[lcrim]

At work, I want to try a Mac iBook G4 in a WIN2K3 Active Directory environment.  I haven't messed w/ Macs much at all.  Right now there is a problem w/ SAP 6.40 client and Java Runtime 1.4.2 which is apparently native to Mac OS 10.4, so until Mac solves that I can't roll it out but I was wondering what other headaches this might bring.
Anybody have any experience w/ this.  I really like the design of  Mac notebooks.  The Dells and IBM/Levornos which are our standard are duller than crap.

[John Ashman]

Larry, don't do OS 10.4.2 for anything critical.  They still have bugs that they're hunting down.  Lots of stupid little things, but they could be damaging if you rely on the software for business.  Each one has gotten better, but 10.3 was way more problem free.  10.4.3 is supposed to solve this (fingers crossed), but it about 2-4 weeks away.

[lcrim]

OS 10.4.2 (Tiger) is supposed to work natively w/ Active Directory and Apple actually runs the same client version (6.40) of SAP that we run.  So except for Lotus Domino, it should work.
Thanks for your input John.

[jgubman]

I've used OS X in a win2k3 environment at work for years. I also have 10.4.2 installed on my work mini.

I've had no problems. Only tricky thing is you need to setup the Mail app as IMAP otherwise for some reason calendar invites won't show up in your inbox.

Other than that one little quirk, I'm able to interact w/ the Exchange server no problem, iCal finds my exchange calendar events, and I'm able to interact w/ the windows fileshares.

One nice other feature of OS X is it's able to easily mount NFS, openAFP, and Samba mounts on the desktop.

However, at work I'm mainly just checking email, using a web browser and interacting w/ Linux and Solaris boxes via ssh, so take that for what it's worth.

[nathanm]

Larry, don't do OS 10.4.2 for anything critical.  They still have bugs that they're hunting down.  Lots of stupid little things, but they could be damaging if you rely on the software for business.  Each one has gotten better, but 10.3 was way more problem free.  10.4.3 is supposed to solve this (fingers crossed), but it about 2-4 weeks away.

That's no joke! What's this though, Tiger is WORSE than Panther!?  Augh!  How could it get any worse!!!???

Check back in on OSX in about five years, lcrim.  Unless of course you have no need to get anything done whatsoever in a timely manner. Can't get to sleep?  The Finder is a great cure for insomnia, you'll get plenty sleepy waiting for it do something.  But hey, that's to be expected when you throw everything that was good about the old OS in the trash heap and start over.  I am tempted to switch back to Windows myself.

[suits_me]

It might be that bad for you, but it's nothing like that bad for me and for a lot of others.

Maybe it's karma, or maybe something else.

At the same time, I might not use it in a mission critical way for the purpose mentioned in the thread...which, despite allegations, is not the realistic target market for Apple.

For home end-losers interested in producing media, surfing safely, or as a non-industrial web server it's so far above Wintel that it's not worth arguing at length.

[Mathew_M]

I agree with Nathan.

It just feels like there's a thick layer of icing to everything in OS X.   For day to day professional work I just want to strip all of the eye candy away and have a simple platinum interface but with multitasking.  There are a few things I like such as Expose which is actually usefull and requires quartz rendering however I could live without it.   Oh yeah Motion requires Quartz but everything else is just eye candy to sell Macs and make an old hippy at heart like Steve Jobs smile.

I don't think switching to windows is going to be very usefull since MS tends to copy everything from the Mac OS.   Longhorn or whatever they're calling it right now looks just as syrupy.

[lcrim]

Part of the impetus to try OSX is the fact that the Betas of Vista we have, which is what MS is calling Longhorn now, at least demonstrates that there is a transition in business OS's coming and so lets look at the rest of the marketplace.
This thread kind of bears out my impression that OSX is a nice homeuser piece.  An inherent advantage in Macs is that they are far less susceptible to viruses/trojans and spyware and unlike MS don't require a tool like LanDesk, to keep up with and manage the constant damn OS updates and patches. I don't expect a wholesale conversion but  we'll learn some stuff about Macs to give us a different perspective on OS's.  Linux is also out there and maybe we should look at that too.

[nathanm]

For day to day professional work I just want to strip all of the eye candy away and have a simple platinum interface but with multitasking.

Yep!  That's what I dreamed of too when I first heard OSX was coming, but it was not to be. They went for something that appealed to the mainstream crowd.  Changing the fundamental nature of the Finder and where things are is just an unnecessary hurdle for Mac users.  Right now OSX is just a toy. Pretty, but sluggish.  About all I've done with it so far was make some custom icons.  *Woo*

I agree, it's a great mom 'n pop OS which doesn't need TOO much TLC, but as of yet it has very little to offer the power user.  Another thing is how HUGE the damn thing is.  An OS9 install was like, I dunno...400MB or so.  But OSX is 2-3GB!  I did a backup on my G4 and there's 300,000 some folders on the damn thing.  THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND!?  Yikes.  And most of those aren't the ones I made!  

You know that saying about how work expands to fill the time allotted?  Well, with OSX it's like the operating system expanded to fill up and burden all this cool, fast hardware that's all around.  OS9 on this G4 Quicksilver is pretty snappy, I can only imagine how blazing it would be on a dual 2.7GHz G5.  If you could still run OS9 on the new hardware I wouldn't be as raked off as I am.  Apparently there's no market for people like me who just want to do the same stuff they've been doing, only faster.  Instead it's, 'hey we've got 200 new features and 1Gb more of shit on your HD you never use! It looks pretty and has more GUI overhead to slow you down!'  Now the graphical horsepower that used to be used to play Quake and Doom in OSX is being used to draw sheet animations in the damn Finder!  What!?  I need a monster 3D card to open a window?!

But like I said, in another few years I'm sure it will be cool.  It'll just be a long, very expensive road to get there if you want to play their game.

[jgubman]

I don't know Nathan, I've owned macs for years and was glad to see OS 9 die. I sure don't miss the constant application/system crashes that I experienced w/ the old os.

OS X is built around FreeBSD, a Unix OS, and is incredibly stable. True, there's a compeletly new filesystem, but it's very familiar to anyone who's spent any time w/ a unix/linux machine.

I agree that the finder was snappier in OS 9, but I don't find it very sluggish in 10.x. Plus it's great to have all the standard tools: perl, java, gcc, ruby, python, apache, etc. preinstalled on my machine.

I know whenever I spend any time on a wintel machine I wonder to myself why someone would actually prefer to use that platform...

[nathanm]

I see your point jgubman and I don't disagree, but I'm a designer, so the coding software doesn't really affect my perception of the OS.  If you have to deal with hundreds of folders and thousands of files the OSX Finder is pitifully slow.  Just plain unworkable.  For instance, I opened up a folder containing approximately 1100 PDF files in List View and it took three MINUTES for me to scroll to the top!  Three minutes, not seconds!  I'm talking flick the mouse wheel, rainbow cursor...redraw...redraw...redraw.  Crawlingly slow.  A slideshow.  This is not even an issue whatsoever in OS9.  But luckily one smart dude and friends were able to make fools out of the entire Apple team:

http://cocoatech.com/

(These types of guys are the true heroes in my book.  It's really the lone dude in his woodshed who makes these things work right when the big company fails)

Open\Save dialogs are a mess too, compared to OS9 (with Default Folder of course! ).  If you go to open a specific filetype from within your application the dialog shows EVERYTHING in the folder in a dimmed state with just the desired filetypes shown normally.  The other files shouldn't be shown at all!  If I want to open an .abr file then I only want to see .abrs, not every other file in there.  It makes no sense.  

They also broke keyboard navigation within open\save dialogs.  The return key no longer can be used to open a damn folder!  You HAVE to use the mouse.  Why?  What is the point of all this? It's like they took the user interface, smashed it into a hundred pieces and are now slowly gluing it back together, charging $130 for each piece too. (great marketing)  At first you couldn't even type keys within a folder to jump alphabetically to what you wanted.  Now that's thankfully back in.  But what for? Why was it ever removed?

OSX basically makes me feel like I've never used a computer before.  There's so many little ridiculous interface things that are screwed up.  Maybe that's why there's that Accesibility preference pane, because everyone who uses OSX feels handicapped!  

The cool programmy, UNIXy  things going on behind the scenes are great and all, but in my view that thoeretical stuff is completely overshadowed by the thoughtless user interface.  Don't get me wrong, I hate the lockups in 9 with a passion, but they are infrequent enough to be tolerable.  OS9 Just Works when it's running fine, which is most of the time.  OSX Just Doesn't Work when it is running fine, which is all the time. Well, that's not true, there is one thing which works flawlessly: the animated rainbow cursor.  That thing runs like a champion!

But what really bugs me is that you can't even choose to be an OS9 luddite if you want (and continue to upgrade your hardware that is).  Why does OS9 have to "die" so that OSX may live?  In the PC world I can still install Win95 if I really want to on current hardware, but I can't run OS9 on nice new powermac.  I'm all for throwing out legacy support for something, assuming the new thing is indeed way better.  I haven't seen that yet with OSX.

[jgubman]

Nathan,

that probably explains our different views on the OS. I rarely (never?) look at folders w/ too much in them. Doesn't the finder try to draw a preview for every pdf/image file it encounters also?

[John Ashman]

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have Tiger than any Windows system.  I just think that they rushed it out rather than getting it right.  We'll see what happens with 10.4.3.  What I don't like is that they act like there are no issues and keep selling defective software.  Dashboard, which is GREAT idea takes about 15-30 seconds to load depend on how much you've got going on.  So, finding out "quick" information takes forever, rendering it almost *useless*.   This setup should be constantly refreshed and ready to pop out the moment you ask for it.  The ability to find files is great, but there should also be a way to MOVE a found file into another folder from the finder!  Or delete.  Or an "organize PDFs" button or something.  Ah, well, they're making progress, but Tiger is definitely slower.  Each update improves things, but it's still got a ways to go before I get my speed back.  My 1.25GHz is slower than my 800GHz model.  Even with double the memory.  WTF?  I "upgraded" to lower performance.  I'm sure they'll fix it, but still.  I feel like I have to get a dual processor G5 tower to get my speed back.  

Has anyone ever thought of putting out a "lite" version of an operating system?  THAT would be great.

[jgubman]

Nathan,

just stumbled across an app that might make your life a little easier.
Have you tried Quicksilver: http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

It's an app that kinda gets the Finder out of your way, you start entering keywords and it (very quickly) finds matches and lets you open, edit, get info, preview, etc.

Very cool and very fast, since I've installed it I rarely find myself using the finder anymore.

[nathanm]

Looks like one of those cryptic, designy websites where they don't really want you to know what it is or how it works. Heh!

It sort of sounds like what Spotlight does, although I haven't "up" graded to Tiger yet so I don't know what that's like.  The assumption seems to be that the user has a huge disorganized mess on their hard drive and it's Spotlight's job to sort it out.  

My quarrel with the Finder is mainly one of breaking basic user interface traditions that worked fine, and not so much about advanced search functions.  Maybe this thing is cool, but right now I'm not terribly keen on getting Tiger.  These big cat names are misnomers, they should be named after the kind of cats you see on dentist posters.  Cute, but not killers. 'Peacock' would be a better animal name for the OS.

[Ernest]

I'm a MAC convert from the Windows and Linux worlds and I can't even begin to express how much I love it!!  But I don't use it the same way as guys like Nathan.  I mostly run Mail and Safari and otherwise use Terminal to connect to the systems at work and do my software development.  But for a tecno-geek programmer like me it's wonderful, and about 15 guys at work have switched to Macs in the past year.  I also find programming for the Mac to be much better than either Windows or Linux.  My wife now has an iBook, I have a PowerBook, and next week we're getting an iMac.  I don't intend to ever buy a PC again.  And I can't stand Windows!

[lcrim]

Because I started this thread I wanted to give you an update on our experience running MAC OS 10.4 on an iBook G4 in an Active Directory environment.
We managed to get an SAP client (6.4) and a Lotus Notes 6 Release client running reliably as well as authenticating the OS to the domain.  We even managed to get a Landesk client working on it.  The interface takes a great deal of getting used to.  Almost everything is there that you can do in Windows if you dig and are patient enough.
Connectivity is robust but pretty much taken out of your hands.  Concepts like user profiles are handled differently.  I liked the fact that you are required to login at every software or device installation.  We use an SSL VPN for remote clients and that functioned too.  For someone like myself, an admin,  there are just too many management packages that won't run in the OS but for regular users it would work.  The notebook computer is quite heavy and the screen is surprisingly dull and lacks crispness.  The keyboard is fine but the lack of a right click w/o attaching a mouse was annoying.  The DOS keyboard shortcuts don't work either -no DOS.

In short - it can be made to work but I doubt that it would be worth the learning curve issues for our corporate users.  I was disappointed that the notebook model we got anyway wasn't better ergonomically, way too frigging heavy w/ no gain for that trade-ff.  It was important , however,  to look at a different way of doing things and  for that alone , I enjoyed the experience.

[drphoto]

I still have a home brew Mac based on the now defunct Daystar chassis running Mac OS8.6. It was, and still is absolutely bombproof. I mean the thing never crashes. It still has my favorite version of Photoshop..."6". (I'm a photographer, so this is my main app) Yes my dual 2 ghz G5 is faster, but I've never really warmed up to "X" and I hated Pshop 7.0 and really don't like CS much better.

Adobe also seems to have been bitten by the 'make it easier for idiots' syndrome, rather than servicing the pro market. Version 6 was just about perfect.

I too wish I could run the old software on the new machine.

Even so....you couldn't give me a windoz box. I taught Pshop classes at a local college and had to use a PC and hated pretty much everything about it.

[nathanm]

I'm jealous drphoto, I always wanted a Daystar machine! Although I would suspect they may 'feel' slower compared to the modern Macs.  You're right about Photoshop 6.  There's always something they put in the next version that's really cool, but I could probably live comfortably with 6 if I had to.  As long as it's got multiple undos I'm cool with it.

I too wish I could run the old software on the new machine.

No kidding!  That is my fantasy too.  Just imagine running that old lean code on these new monsters.  Now you need a monster video card just to process the GUI, you're already taking a performance hit even before you launch Photoshop.

PC Photoshop does have one nice difference: drop down menus are keyboard accessible with TAB and the cursor keys.  Like if you bring up Fade... after running a filter you can key through the blending modes whereas on a Mac you have to use the mouse.

[Jonathan]

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but you guys seem like you'd be in a good position to help with a computer-buying decision I'm looking at:

Two machines, both used. one is an Imac G4 1 ghz processor, OS 10.4.2, 80 gig hard drive. 15" screen, comes with Adobe Photoshop (plus more), Office 2004, some decent burning and recording software. Seller says he has Install disks  but no OS disks. Asking $550, will take $500.  

The other  is a PC (not sure of the brand), 2.6 ghz processor, Pentium 4. 256 megs of Ram, 80 gig hard drive. Comes with monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. (all of which I already have). Comes with XP, but no install discs. I have a copy of XP and Office 2004. I also have Photoshop 5.5 (had 6, but can't find my disk), and other miscellaneous stuff that I'll put in it.  Asking $300, but may be flexible.

I have a bit of experience in Mac land (the wife has an old G4), but have been a PC guy for most of my computer life.

Computer is primarily being used for web surfing, school work (paper-writing, Powerpoint stuff, etc.).

Any advice for which to choose would be appreciated.

-Jon