Thread: iMac Dies -- Over To The Dark Side

^^

58, that's still young, 50s is the new 40s, seriously you should try something new, even Linux, you will be like a kid discovering his first computer, start with Debian or SUSE, like the Pros, and avoid all the girlie distro for clueless teenagers like Ubutu, Mandrake, Caldera, RedHat etc...

having Somchai play around with Vista is not something I would call enjoyable or learning, complete waste of time

I started using IBM desktop machines in 1980 (IBM System 23) and did so, all day, every work day, until I retired in 2005. That's a quarter century of almost daily PC use. Been there.

I installed Linux on a 286 PC IN 1996 (?) and had the unenviable task of getting it to drive a Token-Ring NIC. I've dallied with Linux ever since. I like it. Been there.

My router runs Linux. I've enjoyed installing a number of shells on it and playing around with the features. It's fun.

My iMac, of course, runs BSD Unix. Sometimes I use the KDE desktop, the Konqueror browser and K-Mail. They're OK.

I've been using Macs at home since 1984. That's almost a quarter century of daily Mac use.

Of all the OSes I've used, I like Mac the best. It's that simple.

When Ms. B and I first started living together she had a brand new Sony VAIO laptop. I had an iMac. After using the iMac for a few months she ordered the PowerBook on which I'm typing this message. She never opened the VAIO again.

When I told her I was thinking of buying a PC and installing Linux on it she said, "But will it work like a Mac?" Well, no.

Even though I can't really afford it, I'm sticking with Mac.

You can tease me, poke fun at me and make your ageist remarks until the cows come up. I'm not changing my mind.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Originally Posted by nikster

Other examples - quicklook is genius. Ever wanted to just have a quick look at some file - quicklook does exactly that, no opening of apps, and zero delay. Just show the damn thing. Downloads folder is now in the dock, and shows as grid view by default, it gets overlaid with an icon of the last download added, which also shows up on top of the grid view. This is _exactly_ what I want from a download folder, only previously on Mac and Win I had to do it by hand and it was not nearly as smooth (e.g. open folder, sort by date, etc). My downloads folder has thousands of files so this is great.

Jesus, are you sure you know how to use WinXP ? these things have been there for ages on the Windows platform. It's like bragging for having a spare tire on your brand new car made from India

LOL. No, these features have not been on any version of XP, or Mac OS, or Vista for that matter (quicklook - maybe you just don't get it?). XP doesn't have a dock so arguing that the "download folder in dock" has been around for ages is mildly entertaining. Nuff said.

I was trying to point out small nifty features which are subtle yet end up making the whole computing experience significantly better.

Originally Posted by nikster

If you call the Mac OS interface clumsy you have either never used it, or never used it properly

I am a 15 years Mac veteran, so I know exactly what I am talking about here

Sadly, old age does not equate wisdom. Maybe I can show you a few things? Keyboard shortcuts? Spotlight? If you are having a bumpy ride on OS X, you need to learn to drive.

Many years ago when I was introduced to the Mac - back when they were _really_ expensive, certainly too much for me to afford as a student - I was watching my professor work on his Mac and I was amazed. Things were happening so fast, I could hardly follow what he was doing. It's that way with anything, really - in order to reach a completely fluent work-flow, you need a first class tool. One that stays out of your way and lets you get work done with minimal fuss. OS X does that, and does it really well.

Just now I was mousing over the words "tomorrow afternoon" sent to me in email and got a small unobtrusive pop-up arrow. Clicking on it, I got an option to enter a new calendar event with that date. See below. It's a small thing, but soooo useful. It takes a lot to make me go "wow", but this did it. Watch out for it in next year's Windows

^ Those small things are useless, that's what you don't get, they are just distraction, not productive and really not needed. Yes, Macs are pretty, but if you want to do real work, I mean things beyond surfing porn, sending emails, retouching your personal pics etc... then they become absolutely worthless.

The damn thing is slow, clumsy, has strange logic for placing tools and configuration functions etc... I used to think exactly like you did, so I understand what you are saying, and when I switched to Windows (NT4), I was crying and bitching for my Mac everyday for months, exactly like BH so I know where he is coming from, and then when I started to forget that Macs existed, and started to be serious about Windows, the light came and I was saved !!!

At the end of the day, both OSs do the same shit - it's all down you what you're used to.

Originally Posted by Norton

As Butterfly says, the experience you had with bil computer is not the norm

Trouble is, it is the norm.

I spent ten years of my career as a computer specialist writing all sorts of PC software for the Federal government. I was one of the first government programmers to use HLLAPI to enable PC programs to access mainframe data input screens without operator interaction. For this I received a nice award.

For my last ten years my job title was "Manager", my job was receptionist, but I also served as computer support person for Guam and Saipan and as backup for Hawaii.

In about 1996 Social Security deployed what was then the world's largest Windoze (NT) network. We started out with over 67,000 workstations and had nearly 100,000 when I retired. To give you an idea of the size of the operation, we lost, nationally, an average of five hard drives per day.

It didn't take long for the regional and national support staff people to realize that their job was a nightmare. Even though the workstations in the field were generic machines with special OEM versions of Windoze and completely locked up by system policy, things went wrong at an amazing rate. Sound disappears. Can't print. Video goes whacko. No mainframe access. All sorts of stuff.

Soon the regional support people instituted an informal rule: If they couldn't fix your machine's problem in fifteen minutes, you guessed it, you had to reinstall Windoze.

Of course, this made the support guy happy because he could move on to the next sucker. But, for you it meant an hour installing Windoze from a ghost image. And, horror of horrors, waiting for the machine to rejoin the domain. A process that could take several hours. (Windoze NT didn't scale well. I don't think the MS engineers contemplated that NT would be used on a network of tens of thousands of workstations.)

In fact, this domain problem got so bad that I simply took my all-important front counter machines off the domain, had my users log in with a generic (local) PIN and access network resources (printing, mainframe, Intranet) on an ad hoc basis, as needed.

It drove me nuts that we were so rarely allowed to figure out what went wrong with Windoze. I wanted to know, wanted to know how to fix it and how to prevent the problem in the future. But, bottom line, really supporting Windoze was just too expensive. So much cheaper to reinstall and ignore the root of the problems.

So, I always have a laugh when Butterfly implies that I haven't had enough "manly" experience to "see the light" when it comes to Windoze.

I've had the experience. I've yet to see the light.

Originally Posted by buad hai

I've had the experience. I've yet to see the light.

Actually you have and it's that little apple looking light that comes on when your computer is working.

Have fun with the Mac. I'm certainly not anti Mac and at the end of the day they both do pretty much the same stuff.

Originally Posted by buad hai

In about 1996 Social Security deployed what was then the world's largest Windoze (NT) network. We started out with over 67,000 workstations and had nearly 100,000 when I retired. To give you an idea of the size of the operation, we lost, nationally, an average of five hard drives per day.

It didn't take long for the regional and national support staff people to realize that their job was a nightmare. Even though the workstations in the field were generic machines with special OEM versions of Windoze and completely locked up by system policy, things went wrong at an amazing rate. Sound disappears. Can't print. Video goes whacko. No mainframe access. All sorts of stuff.

ha, here lies the problem. Windows NT was never "built" to operate on large WAN or very large LAN, and yes it was foolish of IT departments to deploys that kind of madness with a BETA version (1996) of what was known as Windows NT4. I know MS is also to be blamed for "advertising" and pushing sales for their platform, but that's what they do. MS has never been strong in the server department, and the server OS is one of the worst out there, that's why most big corporations are moving to Linux or other other Unix. So again, your experience is limited by the stupidity and foolishness of some big IT departments, and I wouldn't have touched that project with a barge pole myself.

That said, in a standalone environment without NT servers (small LAN or individual PC), Windows NT (and Win2000 + XP) are great OS, actually they are the best as a desktop solution, better than the crap KDE and X11WM we see on Linux. The server components and Domain controllers were the worst piece of crap ever, and IT department heads who voted to deploy such horrible systems should be shot for their stupidity and naivety. The tech support who had to deal with those nightmares must all have been disgusted for life with MS computing. I know I would have been. It's probably what you have been exposed to.

Windows NT as a desktop PC was extremly stable (remember MacOS bombs, I had them every fucking days, while the blue screen on my NT was every other months), and very reliable, not mentioning fast, and at the end was more productive and easier to use. It was never designed to work on a large scale basis, that was very ambitious from MS, but the "code" and "architecture" was never there.

Originally Posted by buad hai

I've had the experience. I've yet to see the light.

You have had bad experience in a "limited" and "specific" environment, which is why you feel that way. It's like being a virgin and having crap sex with a bargirl, and say never again. Anyway, never going to change your mind, and if all you do is email and surfing, then yes, switching to something new and learning something new might not be a priority for doing the same thing.

Chok Dee,

I love ice cream.
I like it better than porridge.
I can no longer afford ice cream.
I will switch to porridge.
I will pretend to like it.
I will tell all my friends to give up ice cream
And switch to porridge.
I will preach the porridge gospel throughout the land.
Ice cream will soon disappear from the face of the Earth
And all will be right with the world.

Comparing Apple and MS Operating Systems is a little like choosing between a dark skinned Thai and a light skinned one. Its a matter of personal taste and comfort level. The rest is just noise on the way to the bedroom....

Hope the Mac gets fixed BH

E. G.

and what was wrong and how much?

Originally Posted by buad hai

Finally Home....

Raised from the dead. It's a miracle.

^Power supply. Sent it by bus to this place in Bangkok:

Mac Home Service

Bus fare was 100 baht. Repair charge, including 7% VAT, return bus fare and pickup charge was 5300.

They tried to repair the power supply. Couldn't get the parts. Had to order a new one from Apple in Singapore.

Originally Posted by buad hai

Power supply.

Hard to tell but looks like you have a UPS there on the floor. Hope so or you may be spending another 5400 baht soon.

Also, if you can sit on the floor all the time your on the computer, your a much better man than I.

^Yep, always use an UPS. This one seems pretty good.

Been sitting on the floor mostly for the last 30 years, so I'm used to it!

Dude, that's a G4 lampshade iMac! How old is that thing? They didn't make those for years and years... this is almost a museum piece... no wonder they had trouble getting the parts... not poo-pooing it of course, it's a design classic and still looks lovely. I just didn't imagine we were talking about a grandpa of computing here.

Speaking of ancient systems, comparing NT and OS 9 is just not relevant this day and age. Well OK XP isn't that far removed from NT but OS X is a completely different operating system which until not too long ago included a sandbox that ran OS 9 in a completely virtualized environment. In short, OS 9 sucked very badly when it came to stability, it was the same generation OS as Win95, only older.

I must say that at that time, I used OS 9 (Edit: I guess it was OS 7 back then...) and NT for development. NT was really horrible to use and worse in every single regard save one: It just didn't crash. Ever. No matter how bad the code was that I wrote, NT would march on whereas OS 9 would die several times a day. NT's stability made it a better OS than OS 9 at the end of the day, because hard crashing is a pretty severe usability problem. All the beauty and thought that went into the interface could not make up for that.

Enter OS X which also never crashes...

Originally Posted by nikster

Dude, that's a G4 lampshade iMac! How old is that thing?

It's five years old. That model was sold from February through September of 2003. I retired soon after I bought it and the falling dollar has kept me from buying anything new or even a desk to put the thing on. I'm broke. Sorry.

Apple iMac G4/1.0 17-Inch (Flat Panel) Specs (iMac 17" 1 GHz - M8935LL/A) @ EveryMac.com

I bought the exact same model a few weeks before I came here.It had the same problem but I just bought it to sell it for parts.Bought the damn thing for £20/$40.Should have bought it with me and got it fixed here.UK repair price was a bit higher roughly 6500 baht.
Could have had a G4 iMac and my iBook to play with ggggrrrrr !