The Days I spent playing with Tiger

Sadly, the MacBook Pro was duely returned to its owner this afternoon. The MBP was with me for over 3 weeks now. He had ‘dumped’ it with me for me to learn it and teach him how to do ‘stuff’ with Mac OS X. But even after I did tweak around the OS and had my share of fun with the world’s most sexiest OS, I still think GNU/Linux is what suits my tastes – perfectly.

The MacBook Pro 17” with a whopping 1680x1050 resolution, was running OS X 10.4 “Tiger”. It was running on an Intel Core2 Duo, 2x512M dual-channel mem (1G total), and a 111.8 Gig ATA HDD. I’ve never seen a USB2.0 interface transferring something with 4-5Mbps – before using Tiger.

Ever seen a computer that can run all the three popular OSs? No? Me too – before using a Mac. I think Apple’s decision to switch to Core2 Duo – better battery life, could run Wind0ws for loonies, don’t need to get a PPC live CD for GNU/Linux distros, etc. But POWER6 reports to have crossed 5GHz in recent news. I don’t know what Apple feels now.

The engineering is perfect. The smooth finishing and the metallic feel is so captivating. No wonder girls envy computers. ;) The keyboard feel is so comfortable. I used Dvorak-QWERTY keyboard on the Mac. So that while typing, I could use Dvorak, and while using shortcuts, I can use ⌘C, ⌘X, ⌘V, etc, the way it is printed on the keyboard.

The keyboard – aah – the keyboard has a definite feel to it. And sometimes, it is really a relief that the keyboard will glow in the dark – sometimes even when my shadow falls over it. The Mac has this property – it will adjust it’s brightness to the lighting in the room. Sometimes, this really is a PITA. I didn’t start using Tiger after reading any tutorial. It was recollecting whatever I had read about the Mac in the past, mixed with a little intuition, plus some ⌘? – the Tiger built-in help.

The applications are really built ‘integrated’. The Apple folks really knows designing a desktop. And now I know why GIMP looks the way it looks – try using Photoshop on a Mac. Also, I had this trouble while closing the windows, the first time. It doesn’t exit the app when we press the little-red button on the top-left corner. You have to press ⌘Q key, in order to quit the app. It took me some time, learning this. Also, the Alt-Tab behaves a lot different in a Mac. The correct way is F9 – swish – choose the window you want to switch to. Easy! (If you know how to do it, that is)

The DND (drag-and-drop) is pretty advanced in Tiger. You could drag a URL, drop in anywhere (desktop?) and it will automatically create an internet short-cut. Drag an image from a webpage and it will get saved where you drop it. Nice!

Browsing is faaaasttt! Safari literally flies over the information superhighway. So do Firefox. The default filetype while saving from Safari is somekind of ‘.webarchive’ file. It is some kind of Apple proprietary list. But it saves the scripts, CSS, and everything associated with a webpage (even the server transactions, the GET/POST requests, the web server banners – everything!) into an archive. A lot like MHTML something. That sucks! I’ve seen that firefox does have trouble saving the CSS in some CMS-enabled webpages. But if you’re an Apple-only user, this seems like a kewl feature.

Installation of new apps are also easy. The ones I tried installing over the web are DivX player, Mozilla Firefox and Skype. All except Skype form the Apple menu→Mac OS X Software; this will open Safari with the Apple app instalation web page. Download, drag into the Applications folder, and use. The ‘.dmg’ file is some kind of disk image thingy that is mounted as a drive – dunno – some kind of new OS X magic.

I could get around the system, thanks to my experience with GNOME. The file-open dialog in GNOME too has borrowed its idea from the Mac. Also, there’s no paths in the filesystem. If you press the browse button while uploading/attaching a file on the web, we see only the filename, no the ‘path’. Dunno, but it feels strange!

Many of the apps made me realize where the GNOME folks are getting their ideas form. The Network Utility (Network Tools), System preferences (GNOME Control Center), System Profiler (Hardware Information), etc. I only wonder when the GNOME folks will include something similar to the dock. Talk about tweakability and customizability, then.

The filesystem is pretty robust. Copying the files are blazingly fast. The only mental block that I have while living with the Tiger is the evil proprietary aura that keep radiating from the Mac – ewww!

I am sure to miss my late night sessions with Tiger. :’(

Total Black Out!

I'm experiencing what could be best described as 'Every Geek's Worst Nightmare', namely, his Computer Being Stuck by Lightning!

My laptop powerbrick had been having some trouble and I was unable to charge my laptop. Now that my desktop and BSNL Wi-Fi modem being fried by the stupid lightning — I'm experiencing a Total Black Out!

I'm sorry to all those folks to whom I cannot mail, scrap in Orkut, talk in IRC, or any other net nonsense that I used to engage upon (I'm composing this on a borrowed laptop; thanks Remya).  I must have probably angered some Gods, who might have gotten displeased that I was giving my attention elsewhere.

Here's my sad episode...

Last Saturday, I was sitting in my bedroom, reading PBM notes (ok, don't believe it, if you don't want to), when I heard a distant roar of thunder.  I looked outside and saw darkened sky and lightning streaks glowing outside.  Usually, in a similar situation, we used to plug off our telephone.  I rushed downstairs, to plug off the phone, lest it be fried by lightning or something.  Mission accomplished, I proceeded to the refridgerator (I should mention that I was alone in my house, the 'other' members were out on some errands).  Suddenly, I heard a crack of thunder, a streak of white lightning, a *buzz-clank*, and the circuit-breaker switched itself off! 

I checked the TV, which was not connected, then I remembered that my desktop's UPS was plugged in.  Not powered on, but plugged in, along with the Wi-Fi modem.  I rushed back to my room, and yanked the plugs off.

It was during evening that the power came, and I went downstairs to switch on the circuit-breaker.  Sometimes afterwards, I came upstairs and switched on the desktop.  Nothing!  I weeped!  Then I tried the modem; blink-blink.  I weeped harder!

Now I have nothing left to read except for my exam notes. Maybe the Gods want it that way.  I hate deities that get irritated in short notice and wenge their anger on us poor humans. Back to exams and revisions... maybe I'll sell of my desktop or laptop or both. :(

But I feel like quoting Morpheus, "Fate, as it seems, is not without a sense of irony!"

/etc/init.d/network start

Hurray! I should thank my parents for the greatest thing they've done to me (in the recent times, of course). They've availed me a Net connection. What more can you ask for? The connection is BSNL DataOne, slow as it always is (since when has net been fast enough?), is equipped with a WiFi modem. Kewl! The configuration is a simple point-browser-at-ip thingy. The router is a good one — comes with NAT, WEP/WAP, MAC filtering, and whatnot. Have to poke around and learn the ropes. I got the connection today morning. I should thank Venkat from the depth of my hearts for taking the burden of riding here in the evening a week ago, and being grateful enough to lend his NIC. Thanks a zillion, Venkat! March 02, 2008 update: The only boring thing is the lack of my laptop. I'd have given anything to browse the net through WiFi. The desktop is only a barebones installation — Debian Etch, with no saner apps for the web (err.. Web 2.0 to be precise). I also see that IceWeasel swaps around too much. Gaelon is OK, but some sites don't even like it. But this connection is on a trial basis — the Rs250 scheme. I might get a job in the near future, and I'll definitely go for the Rs900 unlimited scheme. Maybe then I'll swicth to Debian Lenny. I did try telneting into the router. I think it's runnig Busy Box. Anyway, I'm the happiest soul around here (except for my power brick, laptop battery, and may lacking a ULB). Cheerio...

Valentine's Day: In love with Xfce

My laptop power brick got burned out day before yesterday. Since then, I've been unable to perform anything even trivial with my ~50mins battery backup. I've been thinking about replacing the battery too, but since the warranty got expired I think I might have to shell out cash from my pocket. Now that I've switched my attention to my half-abandoned desktop, I've been in search of some GUI-thingy that is simultaneously sleek and performance wise top-notch. I've been using E16 for sometime, both for lack of availability of E17 in Debian Etch and to be "unconventional" not going in the paths of KDE or GNOME. What is most expected out of a GUI (I'm refraining from using the term Desktop environment) is a decent file manager. Sure, I can be satisfied with dired in GNU Emacs, but that's not what you want when you want to copy a ~400MiB video to your friend's thumb drive. The keyword here is "immediate". My desktop is a Celeron 634Mhz box with 128M ram. By most of the so-called "modern" standards this is clearly outdated. I don't know whether it's Binny or Sameer bhai (both of LUG-Cochin) that told me about Xfce. I had dismissed that thinking Enlightenment is all the way to go. But Enlightenment does not have a "decent" file manager. I thought, "What the hell, anyway I'm sitting here unpurposefully, why don't I try out yet-another-desktop-environment?". What striked first about Xfce was its sleek and polished look -- quite like GNOME. And what's more: it uses GTk2 (think Pango and it's advantages here).  These are the visible virtues of Xfce (originally XForms Common Environment):

• Lightweight (Literally!  Uses 60M of my 128M ram, and 30M of my 252M swap in extreme conditions)
• Nice and gooey desktop apps -- I'm head over heals for Thunar.
• Sleek and smooth and 'sexy'.  All thanks to GTk2.
• Have all the D-Bus, HAL and blah-blah functionallity.
• Fast.  Yes, for all my needs.

I think I'll stick with Xfce for my future desktop compting needs.   Gosh! Why didn't I think of this before? "Time," as Morpheus suggests, "is always against us."