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Grex > Systems > #98: The Mac OS X 10.5 - aka Leopard - Item | |
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| 25 new of 68 responses total. |
cross
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response 19 of 68:
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Feb 21 07:03 UTC 2009 |
resp:18 Look it up. The rest is a huge amount of irrelevant detail.
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veek
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response 20 of 68:
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Feb 21 10:20 UTC 2009 |
Re #19: don't be grumpy :) arr! <make way, make way, geek chick coming
through :p tackles Sindi and sits on her>
I've never used a Mac.. and I'm kind of not inclined to because of the
cost/laziness involved; Intel 400Mhz 256MB RAM - would a OSX run on
that? Would it be worthwhile using/learning how to use it for someone
like me? Why are Remmers and Rane even using it - free?
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remmers
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response 21 of 68:
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Feb 21 16:46 UTC 2009 |
Yeah, cross seems to be in grump mode lately.
I'd be curious, too, to know what security problems one opens oneself up
to on an old Mac that's not connected to the internet, although maybe
this item, which is ostensibly about Leopard, isn't the place to discuss it.
Security issues aside, I think it's kind of cool that folks can make
some use out of old software/hardware.
As to why I use the Mac - well, I buy my Macs, they're not free, so
that's not the reason. I like Mac's because they're so well engineered
and come with great software. More detail than that will have to wait
until I'm feeling up to expositing at greater length. :)
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keesan
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response 22 of 68:
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Feb 21 17:55 UTC 2009 |
The Mac does not crash. The hardware is also high quality. OS X lets you
use BSD if you prefer, and even compile programs.
OSX won't run on an Intel that i know of.
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remmers
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response 23 of 68:
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Feb 21 18:08 UTC 2009 |
All current Macs use Intel processors. This has been true for a couple
of years now.
However, it is not easy to get OS X running on a non-Apple Intel machine.
I think what "lets you use BSD" means is that OS X has a BSD variant
(Darwin) built-in; running the Terminal application brings up a Unix
shell (Bash by default).
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keesan
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response 24 of 68:
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Feb 21 18:23 UTC 2009 |
This lets you bypass the gui stuff and type commands. Such as ssh.
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cross
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response 25 of 68:
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Feb 21 22:04 UTC 2009 |
I'm not grumpy; I'm just upset that no one has brought food under my
bridge for me to eat lately.
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ball
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response 26 of 68:
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Feb 22 13:37 UTC 2009 |
I use MacOS X because I had a bad experience installing
NetBSD on a 300 MHz iBook G3, so I didn't want to beat my
head against the same procedure on the 900 MHz iBook G3 that
I was loaned.
MacOS X ships with the important things that I need to
connect to a NetBSD or Linux host and run applications
there: ssh and an X server. I also run a few X clients
locally on the Mac: xterm, xcalc etc.
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mary
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response 27 of 68:
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Feb 22 14:14 UTC 2009 |
No hassles. No virus problems. Elegant look and feel. Works as
advertised. Four biggies for me.
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mary
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response 28 of 68:
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Feb 22 14:18 UTC 2009 |
Oh, I'm on OS 10.5.6.
I wonder if you don't find common threads between the cars people buy and
the flavor of their computers.
I know I buy Honda Civics for the same "no hassles - as advertised"
reasons.
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cross
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response 29 of 68:
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Feb 22 16:35 UTC 2009 |
I just don't buy cars.
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keesan
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response 30 of 68:
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Feb 22 17:46 UTC 2009 |
Free curbside-find bikes, free small linux on curbside computers.
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ball
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response 31 of 68:
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Feb 23 03:09 UTC 2009 |
Manual gearbox, window winders, locks etc. estate
("station wagon"), carries more than you'd think. NetBSD
is analagous - everything's manual and it makes an efficient
work-horse.
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cross
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response 32 of 68:
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Feb 23 04:15 UTC 2009 |
Or install real Linux on them and help them out even more. Fixing people
up with telnet screws them over.
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keesan
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response 33 of 68:
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Feb 23 05:02 UTC 2009 |
Linux installed to hard drive has plenty of space for ssh (dbclient) and it
is quite real. What I use is much faster than the commercial versions.
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cross
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response 34 of 68:
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Feb 23 05:24 UTC 2009 |
That's good!
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keesan
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response 35 of 68:
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Feb 23 05:37 UTC 2009 |
I got Russian working with links browser (which is graphical with embedded
images but uses console fonts). And Russian streaming audio. A 486 would
be perfect for this but we don't have any left.
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ball
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response 36 of 68:
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Feb 23 16:03 UTC 2009 |
I don't have any 486 boxes either, but at least it's
possible to build energy-efficient modern PCs now. Not sure
whether any of those are reaching the curbside yet though.
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nharmon
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response 37 of 68:
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Feb 23 16:38 UTC 2009 |
humm. I run FreeBSD and drive a Jeep. Okay.
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nharmon
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response 38 of 68:
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Feb 23 16:38 UTC 2009 |
...Oh I get it. I like things for which there is a ton of free
documentation on how to modify for my own use.
:D
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keesan
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response 39 of 68:
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Feb 23 20:02 UTC 2009 |
We measured energy use and a 486 beats a 386 or a pentium. The earliest
pentiums were less energy efficient than slightly later ones. Faster cpus
use more energy.
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ball
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response 40 of 68:
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Feb 24 02:55 UTC 2009 |
That's not always the case. Thankfully sanity prevailed
at Intel and even AMD have some modern, fast chips that burn
less power than predecessors.
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keesan
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response 41 of 68:
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Feb 24 04:55 UTC 2009 |
Less than a 486?
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ball
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response 42 of 68:
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Feb 24 20:16 UTC 2009 |
Possibly. Have you looked at Intel Atom? For less than
$120 it's possible to buy a mainboard with an Atom processor
soldered to it and 2 Gbytes of RAM.
I can see that rescuing curbside 486 machines costs less
and keeps them from the landfill. RAM and disk capacity
limitations might be a drawback though.
This being the MacOS X Leopard item, I should probably
mention that one of the Darwin ports (I /think/ only Pure-
Darwin survives) might work on the Atom board. There are
several non-Darwin desktop BSDs and Linux of course as
alternatives.
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remmers
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response 43 of 68:
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Sep 8 22:47 UTC 2009 |
Has anybody else upgraded to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) yet? I did,
the day it was released. Risky move, I know - did it for 10.5 but
ended up going back to 10.4 (Tiger) until certain issues were
resolved. But advance reviews indicated that Snow Leopard was
largely glitch-free and involved mostly under-the-hood revisions,
not user interface stuff, so I took a chance.
Overall I'm really pleased with Snow Leopard. It takes up less
disk than Leopard (saved me about 7 GB). The system boots faster -
just over a minute, instead of the 2-3 minutes that Leopard took.
Applications open and close faster - especially noticeable in the
Mail app. Time Machine backups are faster. Although there are no
radical changes to the user interface, there are some nice
enhancements. For example, the the Airport drop-down menu displays
signal strengths for the networks it can see. Also, when you open a
dock folder in "grid" view, you can go to subfolders and stay in
grid view (which should have been the case all along, of course).
Snow Leopard runs only on Intel Macs, and so marks the end of Apple
support for the Power PC architecture.
For an exhaustive detailed review of Snow Leopard, see John Siracusa's
writeup in Ars Technica:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars
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