Amiram Hayardeny's My China Experience

My Adentures with my New Mac

My first computer was a Mac.  It was a Mac IIe, and the year was 1985.  There was no mouse, no color, hell, no hard drive.  But still, the Mac IIe was more elegant than the IBM PC AT which was the other option at the time.  There were others.  Not too many though, it was the beginning of the personal computer era.  Twenty two years went by, and the variety of personal computers, laptops, hand-held devices, phones, palms is growing by the day.   They all follow Moore's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law) which fundamentally claims that computers will double in power every two years.  I always thought it was eighteen months, and was surprised to see that the original claim was two years.

During my school years, I worked on terminals.  Mainframes (IBM, Control Data, Data General to name a few), but also Mini Computers (DEC's legendary VAX 11/750, VAX 11/780).  UNIX and VMS.  They were all fast, technically innovative, elegant.  But my first job, again, was programming on a Mac.  And so was my second job.  Between KPMG and HBO I have worked and developed on Macs for nearly a decade.

Moving to Windows was an adjustment for me.  Not an easy one.  The Mac always had a better way of doing things.  Better, easier, friendlier.  It was a real personal computer.  When you walked around a Mac development shop, you could tell by the screens that they each reflected their owner's personality.  Indeed, Windows does it well today, but I am talking well over a decade ago.  In any case, Mac OS moved forward, and so did Windows.

I was disconnected from the Mac for years.  From mid 1996 and until last week, I haven't touched a Mac.  AIX, Windows and most recently Solaris were my choices, depending on where I was working at the time.  About a month ago, I had an opportunity to change my IBM Thinkpad T60, running Solaris and Windows XP.  I chose a MacBook Pro.  I could easily use the words "longing" and "yearning" in this context.  I wanted to to work on a Mac again.

I received the new MacBook Pro last week.  It was pre-installed with the Chinese version of the Mac OS 10.4 - Tiger, I believe (somewhat confusing with the variety of Big Cats).  I needed assistance from a Chinese colleague to change the language to English.  I personally think it's funny that you must know the language you don't understand in order to change to a language that you do...  It was love at first sight.  The MacBook Pro is silver colored, shiny, beautiful.  The screen has a quality that I have never seen on any other laptop (note: that doesn't mean that there aren't any, I simply have never seen none).  The keyboard is unusually comfortable.  The battery lasts way more than double the time I have seen on my ThinkPad.  I was a happy camper.

Then, as the infatuation faded, as it usually does, I started to see other things.  I was missing the "del" key.  Really missing it.  I know it may seem childish, but I loved that key.  And the "home" key and the "end" key, which won their independence years ago, and on the MacBook Pro, they are part of a command-right arrow combination.  Most of all, I was missing the right click (I am not even talking about the middle click which is essential to any UNIX developer).  Let me state right here, right now: had I known that this computer doesn't have the right click, I may have chosen another computer.  And a word of advice: when the system is stuck beyond hope, the rainbow colored turning wheel provides no consolation...

But then the Mac surprised the heck out of me.  It actually let me make a fatal error, while giving me the usual "Are you sure blah blah blah?" dialog.  It actually let me drag a system file into the trash, and wasn't able to recover.  The nasty question mark came up when I tried to reboot and there I was, Saturday morning, puffy eyes, unshaved, on my way to the office to get the system disks to reinstall.  I was mad.  But the Mac, surprising me again, saved the day by giving me the easiest installation I have ever seen on a computer.  That was the first reinstall.  The second one was somewhat harder, because I had to reformat the disk.  Less than two weeks, one original dealer installation, and two home-made.  Not a good statistic.

Another big and unpleasant surprise, was the instability of some OpenSource applications on the Mac.  I never saw FireFox or ThunderBird crash in Solaris.  A few times on Windows.  Multitude of times on the Mac.  In fact, I had to reinstall FireFox thrice in  as many weeks (not counting the systems installation).  Disappointing?  Na.  Very disappointing? Absolutely with a Capital A.

I also have a small confession to make.  In over a week of endless trials, I was not yet successful in seeing even one frame of video stream, nor one sound soundbite of live radio.  Everything I installed,, downloaded, on Firefox or Safari, using Windows Media Player, QuickTime, WMV Player.  Absolutely nothing.  Will that qualify me as a complete idiot? probably.  Was I able to do it on Windows and Solaris with no or minor effort, absolutely.  Will I keep trying until it works - you bet.

Ah, and one last thing.  If this Mac had a small chamber for water, it would make a fine steam iron.  Rephrase, since I got this computer, the AC in the house is working overtime.  Rephrase, when I work with the MacBook Pro in front of the TV, I have to wear fire retardant clothes, like race drivers (I always wanted to be Michael Schumacher).  No worries, Mom, the burns are minor, and I expect to recover fully...

Bottom line: the Mac is cool, Mac OS is (despite what I was expecting) not that much better than Windows if at all.  Solaris on the Mac is outstanding!  I will adjust to the missing limb (the right click), and will try and enjoy the new experience.  Will I buy it again?  Not so sure.  And how can I end this without a metaphor?  I feel like a farmer a thousand years ago, being offered a golden plow.  Shiny and beautiful.  Expensive.  Tempting.  But would the crops be better and more?

Douglas Adams said in the mythological "Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy": "A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof, is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools".  I am aware of the implication.  But if the Mac is a foolproof device, I believe it just met a very ingenious fool to work with...

Posted at 06:57AM Aug 29, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[11]