[ale] Using OS X as a thin client

[Jerald Sheets]

On Jul 28, 2007, at 2:07 PM, John Wells wrote:

> I made the serious, grave mistake of paying $1300 for a miserably  
> crappy eMac about 2 years ago. We've had problems with it since we  
> bought it...in particular monitor whine which lasted for the first  
> year or so (and which Apple refused to acknowledge as a problem).
>

As the undisputed king of starting up rabble-rousing on this list, I  
just can't let this statement go without more information.

Specs?

Processor, ram, disk space?
Trying to run significant applications on shoestring specs?


> It's my wife's computer, and I was suckered into buying it with the  
> promise of it being a great media computer. hah! iPhoto is by far  
> the slowest imaging program I have ever used. It was "ok" when we  
> were taking 3.2 megapixels shots but still noticeably slow. Now  
> we're taking 5 mp shots and it's absolutely unusable.
>

My experience is absolutely converse to yours.  It was suggested that  
as a career UNIX admin and a semi=professional musician that I might  
like a mac because of it's UNIX underpinnings and it's penchant for  
doing multimedia right.  I do both 3.2 and 5 Megapixel pics and  
digital video, handle them all in iPhoto, and it's just butter.   
iPhoto is still amazingly fast and responsive, regardless of the  
source material.

> I should've known better. Apple is crap as a computer  
> company...they make decent music devices, but that's it. And  
> they've pulled the wool over a whole crowd of otherwise intelligent  
> people and made them think OS X and Apple machinery is "it". I beg  
> to differ.
>

So let me get this straight...  A company is crap because you either  
don't have the coin for the right specs or because you haven't  
figured out how to get the system to do what you want it to do?

As a 17 year UNIX admin, I find my Macbook Pro (formerly my Powerbook  
G4) both to have been by far and away the absolute *BEST* computers I  
have ever owned.  They are the fastest, easiest to work with, easiest  
to upgrade,cheapest commercial OS, best and most stable framework,  
nicest development tools, wonderful Open Source community surrounding  
the platform, the "it just works" mantra is still true today.  THe  
BSD Ports collection has been ported, I use XWindows and my favorite  
X apps, and can do absolutely everything I need to AS WELL AS run my  
commercial music applications for notation, recording, and drill design.

I do it all on my laptop, and it's the first platform I've ever been  
able to do this with as a professional Sysadmin.

In contrast to Sysadmin work,  as a musician, it outperforms every  
iteration of Windows I tried for recording, hands down.  It runs Pro  
Tools like butter.  It runs my parts extraction in Finale with no  
trouble.  It uses limited resources and is snappy as can be on my  
drill design software and I can run all three at once!  On Windows, I  
can only run one at a time, as it begins to bog down and eventually  
requires a reboot.

I was so confident in it's abilities in both usability and technology  
that when my mother started looking for a new machine, I pointed her  
to a powerbook.  I used to receive weekly to twice weekly calls from  
her regarding her system beforehand, but now she never calls for  
problems.  Her mac just plain works, it works the way she wants it  
to, and it's as fast as can be for her.  I didn't train her on  
anything... not once.  That sixty year-old lady is rocking the house  
on a Mac with no help.

My kids use the mac ALL the time.  They do homework, make movies, run  
iPhoto, and just plain beat the thing to death with no issues.

Instead of an emotional response to issues you are currently  
experiencing, how about joining the local MUG, coming to a meeting,  
or getting with some experts to work through issues you are having.   
It seems to work for you on Linux, eh?


Just "FYI":

The kids' machine isn't as nice as your eMac.  It's an old 867MHz  
Power Mac G4 with 4G ram and a ton of space.  The Powerbook is  
repurposed for my oldest son, 2G ram, 1.67GHz.

My Macbook is the Core 2 Duo, 2G Ram, 120G HDD.

All factory, all as a result of observing just how darned good they  
are to work with, how fast they run my apps, and how strong/firm a  
UNIX underpinning they have.  I pop open a shell and start working in  
perl right away...what could be better?

I got this while on the road with my Drum Corps, so I couldn't get to  
you before the reload.  I'll bet we could've saved you a lot of pain  
by just answering your questions, making suggestions, and I even have  
some hardware I could've given you to help out your experience.

We may be a linux community here, but there's no reason why you can't  
ask these questions and get help before freaking out.  You may have  
had a ton of help from the list you didn't expect, or didn't know  
existed if you'd have just asked.

--j