Friday Open Thread → Re: Get your Leopard from Apple 6PM local time at Apple stores

A friend of mine has a bunch of apple's in his house---has 4 nice iMacs for his 4 kids. (He's an anethestesiologist, so he can afford it . At any rate, he asked me recently if he could put anything on his Mac's to stop the kids from going on them at all hours of the night. Knowing very little about the Apple line, I suggested he wait for Leopard to come out, as it appears that Leopard has some sort of parental controls within it. One could only hope that the built-in stuff is better than what MS did with Vista's parental controls.

I gotta get myself a Mac one of these days. Been saying that for two years.

I said that same thing a couple months ago, but the problems that Macs have with plug'n'play devices plugged into USB ports kept me away. Eventually I got a Windows Vista machine at about 2/3rds the cost of what the Mac would have cost.

Uh oh!! Here come the Mac fans to denigrate my decision.

I respect your decision to get a Vista machine. I have test box downstairs with Vista on it, and I really don't care for it.

The Mac's look pretty, and they have an interesting fan base. I always hear positive things. Like I tried Vista, I might try and get a used Mini on eBay just to mess around with.

For me, I'm going to let Vista pass me. I'm sticking with XP until Vista's successor comes out, or I'm forced to ditch XP.

I took my old 6yr old desktop and installed Ubuntu 7.10 on it just to familiarize myself with Linux. It was an easy install and easy to use. And it ran well on an old 600mhz machine. But it was a bear trying to get a USB Wifi device working. It took a few days to get that straightened out.

Vista has its detractors but I've had no problems getting anything I tried to work right out of the box. Plug'n'play is a strong suit for Microsoft.

I have to give Ubuntu a looksee. I just retired a 1Ggz P3 that I wanted to do something with. Sounds like Ubuntu might be a good idea.

I was reading your later post. Were you assuming the problems you had with Ubutnu would also be problems with the Mac?

In the 1.5 years I've had my Mac, I've never had an issue with any USB device I've hooked up to it. I recently picked up a Sony digital camera and I just plugged it right in.

If Mac's have been having issues with USB devices, this was the first I hear of it.

BTW, I'm not being some sort of "fanboy" or anything, I've just never heard of any USB issues with Mac...

No. It was based on research at the time both here at BBR and elsewhere.
»/nsear ··· t4906917

My Ubuntu playing around was just in the last week. I was looking in to a Mac a few months ago.

I had a bunch of apples in the house but some were bruised pretty bad and my daughter ate the others.

That's cool. I do a lot of research myself before I make a big ticket purchase.

I've had no USB issues with my unit.

All in all, it's a computer and not a family member. What works for you works for you.

For the record, for the most part I am very happy with my Mac. I have nothing against Windows, but with almost a quarter of a century of computer use, OS X is one of the best operating systems I've used.

So.... is it bad I give them names and address them by name?

I've been peeking out of the MS fold lately. I picked up U7.10 Wks and Svr that I'll install over the next month or so and see how long it takes me to figure it out.

I've been playing with Knoppix too. I'm not as brilliant as a lot of these guys, so my learning curve's a bit high. I'll get it eventually.

My immediate goals are bootable *nix thumb drives that'll have security/recovery/anti-mal software on it; and router/proxy combinations. It'd also be nice to customize my DD-Wrt routers.

Not being much of an end user, I can't seem to find a place in my life for a Mac.

NV