[wgscott]

I have to say now that I have this up and running that this is definitely better than most legal forms of sex. If you haven't made the upgrade yet, do so. This is fantastic. If there is any logic to the market place, people will be saying "who was Bill Gates?" in about a year.

My SGI came with a GUI Mac-like shell that sits on top of UNIX but they never really pulled it off. The Mac People have. It is a genuine pleasure to use this operating system. Before now I just put up with personal computer operating systems and found them irritating. This has all the advantages of UNIX and only two of the disadvantages.

[MarkS]

I would love to upgrade, but I have a very old and still very used 68K painting program and Apple removed the support for classic Mac apps in OSX. Also, alot of the games and software that my dad wrote were written for the older processor and I would no longer be able to use them...

I would partion my harddrive or get an external, but I would really hate to have to restart in the middle of a project(I am making a game at the moment) just to switch over to 8.6 to use my painting program. I don't want to buy a new painting program. That's why.

I'll upgrade soon, I just don't know when.

Mark

P.S. When Apple switched from the Motorola 68000 series of processors to the PowerPC, the wrote an emulation mode that piggybacked the OS. Basically, the old 68K programs do not know that they were being run on a different processor. And it is/was very fast!

Wouldn't it be cool if Apple or a third party developer would write a simular emulation layer for OSX so that I could open a program written for the Pentium line directly from the decktop. It would be so cool to have Windows sitting on my Mac formatted harddisk, running off of a PowerPC chip without using a emulator program like SoftWindow or VirtualPC. Apple did it with the 68K, there is no reason that it would not work for the Pentium... Oh well, just dreaming.

[schrocat]

Originally posted by wgscott
This has all the advantages of UNIX and only two of the disadvantages.

What's the two disadvantages?

Hey guys...does a Mac run Wordperfect?
I hate Wordperfect, but it is used exclusively in the legal field (by the wife) so I have to make sure it runs on whatever flavor box is around the house.

That lucite Mac with the 17" flat lucite monitor may be the best looking machine I've ever seen.
They keep catching my eye in the store.
I may have outgrown my disgust for Macs as my biggest hangup was their lack of games. I rarely, if ever, play PC games anymore.

later,

[MarkS]

Originally posted by schrocat

What's the two disadvantages?

Good question....

Originally posted by schrocat

Hey guys...does a Mac run Wordperfect?
I hate Wordperfect, but it is used exclusively in the legal field (by the wife) so I have to make sure it runs on whatever flavor box is around the house.

Yup. Not only that, but the Mac can read WordPerfect files even if you do not have WordPerfect.

Mark

[FishKid]

MarkS, They should have something like that. they have the opposite, run a emulated mac OS on windows....

Next PC I get will be a mac, I like messing around with computer art programs, and I am told that mac is the tool to use!

mark

[icemark]

Mac OS X (and even earlier versions) is perfect for the person that wants a computer appliance. Something that runs fine right out of the box, doesn't want to or need to do driver updates or other upgrade/ maintenance work.

I have played some with it on some of the debugging machines at work, and yes OS X is a major improvement. Improvement over Win XP or even Win NT4 & ME? Ahhh I don't know. It still has some of those same Apple OS quarks. But Finally they let you use a two button mouse though!!! YEAH!!!!

Will it beat out Bill, Nah never going to happen until Mac re-opens licensing again and you can buy parts like motherboards, processors or an other upgrades at any computer store because they are built by dozens of companies rather than one.

BTW Schocat, they discontinued that lucite one (the Cube) a couple of months back.

[DanConnor]

Fishkid-
I teach college computer graphics in a cross-platform environment; and although many designers prefer the Mac, it is mostly just loyalty. Photoshop, Illustrator and practically any program runs identically on either platform. The one exception is 3d applications (3DS MAX, Maya etc) where Macs clearly do not compete. Oh, and if you are designing web pages you would have to own a PC to test your sites, since most of the users will be viewing with pcs.

[SPasse]

Wgscott,

I haven’t had a chance to try out OS-X yet.

I am currently running OS9.

But if I get the buyout that I may, a new MAC should be in my future.

As I hardware engineer, I could get into the Mac vs. PC hardware battle, but I don’t have the energy for that just now.

Most of what I do these days is on a PC, but there will also always be a place in my heart and on my desk for a Mac. (Next to my PC)

Dan,

I’d be willing to bet your 3-D rendering issues are based on graphics rendering issues (graphics cards) as opposed to CPU (main board) issues.

Regards,

Scott Passe

[wgscott]

MarkS:

Here are some things to consider:

1. OS X (and OS 9.1, etc) all come with a program called Appleworks, which seamlessly meshes a word-processing program that is in many respects better than microsoft word, a drawing program, a painting program, a spreadsheet program and the equivalent of MS Powerpoint. This thing reads in any file format you can think of, and about 200 you probably never knew existed. It comes FREE with the operating system, and you can download updates for free. It runs on OS X and is also compatable with OS 8 and OS 9.

2. When you get OS X you can also get OS 9.1 which you also install. That way all legacy software can be run in the piggyback manner you describe, so you don't lose any versitility. The program that starts up 9.1 and allows you to do this takes awhile to open, but the easiest thing is just not to turn your computer off.


Schro:

I am really amazed to hear the legal profession escaped the microsoft monopoly. Congratulations. Again, Appleworks lets you read any format file and write any format file. I've found it a bit buggy, but if people save their files as RTF, then all word processing documents are more or less interchangable.

Oh, while we are on the subject of interchangable documents, it is incredibly easy to make pdf files on OS X, and you don't have to by Adoobe Acrobat Distiller. The graphics are FAR superior.

Since it is a unix machine, you also have the advantage of being able to download all the free GNU software. That is why I think it will blow away the Microsoft market. Basically this has all the advantages of Linux (which is a flavor of Unix) but you don't have to toggle between two operating systems, one of which is probably designed to be incompatable with the other.

PCs are still a better by than Macs, but if you are looking for ease of use, or already have a mac, you NEED this. You also need at least 128 MB memory.

[MarkS]

Originally posted by wgscott
1. OS X (and OS 9.1, etc) all come with a program called Appleworks, which seamlessly meshes a word-processing program that is in many respects better than microsoft word, a drawing program, a painting program, a spreadsheet program and the equivalent of MS Powerpoint. This thing reads in any file format you can think of, and about 200 you probably never knew existed. It comes FREE with the operating system, and you can download updates for free. It runs on OS X and is also compatable with OS 8 and OS 9.

LOL! Thanks, but you are talking to a Mac guru. I was raised on a Mac. Been using them since I was 8. Programming since then too...

IMO, AppleWorks (formerly ClarisWorks) sucks. Don't get me wrong, it does a good job. It's just that it is VERY unrefined. There are simple features that I expect on a low end painting/drawing program that just arn't there.

... Again, Appleworks lets you read any format file and write any format file. I've found it a bit buggy, but if people save their files as RTF, then all word processing documents are more or less interchangable.

Sort of correct. Actually, AppleWorks calls QuickTime's file translater. You may be amazed at the number of files that AppleWorks can open, but it is a small fraction of the files that QuickTime can translate.

Mark

[DanConnor]

Scott-
Yup, thats mostly true. The Mac has a lot of catching up to do in the 3d card area. But also, some of the 3D magazines have done platform tests and found the Mac to be very quick with Photoshop, but with 3D tests not requiring a 3d card the Macs was considerably slower than the PC.

I actually started out on macs, but at that time there was no decent 3d application for the Mac so I switched to NT and used 3d Studio. Even now, I think the only good 3d application for the Mac is Maya.

[wgscott]

[Aragorn]

Heck yeah! Bill Gates FOREVER!
Man, when I took the job of MIS Manager at Kirkwood( I replaced some pro Mac "guru" who convinced the executives to go Mac platform...what was he smokin?) my first order of business was to eliminate all Mac platforms from the LAN! WhoooHoooo! Now they run Intel platforms and Windows. Funny how productivity skyrocketed.