Making the switch to Apple/Mac

OK, so the new Apple Macmini has got me seriously tempted. I was thinking of building myself an all singing all dancing PC but I'm ashamed to admit that the primary motivation for doing so was really just in order to play games (particularly Half Life 2) at a decent resolution and quickly. If I decide I can live without PC games then the case for me having a PC at all starts to disintegrate. Maybe a Macmini is all I really need.

I have a couple of questions though which hopefully won't become showstoppers. I have an HP all in one printer/scanner/copier/fax with a USB connection which I have to be able to share on the network so my wife (who has a Windows XP laptop) can access it aswell. Currently it's connected to my PC and I share it via XP. Ideally my wife and I should be able to share files also. The obvious solution would seem to be one of those network attached storage jobbies with a built-in print server. Now the questions:

1). All the NAS devices with integrated print server I've seen only have a parallel port printer interface rather than USB. Anyone know of one that has a USB printer interface? If that's not an option then I suppose I can always get a separate print server.

2). Will I be able to access the files on the NAS from a Mac aswell as the PC?

3). Will I be able to connect to a printer on a print server from a Mac aswell as a PC?

4). If I decide I don't need NAS, is it possible to share files/folders on a network between PC and Mac?

If the answer to either 2), 3) or 4) is "no" then that's unfortunately a showstopper. Before anyone suggests it, getting my wife to swap to a Powerbook is currently out of the question .

And now a couple more questions which are not related and less important:
5). If I decide to do the Squeezebox thang is there a version of the server software that runs on the Mac?

6). If I want to do some programming on the Mac can I just use all the normal Unix tools?

7). Just how fast will one of these Macmini's be?

Michael.

 

5. Yes, it is, I downloaded it just for the hell of it, but bit pointless without the box!

6. Yes, you can access the terminal from an application. There is also a developers toolkit with all sorts of goodies I have absolutely no idea about.

7. Comaprisions of speed seem a bit pointless to me. No doubt it will be slower than a super top of the range PC, as for PC toers in its price range, I doubt very much you will detect much difference for things like the squeezebox, itunes, surfing, email etc etc. Because its unix application work in their own environment, I am on my step dads Mac at the moment, there are 12 applications in the dock currently running and have been for days, you won't notice any degradation in performance until you are hitting the ram seriously (this is doable in photoshop, I had my harddrive thrashing, but I was working on a 900meg picture)

I will just check on the printer thing for you, suffice to say Apple has had to integrate itself into windows networks, and does so very well indeed(on all accounts) its really a case of hooking the computers up and clicking on file sharing in the mac prefs. You then have a 'drop box' that both computers can share files from (or if securities not an issue the mac will mount the PCs harddrive on the desktop.

 

I stuck your questions on the apple discussions board, so we will say what they say, I am sure its possible but don't have PCs

 

6) MacOSx is based on BSB, you certainly will be able to do Java programming on it, not sure about anything else though.

7) Not sure but the EMACS at university are 800Mhz, they are slow but probably faster than an 800Mhz P3.

 

The killer to me is still that 256MB RAM memory, thing, does anybody know if it takes standard laptop DIMMs or is it soldered on? I know it can't take full size DDR modules because of the size.

 

There is just one other major flow with the Mini, can is there a Mac version of Firefox?

 

If I got one I'd spec it with more memory, probably the full 1Gb - I'd also get the slightly faster 1.45Gz version. Yes, you can get FireFox for the Mac .

Michael.

 

Apparantly the memory for the Mini Mac costs £130 for the 1GB module so this is much cheaper than Apple are charging. This is from Crucial.com

 

Sorry Michael

 

On the development question, when I bought a boxed version of OS X it came with a developer tools CD containing everything you need to write native apps. The CD also contains an X11 server so you can run virtually any *nix app that has been cross-compiled, including the GNU tools. There's plenty of them about. Java development should be straightforward, the VM works well, and no doubt there are OS X ports of some of the GUI environments.

I haven't yet found a programmers' editor for OS X that I really like, but BBEdit has plenty of fans. Bit expensive though, I'm used to my dev tools being free... You could always use emacs. If you were nuts.

At home I use a Shuttle PC running Red Hat Linux for development work, but I could probably do everything on the Powerbook if I could be arsed to learn to use some different tools.

Edit: file and printer sharing is pretty straightforward, but obviously depends on individual hardware. I'd check the website of your printer manufacturer if I was you.

-- Ian

 

Apparantly this little box comes with Apache and PHP installed, not sure about MySQL Server but it should be easy to setup. If I do ever end up setting up my own business (still a small possibility due to some government deal in my favour) I could buy one of these boxes for the office.

 

Apache, SSH, FTP, etc are installed as part of the OS, very neatly integrated too (you just check a control panel checkbox to turn on web serving, for example, and voila, Apache is running). File and printer sharing with Winders is similarly easy - just select the Windows sharing option, and Samba runs. PHP isn't installed out of the box (at least, it wasn't on my Powerbook), but should be simple to install. Likewise MySQL, the most recent version (4.1) includes an installer package for OS X which couldn't be simpler to set up.

-- Ian

 

It's looking better all the time ....Sgt Rock, I don't follow

Michael.

 

For pointing out the Apple mini and causing you to spend

 

Have been thinking about this again, I have to come to the conclusion that the Mini will actually be good for the kind of websites I will produce, Photoshop/CSS/PHP/MySQL but useless if working on .NET sites.

I have just spent £100 on PC software which I entend to use when I graduate, buying a Mac means having to buy new software.

I don't have the room for one either, however I am a lazy sod, when recently visiting my grandad in hospital I loved the idea of those trollys they have over the bed to but stuff on. I could buy one of them for my room, stick a Mac mini buy a cheap 17" TFT and I have a really comfortable computer to use in bed.

Does anybody know what how much noise these Minis make? If its virtualy silent then I will probably buy one. It will mean selling bits of my PC off though and not upgrading my HIFI at all just to pay for it.

 

Sorry enough to buy him one?, or better still, since Michael's loaded, buy me one

I'm faced with a choice of upgrading the HDD space on my Linux Server at a cost of over £500 for a Compaq 72GB SCSI HDD or building a new PC for less than that or now, the Apple. Hmmm, do I really want yet another Computer, even though it may be the cheapest option? I only got the Linux so that I could learn a bit about it so I'd rather not get rid of it. Decisions, decisions.

 

Right, I've found that with OS X and Windows XP file sharing between PC and Mac is pretty straightforward so not really any need for shared network attached storage allthough it would be useful anyway. A printer connected to a Mac can apparently also be shared by a Windows XP machine fairly easily. Apple have a PDF explaining the details:

http://images.apple.com/macosx/pdf/Panther_Windows_TB_10242003.pdf

An external print server would be nice though as it would mean not having to have the machine to which the printer is attached being constantly switched on. Finding an external print server that also works with Macs has proved tricky. Most of them say they do but then when you read the manual they say that it only works with PostScript printers . HP make the Jetdirect 175x print servers however which appear to work with both PC and Mac and any USB printer (doesn't have to be HP or PostScript).

It seems that if I got a Macmini the immediate file and print sharing issues have been solved (I'll be able to everything I do at the moment). I will still have to give it some thought though. There's software I use on the PC which doesn't exist for Mac that I will start to miss. Music Collector Pro (CD cataloguing) is one. QImage photo printing software is another. I'll have to buy new copies of PhotoShop and MS Office (well over £500). The list will no doubt expand. It's only worth doing the switch if I can really get rid of my PC completely. So, not rushing into anything

Michael.

 

Software is my biggest issue, I have thought about ketting a KVM switch and running a dual mac/pc setup on my desk. However this seems a little bit over the top, I have Linux on my PC which I rarely use, the novelty of using a different operating system didn't last, although I still use Linux on my laptop.

The software issue is my biggest problem, I do really like the idea of a small PC though, so I may instead build an Althlon 64-BIT shuttle type system and transfer my current parts over. I will wait for the 64-bit version of XP to come out too. I think the Mac mini is a perfect solution for Mr Average. I think if I was to buy a Mini I would need to wait for the price to come down if it ever does, then at £250 I could just regard it as a toy. I may actually end up using the Mac as my main PC and the PC for video editing etc.

I wish this was on the market when I built my sisters PC, it would have saved me a lot of hassle and it would suite her needs perfectly, she is a girl Thats what macs were originaly designed for .

 

You could always install a copy of MS Virtual PC (especially if you go for the 1GB RAM option), to run occasional Windows apps. This is how I installed Music Collector Pro on my Powerbook. It works pretty well provided you're not doing anything heavy with it.

Photo printing is easy on the Mac, depending on the printer you might be able to do everything you need in iPhoto (which works fine printing borderless digital photos to my Canon photo printer, but otherwise completely sucks and should be avoided).

I don't use Office, have a look at http://www.openoffice.org/ for a free alternative which works pretty well (it reads and writes Word documents, which is all I use it for).

-- Ian

 

From the apple discussions:

he situation you describe can be readily handled with the printer and file sharing capabilities of Mac OS X. A NAS device is not required.

Sharing a Mac printer with a PC: To share a printer connected to a Mac using Mac OS X with a Windows PC over the same network, see "Mac OS X 10.3 Help: Sharing your printer with Windows users via SMB." When configuring the printer for use on the Windows side, the Windows user must specify a PostScript printer driver for the network printer. Any PostScript printer driver will suffice, such as Apple LaserWriter®. This is necessary as Mac OS X uses the built-in PostScript-to-PDF converter to print the document sent from the PC.

File sharing: Mac and PC: The basics are covered in a variety of Mac Help documents, which can also be found in the AppleCare Knowledge Base. Specifically:
- “Mac OS X 10.3 Help: Setting up a Mac computer to share files with Windows users.â€Â

- “Mac OS X 10.3 Help: Setting up a Windows computer to share files with Mac users.â€Â

- “Mac OS X 10.3 Help: Connecting to a Mac from a Windows computer.â€Â
Note that some of the information above is from the"Printing and Printer Sharing" and "Microsoft Windows Integration" chapters of my book, Troubleshooting Mac® OS X, Second Edition.

Good luck!

;-) Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X