Mac Musings

All this was typed from a full screen console known as GLTerminal, on the mac

the extra polish put into the design of the mac user experience pays off. with the overall experience of both owning and using a mac having far surpased any other machine ive had before.

From the sheer simplicity of the setup process that remembers who you told it you are so all other software can reuse your initial setup information, to the unified password management, the .mac account syncronisation recently added is also a nice bonus allowing any mac you sit down at to be... just that little bit more like your own.

While anyone can claim that the overall experience using something is better or worse. The proof is always in the facts. From my own experience the battery life is superb on this G4 14inch iBook, and i can only expect it to be even better on the latest Core(2) based laptops.

Along with mentioning the improved battery life. I have to mention something quite specific to the laptop experience. The "hibernation/sleep" functionality on this iBook is fantastic. Its smoother, faster, and though not something i can verify offhand, it has caused me the least amount of trouble of any device with similar features that ive ever used. I close the lid and seconds later its sleeping, I open the lid and a few seconds later its awake. Something im sure has only improved in performance in the newer models.

I preffer the unix command line, i like having the the power to drive everything through the keyboard, or remotely, and having a wonderful fairly standard set of commands to do what i want on almost any unix system. But being a gamer, and a long term windows user, ( windows NT isnt as bad as it used to be, or as good as it first was... but if you look after it, its not as tempremental as yould think) I find myself accustomed to using a GUI to manage multiple tasks, and using mulitple consoles. And i still occasionaly like to game, so having some kind of entertainment type programs is good, and there are a fair few.

I'm rambling now I think. So I'll leave it there, having said plenty for now about how nice i find this Mac.