If you use OSX and you currently use Photoshop or the Gimp for heavy duty graphics work, you’ve probably gotten the feeling that sometimes you’re using a sledgehammer to drive in a nail. These tools are just more than you need sometimes. For those quick and dirty jobs, this is a program you definitely need in your toolkit.
Face it, iTunes is a pig. If you just want to spin some tunes and spare some cpu cycles in OS X this story is for you. Since I got the iBook a couple years ago I have been impressed with the slick apps that came with OSX. I was used to the spartan world of my homemade, frankenstein linux box for several years before that, so I was wowwed by the glitz and glamour. After some time I realized that I really missed some of the simple tools that made my linux box so much fun to use…
Although I have a ton of things I *should* be doing around the house, I managed to find time to investigate two things that have been bugging me for a while. I had always heard about the "undernet" otherwise known as IRC and I knew I needed to read some to learn about that. Also I had been stymied in the past by getting MySQL to run under OS X and I wanted to try the latest version. This is a short report about the successes.IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is old (as time in the internet age is measured anyway). According to the Wikipedia, IRC was created by Jarkko Oikarinen (nickname "WiZ") from Finland in August 1988. The system was inspired by Bitnet relay which was only a little older. What Bitnet (and thus, IRC) offered was a quick messaging system over the internet where users could join "channels" or "chatrooms" as they are known today and converse in real time. The idea grew out of the early BBS systems that most computer savvy folks used before the rise of the world wide web (the first BBS was the Chicago Bulletin Board System in 1978).
In order to participate in IRC, you need two things: an IRC "client" and the name of an IRC server. Clients abound, in fact if you’re using Mozilla theres one built in. Most people will want a more robust client, something that adds features that make the experience easier to manage, like scripting (there are a bunch of languages that lend themselves to text modification on the fly like python, tcl and perl) which allows you to do more with less clicking. Scripting your interaction with an IRC server makes logging in easier too.
Since I have been using Linux and now OSX at home for almost 5 years, I don’t have much to offer you for Windows clients, but I can say that the nicest one for OSX I’ve found to date is X-Chat Aqua. I’ve spent a goodly amount of time on freenode.net this weekend participating in discussions on three channels: #macosx, ##linux (yes, that’s two "#" signs), and #geeklog.
The next project grew out of a need to organize. I generate tons of notes as I work on projects or investigate things. I usually paste these snippets into either a sticky note (a program on OSX), save it as a text file someplace, or add it to a growing html document I have been keeping for such things. Unfortunately, I can never find any of the stuff when I need it. The ultimate, I thought might be to use a script like that running this site on my own machine.
OSX has apache and php built in, so it shouldn’t be hard to get the scripts I use to power this site to run locally. I had to reinstall mysql (I had an old version that I had butchered in the past installed already). I downloaded the latest version from mysql.com and proceeded to create a database and users to prepare for the scripts (this site is a database driven site and all the stories and links and images are stored in a big database). Luckily, I had just completed a class on Oracle in the city a week ago and a lot of stuff was still fresh to mind, so it was a success! I set up a really nice layout (freshly downloaded from Axonz.com) and I’m all set to go! I learned alot about the httpd.conf file that sets up the configuration of the apache webs server too. These tasks complete, I am now free to attend to more mundane concerns. See ya!
If you’re like me, you may use a legal version of Photoshop at work. My experience with Photoshop (on Windows) has been quite good over the years and once you are familiar with a professional tool like that, you don’t want to settle for anything less when you have some small project of your own to do at home. You may have been lucky enough to be in a position to bring a copy of this image processing powerhouse home, but if not, Photoshop may be a $700 outlay you may not be able to justify. Well, fear not! There is a viable (and legally free) alternative.
Nothing is ever really free, and this is no exception. You’ll pay with time spent figuring out how to get the “free” program installed, and then you’ll pay again in time learning how to use it. As a linux user for many years, I played around with The Gimp on and off. I was never in a position to completely abandon my Windows environment (dual booting was always an option), so I never really gave The Gimp too much of a real try out. When it was time top replace the old Win/tel machine, I opted for an Apple iBook which pretty much put the kabosh on any option for bringing home software from work. I was lucky and found some kind soul who “lent” me a copy o f Photoshop 5 for OS 9, but frankly working in OS 9 was about as painful to me as learning the Gimp would have been, and it took forever to load. I was hoping to find something that was like Photoshop that either ran natively in OS X or in X11 (X Windows) which loads a lot faster than OS 9.
I wanted to use Fink to install a Gimp package but I was stymied when my first attempts failed due to some sort of error in the configure file. I’ll admit I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to get it to work, but after 2 hours of downloading and compiling and watching the arcane code speed by in Fink’s tiny window, I was eager to find something easier. MacGimp looked promising, but I didn’t like the fact that if I installed it, I might have problems later on if I installed any X11 programs using Fink as some usenet posts suggested. I found lots of useful utilities that did work using Fink including the netpbm packages, but I almost gave up on getting the Gimp to compile. I eventually succeeded by choosing “selfupdate” in Fink Commander when I saw a newer version (1.2.5-1) of the Gimp take the place of the earlier version (1.2.4-11) in the data table and I realized maybe the bug had been fixed. It worked! Although The Gimp doesn’t run natively in OS X either, its far faster to load X11 and choose gimp than to wait for OS 9 to load, wait for Photoshop 5 (what a slow pig) and deal with that older Mac OS’s idiosyncracies.
You can get a copy of the Gimp for Windows but I’ll admit I have not tried it. Although we still have a PC in the house, its in Linux when I’m around anyway.
At the risk of igniting a PC vs. Mac “flame war”, I for one am tired of hearing about how much more expensive Macs are when compared to PCs. I read slashdot and poke through usenet all the time and I keep running across these kinds of statements. I hear my PC toting buddies repeating the mantra as well, I even heard my buddy Todd say he could get “more bang for the buck” with a PC. Since my only experience with a Mac has been my 2002.05 iBook (thats a year.month, not a price!) which is decidedly my most favourite computer of all time (so far), I decided to do my own real world comparison by configuring a Mac powerbook (which I hope will take the iBook’s place one day) and comparing it to what I think is a reasonably comparable Dell Laptop using the online configurator each company provides on it’s website. Apples and Oranges?
I realize its difficult if not impossible to compare a Mac to a PC in any quantitative way when the hardware is so very different. (You can’t configure a Mac to use the same processor or graphics card as the Dell laptop). There’s been a “megahertz war” (now “gigahertz war”) which clearly Apple/Motorola lost to Intel, but like Saddam, they stare right in your face and say “you might have thought we lost since our processor speeds are clearly much lower, but those numbers aren’t the whole picture and really all they add up to is a lot of unwanted heat which will fry your computer faster anyway.” Certainly a good point, but armed with my Dec 2003 copy of Macworld its obvious that all those cycles do really add up to snappier performance. On the other hand, except for one or two graphically intense games which ran juusst a little too slow for my liking, I’ve been pretty well satisfied with the 700MHz iBook for most tasks. Other considerations include the operating system which comes with the machine and any special hardware or software features which may make improve useability for me specifically given peripherals I may already own and what I plan to use the machine to do.
Pricing out the machines
15″ PowerBook
I decided to look at laptops since the iBook totally redefined how I use a computer (and how comfortable I can be using it). My G3 700MHz iBook has a 12″ screen (which sounds really small, but its really very useable and it made the iBook quite a bit lighter and smaller). However, there have been times when I needed more real estate and so I decided to look at 15″ laptops, so that narrowed it down a bit. The same issue of Macworld points out that the 15″ version is new and they had several QC issues with the batch they got in for testing, but I will overlook this as I’m sure the bumps will get smoothed out long before I could actually save up enough dough for one of these babys! Apple has two basic lines of portables, the low end iBooks and the higher end powerbooks. I decided to dream big and configure a powerbook. The powerbook line varies by screen size and has pricing which currently ranges from $1,600 to $3,000 before options and this 15″ guy is a middle of the road size.
Here are the basic specs on a powerbook you get for $1,999.00
I bumped the Ram up to 512Mb, selected an optical drive and took the optional wireless card. I also realized that Dell’s 3 year warranty (after configuring the system below) would have to be balanced by Apple’s AppleCare Plan. Also, after reviewing the Dell system I noticed that the slowest hard drive they offered was a 5400rpm and knowing how important that speed is to performace, I came back here and selected a faster drive.
Total: $2,747.00
Having configured a powerbook with all the bells and whistles I would like to use and seeing what it cost, the next task is to configure a Dell with the same stuff and see how much I can save, right?
Dell M60
I’m very familiar with the Dell website, having configured many of the 38 machines at work using it over the years, but this time I was in for a surprise! Here’s my thinking: Dell has three basic laptop lines. The Inspiron is aimed at home users and generally offers higher end graphics cards with offerings in the range of from $700 to $1,400. The Latitude is aimed at business users and packs the machine with stuff the average sales guy on the road looks for at prices of from $900 to $1,500. The Precision is the “desktop replacement” line, (which I always found to be laughable since by the time I get around to buying a new computer, my old one is slower than just about anything you can buy anyway.) I was intruiged. How expensive would a comparably equipped version go for? The base price is listed as $1,800. When you start to configure it, you’re presented with a screen that shows an “optimized” setup for $2,100. Choosing that, Configuring that so that the system has 512Mb RAM, a combo drive and a 60Gig (albeit faster) hard-drive, the final price was $2,546.00
Suspicious of the “optimized” version, I went back, started again and configured the system manually to the specs above except that I chose
Total for Dell M60: $2,633.00
Dell Latitude M800
Unconvinced that I had made a good comparison by choosing the highest end Dell on their site, I decided to step down to the Latitudes. Cathy has a latitude and although its still running, lets just say we’re very lucky we had a three year warranty on it. Again I’ll pick the slowest processor available (although we haven’t touched Centrino models yet which might be a better speed comparison to the G4, I dunno)
Total for Dell M800: $2,760.00
Conclusions
If the only consideration is price, then you’re going to end up paying a lot of money for the priveledge of running around with one of these super powered portables whether you choose to go PC or Mac. The prices are pretty much the same. But what counts for me is ease of use, simplicity of design, build quality, availability of software solutions and portability (size). OS X wins the ease of use thing hands down, I dare you to argue that one, and don’t tell me “but I’m used to Windows, so that will be easier” ‘cuz so was I, and Fatal Exceptions and mysterious hangs and wasting all day trying to fix something that shouldn’t have broke in the first place is not easier, believe me. My favorite thing is shutting the lid and being able to open it up and work immediately - no stupid Windows message telling me its preparing to hibernate when I open the case for 2 minutes while I stare at the screen and hope it doesn’t actually power down. The Macs are elegantly designed, no stupid plastic clips that break off, and hings that allow the screen to get messed up from the torsion of opening it. The plugs are on the side where you can access them not on the rear where you have to basically lunge over the thing to plug stuff in and then you end up bending the connector or worse, breaking it off. and PCMCIA be damned! I hate those useless dongle things. The Macs are built better, face it. If they are a bit more money (which my investigation belies) they’re worth it. Yes, its nice when the Dell guy shows up to fix the problem on site 2 years later. No, I’d rather it never broke in the first place. Especially when it was the hard drive - that time stunk. Thanks for the new one Dell, good thing I do backups regular. Software! This is my favorite gripe of windows users. Yes, if you have a lot of windows software, thats an investment to consider. However, most folks I know stole all their expensive windows software from work including the damn OS disks, so maybe its time you bought something from an honest programmer for once in your life anyway! I’ve bought some software since I switched over, its true. Mostly its been shareware that is just plain incredibly elegant stuff that deserves to be supported, though. Most of the stuff I use if open source anyway now that Macs run BSD. You can get software to do just about anything FOR FREE! (assuming you have an internet account). Size: Macs win.
I think I could be happy with the Dell M800, which I’m sure is a kick butt machine but my experience with OS X so far would steer me to another, probably a bit faster next time, Mac. My quick (unscientific) investigation does NOT support the claim that PCs are a much better buy, at least for the type of gear (higher end laptops) that I’m interested in.
I’d be interested to see more comparisons on this general spec from other makers. I’d also like comments on the differences in the graphics cards which I didn’t have time to investigate.
Shameless Plug for Mozilla
If you spend ALOT of time online (as it has been my wont of late, armed with freshly installed cable modem, to do) you will undoubtedly find reference amidst the flotsam and jetsam that clog the internet to “Mozilla”. Mozilla http://www.mozilla.org is an open source web browser that offers an elegant alternative to the unarguably ubiquitous Microsoft (MS) Internet Explorer (IE) The fight between IE and Netscape, if you’ll remember, was at the center of the now infamous MS anti-trust trial wherein IE was said to have been “inextricably linked” to the MS OS and then miraculously wasn’t anymore. [opinion] MS may have been successful in muscling out its competition, but it has not seen very much improvement in the IE browser [/opinion]. Meanwhile, the Godzilla look-alike, a Netscape mascot logo since 1994, still brands the Mozilla open source project (1998) which offers free to the world a very fast and stable set of tools that has made navigating the web a lot more fun. Read on for interesting links…For the completely uninitiated, you can read a quick overview of Mozilla here: http://mozilla.org/why/users.html where you can find links to the download pages for various operating systems. The Mozilla museum http://home.snafu.de/tilman/mozilla/ serves up old images of the Moz mascot through time. Dave Titus, the creator of the Mozilla character has a site (with really cool graphics!) at http://www.davetitus.com/flash/home_06e.html
And if you were wondering what Tim Berners-Lee, the “father” of the web is thinking will be the next www: the semantic web, http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html
whereby, using XML and RDF he thinks it may be possible to make the web browseable by artificial intelligences. Think of the concept as a “global database” (his words) wherein data is stored in a logical way so that your machines can go out and use it to get stuff done for you.
