Mac-snobs: pondering the switch

[dwenius]

Dear Lazyweb,

The Gentoo box, she is old. Very old. First generation dual-CPU Dell with dumb proprietary memory old. We are eyeing some kind of mac for the next go 'round, but I have some

Recall also that I am a lifetime unix bigot. Some of these questions may therefore be offensive to the faithful.

1. Hardware and HW compatibility questions first: Is there any point in hanging onto these SCSI drives, external enclosures, this nice SUN raid array, etc.? Does any of this hardware care about SCSI anymore?


2. What's the deal with printing...is it just CUPS? I've noticed that they sell USB-to-parallel printer cables; anyone used one? We have this perfectly usable laser printer that can handle 11x17" paper here, and I'd like to hang onto it if we can.


3. It looks like they ship the mini with a DVI-to-VGA adapter; good, we can keep the flatscreen. On the other hand, we eat a USB port for a mouse/kb adapter: boo.
   
4. Which of the hardware options-- mini, iMac, MacBook-- has the best reliability record? I know, they're all less than a year old, nobody knows yet. But you have stories, I know you do. Tell them to me. What broke way too easily? Where did they cut corners in a way that will piss me off? This Dell is ancient, but it's built like a tank; I've kicked it in the head with bad software on occasion, but the hardware has been rock solid.


5. Software stuff now, and first things first: I have over a decade of saved email; is OS-X going to do something automated and stupid when it finds a pile of email, like try to translate it out of mbox into some clever binary format?


6. In a related question: Graphic mail programs blow a goat. Can I assume that fetchmail and mutt will run without difficulty in a shell? The default shell is bash, right?


7. Speaking of shell windows: I still use a trimmed down custom compiled X-term, because it lets you remap character classes to allow double-click selection of email addresses, URLs, and so forth (you map the @ sign to the letter 'a' for example). Will I be able to do this? Rxvt, E-term, and other newfangled terminal programs do not allow this. You laugh, but it probably saves me 15-20 hours of real clock time a year, twice that if you count the time I spend being annoyed by terminals that lack it (ahem, cygwin).


8. More window management: I currently use XFCE, which is fast. I am not down with the current trend towards eyecandy with questionable human interface value. Are the more bloated features of the default UI defeatable, or do I have to live with slowdowns for features I don't need or want?


9. Is there a centralized source or binary repository? Can it be trusted? How current is it? Gentoo's portage was very fine, but there could be delays of weeks for some packages (say, Firefox)


10. Speaking of which, Firefox is not optional. Anything I need to know about the OS-X version? The usual extensions are available and such? Have the earlier stability flaws been addressed?


11. How well do random X11 programs build and run? Will I have to run an X server alongside whatever OS-X is using?

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

2. I'm pretty sure it's just CUPS.

6. Yes, yes, and yes.

9. You'll want either fink or DarwinPorts, depending on whether you're a Linux or BSD bigot.

10. I didn't have the greatest time with Firefox 1.5.0.1 on OS X in terms of stability. Flash seemed to make it puke a lot. It's possible that the latest build is better, but i wouldn't hold my breath. At the same time, my OS install got all fucked up by a bad Virtual PC install, so it's hard to tell where the blame lay.

11. Yes, you'll have to run an X server if you want to run X apps. They run fine, though.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Followup q: how about Flash and Safari, for when you must?

I have no idea why Flash is still being used for legitimate business purposes, as opposed to it's natural role as a platform for time-wasting games and indie video exploits. It's like some business developers have been alseep for the last decade.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Flash and Safari or Flash and Camino didn't seem to cause trouble. Really, as far as i could tell, Firefox and Flash got along fine for a while, so i really suspect my trashed OS.

Flash has quite a lot of potential for legitimate business purposes and is far superior to, say, something written in Java.

[(Anonymous)]

Superior to Java for what it does, sure. Inferior to Laszlo, from what I've seen, though.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, let's check back when Laszlo has a quarter of the traction of Flash.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

In Safari, there is a hotkey to disable/enable plugins, through which you can selectively defeat Flash loads. I haven't witnessed Safari breaking due to Flash. Safari does have an image caching problem (which is to say, it writes images to cache and then recalls them from the server rather than locally), so Firefox is the defacto speed leader at the moment. When/if that bug is resolved, they're probably close to parity although FF will probably be better in perceptual speed due to their different approaches to rendering incoming files.

There are third-party debugger/tweak enablers for Safari (which I use in website development) to tailor Safari to your liking, although note some of them probably slow Safari more than they speed it.

[tongodeon.livejournal.com]

I didn't have the greatest time with Firefox 1.5.0.1 on OS X in terms of stability.

1.5.0.1 blew goats. 1.5.0.2 was much better. 1.5.0.3 was a step back because the space bar didn't advance the page, but other than that it's been good.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

> 1.5.0.3 was a step back because the space bar didn't advance the page

Yes it does. The problem is that focus is not automatically brought to a window or pane that can scroll.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Ew, FF on the work machine only does this for particular classes of websites (cough, Blogger and phpBB), and having to go for the mouse when I've got a jillion tabs loaded and I'm keyboarding around them is a Dumb Thing.

Sounds like Camino and Safari may solve all of this, though. I maybe overstated the case; I'm not crazy with extensions, but I would seriously miss Adblock, BugMeNot, UserAgentSwitcher, and DownThemAll.

[sambushell.livejournal.com]

1. Sure, if they're really big or so it might be worthwhile to hang on to them. But only if you're getting something that you can put SCSI PCImumble cards into: not the iMac or mac mini, not the MacBook. The MacBook Pro has a slot for which there may appear SCSI cards some day, but I haven't seen any yet.

2. Yes, CUPS.

5. Mail.app does have its own storage format, yes.

6. I have no direct experience with them on Mac OS X, but I have no reason to expect trouble. bash is the default shell.

7. 11. Run whatever xterm you like, sure. To run X11 clients, you need to run the X11.app server.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

1) If you can add a SCSI card to the computer, you can run SCSI on it. So this currently means a desktop computer and a compatible card. Mac OS X itself supports the cards, you don't download drivers from somewhere, so get a card guaranteed compatible with Mac OS X, or at the very least returnable. I do not know the SCSI on Mac OS X Intel story. They might have given up maintaining it. I dunno.

(Mac Mini and iMac do not have places to add cards. Mac Book Pro uses some new kind of card called an "Express" card which is the newer kind of PCMCIA.)

2) Mac OS X includes CUPS and also includes special drivers for many many recent printers from Epson, HP, Canon, and a couple more vendors. I assume your old laser printer is happy with CUPS and you are too, so you should be fine.

4) The MacBookPro and MacBook are getting a lot of attention for the heat/noise issues. They DO run hot, no doubt. As for the noise, I think it's the alien implants that are bugging people because their complaints seem pretty retarded to me. iMac (Intel) and Mac Mini (Intel) are pretty well regarded at the moment. Current rumors are that Apple will start selling desktop Intel boxes in August at the Developer Conference. Those are RUMORS but they seem reasonable.

5) If you launch Mail.app, it will give you the option of importing your mail. It doesn't delete the old mail when it imports. If you don't launch Mail.app, it will not mess with your mail. There's also no need to configure Mail.app to touch your mail accounts. So you've got two layers of protection from the GUI-ness there.

8) The Mac OS X GUI is not very customizable. There's a few hacks that write secret preferences that, for example, turn off the drop shadow, but not enough, and they don't really affect things that much. (I'd go on to explain that the graphical stuff doesn't consume much CPU, but you won't believe me, even when I'd explain that most all of the special effects are done by the graphics card.)

9) Fink and DarwinPorts are other people's repositories of open source goodness. They don't control Mac OS X itself. Mac OS X itself does not have package management. (SIGH. It's a LONG saga. Maybe in a few more years we'll get it.)

I haven't used Fink or DarwinPorts, so I can't tell you if they are well run.

I don't know what happens when Mac OS installs Apache, python, and perl, and so does Fink. I presume this is handled somehow, because I know people do this.

10) Firefox runs pretty dang well. At least as well as Safari. (It's often a bit faster than Safari, but seems to crash slightly more often.) Yes, it used to crash more, so it's more stable now. It's also faster than previous versions. FireFox has many extensions that run under Mac OS X. I use a few, and don't see any troubles.

11) You will need to install the Developer package (to compile stuff) and also install the X windows package. Then you can have X windows launched when you log in, and presumably you can then have it open all your crazy doo dads and dingers right while you are logging in. X Windows is an app under Mac OS X.

[haineux.livejournal.com]

Grrr. This would be me. (Livejournal keeps me logged in 90% of the time, so the other 10 is annoying.)

[haineux.livejournal.com]

Also, there are deals to be had through your Apple employee friends, so talk to them if you decide you want to make the jump.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Indeed, we will.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

As a sidenote, X11 is included passim on system disks, but is not installed by default. If you don't see /Applications/Utilities/X11, run the OS installer, click 'Options', install X11; it will not stomp over existing system files. The rest of the developer tools (a.k.a. XCode) require a (free) registration for a (free) hefty package download. Most of the heft is documentation, variously PDFs and HTML with graphic screenshots.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

1) ok, maybe best to bail on SCSI then, as I don't think a big desktop is what we want.
2) Must. Save. Obscure. Printer. Drivers!
4) I will research the hotness issues.
5) Good to know. As wisn pointed out, I lose Spotlight access to mail if I stick with my habitual software choices for mail; this could be a drawback. Can you configure the default actions in the Spotlight search result screen? That is, can I get Spotlight to launch a terminal and mutt on a specific mail message search result? I'll assume not. Hmmmmm, pondering.
8) I am open to rational argument on UI speed concerns. I just know what has happened to every other UI I've ever worked with, except XFCE.
11) it's not so much the doodads and dingers, it's the 2-3 programs I don't wish to abandon that have usable X11 interfaces. One of these is Nethack, the others are fractal programs, hence all the graphics performance questions.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

1. Macs haven't supported SCSI natively in hardware for something over seven years now (although the software drivers are still embedded). SCSI adaptor cards are cheaply available if you get a tower Mac. Firewire -> SCSI adaptors do not always operate smoothly (some devices will not work at all through them), and when last I checked requires one hardware adaptor per device address.
2. CUPS + proprietary. Yes. Stick with name-brand adaptors and it should work, M had minimal trouble with hers. Check user communities for which brands are recommended for which machines because apparently it matters.
3. Mac keyboards provide two unpowered USB-A ports. Mac displays provide more, if you get one. Digital -> digital converter looks better than digital -> VGA, if you have the option.
4. All three Intel-based lines are having reliability problems of varying severity and are probably overstated in extent. The Mini I've heard fewest operating complaints about. Many geeks have performance gripes w/r/t video hardware but apparently it will only matter if you're a serious gamer, in which case wtf are you using a Mac for? The iMac seems to run well when it runs but I've witnessed one box ship DOA. The 15" MacBook is the subject of a silent recall (for batteries) and the other laptops reportedly overheat. I suspect Apple's failure rate is low for a radical shift to new v.1 hardware, but you asked.
5. Mail.app will attempt to split your archives into individual files, one per message, and includes its metadata in its system-wide index. But only if you tell Mail to import your files. I do not know if it creates a copy of your archive to do this. (The rest of the Sircusa article is worth skimming to introduce yourself to the OS)
6. punt
7. punt
8. Instead, acquaint yourself with HCI optimizers like Quicksilver.
9. punt. Not clear why you need to compile Firefox yourself if you're not developing for it, but you can. If you're looking for a platform-optimized version of Mozilla, look up Camino, which unlike Firefox does not run all arbitrary FF extensions.
10. Any FF extension which is not platform-specific ought to. I haven't encountered any gotchas yet.
11. punt on part A. Yes on part B.

A lot of your questions are w/r/t getting the Nth degree of performance out of the screen. Unless you're planning on using a Mac for major software compiles, 3D rendering, stats analysis, or some other purpose that requires massive CPU or disk throughput, just toss enough third party RAM in (Apple always provides too little) and leave it alone until you begin witnessing interface latency. At the very least, don't begin attempting to tweak the GUI until you've used it a while. I'm writing this on a six year old Mac and even though Apple hasn't made anything this slow in years, current software is not making it unusable.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

3) Alas, digi->digi isn't an option with the device we already own.
4) This raises interesting points. A. wants a laptop, to work on the go, but the heat issue could be a problem. How hot? Dangerous to the touch for small children? The mini is appealing in several ways but you can't take it with you. Hmmm.
5) Per haineaux, I could get the index feature without munging the archvie, which might be handy. Updating it, though, if I stuck with mutt, would mean re-importing the whole thing to stay current, right? I'm going to guess that multiple imports of a big honking pile of data are less well understood.
8) Thanks, I'll take a look.
9) I *don't* need to compile myself, stuck in gentoo land for a minute there. Sorry.

Not planning on big compiles necessarily, but I will run jobs (fractal generation, big searches, etc.) that will tax I/O and CPU.

I'm not sure why I'm so concerned. I know I won't bring a non-work Wintel machine into the house if I can avoid it. A. and I are both annoyed at the number of trivial tasks that linux can't handle without hand-holding. We want stuff to just work. This spells Mac, to me. It won't be perfect; we'll cope.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

5) Spotlight is overrated and I wouldn't bemoan its lack of indexing somethingorother. There may or may not be problems with the indexing engine; my beef is with the design of the search front end. The Sircusa article goes into more detail you need about why, but in brief the lack of access to boolean or regex queries makes it only slightly more useful than nothing at all, and considerably less useful than your choice of trad Unix utility. (Or what I use, which is multifile search via BBEdit)

4) No idea how hot the laptops run; individual accounts vary and, as with the whole scratching-black-ipod dilemma of last fall, user reports should be filtered for hysteria. Personally I'd go to a local Apple store during a slow hour and ask the tech at the Genius Bar what he's seeing; the guys working the floor won't know.