i want to buy an ibook, but...

F

fases

Registered
hi there people,

i'm one of those guys who runs FreeBSD (and windows sometimes, when needed) and have no idea how a mac works... i've never used a mac enough time to know the system well, so i'm completely blind here... so to the point...

i am an engineering student (computer science) and i will be needing a laptop for the coming year (and the following ones)... i am thinking about buying an ibook, but there are many questions in my head... i know i will need to program in x86 assembly and i'm not sure if that's possible in a mac... is it? is there some kind of emulation?

also, i'd like to ask you what applications you use the most in mac osx (whatever you use for - not important), both opensource and commercial... this will help me form an idea of who uses the system and what for...

no doubt mac osx is incredible, but, as all incredible things, it's not sufficiently spread yet... my college works with opensource software for most of things, but for assembly we need the processor most of the times, so we can really test it successfully...

hope you can clarify my mind a little...

thanks in advance and regards
 
fases said:
hi there people,

i'm one of those guys who runs FreeBSD (and windows sometimes, when needed) and have no idea how a mac works... i've never used a mac enough time to know the system well, so i'm completely blind here... so to the point...

i am an engineering student (computer science) and i will be needing a laptop for the coming year (and the following ones)... i am thinking about buying an ibook, but there are many questions in my head... i know i will need to program in x86 assembly and i'm not sure if that's possible in a mac... is it? is there some kind of emulation?

also, i'd like to ask you what applications you use the most in mac osx (whatever you use for - not important), both opensource and commercial... this will help me form an idea of who uses the system and what for...

no doubt mac osx is incredible, but, as all incredible things, it's not sufficiently spread yet... my college works with opensource software for most of things, but for assembly we need the processor most of the times, so we can really test it successfully...

hope you can clarify my mind a little...

thanks in advance and regards
Click to expand...

If you'll be working extensively with x86 I'd recommend skipping the iBook and OS X and getting an x86-native laptop, like a nice thinkpad. On the iBook you could use Virtual PC, but it's pretty laggy and annoying for anything but simple tasks unless you have a lot of processor power- something that the current iBook really doesn't have. Other than that, there isn't much else around that I know about in the way of emulating x86 on a Mac. I haven't looked into x86 emulators that much though so it would definitely be good to get another opinion. Every emulator that I've tried was pretty much like Virtual PC- really, really laggy and unpractical for prolonged use.

I use my PowerBook mostly for updating my website, working in photoshop, listening to music, burning CD's, administering my network, and for school work during the school year (I'm in high school.) I find that it's perfect for those tasks, basically for doing productive things in general, and I enjoy using it much more than any other laptop I've ever owned. Having the Unix terminal is great too because I'm somewhat of a Unix n00b and being able to experiment from the comfort of my home OS has been awesome. OS X also comes with an X11 emulator which runs PowerPC-compiled Unix apps very well. I also have a Dell that runs SuSE linux and Windows, which I use when I need x86 apps. My parents have a G3 iBook and it's great too, although it's significantly slower and, although I'm probably just spoiled, I wouldn't want to use it as my primary laptop. I would imagine that the G4 version is a big improvement though.
 
WinWord10 said:
If you'll be working extensively with x86 I'd recommend skipping the iBook and OS X and getting an x86-native laptop, like a nice thinkpad. On the iBook you could use Virtual PC, but it's pretty laggy and annoying for anything but simple tasks unless you have a lot of processor power- something that the current iBook really doesn't have. Other than that, there isn't much else around that I know about in the way of emulating x86 on a Mac. I haven't looked into x86 emulators that much though so it would definitely be good to get another opinion. Every emulator that I've tried was pretty much like Virtual PC- really, really laggy and unpractical for prolonged use.

I use my PowerBook mostly for updating my website, working in photoshop, listening to music, burning CD's, administering my network, and for school work during the school year (I'm in high school.) I find that it's perfect for those tasks, basically for doing productive things in general, and I enjoy using it much more than any other laptop I've ever owned. Having the Unix terminal is great too because I'm somewhat of a Unix n00b and being able to experiment from the comfort of my home OS has been awesome. OS X also comes with an X11 emulator which runs PowerPC-compiled Unix apps very well. I also have a Dell that runs SuSE linux and Windows, which I use when I need x86 apps. My parents have a G3 iBook and it's great too, although it's significantly slower and, although I'm probably just spoiled, I wouldn't want to use it as my primary laptop. I would imagine that the G4 version is a big improvement though.
Click to expand...

thanks, that was most helpful.
from what i've read about virtual pc, i guess it would be a solution to consider, since i can edit the assembly code directly in mac osx and then move the source code to windows running under virtual pc (it seems to be possible)... i'll mainly just be running some DOS applications under windows...

i guess someone that's getting a degree on engineering should know every main operating system out there... i already know windows, linux and *bsd. i guess it's time to get familiar with mac osx.

another question... does mac osx support opengl?
 
welcome to the forum, fases.
Yup, macosx supports opengl and hopefully soon even opengl 2.0 (with the next os update 10.4).
 
about your x86 assembly concerns....

when i did the comp. sci thing as an undergrad, we had to write the bulk of our programs to run under the linux system they used at school. thats all fine, except i used my roomates windows machine primarily. i found that i could just ssh in to the comp. sci system and do my programming from whereever regardless of the machine.

i dont know how much x86 assembly you are going to have to write, but if it is like mine and you just need it for a class or two, you may want to check out what i'm saying with the remote access. then you are free to get whatever machine you want.
 
cfleck said:
about your x86 assembly concerns....

when i did the comp. sci thing as an undergrad, we had to write the bulk of our programs to run under the linux system they used at school. thats all fine, except i used my roomates windows machine primarily. i found that i could just ssh in to the comp. sci system and do my programming from whereever regardless of the machine.

i dont know how much x86 assembly you are going to have to write, but if it is like mine and you just need it for a class or two, you may want to check out what i'm saying with the remote access. then you are free to get whatever machine you want.
Click to expand...

hey, that's a nice idea! i didn't even remeber that. it probably works for me as well! thanks for the sugestion! :D
 
As with my undergrad program (Comp. Info. Sys.), we did our stuff primarily on the windoze and linux boxes (though my curriculum did not incorporate any assembly language programming, whew! ;) ).
For the things that we did do that were out of the ordinary, I sucked it up and used the computer labs. If you do most of your work at home or wherever, its interesting to see how the other half lives by venturing into the labs at 4 in the morning. hahah
I actually took a class on mainframe programming using ProxMVS. Anyone heard of that? Do they still use that?? Reminiscent of the punch card era, I think that was actually the last year they taught that course.

A word of warning though, Do NOT wake the guy passed out on the couch in the computer lab surrounded by papers, programming manuals and 3 empty starbucks cups, very dangerous... :confused:

-J-
 
i finally decided to buy an ibook... i was wondering... i've seen that the maximum display is 1024x768... isn't that too small, even for a 14'' screen? i mean, i usually work with resolutions like 1280x1024 or possibly superior...
 
Yeah, sadly that is the max. There is a program out there that allows you to exceed that maximum, but only for attached external displays.

http://www.rutemoeller.com/mp/ibook/ibook_e.html

This works great for me as I hook up my iBook to a KVM and drop the screen brightness to zero, but if you're looking to get more screen real estate while on the go, you're out of luck. Expose does help a lot, and then there are virtual desktop programs as well. I've used CodeTek's and it's good.
 
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