First impressions
I’m playing with my PowerBook for about two days now and even though not being too tolerant when it comes to operating systems, I have to admit that OS X itself is pretty appealing. It has that Just Works(tm)-touch I sometimes miss with GNU/Linux. I’m afraid there’s probably not too much to write about, it’s nearly too simple and I found my way around pretty fast.
Finder itself is a really neat thing once you get used to it and so is the Dock. Once you found out how it works and how to find your applications quickly using Exposé, it’s very comfortable even without virtual desktops. This is nothing too new for I don’t use the kicker’s taskbar with KDE either. Instead I installed myself komposé, an Exposé clone which is not as nice or fast (no support for x.org’s new features, yet) but still works. Installing software also is a piece of cake. Disk Image. Demonstration closed.
Hooking up the Airport Extreme card to my network was somewhat confusing due to simplicity. I didn’t find anything to select the encryption method I use, enter four different keys or any other information I have to put somewhere when setting up a wireless device on other operating systems. After realizing that the request password was in fact the key and entering IP, gateway and DNS (no DHCP for me, please), I had access to my network. Easy.
With my new found connectivity Safari was the next stop. It’s a nice little browser and for using KHTML, rendering is as expected but a little bit slow. The search-box only supports google but I’m used to Konqueror’s Web Shortcuts anyway. Sogudi adds that functionality. Take a look at Pimp my Safari. Awful name but a useful site nonetheless. Also seems pretty fresh, so there might more to expect. Safari is the only application that crashed during the last two days. Twice.
I tried to mount some NFS-shares for easy data exchange and after crawling the web for appropriate information I went with a description explaing how to configure Mac OS X as an NFS Client utilizing the NetInfo manager. This worked nicely although the mounted shares did not show up in Finder’s sidebar. Dragging them there doesn’t work. Mounting via <command>+<k> works as expected. Dragging the mounted shares into the user’s start objects will make them available automagically after a reboot. File sharing also worked vice versa. Simply enabling Windows Sharing made my user’s home directory accessible with KDE’s SMB-KIO-slave.
I also have an external USB/Firewire HDD for non-networked storage purposes. It’s ext3 formated but integrates nicely into OS X using ext2fsx, an ext2 filesystem driver.
When it comes to multimedia formats I’m used to playback just about anything using mplayer or xine. iTunes doesn’t. It doesn’t even support Ogg Vorbis. After installing the Ogg Vorbis component for QuickTime, iTunes played ogg encoded files but still failed on ogg streams. After some more searching I installed Whamb, which is capable of playing ogg streams and even gets an acceptable look with the iTunes 4 skin.
Same for video. I have a lot of ogm files (xvid/ogg) here, QuickTime somehow doesn’t know what to do with them. Installing the XviD QuickTime Component didn’t help it but Installing MPlayer OS X solved the problem. Some apps just work, no matter which OS. I still didn’t find a tiny (and free) app to record from the PowerBook’s internal mic, though.
While speaking of Applications: I like to keep track of various system informations like CPU, memory and bandwidth usage. Under GNU/Linux I use simple karamba-themes or torsmo, for OS X it seems to be MenuMeters which is very customizable and resides in the menubar. Speaking the menubar, super OS X menubar items lists dozens of of them. Of course everyone also needs an office suite. After deleting the pre-installed Microsoft Office demos, I got myself NeoOfice/J, a Java port of OpenOffice.org. It doesn’t adopt to OS X’ style and isn’t very responsive, but it will do it’s job. If OOo 2 is out for OS X, I’ll probably switch.
Coming from a *nix derivative, I’m also curious about the inner workings behind OS X’ shiny GUI. Until now I only took a short look while getting my NFS shares mounted. It does look familiar, more command-line fiddling is to come - iTerm is just waiting for installation.
Just in case something comes up that I can’t resolve or live with, I took a quick look at Fink. I installed some applications to see how it works but eventually removed it. I want to stay native, at least for a while. Speaking of which, I downloaded the PPC live cd of the just released Ubuntu 5.04. I had to pass some startup parameters and after coming up the trackpad didn’t work. I didn’t look into this yet, this was a only quick test anyway. If I install GNU/Linux on my powerbook, which will happen eventually, it will of course be Debian PPC ;).
Well, enough scribbling of someone who has been using this system for barely two days. Both, PowerBook and OS X made quite an impression here. It _is_ simple. It is fun to use. The general performance is not as snappy and responsive as Debian/KDE 3.4 on my P4 2.4GHz XPC but it’s not exactly slow and I guess with all that eye-candy I have to compromise (not that KDE would look any worse here). I guess there will be a lot more entries covering my new Mac..
April 11th, 2005 at 4:29
I saw your article on osnews.com, and decided to repost what I posted overthere already.
Coming mostly from the Windows world (that’s what I still use at work), then moved home for linux (RedHat mostly) for about 2 years, but once I got lots of gadgets - it wasn’t easy to keep up with manual patching of kernels, etc. (I simply lost enthusiasm to do that through unusual ways)… And voila - I bought an iBook year and half ago, and I’m happy with it
- and it got the gnu/*nix tools that I like.
“After deleting the pre-installed Microsoft Office demos, I got myself NeoOfice/J, a Java port of OpenOffice.org. It doesn’t adopt to OS X’ style and isn’t very responsive, but it will do it’s job. If OOo 2 is out for OS X, I’ll probably switch.”
NeoOffice/J is still not fully integrated Aqua or Carbon app, but that’s the milestone in a long run - for example, it not only “switches” the API for menus, rendering - but does a lot of other small changes to the baseline OOo source code - rendering and usage of fonts, printers, files, etc. I’m not sure whether the changes would be backpropagated to the Ooo branch, or not, but I’m quite happy with the NeoOffice/J (after buying ThinkFree from $50, I feel now kind of ripped-off).
April 11th, 2005 at 4:31
Try this for simple audio recording:
http://versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17392
April 11th, 2005 at 4:33
How I can switch to a Mac for work: Part 1 - Email
In this first installment, I examine Mozilla Thunderbird and Evolution for using email on the Mac. …
April 11th, 2005 at 5:01
If you decide to install Linux native to it, you will have problems with the Airport Extreme card, because it’s not supported by the Linux Kernel. This is due to the chipset the card has (IIRC, Broadcom something.). They refused to release the specifications, so linux support for it will probably never exist, or will take a lot of time because only possible way to make the drivers would be aplying reverse engineering, which takes lots of time.
Fuck Broadcom!
Greetings.
April 11th, 2005 at 5:30
Sogudi looks pretty good but AcidSearch is far superior. Completely customizable with custom shortcuts and the option to search multiple engines at once and open in tabs…either in your current page or a new one.
example: si (for search images) josie maran will open a new browser page with results from Google Images, Yahoo Images and MS Images each in their own tabs. You can create your own shortcut and search engines.
And it’s free!
April 11th, 2005 at 6:21
Audacity should record from the built in mic.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
I’ve never tried Sound Recorder but it’s free.
http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Freeware/SoundRecorder.shtml
Audio In is an old standby that works very well even though it is a bit simplistic.
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Archive/gst/snd/audio-in-103.hqx
April 11th, 2005 at 6:24
An app called Sound Studio used to ship with PowerBooks and iBooks, but I noticed after reading your post it is no longer listed on the Apple ‘included software’ list. It is available from Felt Tip for $49.95. Too bad it’s no longer included, they probably dropped it when Garage Band was released.
Here are some freeware apps for audio recording:
Audacity
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/8052
Audio In
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/8846
BTW- Circus Ponies Notebook and Aqua Minds NoteTaker are both very nice apps that include the ability to record audio into your notes. You don’t think MS came up with the idea for One Note, did you? (rolls eyes)
Anyway, there are a ton of cool Mac only apps out there to try. Have a good time and drop me an e-mail if you can’t find something you need.
April 11th, 2005 at 7:18
Don’t forget VLC:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/5758
And someone just released an OS X version of XinePlayer, but it still needs some work. Looks very promising, though.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/17492
There used to be a free recording app called “Wiretap.” But it’s been updated to shareware. You might still find the free version floating around somewhere. You could also try out SoundRecorder. It’s free but I haven’t used it.
http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Freeware/SoundRecorder.shtml
Also Audio In:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/15962
Audion X supports Ogg. It’s a great MP3 player that supports skins, mp3Pro, streaming, and has a bunch of other features. And it’s now free.
http://www.panic.com/audion/
April 11th, 2005 at 7:25
It also looks as if Audion X has the ability to record from the microphone.
April 11th, 2005 at 7:51
Hi
You may want to use the 3ivx decoder from 3ivx.com for your video playback.
There is another open source browser option at http://caminobrowser.org/
Also look at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ for PPC Linux.
April 11th, 2005 at 8:00
Sorry for the redundant information. For some reason, none of the posts above mine were visible earlier when I posted. Weird.
April 11th, 2005 at 9:00
Don’t forget either quicksilver
http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/
once you have tried it, you won’t be able to live without it!!
April 11th, 2005 at 10:04
Some prefer the original: Launchbar (http://www.launchbar.com)… sure you’ll have to pay for it. Still… amazing app that changed the way to use a mac.
A.
April 11th, 2005 at 11:00
“I took a quick look at Fink. I installed some applications to see how it works but eventually removed it. I want to stay native, at least for a while.”
I wouldn’t hesitate with fink, it’s simply great. In fact, I _would_ consider it native OS X. Consider it this way: Apple and third parties handle the fancy Aqua UI stuff. Fink handles the command line side.
In practise, it’s probably more obscure; I wouldn’t i.e. install UI applications via fink, only command line tools. But generally, there seems to be zero overlap problems between the two. Fink is Great!
April 11th, 2005 at 11:03
I use the awesome QuickSilver too, and I use something called “Audio Recorder” for simple mic/line-in recording. It’s scriptable and does file autonaming.
April 11th, 2005 at 11:39
For virtual desktop support, I use the free and amazing Desktop Manager (http://wsmanager.sourceforge.net).
Needing a word processing app, I bought Apple’s iWork (http://www.apple.com/iwork). The Pages word processor does wonders, I wrote a full documentation with it. It is fast, intuitive and doesn’t get in the way.
I also find DragThing (http://www.dragthing.com) an essential utility. I configured a few pop-up palettes that appear when moving the mouse over the small indicator at bottom of screen. It’s a shareware, well worth the price.
Finally, TinkerTool is a small utility that lets you tweak some appearance features, like having the scroll arrows both at both sides of the scroll bar. I also use it to set the dock positioned at the edge of the screen instead of the middle. http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html
April 11th, 2005 at 12:24
For audio recording through the line in and/or mic here:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17392
For multiple desktops and in an ultra cool way here:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/25259
For alternative free browsers to Safari here:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19029
and here:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14326
Still, you could enhance your Safari experience with:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17776
For office products while OOo and NeoOffice are great (the same can be said for iWork too) they do not hold a candle against the real deal: M$ Office!
However, after all said and done I use iWork and NeoOffice :p
Some other great free apps are:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22990
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/18529
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/4580
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13112
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/24055
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13994
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/15375
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23031
All in all search and you will find! Do not despair!
April 11th, 2005 at 13:20
i’m also a linux user that switched from intel to power - i’ve used debian PPC for about 1/2year (after having debian i386 for maybe 4years) but now i switched to ubuntu, which i definitely don’t regret. if you like KDE try Kubuntu (or setup ubuntu and then install kubuntu-base, which is a bit less clean as you’ll probably have some GNOME-leftovers).
nice review
April 11th, 2005 at 17:11
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