[thelist] stupid OSX questions

Bob Davis bobd at members.evolt.org
Mon Mar 26 19:44:10 CST 2001


Hi Erika!

On Monday, March 26, 2001, at 08:04 PM, Erika Meyer wrote:

> somewhere I think I gathered that OSX is now commercially available.
>

Yup - as of Saturday.

> I just got a new job and was asked what my dream machine would be... 
> well, I'm going to ask for a Mac, but I'm wondering if I should ask for 
> OSX or not.  I'm wondering if I will be able to do the web-designy 
> things I need to do on the new OS... if so, I'd like to try it.
>

Ok, well, here's the deal. First of all - Apple isn't shipping OS-X on 
machines, only as a stand-alone operating system. You can't (afaik) 
order it pre-installed on a machine yet.

That being said, when you order X, you also get 9.1 for running 
'Classic' applications (and it's a real 9.1 CD, not some minimal 
install).  You can boot into either os, depending on what you want to 
do. I like X, but I've used unix type operating systems before.  I use 
9.1 for Photoshop and CD burning, and anything where I need a device 
that isn't supported yet.

> This is a pretty different OS, right... so will I be screwed when I 
> want to use Photoshop, BBEdit, Flash, etc?

No, they're all usable, but you have to go to 9.1 if you want to use a 
tablet, scan images (no direct connection from the scanner to photoshop, 
no drivers for tablets, all that good stuff).  However, it's really easy 
to change what os you boot into (it's a control panel), so it's no big 
deal.  BBEdit works fine, I don't know about Flash though.  One plus - 
if you crash Flash, the rest of the machine is fine - no re-boot 
needed. :-)


>
> And do I need to be Unix goddess in order to operate the OS?  Or is it 
> learnable to the standard Mac-using idiot?
>

It's totally different.  There's not a lot about X that you'll find 
familiar. It's all learnable, and you have to find the command line 
interface if you want to use it.  I'm still working on some of the 
configuration stuff - it's not really unix, not really MacOS. It's weird.

If they'll buy it, go for it.  It can't hurt to learn a new system, and 
it's really useful for stuff like developing PHP or sites that make 
heavy use of Apache SSI's.  It's all of the cool stuff that 
Unix/Linux/BSD has to offer, with a pretty easy interface for users.

And root is disabled by default, so it's harder to mess it up. :)

Let me know if you have any other questions.

bob

--
bob davis
bobd at members.evolt.org




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