Computer OS preference

Nope, not surprised

 

As a user, it's exactly the same, except better. It has nice little touches here and there and things are faster. Especially boot up and waking from sleep. There is supposedly whole slew of goodies for the developer, such as a brand new compiler which does some magical things. I haven't really explored much yet. Programming stuff I'm talking about applies to Leopard.

I'm on the same boat. I've been trying to program pretty looking GUI programs for quite a while. I've been somewhat successful in Java using Swing, but it always felt clunky.

Windows programming in C++ and MFC? I didn't even try. Seemed formidable and need upfront cash to get Visual Studio license. I think they have a free Visual Studio now, but only for Vista.

Visual Basic (VB6) made things easy, I heard, but I found the stuff written in VB rather revolting. I haven't tried .Net and C# based on philosophical grounds.

The development tools that I mentioned are all free and they have that special polish that Apple is famous for. It feels smooth and mature. Well, they've been developing the tools since the early 80's. Remember NeXT, the company Jobs found after he got kicked off Apple? They had some loyal following. They envisioned a computer where anyone could program.

Knowing C and not knowing C++ is probably helpful. Objective-C is just C plus a little bit extra syntax for objective oriented programming stuff retrofitted. C++ might confuse you. Maybe not.

Programming in Mac, unless you are doing super fancy stuff, goes like this. You draw what your program is going to look like using a GUI tool (Interface Builder). Then you write some code that connects to the interface. It's a little like Visual Basic 6 programming. You can build nice looking toy apps within a couple of hours.

I'm reading Aaron Hillegass's "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" It's really fun to read. You get to build your own little programs right away and it almost makes sense right away.

There are some difficult parts that takes time to sink in. (at least for me) Like reference counting and message passing weird looking syntax that suddenly makes clear sense after looking at it for a few days.

Apple's website has surprisingly deep and well written articles on how to program from ground up. The website has many sample programs. You really don't need any books if that's your thing. But having a book makes it a lot easier for me.

Apple Developer Connection - Mac Dev Center


Stack Overflow is a great resource if you are a programmer or think you might want to be.

Best Cocoa/Mac OS X programming blogs? - Stack Overflow

Cocoa and Objective-C resources? - Stack Overflow

 

Thanks for all that info on programming. I'm going to look into it.

As for Snow Leopard, I decided to read some of the one-star reviews on Amazon. There were complaints about HP printers. Turns out HP didn't get the drivers done in time, and a call to HP revealed that my printer is one of the ones that won't work, until HP puts out a new driver. So I'm going to have to wait on Snow Leopard. I phoned an Apple place. They were rather testy about it: "It's not our fault! HP didn't get the drivers ready in time!" HP seemed to confirm that.

 

I have an HP Scanner that I bought a few years ago that was advertised as being "Mac OS X" compatible (Mac logos all over the box). The original HP software was some of the shittiest software that I have ever used. Huge resource sucking resident program just to scan stuff. Took them a couple of years to make it usable. The third party scan software won't work with it because it has a weird interface compared to Canon and other scanners.

I was planning to buy a HP printer, but after the issues with the scanner, I don't want to reward them with any of my money.

FWIW, I upgraded to Snow Leopard (10.6) last week - no issues. I have a Brother Laser Printer with WiFi - it works fine.

 

I used to be an HP fan but a few years ago my HP all-in-one (print, scan fax) crapped out, being sick of paying HP prices for ink, I did a bit of research and jumped on a Kodak all-in-one. the difference was HUGE where the HP cost $60 - $80 for an ink load, the Kodak costs $25, plus it lasts twice as long. Print quality is great, I use it for photos as well.
While I can't address how well the drivers are for Mac, they are quite good for windows. I think if you are looking for a printer, one of these would be well worth researching.

 

I took a look at the Kodak printers, but they don't offer Linux drivers. HP, despite their faults, is one of the few printer companies that takes Linux seriously. It's an odd thing too, since it's pretty easy to support the Linux world. All you have to do is publish the primitives and Linux geeks will do all of the heavy lifting. Unfortunately, most manufactures try to keep everything super secret, even if it's not to their advantage.

Tom

 

I have an HP laser printer and an HP scanner. I've never had any trouble with either, although the scanner program always draws a useless (wrong size, wrong location) box around the preview, and I have to drag its edges for every scan. Both worked immediately on connecting them to my Mac. The printer is the same age as my Mac, because my old printer would not work with it. So it's over two years old. I've never had to replace the toner cartridge.

I don't need new peripherals. I just have to wait for HP to bring out the drivers before I upgrade to Snow Leopard. And I have no need to do that immediately.

But I wanted folks to know that if they have HP stuff, they need to check before upgrading.

 

On my home network, I have a HP CLJ 3600dn. The only time it did not play nicely was when I built my Vista Ultimate machine, and had to wait a few months for them to roll out a Vista driver

Otherwise, Ubuntu, Windows, Mac, whatever, the CLJ plays nicely with them

 

I've had nothing but good experience with brother printers. I have one now hooked up to a mac and a pc at the same time, and it works fine. What computer gods?

 

That is their biggest fault, I'm hopeing someone soon writes some drivers for them soon.

 

I laugh because I remember past Microsoft ads that essentially trashed previous MS products in order to boost their newest release. Anyone else remember their ad about how often older OS's needed reboots versus XP? They scaled way back with the release of Vista, and I fear that they won't do it at all for Windows 7. One less source of mirth in my life, I guess.

Personally, I think Windows 7 will be a dramatic improvement in user experience over predecessors. As a Mac user, I attribute most of this improvement to Microsoft finally realizing that throwing in eye candy is not the same thing as making their OS more Mac-like. I can really see where they've thought the user experience through and made functional changes in how you accomplish tasks... in some areas. And from what I've read, they've made drivers, etc, a major priority so they should avoid that side of the Vista equation.

Of course "improvement" is relative and given that Microsoft's existence is probably on the line, Windows 7 would have to be better than Vista.

(I've got Windows 7 running under (free) Virtualbox on my Mac, along with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu. I need XP in order to be able to get readings off of a glucose meter, and the other OS's are purely for curiosity sake.)

 

In my line of work, the MAC is useless. For technical work with Networking and firewalls/security, the MAC just cant hack it. For this I prefer XP for the workstation, and Linux for the servers. One other thing encountered with the MAC, if you don't purchase their "warranty" and something breaks, it is very expensive to repair. One user had the HD fail, MAC refused to warranty it because it was older than 90 days and they didn't get apple-care, and charged $400 to replace it. If you replace it yourself, Apple will no longer perform any work on the unit. They have little tabs inside that take a special tool to release, and if they find them broken, the will put it back together and ship it back saying you are on your own. Happened to two people I know.

For graphics and stuff like that, it is much better than Winderz or Linux, but that is something you really have to be doing to have a MAC. For what we paid for the MAC, we could buy two workstations with monitors. My current workstation is a Dell M6300 laptop with a docking station and second monitor. I fill both screens daily with multiple screens, sometimes with 10 or more PUtty sessions to routers and switches. Another thing Mac cant do that MS can, and that is Exchange calendars and scheduling. There is the Entourage that works good with Exchange, but it doesn't have the calendars or other folders. I have it sitting to the left of me with the Orion monitoring going, and if I need to test VPN's it works fine for that, in fact that is one of the things we do the most with it, we have customers who use MAC's and need to VPN, so we setup their VPN profiles and send them the files from the MAC.

 

Window's existance is certainly not on the line.
However, market share always is.
But again, with the exception of ME, MS has improved each OS in my experience.
I DID need to reboot much less with XP than 98/ME/95. And I did get a much better experience with Vista than XP.
I am certainly aware that a number of people had bad experiences with Vista which is why, overall, I feel it was a failure for MS. But for me, it worked great.
I look forward to seeing MS learn from its mistakes with Vista and deliver a better OS with their next release.
And if Apple would get off their backend and work with developers of software and peripherals (my glucometer isn't supported by Mac either) I might dump Windows.
But until they can give me a better gaming experience than Windows, it's Windows for this gamer

 

New HP drivers included with the 10.6.1 update:
HP Printer Drivers for Mac OS X v10.6.
Mac OS X v10.6: Printer and scanner software

 

OFF-TOPIC:

I had a ham radio transceiver made by a company called TenTec. (Probably the last company building radios in the U.S.) Their warranty stated that if you tried to fix it and made it worse, they would STILL honor the warranty. Once I phoned them and they talked me through the diagnostic, and then mailed me the replacement part, all free. They saved more money letting people fix their own gear than they lost on the ones who screwed up. But then, radio amateurs are supposed to know something about electronics.

Sorry for the digression. :focus:

 

Interesting. I understand that any Un*x box, being a Mac or something else, doesn't do the job and you absolutely need a Windows box?...

Interesting. This doesn't reflect the fact that Apple's customer satisfaction is way higher than any of the Wintel makers. See this article by PC World. Apple is at 84% while everyone else is stuck at 75%. Results are the same year after year.

I'm not sure of your definition of "workstation" but if you build a PC with the same specs a MacPro would have, you will be in the same ball park in regards to pricing...

You are right, you wouldn't use putty on the Mac as you don't need any additionnal software to achieve this. You could simply open as many Terminal/shell windows as you want. It is a standard bash with everything you would expect (ssh being one of course). No need for putty; Macs are Un*x boxes (based on FreeBSD/Mach kernel precisely).

This has changed with Mac OS X 10.6, released last month (30$ upgrade). It fully supports Exchange through the native apps (Mail, iCal, AdressBook, etc.).

Maybe you should use the Mac to open Terminal, get rid of putty, upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6 (if the hardware isn't too old) and get rid of the Wintel box!

 

I didn't see your post earlier. It looks from the list that my printer is now supported. It was just yesterday or the day before I called HP and they said it wasn't yet. I think maybe I should phone Apple and check again.

Edit: Yep. It's included in 10.6.1

 

Yeah, this update just came out yesterday. The links are directly to Apple's support/knowledgebase site.

 

I have installed @ home:
- G4 with Tiger
- iMac with Snow Leopard
- MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard (with Fusion for XP on rare occasion)
- Fedora running on Intel (Web Server)
- Debian running on HP PARISC (FileServer/WebServer)
- Solaris 8 on an old Sparc (will be decommissioned soon)
- iPhone OS 3.1 (iPod Touch)
- AppleTv (a version of Tiger I think)
- The last but not the least Prius OS
Did anyone found a way to interface/connect a computer and a Prius?

 

Does someone know what exactly the Prius main computer runs on? Probably some flavor of an opensource real time OS?