TITLE: Breaking in a New iBook
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: July 08, 2005  2:35 PM
DESC: On tough product choices, Tiger, switching to bash, and on-line identity.
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BODY:
Daring Fireball recently ran a piece on several
issues in the Apple world, including the
<A HREF="http://daringfireball.net/2005/06/shuffling">
   recent streamlining</A>
of the iPod line:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
This emphasis on a simplified product lineup has
been a hallmark of the Jobs 2.0 Administration.
For the most part, given a budget and a use case,
it's pretty easy to decide which Mac or which iPod
to buy.  (The hardest call to make, in my opinion,
is between the iBooks and 12" PowerBook.)
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree with John's assessment of the last tough
choice -- I recently agonized over the iBook versus
PowerBook choice, focusing for budget reasons on the
crossover point from iBook to PowerBook.  In the end,
I think it was more pride than anything else keeping
me on the fence.  I love my old G3 clamshell PowerBook
and like the look of the titanium Powerbooks.  But
given my real needs and budget, the iBook was the
right choice.  One potential benefit of going with
the simpler, lower-cost alternative for now is that
it postpones a more substantial purchase until the
<A HREF="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.html">
   shift to Intel-based processors</A>
is complete.  My next PowerBook can be one from The
Next Generation.

My new iBook arrived last week.  I've been having great
fun playing with OS X 10.4...  My old Powerbook is
still running Jaguar, so I have been missing out on
the many cool things available only on Panther.  I'm
only just now scratching the surface of Dashboard and
Expose and the like, but they feel great.  My only
minor regret at this point is going with the 30GB drive.
I'm already down to 13 gig free, and I haven't done
much more than basic set up and my basic set of apps.
In reality, that's still plenty of space for me.  I
don't store lots of video and music on my laptop yet,
and my data will fit comfortably in 10 gig.  If I do
need more space, I can just pick up a external drive.

While setting up this machine, it really struck how
much of my Mac experience now is bundled up with Unix.
In the old days, I set up Macs by dragging StuffIt
archives around and creating folders; I spent a few
minutes with control panels, but not all that much.
Setting up OS X, I spend almost all of my time in a
terminal shell, with occasional forays out to System
Preferences.  This machine switch may be more Unix-heavy
than usual, because I've decided to follow OS X from
tcsh to bash.  Rewriting config files and hacking
scripts is fun but time consuming.

Of course, this change pales next to the switch I made
when I went to grad school.  As an
<A HREF="http://www.cs.bsu.edu/">
   undergrad</A>,
I became a rather accomplished VMS hacker on an old
cluster of DEC Vaxes.  When I got to my
<A HREF="http://www.cse.msu.edu/">
   graduate program</A>,
there wasn't a Vax to be seen.  Windows machines
were everywhere, but the main currency was Unix, so
I set out to master it.


Another thing that struck me this week is how much
of my on-line identity is bundled up in my Unix
username.  "I am <TT>wallingf</TT>."  That has been
my username since my first Unix account in the fall
of 1986, and I've kept it on all subsequent Unix
machines and whenever possible elsewhere.  At least
I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.
Last year as we prepared for the
<A HREF="http://www.dreamsongs.com/Feyerabend/Extravagaria2004.html">
   Extravagria workshop</A>
at OOPSLA 2004, Dick Gabriel wrote that <TT>rpg</TT>
is the

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
Login name for RichardGabriel.  I have used this login
since 1973 and resent ISPs and organizations that don't
allow me to use it. 
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Anyway, my iBook now knows me as <TT>wallingf</TT>.
I guess I should give her a name, too.
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