| ||
|
|
|
Posted: Mon, April 19, 2004
Mac 15" PowerBook G4By David ChisnallFirst impressions MacOS X It just works The hardware The software Developer tools Caveat First impressionsLast year, I purchased my first Mac - a 15" PowerBook. While I was an undergraduate studying Computer Science at the University of Wales Swansea, I had had the opportunity to use some of the department's Macs, and been impressed. Nevertheless, I was somewhat apprehensive. I had been using PCs, running DOS, Windows or some kind of UNIX variant for over ten years, but other than a few lab sessions I had had no experience with Macs. When it arrived, the first thing I noticed was the packaging. I've bought a number of computers in the past, and
none of them came in anything as sleek as the
PowerBook's box. This highlights what I consider to be the defining feature of Apple products - attention to detail. On booting the machine for the first time, I was greeted by a few simple questions related to creation of user accounts, and then it was working. I then started to install the software I'd bought with it. On Windows, installing software is usually requires running a set-up program, then rebooting. I've never quite understood why installing an office suite should require a reboot, but it seems to be the case. On the Mac, it's simply a matter of dragging the application bundle to your Applications folder (or somewhere else, if you prefer). Configuring access to my home network was easy. My desktop's Windows shares showed up in the Finder (OS X's file browser) and I was able to copy files across without fuss. Apple's Mail application imported my e-mail history (several hundred megabytes, containing every e-mail I've sent or received since 1997) in minutes. The total time between the PowerBook arriving and being ready to use was about two hours. Configuring a Windows or UNIX machine to the same degree usually takes me a day or two. MacOS XWhen buying a computer, there are three choices for the operating system: Windows, UNIX, or MacOS. Windows is popular, and has a lot of commercial software available for it. It is also an excellent platform for running computer viruses.UNIX is traditionally used on servers and high-end workstations, although free UNIX clones and derivatives such as Linux and FreeBSD have started to gain some ground on cheaper workstations and even desktops. Laptop support is extremely varied amongst the UNIX family, although you can buy a reasonable speed SPARC laptop running Solaris for not much more than the cost of a small car. MacOS up to version 9 had a reputation for ease of use at the expense of technical merit. The last version of Classic (pre-OS X) MacOS didn't support pre-emptive multitasking or protected memory, two features required to prevent a single badly behaved application from killing the entire system. MacOS X came from a completely different heritage. After leaving Apple, Steve Jobs had formed a company called NeXT, with the aim of creating the perfect desktop computer. Many people believe that they came as close as possible with the technology available at the time, although with a price tag of $10,000 it wasn't a huge seller. The NeXTStep operating system was based on UNIX, but with a very modern graphical interface and development environment. In 1996, Apple bought NeXT for $400m, although it is often joked that NeXT was paid $400m to take over Apple. OS X is a direct descendent of NeXTStep. It is often said that the ideal time to buy a computer is about a week after you do, and for me this was true twice. A week after I ordered mine, Apple released new models. My order was automatically upgraded to the new model, at the same price as the old one. 
About a week after my PowerBook arrived, Apple released a new version of the operating system. The new version, 10.3 or Panther, was made available to people who had bought a new Mac in the
last few months for the cost of shipping. It currently retails at just over £99. Installing the new version was very easy, and didn't break anything. Unlike previous operating system upgrades I have experienced, it actually made things run faster. This is not unprecedented. The last version, 10.2 or Jaguar, added Quartz Extreme, a feature which used the 3D accelerator to speed up drawing the windowing system. 10.3 included a large number of small improvements as well as, according to the documentation, "support for lots of important buzzwords". One of the most useful buzzwords from my perspective was X11. 10.3 included a rootless X server, which allows me to run applications on UNIX machines and display them on my Mac over a network. Another new innovation was a feature called Exposé. This zooms all of your windows out so that you can see them all at once. You can then click on the one you want, or move to it using the arrow keys, and let them all fly back into place with the selected window on top. It just worksMac users frequently quote the "it just works" line when describing their computers. Until I got one, I thought it was just marketing hyperbole. Since then, I've found it more and more true.I have a fairly simple wireless network at home. At work, I use a different wireless network, which requires completely different settings and uses a VPN. Every day, I move my computer between the two. Switching configurations is as simple as clicking on the Apple menu, clicking on location, and selecting the location. Three clicks. Last month, I went to a meeting where a colleague was giving a presentation. When we arrived, he realised that he had forgotten the adaptor he needed to connect his iBook to the projector. Setting up an ad-hoc wireless network between our laptops required a total of five mouse clicks between the two. Once done, he simply dropped the presentation file on my computer and ran it. Once the network was established, Apple's instant messaging application iChat noticed that we were close to each other and we appeared on each other's contact list, allowing us to confer easily. Detractors often point to the fact that Macs only have one mouse button, and call them "mitten mice". I would be lying if I said I had never missed having more than one button, but the only times I have, have been when I was running X11 programs. Native Mac applications simply don't need more than one mouse button. A large part of the ease of use of OS X comes from the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines. This is a 323-page book, available online, which describes how an OS X application should behave. Most application developers follow these guidelines. The hardwareThe PowerBook itself is a work of art. At only 1" thick, and weighing 2.5 kg, it is easy to carry around. In that small space is a DVD writer, a modern 3D accelerator and a 1.25GHz RISC CPU.1.25GHz does not sound fast. Pentium 4s are reaching speeds of over 3GHz. The first thing to note is that the average user will not need more than a fraction of that. The only thing I do that even taxes this machine is video editing. A faster CPU is one which uses more power, reducing battery life and generating heat. Any male PowerBook user who uses it on their lap will be grateful that the PowerPC doesn't generate as much heat as a Pentium 4. The second side effect of the low clock speed is that it is quiet. Modern PC laptops have a fan that has to be on all of the time, which can be distracting while working. The fan on the PowerBook is very quiet, and only comes on when the CPU has been running at 100% for a little while, or when burning a CD or DVD. The second thing to note when looking at the CPU speed is AltiVec, or Velocity Engine as Apple calls it. This is the vector processing unit in the G4, which can execute up to 4 instructions at once on top of those running in the main CPU. PC chips have something similar. The problem is that PC chips have several things similar (MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 etc.), each of which requires different code. This code must be written in assembly language, which is very hard work and time consuming. Apple provides developers with a set of simple functions for using these directly from a high-level language, as well as a set of routines for doing things like Fast Fourier Transforms, which are used extensively in image processing. Most code which is required to run fast takes advantage of these libraries. As a comparison, encoding a CD track to AAC on a 1.33GHz Athlon could be done six times faster than realtime. Encoding the same track on the PowerBook with a 1.25GHz G4 and an AltiVec enabled encoder was done in twelve times realtime speed. There are a number of small features which contribute to the usability of the PowerBook. There is a light sensor under the keyboard, which dims the screen and lights the keys when it gets dark. The battery has a small row of LEDs indicating the charge status. When it's plugged in, the end of the power plug glows green if the machine is fully charged, or orange if it is not. The usual assortment of sockets is provided, including DVI and s-video out for driving a second display, USB-2 and FireWire (both 400Mb/s and 800Mb/s variants). An 802.11g interface card and antenna are built in, for wireless networking, and a gigabit Ethernet port is also provided. The Ethernet port is auto-sensing, so you can plug it into a hub/switch, or directly into another computer with the same cable. The softwareThe PowerBook comes with quite a lot of software. Even some of the simplest included programs are worth a mention. The OS X calculator, for example, is capable of converting between currencies using exchange rates it looks up on the Internet.The most well known are the iApps. Some of these are for productivity, such as iCal and iSync. iCal is a calendaring application, which supports different overlaid calendars, and shared calendars via WebDAV. iSync is a synchronisation tool which keeps my calendar and address book synchronised with my phone via Bluetooth.  Most of the iApps are for recreation. iMovie is a simple yet powerful video editing program, which I recently used to create a promotional video. Videos created in iMovie, or Final Cut (Apple's professional video editing program) can then be burned to DVD using iDVD, complete with menus and chapter selection. Web access is handled nicely by Safari, the default browser, and Internet Explorer for the few badly designed sites that still require it. Apple's Mail application is descended from NeXT's mail client; a good heritage for an Internet application considering that the first web browser was developed on a NeXT machine. It includes an accurate spam filter, and support for both POP and IMAP. As well as the Apple applications included, there are also two bundled apps from The Omni Group that stand out. OmniGraffle is a very intuitive diagram drawing tool, which produces elegant results. OmniOutliner is a solution for a problem that you don't realise exists until after you've used it. According to the documentation, it's a program for manipulating lists. More than that, it's a tool for structuring information. OmniOutliner allows you to create lists or trees of rich text, and easily move elements and subtrees around. If you are doing any writing it's an invaluable tool, since it allows you to create outlines of headings, shuffle them around until you are happy with them, and then export as text. In addition to the bundled applications, I bought a couple of others. The first was Keynote. Keynote is a presentation tool, which has the same relation to Microsoft PowerPoint that OS X does to Windows. It's easier to use, and the results look better. It imports and exports PowerPoint presentation, and can also export presentation as QuickTime movies, with transitions in tact, or as PDFs. The ability to save as PDF is shared by almost all OS X applications. The second application I bought was AppleWorks, a purchase which I must admit was mainly out of nostalgia. When I was at school I used ClarisWorks 1.0, the office suite that would become AppleWorks. At the time, it was far ahead of the competition, and I was interested to see what changes had been made. Sadly, the answer is very few. It feels like a Classic application, and doesn't seem nearly as polished as any of the other programs. This isn't a big problem for me, since I don't really use an office suite. I use Keynote for presentations. Small documents I write in TextEdit, the OS X text editor, which supports rich text and spell checking and can import and export MS Word documents. For large documents I use TeXShop, the OS X front-end to the TeX document processing system. People who do require a good office suite would be well advised to look at Microsoft Office for the Mac, which is believed by some to be better than the Windows version. Developer toolsIn stark contrast with Windows, where the developer tools cost several hundred pounds, OS X includes the XCode integrated development environment. This can be used to develop applications in C, Objective-C, C++, Java or AppleScript.AppleScript is worth a mention on its own. AppleScript is an English-like language used to write script files that automate the actions of the computer and the applications that run on it. Dragging any application to the script editor will give a list of scriptable functions. Most applications expose a number. I use a free program called Romeo, which exports menus to a Bluetooth phone, allowing it to be used to remote control scriptable actions. I can use it to control playing music in iTunes, DVDs, or presentations. It even pauses my music when my phone rings. A new addition to the power of AppleScript is Folder Actions. These were added in Panther, and allow a script to be run whenever a specific action happens in a folder. I have used these to run automatic backups whenever my iPod is plugged in, or when a specific Windows share is present, and to create a folder which automatically zips anything dropped in it. The XCode IDE has the same usability as other Apple programs. Since OS X is very UNIX-like, it is possible to develop applications on the Mac, and then deploy them on UNIX servers or workstations, as long as some small amount of care is taken to make sure that Mac-specific functions are avoided. It is even possible to develop graphical applications in this way. The Cocoa application programming interface (API) is based on the OPENSTEP specification, released jointly by Sun and NeXT. The GNUStep project has implemented large portions of this specification on Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems, making it relatively easy to move code between the two systems. CaveatThe only real problem I've had since I started using a Mac is that occasionally I have to use other types of computers. After OS X, Windows seems crude and ungainly, and I have difficulty believing that I used to use it all of the time.Product informationThis review covers the Superdrive edition of the 15" Aluminium PowerBook released in September 2003.The unit comprises: Anyone looking to invest in a Mac should also consider the cost of AppleCare - a protection plan which extends the built-in 90 days of telephone support and one year warranty to three. The cheapest repair on the PowerBook is about £500, so if anything goes wrong then AppleCare is worth it (less so on the desktops, but laptops take quite a pounding, and things can break). AppleCare for the Powerbook costs £279, while the 15" PowerBook with Superdrive costs £1,999. All prices are inclusive of VAT at 17.5%. If this sounds completely out of reach, never fear; Apple has a Financial Services arm which facilitates business leasing of many of its products. ContactsApple StoreTel: 0800 039 1010 Web: http://www.apple.com/uk/thestore/ Apple Resellers AT Computers Ltd (Cardiff) Tel: 02920 620 839 E-mail: sales@atcardiff.co.uk Web: http://www.atcomputers.co.uk BCC IT Solutions (Newcastle Emlyn) Tel: 01239 710 823 E-mail: enquiries@bccit.co.uk Web: http://www.bccit.co.uk About the AuthorDavid Chisnall came to Swansea to study Computer Science in 2000, because he quite liked the idea of being near the sea. In 2003, he graduated with first class honours and in January 2004 began studying for a PhD in the same subject, where he now has a desk with a view of the sea. In his free time, he is pursuing a writing career, and is currently contributing to a book about Linux due to be published in the spring. |
|
|
Subscribe to ITWales Updates Click Here! |