PC Convert getting first Mac

[WDRAM]

Hey all--

Well, I ordered my first mac on Sunday -- 12" iBook 600 (G3 should hold up long enough, right? Ah well, the TiBook is too expensive) with 384MB RAM, Combo Drive, and a 30GB HD, with a bag, a mouse, and Office v.X. Judging by what I read here, that should be more than enough to run OS X quite well. I hope to get a bunch of apps I need from a friend of mine, including:
vPC 5
Illustrator 10
Premiere
REALbasic
Flash 5/Fireworks
etc., etc.

What else do you think I'll need (besides UT + Q3 )? I want to do some image editing/creating, some DV editing, some web design, and some VB (C++ in a year or so) programming. Gaming takes a back seat for now (only a 8MB 3d card, and I have and Alienware PC). What exactly IS the classic interface BTW? Will I need to partition a space for OS 9 so I can install the OS 9 progs there? Or do I just install the progs directly into OS X and it takes care of it??? And will I need a partition for XP for vPC 5???

[ulrik]

Originally posted by WDRAM
Hey all--

Well, I ordered my first mac on Sunday -- 12" iBook 600 (G3 should hold up long enough, right? Ah well, the TiBook is too expensive) with 384MB RAM, Combo Drive, and a 30GB HD, with a bag, a mouse, and Office v.X. Judging by what I read here, that should be more than enough to run OS X quite well. I hope to get a bunch of apps I need from a friend of mine, including:
vPC 5
Illustrator 10
Premiere
REALbasic
Flash 5/Fireworks
etc., etc

You come from Windows or Linux, I suppose (PC user). Well, you will at first be a bit disappointed. MacOS X is still not as fast as it should be, don't think it is your Mac which is too slow, the G3 is a damn fine CPU. But still, I think you will be happy with OS X and I strongly suggest to take a weekend and check out OS 9...than you will know what a user friendly OS looks like. OS X is a bit away from this, but it as the technology which OS 9 is lacking...
I am very interested in your first experiences on the Mac. I converted ca. two years ago. Used PCs for over twelve years, took me two months to get hooked up to the Mac platform...and that was even before OS X (I think my first purchase in the Apple store was the OS X PB).

What else do you think I'll need (besides UT + Q3 )? I want to do some image editing/creating, some DV editing, some web design, and some VB (C++ in a year or so) programming. Gaming takes a back seat for now (only a 8MB 3d card, and I have and Alienware PC). What exactly IS the classic interface BTW? Will I need to partition a space for OS 9 so I can install the OS 9 progs there? Or do I just install the progs directly into OS X and it takes care of it??? And will I need a partition for XP for vPC 5???

OK, image creating: You need nothing, it is weaved into the OS, all MacOSes since 8 I think have native image support, you will see that most software is distributed on virtual HDDs, the disk copy images (.img, .dmg)
The app you need to do this is Disk Copy, which comes with OS X

DV Editing: iMovie! iMovie! iMovie! It is free, it is great! You can't do much with it, but you can edit and cut movies, add transitions and sound and stuff, and it is soooo easy you can't describe it! If you wanna go further, I suggest Final Cut Pro, I haven't tested V3 yet, I used V2 maybe two or three times at work and I like it more than Adobe Premiere. But I am just a hobby DV guy, I use such apps mainly for codec converting and sound muxing, not for *real* DV stuff

Web design: Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Simpletext...choose
but Dreamweaver is still Classic, so it won't run in the native Cocoa or Carbon framework but in the Classic environment, which isn't that much fun. I suggest GoLive.

VB: Tough question, I am only coding a bit Objective-C, but IIRC Codewarrios does it...but I am not sure

I strongly suggest to dedicate a small (1 gig) partition to OS 9. The classic environment, to put it simple, is a virtual OS 9 running inside OS X.

OS X is a completely different architecture than OS 9, so classic OS 9 and OS 8 applications don't run under OS X natively. OS X has three main frameworks in which it runs apps (or from which the apps use the libraries). First is Cocoa. Cocoa apps ONLY run in OS X and are specially coded towards OS X and can take full advantage of some OS X-only GUI elements f.e. Then there is Carbon. Carbon is a layer for Apps which are written to run natively in OS X but used to be OS 9 apps. Mostly. Some Apps (like the Finder and I think IE) are written from the ground up in Carbon. Technically, a Carbon app CAN run both in OS X and OS 9. And finally there is Classic, an emulated version of OS 9, giving you the ability to run *old* OS 9 apps under OS X, but with the classic interface and often with some minor problems.

Hope I helped a bit...

[WDRAM]

Thanks, Ulrik, that was extremely helpful!
I am looking forward to the shipment of my iBook even more now.

Und du wohnst in Deutschland? Das ist toll! Ich wohne in den USA, aber ich spreche ein wenig Deutsch. Tschüs!

[rinse]

Ulrik... i believe he meant image editing as in bitmap editing similar to what is done in photoshop. Not disk image editing.

Also, for any sort of text editing (coding, web pages, etc.) get BBedit. www.barebones.com

As for some of the questions first posed...

1. No you dont NEED a separate partition... you cna do it however and some people prefer it this way. I have OS9 and OSX living happily on big 40gb partition with my documents.

2. Flash and the rest of Macromedia's products by far and large (except Freehand and Flash/Shockwave players) have not been released in a version taht runs natively in OSX... they run in a layer similar to emulation known as Classic. Classic is essentially OS9 running inside of OSX.

3. not sure about VB in OSX, however tons of great dev languages have a great home here... PERL, PHP, Java, Python, etc.


Enjoy... you have made wise choice my friend.

[liquidstrife]

Hey man, it's 7:30am and my iBook with the same specs is supposed to come within the next 4 hours according to my tracking. This is why I havent been to school for about..8 days. It's dumb, but I want my iBook. All I can do is listen to Rush.....yea. You'll enjoy it . Im sure!

[WDRAM]

That's cool liquid, but mine won't ship until the end of next week prolly (it said 10 DAYS because I put in a bigger hard drive and more RAM) so, I'm playing the waiting game for now....But hey, Office, my Bag, and my Mouse shipped.....As if I could use them.