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The thread about Switching to a Mac


stevestojan

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I forget who it was, but you were saying you were thinking you were regretting it. Any better now? I need to get a new laptop right away and am considering the switch.

 

Thanks

 

Stoj, Not a direct response to the above, but doesn't the little lizard have an employee discount program with the aforementioned Apple?

They offer discounts - not as deep as for stoont's 'n teechers but it's a shave off the retail. I'm just saying.

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You might hate Apple, but if it weren't for Woz and Jobs who stole the user interface from Xerox PARC, we'd all still be struggling with autoexec.bat and iconfig issues on a black screen with white text while pressing the scroll button to move the text up into viewing range. I'm sure by now the software engineers at Microsoft would be consumed in a raging heuristic controversy about allowing users to select more than green, orange and white text on the black screen. Ah yes, MS DOSE (the MS DOS Era) was great training for Radiologists no doubt and about as fun as a dose of the clap.

 

This myth has been debunked. People who were at Xerox PARC back then say that the execs at Xerox didn't know what they had and basically sold it for pennies to Apple. A local Mac users group had Wozniak give a talk and they put it on the local access channel. He talked about how he got interested in computers and how Apple was started. It was really interesting.

 

 

I have used Macs since since 1984. The first Mac I used had no HD and we had to swap floppies all the time. PCs are a lot harder to learn and upkeep.

 

The recent Intel based Macs can run BOTH OSX and Windows.

 

I bought my first Mac in 1994. I had that for 5 years. The only reason I bought a new one then was that I wanted a fast up to date one. The second lasted five more years. Something went flaky with the motherboard. The people at the Apple Store did diagnostics on it for free even though it was that old. My current one, a Mac Mini is about 3 -4 years old and has been running fine. No crashes of the OS at all.

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Stoj, Not a direct response to the above, but doesn't the little lizard have an employee discount program with the aforementioned Apple?

They offer discounts - not as deep as for stoont's 'n teechers but it's a shave off the retail. I'm just saying.

 

The fiance takes 1 class a semester as GEICO generally only promotes those with a degree or who are actively pursuing. So, I can legitimately get the $100 off.

 

I know GEICO offers discounts for all sorts of things (my verizon bill, for example). Not sure about Apple, but I think the student discount was my best bet.

 

I'll let everyone know how I like the MacBook when I get it Tuesday!

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This myth has been debunked. People who were at Xerox PARC back then say that the execs at Xerox didn't know what they had and basically sold it for pennies to Apple. A local Mac users group had Wozniak give a talk and they put it on the local access channel. He talked about how he got interested in computers and how Apple was started. It was really interesting.

 

 

I have used Macs since since 1984. The first Mac I used had no HD and we had to swap floppies all the time. PCs are a lot harder to learn and upkeep.

 

The recent Intel based Macs can run BOTH OSX and Windows.

 

I bought my first Mac in 1994. I had that for 5 years. The only reason I bought a new one then was that I wanted a fast up to date one. The second lasted five more years. Something went flaky with the motherboard. The people at the Apple Store did diagnostics on it for free even though it was that old. My current one, a Mac Mini is about 3 -4 years old and has been running fine. No crashes of the OS at all.

 

Wacka, my first Mac was a MAC SE and I ruled in 1987 - it had 2 800k floppy drives and I hooked it to a 40 MEGABYTE HD.

 

I accept your taking exception to my loose use of the word "stole" in the above, however here's some suggested reading. One could also argue that Bill Gates "stole" MS DOSE from Tim Paterson.

I went back to Kallege in 87 (IIRC) and got the Mac to do papers on. The typography and composition lab at RIT had Xerox DTP ran on a network of SUN Sparcs and the Xerox GUI kicked ass. For the time they were far more powerful and - even though I'm an unabashed Mac fan, the GUI was more elegant. Of course we're talking about System 6.5 or thereabouts. Archie Provan - Professor of Typography consulted with Xerox and I believe also Apple on the use and rendering of fonts in their suitcases.

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Thanks Nanker for your suggestions. It is a driver issue for my printer (a laser jet HP 1020). I posted that problem before and many helped me out. I downloaded all sorts of drivers and still can't get it to work. Most of the problems I have are my own fault- I am used to Windows. Is there a way to display two pages side by side? If I try and type on one page the other disappears. Thanks again

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Thanks Nanker for your suggestions. It is a driver issue for my printer (a laser jet HP 1020). I posted that problem before and many helped me out. I downloaded all sorts of drivers and still can't get it to work. Most of the problems I have are my own fault- I am used to Windows. Is there a way to display two pages side by side? If I try and type on one page the other disappears. Thanks again

 

 

I remember that discussion. I am shocked that Mac support or HP support couldn't resolve that question, easily.

 

...of course, Mac has no drivers...right? :nana:

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I remember that discussion. I am shocked that Mac support or HP support couldn't resolve that question, easily.

 

...of course, Mac has no drivers...right? :nana:

Mac support did not want to be bothered. They said it was an HP problem. I did not want to waste an hour of my life talking to an automated system at HP

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Thanks Nanker for your suggestions. It is a driver issue for my printer (a laser jet HP 1020). I posted that problem before and many helped me out. I downloaded all sorts of drivers and still can't get it to work. Most of the problems I have are my own fault- I am used to Windows. Is there a way to display two pages side by side? If I try and type on one page the other disappears. Thanks again

Not sure of the problem with 2 pages side by side. I'm on my MacBook and have 2 separate Safari windows open. I then opened a blank Open Office document, and copied back and forth. ?? What am I missing?

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Thanks Nanker for your suggestions. It is a driver issue for my printer (a laser jet HP 1020). I posted that problem before and many helped me out. I downloaded all sorts of drivers and still can't get it to work. Most of the problems I have are my own fault- I am used to Windows. Is there a way to display two pages side by side? If I try and type on one page the other disappears. Thanks again

Just did a little googling about your printer problem, because I was curious - I've never had a problem hooking a printer up to a Mac. Well, from just a few sites I read, it appears you have a printer that HP never intended to be used on a Mac (for whatever reason). I'm sure you already tried this, but these 2 sites had some decent sounding suggestions:

 

 

HP LaserJet 1020 on a MacBook

 

HP LaserJet 1020 on OSX

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Not sure of the problem with 2 pages side by side. I'm on my MacBook and have 2 separate Safari windows open. I then opened a blank Open Office document, and copied back and forth. ?? What am I missing?

I figured it out- don't mind me- I just am dumb with Apples

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I figured it out- don't mind me- I just am dumb with Apples

Whaddayouse... an Orange?

:nana:

 

Glad you got it figured out. I know what you mean about being used to the interface.

It's habitual over time how we use these things.

After about 8 years of getting used to doing Ctrl C and Ctrl V using my pinky and index fingers at work, I piss myself off when I use that at home on my Mac and get shungotts. It's Command C and V - which uses a thumb and index finger combo. It's a little like rolling your own smileys and typing ":duh:" instead of ";)" ;)

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Quick question... are the most common file types the same between systems?

 

Are picture files .gif, .jpg, etc the same on a Mac

Videos .avi, .mpg, etc?

Documents .txt, .doc, etc?

 

Thanks

Yes.

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Quick question... are the most common file types the same between systems?

 

Are picture files .gif, .jpg, etc the same on a Mac

Videos .avi, .mpg, etc?

Documents .txt, .doc, etc?

 

Thanks

 

Macs don't use file extensions, just like Linux.

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Wacka, my first Mac was a MAC SE and I ruled in 1987 - it had 2 800k floppy drives and I hooked it to a 40 MEGABYTE HD.

 

I accept your taking exception to my loose use of the word "stole" in the above, however here's some suggested reading. One could also argue that Bill Gates "stole" MS DOSE from Tim Paterson.

I went back to Kallege in 87 (IIRC) and got the Mac to do papers on. The typography and composition lab at RIT had Xerox DTP ran on a network of SUN Sparcs and the Xerox GUI kicked ass. For the time they were far more powerful and - even though I'm an unabashed Mac fan, the GUI was more elegant. Of course we're talking about System 6.5 or thereabouts. Archie Provan - Professor of Typography consulted with Xerox and I believe also Apple on the use and rendering of fonts in their suitcases.

 

I live in the Bay Area- Silicon Valley is here. In fact, I rode past Apple, Symantec, National Semiconductor and Intel HQs yesterday when I was in Silicon Valley. They have had a lot of shows on about the startup of many companies. That's where I got the info. They tracked down and talked to a lot of the people that started up the companies.

 

Woz said when they got their first order for 1000 Apple Computers, they only has $ for 250. They would sell 50 at a time to make $ to buy more chips. Another time Jobs and him wrote a Breakout type game program over a weekend for Atari to get more $ for Apple.

 

Woz graduated from Community College, never went to a four year school Every few years he gives the commencement speech there- He says "See what you can do with a 2 year degree." He teaches high school kids about building computers every so often.

 

Fry's Electronics, an electronic dept. store here, had an actual Apple I (maybe even the prototype) on display. The circuit boards were mounted on wood, I kid you not!

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OS X uses and understands file extensions.

 

Yes, back in 2001 Apple mandated that file name extensions became mandatory.

 

However, it still gives preferential treatment to file type metadata. From my interaction with it, Apple's Application Binding first looks at file type metadata, and THEN at file extensions, making file extensions all but useless.

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