I've been hesitating for a while, but I finally went down to Micro Anvika on Tottenham Court Road (the electronics street in London) and purchased two 12" iBooks (with the combo drive, and 384M): one for my mum, and one for my dad. They're sweet.
I like many things about the iBooks and OSX. I like way there's a light on the power cord which shows whether it's charging or fully charged. I like the way it's easy to install a wavelan card. I like the way it only describes times in a vague way e.g. "about five minutes". I like the Finder and the OSX desktop. I like the way it found my airport and used it first time. I like the mail application and the fact that by default it doesn't delete messages from the server when using POP3. I like the fact that it's really UNIX box underneath and I can just get a shell and ssh out. I like the DVD. But mostly, I like the fact that it's easy to use (hey, it's for my parents, remember).
I don't like the way you have to unscrew two screws to insert more memory. I don't like the way that the hash key is alt-3. I don't like them switching the quote and at keys. I don't like the way I have to install from 4CDs before actually using it. I don't like the fact that OSX updates takes ages over a modem.
Overall I'm very happy. Time will tell whether the technical support (that's me!) on these laptops will be easier than for the Win98 Dell, but I hope so...
Only having one mouse button hasn't bugged me as much as I thought it would...
If you meant shift-3 and not alt-3, then what you have is quite simply a US keyboard instead of a UK one. On the two boxes I have on my desk, I have on of each and getting used to the switch isn't too hard. But UK keyboards are clearly much better, especially for coding.
Re:I'm getting one too!
gnat on 2002-03-03T19:29:39
Cool! Speaking of OSCON, we're going to have a bunch of sessions on OS X in the operating systems track, so you can learn how to program the thing. (A lot of stuff is moved around or subtly different from bog standard FreeBSD)--Nat
