I want a laptop, and I am seriously thinking of getting an iBook or PowerBook, but I want to know if it will "just work". There are several things I want from my investment in a laptop (doesn't everyone want these):
1. Quality hardware. The agonizing death of the keyboard on my SO's 1.5 year old toshiba convinced me that I want a laptop made by a company with a history of quality.
Don't get an iBook then. I've had no end of trouble with mine, and I'm not alone. There seems to be a mechanical problem with the display that manifests itself after as little as a few weeks. Some people have had the logic board replaced as much as three times during their warranty period, and it seems AppleCare is a requirement for most.
http://discussions.info.apple.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]@.eef6178
Check out the two threads "At 30 degrees the display goes black" and "iBook users with display problems post here".
I've had my own logic board replaced once. The repair was fast, but I was without the iBook for a week. I'm currently scraping together the money for AppleCare so I can continue to use it after my warranty runs out.
If you can at all manage it, go for the 12" Powerbook (or wait until WWDC and see what they do to the 15").
2. Hardware supported by the OS. I don't want to have an unusable modem and CD burner because the manufacturer used some wierd brand without Linux support. And I'm sick of having to reboot every other time I want to use the USB CD Burner on my Debian box.
You'll have much less of these problems with a Mac. Typically what would happen to me is I'd ask the guy in the shop is component Z was compatible with Linux and he'd look at me like and aliean. I'd buy it, spend several days researching how to get it to work, fail, and if I could be bothered I'd return it for a refund. More usually I'd just reboot into Windows.
With Macs they will know if it's compatible, and usually, with branded peripherals the answer is yes. I'm using a Lexmark USB printer and an external Firewire drive, and while I'm sure both of these can be persuaded to work with Debian, I wouldn't want to try.
3. Good package management. I want to easily be able to install all the beautiful software I am used to having easy access to using dselect on Debian.
[...]
I currently use Debian, and I think dselect is spectacular because it generally makes installing new software pretty darn easy. The other day I tried to help a colleague install XEmacs on his Powerbook, we got X from Apple's X11 beta and XEmacs using Fink. I expected that it would be as seamless as using dselect on my Debian box, but it "just DIDN'T work". First libncurses was the wrong version, then dyld failed because another library was the wrong version. We never got XEmacs to run, and he just gave up. Maybe I could have done the install myself, if I had been sitting at the keyboard instead of backseat driving, and maybe mixing Fink with Apple's X11 made it more complicated, but it didn't seem to be as smooth as dselect on Debian.
I can fully relate. The quality control that goes into the Debian package management system and, more importantly, the packages themselves is incredible. Fink just isn't as slick. I could count on one hand the number of times a Debian apt-get upgrade failed for a serious reason, but I've had numerous problems with Fink. They're all solved now, but I don't get the same perception of quality. Maybe it's just a perception, but your point is a good one.
However, I'd suggest that you'd be surprised by how little you end up using Fink as a former Debian user. I switched from Debian last September and all I need Fink for now is LaTeX and the GNU equivalents of the shitty BSD file tools (diff, du, ls, chmod, etc.). Originally I installed virtually all my favourite Linux applications, but I have gradually replaced the with OS X native equivalents (e.g. XChat-Aqua) or improvements (Safari replaced Galeon, iTunes replaced XMMS).
For example, you'll find yourself using applications with well-thought-through user interfaces, consistent graphical appearances and intuitive operation. It's sad, but the same cannot be said for most graphical Linux tools. And if you're a terminal fiend, all the standard GNU tools for manipulation and searching of
files are in Fink, waiting to be installed (I've never had any problems with these!).
I still use Mutt occasionally (mostly remotely--which reminds me, Apache, SSH server, and Samba daemon come preinstalled with OS X and are updated by Software Update) but for all but the funkiest mail handling operations, Apple's Mail is just fine.
If you're getting a Mac just to run precisely the same packages you ran on Debian on a PC, I think it's a waste of money. However, if you're going to experiment, to play around with the OS, and to try different applications, then it's a fun risk to take and you'll have a great time learning about the different way they do things over here. I did.
Good luck, -- Michael
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