I am ashamed to admit it in this day and age, but I have not "driven" a Mac machine. Not once. never. Yes, I've known people who loved them, used nothing but MacOS, swore by it.. but I have never even been remotely interested in seeing for myself what makes it so special ... until now.
Maybe its all Pudge's fault for demonstrating cute AppleScript tricks (VBScript and its cousins seem somehow scriptkiddish ? dont flame me for my prejudices :), maybe its how many people seem to be using it as a development platform these days.. I just dont know.
But I cornered the only Prof in the department who uses Mac (and has a dual G5) and asked for a test drive. Now, if this were a review (or a nice bedtime story), I would be enthralled with its power and usability and I would become an instant convert, right ?
Wrong. He told me he uses the department x86 machine here and uses the G5 at home! Rats!! Thwarted again! :) but he did promise that he would probably be bringing it over to the department sometime in the summer :) which just goes to show, out of the 100+ people in CS, only 1 person that I know of owns a Mac. I actually thought there would be more ... disappointed.
touch the mac. love it.
rjbs on 2004-01-14T14:32:29
When I was in college, I got a job supporting the university computer labs. They were all PowerMac 7200's. They struck me as being nice because they were simple to support. They were adequate. I didn't want one because I wanted bash, gcc, and other things that were a hassle to use on MacOS 7.
At a later job, doing tech support and repairs for walk-in customers, I came to see how much more intuitive users really found MacOS. It was also easier to repair in a pinch, because the number of possible problems seemed smaller, because it didn't lend itself to being mucked about in so much. (Mostly that was a perception issue.) I still didn't want one. MacOS 8 had added some bells and whistles, but it wasn't Linux, and I PPC-GNU/Linux wasn't x86-GNU/Linux.
I forgot about Macs, kept running Slackware at home, got a job coding for OS/2 and Win32 machines, and every once in a while thought, "That MacOS X thing sounds like it'll be neat." Then I played with it, and thought, "Wow."
Then I played with 10.2, and thought, "I need this." So I bought a PowerBook. It is the best computer I've ever owned, without a single doubt in my mind. With 10.3, it's a beautiful interface to a unixy system, complete with Perl, Vim, all manner of little admin widgets, slick end-user apps, and is equally impressive to wizards and muggles alike.
Yes, I'm a zealot. Don't let that guy forget to bring the G5 in. It may change the way you work.
