Until now, I have always reserved my feelings about Mac OS X.Â
After all, I hadn’t used it extensively enough to pass judgement on
it. Well, no more. It is severely deficient for a serious
computer user. I’ve long been told that Macs are meant for the
average joe who doesn’t know a mouse from a joystick. Well,
it’s definitely not for the computer geek.
First let me clarify, that my experience was on an iBook, which
wouldn’t allow me to have administrative rights. Had I been able
to login as an admin, I could have easily downloaded all of the
necessary software that I needed. So, the point of this article
to not to say that Mac OS X cannot be made to work for the power
user. Â The point is that Linux (http://www.linux.org) works out of the box.
Late yesterday afternoon, I received a digital video of a lesson that
the principal wanted to be aired the next day. Simple enough, I
thought. Mac OS X has a superior video editing program, I
thought. Linux (http://www.linux.org)’s video editing programs just aren’t ready for
primetime, I thought, and iMovie is just so easy.
After completing a very nice editing job with iMovie, I was ready to
explore my export options. I knew from the beginning that this
iBook did not have a DVD burner, so my forethought led me to believe
that I would be able to burn a VCD. On Linux (http://www.linux.org), this is a simple
task that requires no additional downloads.
I soon discovered that iMovie/Quicktime will NOT burn a VCD out of the
box. After searching through many forums, most people said to use
Roxio’s Toast. Well, I can’t download and install anything
without admin rights, and Toast is not free anyway. Strike one.
I then had the bright idea that, Hey, I have my SuSE (http://www.suse.com) Linux (http://www.linux.org) laptop
sitting right next to me on this counter, why not send the dv file
through the LAN via ssh. Â My thought was that, since Mac OS X is
so cleverly based on BSD (http://www.bsd.org/), ssh would surely be enabled. And I’m
sure the ssh client is enabled, but I could not access the terminal
without admin rights! Who ever heard of such a thing!Â
Anyway, no big deal, I’d just use Safari. I knew Safari was based
on khtml, which is based on Konqueror. I figured, Hey, Safari
probably has all the features of Konqueror and then some, right? Â
Wrong.
Trying to do an sftp connect with Safari/Finder/etc proved pointless. Strike two.
I then decided to use FTP. I quickly installed an FTP server on
my linux laptop (because I don’t normally use ftp at home). No
problems on the Linux (http://www.linux.org) side. I used Finder to connect to the Linux (http://www.linux.org)
FTP server. I then thought, Yes! I’m so close. Now,
with all the Mac ease and sophistication, I’ll just drag and drop this
dv movie right into my /home folder on the Linux (http://www.linux.org) laptop. Â Â
ERROR, read only. What? I logged in as myself. How
could my own home folder be read only? I was sure it was
something on the Linux (http://www.linux.org) side. I set overgenerous permissions, I
checked the pure-ftpd config file. Finally, I even download
proftpd and compiled it from source, thinking that it must be a problem
on my Linux (http://www.linux.org) end.
Still nothing. Surely, I’m not that dumb. So, I checked the
mac forums again. Apparently, connecting via FTP with Macs is
always read-only. To actually upload something via FTP, you have
to, yep you guessed it, download (or buy) another program. Strike three.
Tasting defeat, I closed the iBook and waited until this morning when I
could just copy the edited dv back to the camera and play it through
the media retrieval system from the tape. No VCD.
So, like I said, Mac OS X might be good for power users after one has
spent quite a good deal of time downloading, finking, and compiling all
the necessary software, but why go through the trouble? So, I can
have widgets? I don’t think so. I can download FreeBSD (http://www.bsd.org/) and
have a working system with everything I need (including widgets).Â
Why use Apple’s WannaBSD (http://www.bsd.org/)?
If you want to play around on your computer with cute eye candy, get an
Apple. If you want to do some serious computing, you can still
get an Apple, but make sure you install Linux (http://www.linux.org) on it.
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