweb, expecting middle age school marms to perform os patches from floppy was a bit much.
Joe Max
The airline adapter thingee is still of limited use, unless you fly first class all the time. I was told by airline employees that we’ll see such adapter hook-ups make it to coach eventually, but it’ll take a while. Still, I paid less than $20 for the Belden kit on eBay, and it includes a cigarette lighter adapter which I have used a couple times with my PowerBook, so I don’t regret buying it.
The words I look forward to seeing in a Tom Delay headline is “Enters Federal Prison.”
Punchy
Scandal-thon continues. Renzi is in trouble. Wolfie is about to be given the bum’s rush. Shit brewing with Attorney-gate.
Christ…6 years and they managed to completely dismantle what 200+ years worked just fine. these guys are efficient, I’ll give them that.
The Other Steve
Is it as funny as the Camp Gitmo or Camp Abu Ghraib t-shirts?
Mr Furious
TOS-
Got any suggestions? I am in a color- and sharpness-critical field… My monitor is almost more important than the hardware. The Apple displays are actually well-priced compared to LaCie… Plus I can get the (negligible) education discount.
tBone
The Dell Ultrasharp 24″ WFP model is a good alternative to the 23″ Cinema Display – it uses the same LCD, has more ports, and is around $300 cheaper than the Apple model. Obviously you lose the OSX-specific options you get with a Cinema Display, though.
Avoid those cheap, “decent” LCDs with low response times – most likely they’re 6-bit. For what you’re doing, color fidelity is more important, so you’re better off with a slower 8-bit monitor – like the Cinema Displays or the Dell.
mrmobi
Indeed, Mr.F. I’m a designer who has worked in the field since before personal computers. My shop had extensive typesetting equipment, and our first PCs were ones we built ourselves (for about $2,000, in the days when typesetting terminals cost $10,000). I’m so old I remember CP/M.
These days, since I can run Windows XP Pro on a Mac mini using Parallels, I dont’ need a PC. (I only use PCs for opening PC page-layout files or using Publisher, or Access to export databases to text or Excel format.)
My main portable work platform is a Powerbook G4 with 2gb memory and a 20 inch Apple Cinema Display. Color is critical here, and the display is calibrated. I can look at the screen and expect that my 6 color HP designjet prints will pretty well match what I see. Oh, and Apple stuff is expensive. For the last several years, I’ve been buying reconditioned equipment from Apple. It’s usually several hundred dollars less, and comes with the same warranty as new.
The Apple system software before X was horrible. The period when Apple allowed other companies to make macs was especially horrible. I have a bald spot that should be named after System 7. The only “Mac” I’ve ever had that flat out failed was a clone, and it literally burned up, frying the processor.
Oh, and Tim, make sure you get DiskWarrior, it is mission-critical. Hard disks fail, and it pays to have as many kinds of backup and help as possible.
Bubblegum Tate
My mouse has 27 buttons. Which also proves that I have a gigantic penis.
RSA
. . .or maybe 17 smaller but more flexible ones (flashing on Dilbert).
The Other Steve
Perhaps you should be looking at serious professional equipment then? Like the Sony Luma series.
The Apple stuff is just consumer grade, comparable to the better stuff from NEC, Viewsonic, Sony, etc.
I have a Viewsonic vx1935wm I just bought at Costco for $200, it has a wonderful display. I may use it as a television downstairs and get the 23″ model now, which sells for $250.
Mr Furious
Mrmobi-
Took a trip down “Clone Lane” myself once. Bought a Supermac made by Umax. Served me ably enough until I bought my blue and white G3. Which to my dismay, I bought about a month before the vastly improved G4 came out.
That G3 held me until I bought my G5 two years ago. I love this new machine.
At work, I am working a dual monitor set-up with an Intel iMac. Cannot wait for CS3 to come out, the non-Intel-native CS2 runs fairly slowly.
Mr Furious
Gah! Those Sonys are four grand!
As a gy who has paid around $1000 – $2000 for monitors over the years, the $750 I’d shell out for the 23″ Cinema sounds pretty good. I have two 20s at work and I love them… Saving even a couple hundred on a monitor I am not familiar with will probably not be worth it.
As for the LACie, it is probably better than the Apples, but for the money I could buy two Cinemas and a calibrator.
Dreggas
Uh pssst we’ve moved past those, you know, to clear towers loaded with blacklight sensitive hardware and said blacklight to make it glow along with a liquid cooled processor and such.
Fortunately gaming has had its influence on computing and now the cases and gear are coming out in some pretty spiffy colors and looks.
Dreggas
Oh and don’t ever work in a Popcorn Factory or you’ll die and OSHA won’t do a damn thing about it.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Is there no area in which the magical wonder of the Bush Administration hasn’t affected federal regulation or federal organizations? If you waved a magical shit-wand at the US government, you couldn’t fuck this country up more than Bush has in 6 short years. It really is one for the ages, isn’t it?
demimondian
Let’s hope so.
tBone
Shhhhhhh. All these years, Cheney’s been telling him the wand was just part of Harry Potter storytime. Don’t spoil it.
Jon H
Regarding the Mac laptop:
I personally would have waited until WWDC (6/11-6/15). Apple often announces new hardware at WWDC or MacWorld.
Of course, even if a new laptop were announced, it might be a month before it actually ships.
Jon H
“hell, the apple cinema’s still have a 16ms response time, when the rest of the industry is doing 5ms. Don’t think it makes a difference? It does.”
They get that 5ms by tricks that work fine for games but won’t be very nice if you’re doing professional graphics.
Jon H
My personal favorite useless software is MacSaber.app, which uses the motion sensor to turn your laptop into an audio lightsaber simulator.
Just don’t lose your grip.
The Other Steve
Got a video for ya…
tv.truenuff.com/mac/upgrading.php
DWangerin
Tim, for apps I would recommend SubEthaEdit for text editing, teTex or TeXShop for typesetting, and PithHelmet to block ads in Safari. Beyond that you will need whatever domain-specific apps necessary to do your work. It will probably take about two weeks to get used to using the Mac (keybindings, apple+tab vs apple+tilde, no freaking second mouse button built-in, etc), or at least that’s how long it took me when I switched.
For everyone debating Mac vs. PC- get over it. A computer is a tool and nothing more; just choose the right tool for the job. I’ve worked on about every platform out there and the Mac was the right tool for my notebook needs; it runs all my unix apps, has a trouble free OS, and has good native application support (including MS Office, which you cannot avoid in any decent sized company). The hardware build quality is top-notch, on par with the IBM T series. I’ve been using my Al G4 PowerBook for about 14 hours per day, everyday, for the last three years and I have yet to have a single hardware problem (although the battery is naturally starting to wear out).
RSA
I’ll second TeXShop. (Actually, I firsted it, but had too many links and I guess my post expired before it got moderated.)
nycmoderate
Tim: hopefully better late than never Mac info for you.
I highly recommend a dotMac account. The online storage and automated Backup is worth the price alone.
Adium is definitely the way to go for chatting. It’s extremely customizable and allows me to have 3 GTalk accounts and my IM online all at the same time. It also allows for tabbed chat windows, something I find hard to live without when I’m at work.
If you do any kind of file renaming (such as creating sequential filenames to keep track of photos downloaded from the same website, for instance), I highly recommend a neat little app/droplet called A Better Finder Rename.
DVDBackup will allow you to load full versions of DVDs onto your laptop for viewing (while on trips and what-not). It’s also possible to use it for less, well, legal purposes. Not that I would ever do anything like that. MacTheRipper is another DVD program for similar purposes, but more customizable.
OnyX is a system maintainance app that gives you acces to some of the hidden functionality for OS X. Cool but useful things like having both arrows at both ends of scroll bars.
I just found two great little apps called EasyCrop (to crop pictures in about .2 seconds) and FastIcns, which allows drag-and-drop creation and placement of custom icons (a dangerous habit to start if you don’t have lots and lots of time to kill).
GimmeSomeTune is another neat little app that opens with iTunes and can automatically retrieve and save lyrics and album art, while also allowing keyboard control of iTunes.
As for fun but useless, I just got OSXPlanet, which puts a live satellite photo of Earth on my desktop, complete with locations, clouds, etc. You can also have other planets if you prefer.
As for Widgets, if you’re new to Mac, definitely get xCuts (a database of keyboard shortcuts) and CharacterPad (for making those pesky characters you can never remember the keystrokes for). I’m also highly dependent on iStatPro, Application Update, and Widget Update.
craig johnson
From time to time Tom DeLay brings Jesus into his conversation. For my money, when ol’ Tom speaks for Jesus he is a proxymoron.
Sort a like when Frist diagnosed a brain dead woman from a video.
Etcetera for Bush et al.