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

[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.