[Am-info] [OT] I've gone over to the brightly colored side.

[Mitch Stone]

--- From a message sent by Sujal Shah on 1/18/02 7:42 AM ---

>	Just as an FYI, I've done the improbable...  I needed to replace my
>Vaio (running a heavily modified RedHat 7.1) because of some power
>problems... so I went out and bought...
>
>an iBook.
>
>And I have to say, I'm truly impressed.  In fact, I was impressed before
>I bought it, having a Mac power-user in the office (he has the cinema
>wide screen on his desk attached to a dual G4 desktop), and having
>worked on, for a short while, some file system development for the OS X.
>
>It's smooth, prettier than windows, offers a nice Unix feel when you
>just need to do a ps or df :-) (which was a big plus for me), runs
>Mozilla well, and offers a solid development library.
>
>It also feels like the computer is helping me via the GUIs and
>interfaces, rather than dragging me along a "merry" path, which is what
>I feel like in Windows.
>
>I just wanted to let all the longtime Mac folks know that they has some
>small part in this. :-)

I'm seeing a tremendous amount of interest in OS X from the Unix folks, 
which really surprised me at first, but it probably should not. 
Apparently Unix code ports into this environment quite readily. 

I saw an eye-opening demonstration of this at MacWorld San Francisco last 
week from a guy who runs a movie special effects house. He took one of 
his his Unix production apps (presumably from SGI) to OS X in a 
startlingly short period of time and was able to add a great deal of 
functionality that he said he would've been impossible with Unix alone. 
Apple struck a vein of new supporters with OS X and I'd like to think it 
was intentional though they haven't done much publicly to play up the 
Unix connection.

I envy anyone who is exposing themselves to the Mac for the first time 
now. Migrating to OS X from the "classic" MacOS has been kind of painful 
for us veterans. We are definitely not in Kansas anymore and it takes 
some adjustment. I'm nearly there, though, and hope to be living in OS X 
full time in a couple of months. The missing piece of he puzzle is a 
good, fully-featured e-mail client. Let me know if you find one.

But the best news is, I've yet to see OS X crash.



 Mitch Stone  
 mitch@accidentalexpert.com