Need advice from Apple users
 

When it comes to x86-compatible boxes, I know exactly what I am doing. I can field strip any IBM-comaptible box in two minutes flat, and I know my way around any version of Windows expertly. I can tinker with the registry without fear, install hardware and software like it's going out of style, and get a PC running smoother than a Menthol Camel dipped in rich creamery butter.

But I know next to nothing about Apple computers. And now I'm thinking of buying one.

I'm thinking of buying one because I am trying to leave the programming racket and get into graphics design, and EVERY graphics design job listing I see requires Apple expertise. I have used Photoshop on the PC for some time, but it's just a different environment.

I want a box I can run OSX on, and which will run Photoshop and other desktop publishing apps smoothly, without choking on high-res graphics. It needs to have USB support, but I imagine most (if not all) newer Apples will. I need at least a 17" display, preferably 19" (CRT is fine, don't need flat-panel). Advice? What to buy, where to get it for a good deal? All of my PC expertise is useless in this endeavor, so I am grateful for any assistance.

Thanks.

Hot Pastrami
http://www.alanbellows.com

You might want to check out an older Mac to start with, and throw in more memory and a processor upgrade. I have a beige G3/233 system at home that I'm going to upgrade.
I'll need to get a USB card for it I believe.

It sounds as if it's not that far removed from upgrading a PC. The newer Macs use commodity hardware -- IDE HDs and CD-Roms, PC133 memory, etc.

What's your price range? I'm a switcher myself (almost two years now), so I can help you out here. I'm obsessive over Apple hardware, so I know the pricing and what's best for what. Just tell me what your price range is and we'll make it work.

Price range
 

Hey Dave,

Well, provided that I can use my existing 19" PC moniitor on the Apple (which should be possible with a cheap adapter, yes?), I can spend up to about $1500 on the box. If for some reason I need an Apple-specific display, then that will have to be rolled into the budget. Naturally though, I want to save money if I can, so if a $1200 box will get me by, then that's fine. But if the $1500 box would kick it's ass, then it's worth the extra money.

When working with high-resolution graphics as I intend to, CPU, memory, and video card requirements will take precedence over features like speakers, power-drive, etc.

Thanks for any advice,

Alan "Hot Pastrami" Bellows
http://www.alanbellows.com

A'ight. Your 19" monitor will work, if it has a standard 15-pin VGA connector, with no adaptor. Apple actually uses mostly standard hardware.

Unfortunately, for a professional system, $1,500 is on the low end. I paid about $4,000 for my Power Mac last year, $3,100 for my PowerBook, $1,700 for Jenni's iMac, about $1,500 for my iBook...

My Power Mac is a dual 800MHz G4 with a GeForce 3, 2x60GB IBM HD's, 1.152GB of PC133 RAM (2x512 & 1x128)... has 2xUSB 1.1, 2xFireWire 400, an AirPort card, gigabit ethernet... it's pretty awesome. It runs Mac OS X great (Photoshop, Bryce 5, etc). It was actually ordered on September 11, 2001, and I've already said what it cost. Fortunately, you can probably find one on eBay for about... $1,500 :) and if not, I might be willing to sell you mine (I was thinking about upgrading anyway).

Anyway, search eBay for Power Mac dual 800 or something. I'll do the same and post you some links. Also, places like smalldog.com might have some refurbished PowerMacs, which still come with the standard 1-year Apple warranty (and the option to extend it to 3 years).

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=14912

I'd probably go $1,600 on that one, mainly because of the added SCSI and RAM. Actually, I'd probably go more myself, but I'm telling you that if you have to go $1,600 to get that one, it's worth it.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=14912

$1,450, maybe $1,500. You'll want to stick more RAM in there, but that can be had cheap at Crucial.

http://www.smalldog.com/product/42538

Buy that and then add more RAM (2x512MB) and you will be a happy camper.

Well, here are a couple closed auctions that show my $1500 may yeild a dual 867MHz machine pretty easily:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=14912
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=14912

...also, just over $1500 will get me a brand-new single-processor 1GHz box from the Apple store. You think the dual 800MHz is better than the single 1GHz?

Thanks man, this is really helping me out.

Alan "hot Pastrami" Bellows
http://www.alanbellows.com

Yes. Mac OS X makes such good use of dual processors it's not even funny. It really is like having a single processor at about 1.8x the speed. You would be silly to squander $1,500 on a single processor machine when duallies are available.

I say buy from smalldog - you get the full warranty, it's hella fast... pretty much all you want. You can always add SCSI later (I'm a fan of it)... but it's not necessary.

Now that I have a little more time...

I truly believe that you'll find Mac OS X and a nice Macintosh or two to be your ideal platform (or as close as you'll get this decade).

I myself am a programmer, and that's what I love most. But there are hundreds of other little things I love too, and the Mac lets me do them with the least hassle. Mac OS X is, I believe, one of the best programming environments available. You have X11 available and most UNIX software will compile pretty effortlessly on OS X (in fact, most of it is already compiled and packaged). Apple's own development tools are quite capable (such as being able to build Aqua UI's on top of Java apps - I don't know if you've done much Java programming, but GUI design in Java SUCKS. This takes the suck away). Perl (as well as most scripting interpreters) are available. So you can program for the Aqua interface, for Qt/GTK, command-line only... it's a beautiful thing.

It also gives you a pretty wide application choice. I break it down into four groups: Apple, ISV's, UNIX and Major Software Companies.

Apple's software is spectacular. If you do any video editing, you'll be amazed with iMovie, just because it's so effortless. I was showing iMovie to my dad last night, and in two minutes I had imported that fun Crab-vs-Pipe video, added a title, added a transition between two scenes (that looked quite professional), made the second scene look like it was taken from aged film and added a soundtrack. iTunes will also become your choice MP3 jukebox software because it's so simple yet so powerful. You'll appreciate Safari, Apple's new browser (that's still in beta). iPhoto absolutely rules for sorting your digicam pictures (or any digital images you have), as well as small touchups (like removing an unsightly pimple in three seconds flat or getting rid of red-eye even quicker). iCal has some ways to go, but it's actually quite good for calendaring and scheduling (if you need that sort of thing, which I do). And guess what - I haven't mentioned even a quarter of all that's available from Apple, most of it absolutely free to you (or included in the cost of your machine, depending on how you look at it).

ISV's put out stuff like the weather program I'm now using (called Meteorologist), nice FTP clients (I recently bought Fetch), Konfabulator, Mozilla, etc. I include shareware and freeware here. Stuff that's written specifically for Mac OS X. Believe it or not, there is a <b>lot</b> of high quality software available here. I've mentioned a few of the really good ones, but there's lots that I haven't. You'll love the software put out by guys like you and me.

The UNIX apps are the ones that are generally written for Linux and then ported to Mac OS X an hour after the source is released. They run great on OS X because of the magic of rootless X servers. Check out this screenshot from my PowerBook. That's Linux's own Xchat running there, recompiled for OS X and installed in about two minutes via fink. I use Apple's distribution of X11, but you can use XDarwin if you prefer. There are thousands of UNIX apps available for OS X. This is really nice if you can't find, for example, a decent IRC client (I'm waiting, shareware people - though I bought Ircle).

And lastly, the platform is supported by a lot of major software developers. Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, Aspyr (for games)... just about everyone. If you've been using only Windows, this is no big thing. But for Linux geeks like myself, this is great. Linux sucked hardcore in this regard. And even Windows has something to learn - the Mac versions of the software are arguably better than their Windows counterparts. I kid you not, Microsoft has touted Office X as their best version ever. Microsoft is saying "yeah, if you want the best environment to use Office in, buy a Mac".

It doesn't hurt that OS X has an assload of great stuff built in, either. Here's a good link to click:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/

Read about all the technologies in Mac OS X (especially Quartz Extreme - I can't get over how cool it is).

I'm just getting started! I'mma go to bed now, but I'll add more tomorrow and this weekend. Start reading on http://www.apple.com though - you'll find lots of good information.

Maybe you can help me with something. Every time I get interested in Macs and start to read up on them, I'm lost in a sea of cool-sounding names.

For example, what exactly is Aqua? Is it a window manager? Or is it a desktop evironment?

Does Quartz provide the same function as X11? Does it do widgets? Or does it just provide simple drawing functions?

And what's the difference between Carbon and Cocoa? I know that Cocoa is object oriented, but why do they have two seperate system API's? And why do they need a set of system API's in the first place if the whole thing is based on BSD? I guess Carbon is supposed to be for legacy Mac apps, but then what's the difference between Carbon and Classic?

The essential difference between Carbon and Cocoa is that Cocoa's OSX native, and Carbon'll run on both OS9 and OSX.

Beyond that, I don't really know; most of the C/++ I've done has relied on ncurses or stdio for input, with a smidgen of OpenGL (not really anything significant).

OKAY! Here we go...

<b>Aqua</b> is the interface implementation. An Aqua-app is one that has the brightly colored buttons in the upper-left corner, etc. Think of it as GTK for Macs, except it's easier to program for.

<b>Quartz</b> is the technology that displays the images on the screen. It is based on Adobe's PDF (which is why you can save anything as PDF in OS X). Quartz is the reason that everything is so beautifully anti-aliased in Mac OS X.

<b>Quartz Extreme</b> is even cooler. Basically, what it means is that instead of the graphics on your screen being drawn by the 2D portion of your card and your CPU, they are handled primarily by the 3D processor on your video card. Everything you see is rendered as a 3D texture by the GPU and displayed on your desktop for you to marvel at. This takes all the heavy graphics off the CPU and made for a tremendous performance boost when it was introduced. Mac OS X is very graphics-heavy, and this takes advantage of the hardware you've got. I'm still amazed at this.

<b>Carbon</b> exists to "create a gentle migration path for developers transitioning from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X." Basically, what it means is that you can write your apps to run in both OS X and System 9 (aka Classic). It doesn't quite have all the functionality of Cocoa and it apparently isn't as fast. It's a convenience measure, and it was done to garner developer support.

<b>Cocoa</b> is what you'd want to do any Mac OS X programming in. It's designed for Mac OS X only and you can read more about it here.

The difference between Carbon and Classic is that Classic apps require OS 9 to run whereas Carbon apps generally do not. Carbon apps should look like OS X native apps (when run in OS X, of course), while Classic apps will have that old Mac look (platinum title bar, etc). Classic apps can be run in Mac OS X via Classic mode, where OS 9 is basically running on top of OS X. It's a poor way to do things, and since you don't have any legacy Mac apps, you wouldn't need to worry about it. :)

There is a wealth of information available on Apple's site. One of the best pages for understanding the technologies involved is available here:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/technologies/

When you cut through the buzz, you can see that there really are a lot of cool things going on.

Wow, dave... thanks for all the info. That box at Smalldog is looking like the route to take right now, but it'll take an effort of will to talk myself into it. I am such a hardcore PC guy, and have been for years, that buying an Apple is a totally foreign idea. The fact that I'm seriously considering it surprised the hell out of my friends, who would have thought it impossible.

Ok, another technical question for you... which type of DIMM do Apples use, exactly? Here are the three 512MB PC2100 DDR DIMM types listed on Crucial:

DDR PC2100 • CL=2.5 • Unbuffered • Non-parity • 7.5ns • 2.5V • 64Meg x 64
DDR PC2100 • CL=2.5 • Unbuffered • ECC • 7.5ns • 2.5V • 64Meg x 72
DDR PC2100 • CL=2.5 • Registered • ECC • 7.5ns • 2.5V • 64Meg x 72

Ugh, another thing I realized is that I'll have to fork over another $600 for Mac Photoshop 7.0. So by the time I buy the box, ship it, get the extra memory and buy Photoshop, I'll be somewhere in the neighborhood of $2400. I guess I've got to decide if the expense is worth it for me right now... I want to get onto professional graphics design, and getting a Mac appears to be the only way to do that, but that's a lot of scratch to scare up right now.

Thanks

I'd get the unbuffered non-parity, just because that's probably what they've got in there. But get the machine and match whatever's in there, or if you wanna get the cheapest stuff and they have ECC in there, go ahead and yank the original 256. 1024 will definitely be enough RAM for now.

As far as Photoshop... I had an old Mac license (3.0, I believe), that a friend had given me. His company has a software policy of buying two upgrades and then re-purchasing the product on the third... well, he had bought 4 and 5 and was moving on to 6, so he had all these 3 licenses laying around. I got one, and then bought the Photoshop 7 upgrade ($150).

The other option is to use Photoshop illegally until you can afford it. While it's technically illegal, as long as you're going to eventually buy it, Adobe really isn't going to care. Why? Because it gets you using their product. That's important, because it gets more professionals using Photoshop. If I were a graphic designer doing photo work and my employer said "what are you more trained with, Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro?" - Adobe wants that answer to be Photoshop, 'cause it means more licenses sold.

If you really don't feel comfortable with that (I generally don't steal software either), I can call Doug and ask him if he's got any of the old licenses laying around still. Once you've got that, $150 gets you 7 legally.

Macs aren't cheap, but you're not getting a hunk of junk either. That machine, honestly, will probably last you three or four years (you'll probably want to upgrade the video, but you'd probably want to do that anyway). My Power Mac is a year and a half old and it's still stupidly fast (and gets faster with each OS release, as it becomes more optimized for my hardware). The only reason I'm thinking about getting a new one is because I have insurance money coming to me that I have to spend. But honestly, I still can't even justify that because my Power Mac is just so good.

It's funny that you mention your friends' disbelief, because I went through the exact same thing a few years ago. I used to <b>hate</b> Macs. I'd call 'em "Macintrash", always talking shit about 'em... well, I've seen the light. Apple's hardware is finally something to drool over (for most of the 90's, it wasn't) and the OS no longer sucks ass (I don't care what long-time Mac users tell you - yes, it's convenient and intuitive, but it's not stable at ALL and therefore is stupidly difficult to actually use).

It's different in the Mac world than it is in the PC world, because the hardware doesn't become obsolete as fast. My iBook, which was going on two years old, was still perfectly usable until it got destroyed in the fire.

Also, don't tie the Mac totally to the graphics profession. If you want to get it for that, that's fine - but keep an open mind. If you're anything like me, you'll start using it for just about everything else too. And I <b>like</b> Windows XP.

Also consider the Apple Instant Loan. It's financed by MBNA or whatever that bank is. If you have good credit, you shouldn't have trouble getting approval, and I think you can use it on SmallDog's stuff too. Get the loan, pay it off over two or three years... life is good. :)

The alternative is to come work at SAIC. We have a two-year interest-free loan for financing 70% (up to $4,000) of a new computer for employees. That's how I bought my Power Mac. :)

Well, that's damn nice of you to offer to try to find an old license for me, but I don't want you to have to tap such a limited resource for my benefit. You've already helped me out a lot with information alone. I was thinking I might snag an older version of Photoshop off eBay for $50 or so, then buy the $150 upgrade... that would make the price a lot more palatable.

As far as "borrowing" a license goes, I have no objection to the idea as long as I have the real intent to purchase the software later, but I don't know any Apple people I could hit up for it, so I would have nowhere to procure such an, er, Evaluation Version.

I have long regarded Apples as a computing dead end until recently. I appreciated and admired their hardware, but I disliked the OS and the way that Apple did business... not allowing Apple-compatible clones, etc... it just went against my way of thinking. But with the introduction of OSX, I am encouraged by the direction they're going. I'm open-minded and completely willing to give an Apple a chance to be my computer of choice, but they must earn it. There are several Windows apps I'd miss terribly (Trillian, Textpad to name a couple), but c'est la vie.

I thought about the loan approach, but their lowest APR is 9.99%... I have a credit card with an 8.99% I'd sooner put it on. I just refinanced my house and car, so I think I ought to let the dust settle on my credit report before I apply for any more financing for awhile.

I appreciate the help Dave, I can't thank you enough.