I typed this one in TextEdit

In case you missed my previous blog, I had this entire post written up and an accidentally closed window resulted in me losing it all. Now you haven't been a writer long enough if you have never lost an entire piece of work to some sort of mishap; it seems like I've been a writer for entirely too long :)

I haven't made a Macdate in a while, but that isn't to say that I haven't been using the machine. Since February 6th I've been using the PowerMac G5 2000 as my primary work computer non-stop, and now I'm at a very interesting point in my usage - I'm actually getting used to the Mac.

When I first started using the Mac I was overwhelmed with the features and just getting used to the OS. Features like Exposé and the keyboard shortcut mania that I discovered were quite amazing to someone who had used DOS/Windows all his life. For the most part, the way things work in OS X just makes sense.

I realized today that I hadn't touched on network interaction between Macs and PCs yet so let's talk about that. Networking was horrible under desktop PC OSes until Windows 2000/XP, but now we've all been spoiled with networking that just works. This directly corresponded to my expectations when I tried networking the G5 with the rest of my PC-ridden home network. OS X's Windows file sharing is made courtesy of samba, and although I've heard many criticisms about samba - under OS X it just works. I didn't bother burning any of my old documents, music, etc... off my old PC, instead I relied entirely on OS X's ability to see my PC's shared folders to get my much needed files onto the G5. As you can probably guess, if things hadn't gone smoothly my first blog would have been a much more complaint-oriented one :) I don't know why this impresses me, but the fact all of the 6 PCs I've got on this network right now can be seen by the G5 (and vice versa) is something I definitely appreciate. Gone are the days when Macs and PCs didn't like to cooperate, it truly is a harmonious hardware home here.

I bought a HP Laserjet 4000 years ago, and it's served me well. The problem is that it's a parallel port model and the G5 has no legacy ports: what a great test for Windows printer sharing under OS X :) OS X had no problems finding the printer on my network and I've been using it ever since. Drivers were already available on OS X, making the process as painless as possible. Now onto CD burning and imaging...

We're setting up a new db server for AnandTech (quad Opteron, 144GB RAID 10, 8GB DDR, the usual ;)...) and Jason Clark (our fearless Webmaster/Server Guru) is up in Canada setting it up now. The problem was that the server was up in Canada and our copy of Windows 2003 Enterprise Server arrived - in Raleigh. Instead of Fedexing it up to him, I decided to give CD-ripping under OS X a try and upload the image to him. OS X has built-in CD burning functionality courtesy of a program called the Disk Utility.

The built-in Windows CD burning utilities are basically useless for anything other than putting files on a CD. Burning an image or creating an iso requires the use of something more capable like Nero. Disk Utility manages to do more than XP's built in CD burning, but also has its shortcomings. I needed to make an iso, which Disk Utility doesn't support the creation of - directly. Instead Disk Utility will allow me to make a .dmg file, which is an OS X mountable image. So I did that, but I needed a .iso. A quick search on www.macosxhints.com revealed a method to convert dmg images to isos. Bring up the command prompt (known as the Terminal) and type:

hdiutil convert /path/to/filename.dmg -format UDto -o /path/to/savefile.iso

I now had an iso (you can even script running the above to make it easier) and I needed to upload it to Jason. Here's where a complaint about OS X comes into play: you cannot upload using the GUI based FTP. You can download, but not upload. You can download using the command-line ftp command, but for whatever reason the GUI based interface only allows downloading. I'm not exactly certain why you can't, but it's just impossible without the use of a third party client. Thanks to a lot of recommendations I downloaded a copy of Transmit 2 and I was on my way.

I've been using Safari as my web browser ever since I moved to the Mac, and I have not missed IE except for two issues:

1) Safari's smooth scrolling isn't as "smooth" as IE's for some reason. It is extremely evident when I go upstairs to use one of my faster PCs and then come back down to use the G5. Smooth scrolling in Safari just seems slower or choppier, and I'm not really certain why. I tried turning smooth scrolling off, but I don't think that's an appropriate solution - I like smooth scrolling but I just want it to be faster.

2) Safari renders pages much slower than IE.

My first complaint is unfortunately unfixable (unless there's something else I've missed in the preferences) but the second one I can do something about. Mozilla's Firefox browser has become a big success on the PC and thankfully, a version is available for OS X. Firefox renders webpages significantly faster than Safari and its "Find As You Type" functionality is great for keyboard nuts like myself. I haven't had any rendering issues with Firefox, but the browser is definitely not as polished as Safari (granted I'm talking about a 0.8 release of Firefox). The default pinstripe theme does a good job of fitting in with OS X, but there are still some issues (both visual and functional). Quite possibly the most annoying thing about Firefox under OS X is that some of the keyboard shortcuts are clearly Windows-derived. There's nothing more psychologically frustrating than having every application share the same fundamental keyboard shortcuts - except one, and a very important one at that...

...which brings me to my next point of discussion: Apple's Keyboard Shortcut Preferences. What truly surprised me about OS X is that although it is built for users that are confused by more than one mouse button, it is built even more for users who aren't. The fact that there are keyboard shortcuts for everything illustrates this point while the ability to redefine an application's keyboard shortcuts further exemplifies it.

Let me give you an example: under OS X, to get to the end of a line of text I have to hit Apple + Right Arrow (the equivalent of hitting the end key on a PC). As you can guess, to get to the beginning of a line of text I just hit Apple + Left Arrow. Unfortunately, Adium is a bit stubborn and decides that Apple + Arrow will switch through tabbed conversations. In Adium, Control + Arrow will move to the start/end of a line of text. Now I've grown accustomed to switching my keyboard shortcut habits for Adium, but it just dawned on me yesterday that I shouldn't have to deal with its unwillingness to cooperate - OS X gives me the power to force it to do otherwise. I hopped in the Keyboard Shortcuts preferences window, added Adium as an application and told it to assign the Next/Prev Message functions to Apple + Shift + Right/Left Arrow. Problem solved. The fact that these sort of user empowering features are included in the OS just blows my mind; it's not what I expected from OS X. Granted, you can't hit 'Del' and hop into the BIOS at startup but if you don't like the way a particular application behaves you can change it. Very nice.

Memory usage has gone up tremendously on the G5, especially now that I'm doing more and more work on it. Right now I'm at 2.57GB used with 1.43GB free; I originally thought that a user like me could get by on "only" 2GB but it doesn't seem like that's the case. Maybe if I wasn't so liberal with my multitasking I could get by with 2GB, but that's not gonna happen anytime soon :)

When I started this project one of the first things I mentioned was that OS X's method of keeping all programs open even after you've closed all child windows was a good thing - provided that the OS was stable. Well OS X is definitely stable and its memory management is top notch so that's not a problem, but I do have a complaint. For whatever reason, if there are too many windows open I tend to get a bit uneasy - sort of like a desktop claustrophobia. Now I'm not a freak and I'm not claustrophobic in the real world, but it's something that has always bothered me. Right now I'm finding that even with my primary resolution at 1920 x 1200 there can be a bit too much on the screen at once. Apple does have a way around this - Apple + H - which will hide all of the windows of an application. Unfortunately, after hiding an application the only way to get it back is to click on the dock or to Apple + Tab through all the apps to get to it. I'm not exactly certain if I can come up with a better way, maybe it's something that I need to get used to. We'll see.

I'm also finding that I don't like the default mapping of the Exposé functions to F9 - F11. I want something closer since my hands are never around the F-keys, much less the F9 - F11 keys. Luckily that's a trivial change, I just have to figure out what I'd like to map them to.

The more I use it, the more I definitely like Apple's Mail application. I always had serious issues connecting to NCSU's IMAP server using Outlook (and not all of them were NCSU's fault!), but Mail's IMAP support is incredible. The only thing I wish I had from Outlook 2004 was the side preview panel, which really helps on wide displays.

Just as I was warned - the Radeon 9800 Pro manages to make the G5 considerably louder. Before the video card upgrade the system was Dell-quiet, now there's this ever lasting hum courtesy of the Radeon 9800 Pro's GPU fan. I might see if I can mount the Zalman heatsink from the Sapphire Radeon 9800XT Ultimate on the 9800 Pro to quiet it down; it's running at a lower core clock so hopefully cooling using just the heatsink will be adequate.

The noise is worth it though; the 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro makes Exposé with a ton of windows extremely smooth. It's still not as smooth as dealing with four windows, but it's a definite improvement over the 64MB 9600 Pro I had in here previously. People have asked how much of the performance increase is due to the fact that the 9800 Pro has more memory bandwidth and a higher fillrate - honestly I'm not sure, does anyone know if there are any clock adjusting utilities available for OS X ala Powerstrip? I feel like testing :)

I think that's all for now, if I remember anything else to comment on I'll be sure to drop by again. Sorry for the delay in posting this thing, sometimes my "day job" (read: school) gets overly busy. Only 2.5 months left...

Take care :)