Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

The Mac Proselytization Thread

Page: (1)2 3 4

flufeemunk effluvia

00:48 / 09.07.04

I heart Mac OS X extra hardcore because it is like UNIX with a very pretty candy colored GUI. Any Barbelithers mac users? If you are, say what machine you have and what system you are running under.

PC users: get one (or at least boot Debian or something, man).

01:38 / 09.07.04

G3 dual USB 12" snow iBook, 800 Mhz, 10.3, Airport, 640 Mb RAM, 30 gigs hardcore mac-hugging. Soon to be replaced with one of the new 15" powerbooks as soon as I can convince myself to part with three thousand fucking dollars.

Representing the Linux-geek-turned-Mac-licker posse. Of course, if Apple decide to fuck me like Microsoft, I'm wiping it and installing some Linux distro, because, you know, I can.

01:48 / 09.07.04

400mhz g3 at home (Jaguar), 450mhz g4 at work (Panther), and with luck I'm gonna be getting a serious hardware boost before too much longer, probably one of the iMac's they'll be announcing in September (just in time for my Birthday!)

And you know that feeling you have when you've gone a day-and-a-half without a smoke? That's how I feel about the PowerBook.

Some day, my precious, some day.

02:04 / 09.07.04

MUAH

DON'T MAKE ME GO TO THE APPLE STORE TO PLACE THAT SAVED ORDER

ARGH

02:40 / 09.07.04

15 inches of delicious Quartz Extreme, fridge. Think about it. 15 rock-hard inches of viewable screen. Mmmmmmm, feels good, doesn't it?

Or you could wait until January for Macworld, where they'll be announcing the new models...

02:45 / 09.07.04

Abulafia: iMac DV Special Edition - Graphite. G3, 400 MHz, 128MB RAM.

I'm attatched enough to havestarted this thread about how to upgrade Abby to a smoking 500MHz G4, with 1 Gig of RAM.

Then I'll fix the hard drive. As it is, I have to store the stuff I don't listen to on my iPod.

Mmm, iPod.

03:40 / 09.07.04

I am posting this from home on one of those new 15" powerbooks fridge describes. It cost us less that $3,000 because my better half is a state employee and a graduate student, which means Mac discounts out the yin-yang. According to the "About" screen (because I can't keep track of this stuff on my own) it's a 1.5 GHz G4 with 512 megs of RAM. It has the USB and the Firewire, which seemed sexy at the time, but I haven't really used that yet.

I'm still getting used to it -- the last time I really used a Mac, everything was in Zapf Chancery on the screen, and in a little beige box on the computer desk. And I had an Amiga in my dorm room that I preferred anyway.

This Mac, it runs recording software nicely, and has stored many, many mp3s already. It's also handy because I've got a wireless router set up at home and the thing has a built-in Airport so I have one less external device to screw up the drivers for.

Any user tips I should know about?

05:33 / 09.07.04

A 1 gig g4 ibook running panther and my trusty old g3 imac from 2000

by favourite bit of mac advise comes from th manual - don't use them to run a nuclear power plant...

Red Cross Iodized Salt

06:19 / 09.07.04

Posting right now on a 1ghz Titanium PowerBook w/ a gig of RAM. It's almost two years old and it still flies. Ever other computer I've owned / used for an extended period of time felt decrepit well before the 18 month mark.

When I bought it I felt serious buyers remorse over the ridiculous amount of money I had just spent...then I opened the box, stated that "this might be the nicest thing I've ever owned" and haven't looked back since.

OS X made me like using computers again.

Red Cross Iodized Salt

06:29 / 09.07.04

Any user tips I should know about?

For security against viruses and/or unwelcome software (rare on OS X, but always a possibility), create a new Administrator account and change the permissions of the user account(s) you regularly use to 'Standard'. This means that you have to type in the Admin user name and password every time you want to update anything, but it also means that nothing you might not want changed will be changed without your knowing about it. Fast user switching makes going from account to account really easy (plus it looks cool).

Anyone running 10.3 should - if they haven't already done so - download and install a copy of Quicksilver. Probably the best free app I've ever used. Difficult to describe what it does, but you'll figure it out quickly enough.

Lots more OS X software can be found at Versiontracker

10:31 / 09.07.04

Any user tips I should know about?

If I remember correctly, Airport doesn't have encryption/security turned on by default, so if you're using your laptop in public it IS possible that someone is intercepting your data (a friend of mine did this at the '03 Macworld and frigtened passers-by by giving them their hotmail passwords).

hyperjeff.net has a searchable database of OSX apps, and you can search by licence. Mmmm, freeware.

13:04 / 09.07.04

15" Titanium G4 PB, 10.2.8, 1GHz, superdrive. Last of the Ti models before everything went aluminium (about 2 weeks after I bought it) and, frankly a bit shit looking. I do envy a backlit keyboard, but can't stand the cheap new silver look, so I'm very happy with this thank you. You really can get withdrawal symptoms if you're separated for too long...

OSX is indeed the loveliest looking thing around. I use XP at work and can't help feeling superior at just how... rubbish some of it looks now. Especially if someone's configured it to Windows 'classic' look (or whatever). I can just about look at OS9 these days, but it seems so primitive. The day I got all my work-essential apps on OSX signalled the end of my dual-boot needs.

Here's the question, though: Do I get Panther or wait for Tiger? Or am I just fine with Jaguar? It's not that it'd necessarily notice or need a huge performance difference, but those graphical enhancements are so very appealing. Oh, and then I could use AirTunes. Hmmm...

13:37 / 09.07.04

Once you start using hot corners you'll wonder how you ever survived without them ...

14:03 / 09.07.04

Seems like everyone has pbooks around here. Never knew. I got a last generation Tibook that's fully loaded. Also got an big external firewire drive for fast storage and a 17" monitor on the side which is crucial for working on the "big" projects where you have to actionscript crazy amounts of stuff in flash and still see what going on.

Tips?

Well... update to the latest OS since it's faster and more stable. 10.3.5 should be out anytime now. It's actually running pre-release on the new 2.5 dualies that are out this month. And when Tiger's out in 9 mo. to a year, pick that up too. Lots of underhood changes. You can search contextually for anything, create scripts that pull your entire projects together regardless of the types of files (think about how you structure a job and how you end up accessing it and working on it), and there's huge advances coming in audio, video, and image rendering as effects are going to be native to the system and run on your GPU, etc. Speedy!

The best performance enhancement is always RAM. Modern OSes love it when you got more to give. I wouldn't run under a gb anymore.

And one more thing. Get Applecare. Especially if you have a portable. Will save you headaches.

Been working on macs since the days of the classic and aware of them since the 128k. If anyone's got any problems or questions, feel free to drop me a pm. Chances are I banged my head against them before.

farseer /pokes out an i

18:17 / 09.07.04

I've got: PBG4 17" 1Ghz, 512MB, 80G Superdrive, PMG4 (AGP) 400 340MB, 120G+120G+80G (server), PBG4 15" 867 (work mac), PMG4 450, 512MB, 30G ZIP that I'll be giving to my neices and nephews soon. I run OS X 10.3.4 (or whatever is latest), and screw OS 9 in the eyeballs, I hate classic. 8P

Any user tips I should know about?

Stay with what OS you've got until Tiger comes out. If you're not on Jaguar yet, Tiger is worth the wait. And Jag won't knock you up and happy like Tiger will. Hmmmm Spotlight... h.264....

Re: all powerbook owners. If you wish to avoid the issue described in: , then I strongly recommend you snag some:

Some folks just put some paper between their KB and LCD, or whatever. I always forgot to do that, so I ended up getting the macally screen protectors and I've been very happy with them. The screen protectors have totally saved my PBG4 17" & PBG4 15" from developing the nasty, impossible to remove marks on the LCD that my old PBG3 400 (Bronze) did.

Cheers!

19:24 / 09.07.04

in where!?

some whats!?

19:38 / 09.07.04

Not to threadrot, but...

What are your macs called?

jblank: the fucking slidechamp

22:08 / 09.07.04

8500/120, upgraded to 225Mhz 604, 208Mb ram, 23Gb drive space, OS 9. retro and proud!

(not that i don't love the unix, but i really can't afford it... it's not my fault Jobs hates anyone that can't buy a new computer every 10 months...)

22:39 / 09.07.04

Re: all powerbook owners. If you wish to avoid the issue described in: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=24961 , then I strongly recommend you snag some: http://www.macally.com/spec/specialites/accessories/screenprotector.html

Red Cross Iodized Salt

23:35 / 09.07.04

in where!?

Putting a sheet of paper or a piece of cloth between the screen and keyboard of a PowerBook when closed prevents the screen from being marked by the keys.

(oh, just saw lekvar's post above...that's what happens when you take an hour to hit the 'post' button)

00:54 / 10.07.04

You'll see the screen problem over time, but most of the marks I've seen have come from the oil transfered from the keys. Get a nice circular motion going with a soft cloth and some LCD-safe cleaning spray and you're usually good to go.

10:40 / 10.07.04

Bah, you asked. First revision G4 12" Powerbook, USB 1.0, vga out, 10.2.8 (but it was so much faster under 10.2.6). Probably not upgrading to 10.3 unless I don't have to pay; 10.4 looks to be what I need.

And yes, it has a name. It's called Wintermute, simply because I believe that computers should only ever be named after other computers.

flufeemunk effluvia

23:40 / 10.07.04

I definitely forgot to put my system up!

First had an old performa running system seven
Second had an original bondi imac (tray loading drive, infared port, primitive USB port and all)
Third my new and sexy 14 inch G4 iBook.

It is so pretty.

10:08 / 12.07.04

... right, so now i'm having problems - right from when i first booted my mac up it displayed the ''looking for the OS logo before booting into OSX. Odd I thought, but since everything appeared to be working i paid it no more heed. However, since yesterday my mac has been refusing to boot into OSX - it just keeps giving me the OS not found logo.

I've performed the hardware test and it all passed with flying colours - I tried software restore but the mac wouldn't read the CDs. I also inserted the OSX installer disk - at first it had a few panics telling me it couldn't find the drivers for my particular laptop but on subsequent occasions it has gone through to the screen that allows me to re-install OSX -

The question I have is should I try re-installing OSX or is there something else I could try first? Will reinstalling the OSx e=effect the other data on the hard disk or will it leave it largely untouched ALA some Windows installations.....

Hellllllllppp?

12:43 / 12.07.04

hey sleaze... a software restore should only target system components on your disk and is usually a recommended move prior to considering initialization. Hopefully you have somewhat recent backups.

But before this, I'd take a look at two options.

You could try to boot the iBook in firewire target disk mode which is done at startup. You could connect your iMac (hopefully it has a firewire port) to your iBook and boot the iMac. Then when you boot up the iBook, hold down T until that screen shows the firewire logo. At this point, you should be able to access the machine from the iMac as if it was a drive. Then you could run "Repair Disk Permissions" under the disk utility application you have there (considering the iMac's running OSX).

Secondly, you could boot into Open Firmware at startup on the iBook by holding down Option-Command-O-F. This should bring you to a low-level screen where you can perform functions like zapping your P-RAM, resetting your power settings and the like. You'll find decent information on commands and procedures in the discussion area of Apple's site here.

12:53 / 12.07.04

Also... repairing disk permissions is something I do on my pbook somewhat regularly, basically whenever I do a new software installation on my mac. It's an important thing to do when you run OSX, since it sorts out some things in the system that might build into a pain over time.

I run this other lil' app from time to time called Cocktail. It gives access to the above function as well as things like cron scripts, pre-binding, and clearing cache, etc. Read up on it before you start messing with settings and let the process (sometimes long) finish before going to task on anything else. I'd also grab the extras that are available as a separate download.

12:53 / 12.07.04

The imac has firewire ports but is still running OS9 - (I need a machine that will boot in OS9 and the memory availble in my IMAC at the momen makes upping it to OSx seem like a less than attractive option - i'll let you know how i go...)

12:58 / 12.07.04

Here's a link to open firmware and some methods you could employ on the old book. Let me know how it goes...

17:17 / 12.07.04

800 Mhz, 30 GB HD, Dual USB iBook named Phantasmagoria. Phanty was one of those late Fall '02 iBooks that had logic board problems worthy of a lawsuit. But now all is square with Apple and it runs like a Swiss watch. Got it a 512 MB pen drive and 150 GB ext HD to keep it company and I'm contemplating picking up an old slot-feed iMac for backup (friend of mine says he can snag me one for around $100).

Once you start using hot corners you'll wonder how you ever survived without them ...

A-fucking-men. I find myself doing this with stacks of useless windows on my XP machine at work and always end in a grumble because I can't. And popups? Viruses? That's why I keep to Mac. Less worry and less inteference.

11:02 / 13.07.04

zapping the PRAM didn't seem to do much - am going to grab a firewire to firewire cable to see if i can recover any data from the hard drive before trying the the other firmware/power solutions...

If all else fails, i'll just reinstall OSx and start again... but probably not before thursday when my home phoneline is sorted and I have net access at home again...

21:14 / 13.07.04

Honestly, I'm not trying to devalue the beautiful Mac geekiness of this thread and I realise this lowers the tone a little, but as a fellow Mac person I feel delighted to have just discovered the F9, F10 thing.

I only uncovered this because I spilt something on my keyboard and when I wiped it off I pressed F9 by accident. But it's cool, isn't it? Useful, no?

Hurrah for weird keyboard commands I didn't know about.

22:23 / 13.07.04

F11's pretty good too as it moves everything of your desktop to get to it.

There's actually one or two other effects that are hidden away in the system that are only accessible through the terminal, but nothing to get panties in a bunch over.

The next OS, Tiger, will be doing some interesting things with Expose as well. You could go to places like Appleinsider to get a sneak peek at upcoming tech as well as some well-rounded discussion.

And sleaze... keep us updated on your progress.

22:25 / 13.07.04

A weird keyboard thing I found probably isn't useful to many, but I thought it was a nice inclusion on Apple's part.

My Blue and White g3 has one of the old beige keyboards, the ones that have the power button instead of the "eject" button, but I found that if I press and hold the f12 key, the cd tray pops out. Yay!

BTW, my computer is "Orpheus," due to it's return fro the dead.

22:47 / 13.07.04

There's actually one or two other effects that are hidden away in the system that are only accessible through the terminal, but nothing to get panties in a bunch over.

...like?

flufeemunk effluvia

00:39 / 14.07.04

What do you guys think about Konfabulator?

I personally love it. I have an alarm clock set so i hear the clash REALLY LOUD at 8 AM.

Page: (1)2 3 4