Mac switch for unix college programming student?

[Dark Dexter]

Ok, the question is simple, do you think i should switch to mac for a notebook? I am currently using a Pentium II 400Mhz running Debian GNU/Linux for taking notes and listening to music at school. I play Starcraft on it using wine for some light gaming along with tetris. I've kinda realized I cant stay on that thing much more and I need a new lappy.

Here is my computing experience. I'm a very confident Unix user and have numerious Linux and FreeBSD machines along with 2 macs and a few windows machines too. I have the least expereince in OS X thought and wanted to know is switching is really for me.

I'm currently going to college and majoring in Computer Science and Computer Engineering. I'd like to have a laptop with long wireless range and a nice coding enviroment. I've been using Visual Studio in windows and the command line and gcc in linux. Is mac easy to write C and Java on and is the programs it writes cross platform enought to work on Windows (what my school uses) I personally dislike windows but for developing apps it might be better... depends on your anwsers.

I've been looking into waiting for the Intel ibooks and dont know if its really worth it to get one insteard of a cheapy Dell or something. Basically I want it for coding, messing around, and light gaming. Would the coming intel ibook or maybe macbook pro suit my needs? I want to keep my price under $2000 (i get student discounts so i could get a macbook pro)

Any Ideas to all my questions? Sorry that this is so long but I have been looking into this for monthts and came out with these questions.

Also hows fink on PowerPC and Intel. I heard its like Debian... that would be a big plus for my Linux head


Sorry that this is so long and thanks in advance for the help!

[powermac]

My suggestion is the Mac Pro Book, may be better suited to your needs. I suggest this only because you mentioned gaming. As far as programming, and knowing very little about it, I might again suggest the MPB because of the speed and power.
Since the Intel Ibook is not out, it is hard to say. In your price range, I would go got the MPB.

[whitesaint]

If you can wait anywhere from 3-6 months, get an Intel iBook, otherwise get the MacBook Pro now. No Doubt the Macbook Pro will be fast, but if you can't wait you can also get the PowerPC iBook now. It's a very capable machine and will be fine for programming but you might wanna upgrade the ram if you want to run several applications at once.

Mac OS X sounds like it would be perfect for someone like you. OSX can code and compile java and C with the free developer tools, your C programs will no doubt be cross platform, if you want to use Java and Swing, then your Java will be cross platform too. You can also program with all your familiar tools ie pico, emacs on the built in unix command line. Writing code really is a delight compared to other platforms.

And as far as the games go, Mac OS X has most of the major games, like yknow good games, realistic 3d type games. I actually play pretty recent video games and program a lot on my eMac 1 Ghz, and i think its a very fast computer imho. Many many games already have released updates to run on Intel, for free. An Intel Mac will run Doom3/Quake4/WOW just fine.

But yea Mac OS X was designed for college students and you can program every unix language and a lot of other frameworks/languages as well. I promise you, you wont be disappointed especially if you're a computer science student. You're probably familiar X11/XWindows and that comes built in with every mac which you can also run your unix programs in that as well. I know Fink runs on PowerPC but im not quite sure about Intel yet. Just whatever you do, dont get a Dell.

[Dark Dexter]

I have 2 macs already (a G3 powermac running Jaguar and a G4cube running Tiget for my mom) I've been playing around on the cube with VNC and have really been loving it. I used to hate macs (arounds System 7 - System 9.... sorry but they were equally bad as windows imho). But OS X having such an open source base that I'm so famillar with has been really nice. I really like that it uses bash instead of csh too cause all my lame little bash scripts for getting stuff done still work.

I think I can put up with my Pentium II a few more months. I'll get a better wifi card and I think I should be able to manage (my current card has TERRIBLE Range... right next to my router it has 68% ) Having X11 and when fink gets better at intel macs (its in heavy beta now it seems) I'll be all set. So i can play SuperTux on my mac :P . Yea, I think I'm gonna switich... i just wish apple would hurry with the intel ibooks.... and all the talk of swaping from core duo to memeron has me a bit worried that i'll be obsoleted soon... but compated to a P2 i guess it could be worse.... what time do you think I should get the ibook? When apple anonuces them or when the news about memron gets out. With a new wifi card I'm willing to wait, i could buy Tiger for my G3 in the mean time

Ideas?

[fryke]

For the G3 I'd choose Panther instead of Tiger, though. Panther seems to be the sweet spot for "not so recent" hardware.

[nixgeek]

Although I'm not a coder like you are, I've been going through the same dilemma. I want to get a MacBook Pro, but I' not quite convinced by this first gen model. I want to see what happens once Merom is released. I don't have too much of a problem waiting since I'm already getting my OS X fix with my iMac G5 which will be a year old in September, but I'm so impressed by the Core Duo CPUs in most laptops right now that I'm constanly fighing the urge to jump the gun.

My wife just got herself a Dell E1705 Intel Core Duo laptop with the discrete GeForce Go 7800 graphics. I have to admit that this laptop is one sweet machine. Blows away anything I have here at the house hardware-wise. My only issue with it is Windows. Sure I could run Linux on a laptop as similar as this one for my portable needs (I'm happily using Ubuntu on my laptop from work right now which is a cruddy HP Compaq nx9010 and I've been quite fond of the Lenovo laptops as well as the HP dv1000t), but it wouldn't have the same aesthetic as the MacBook Pro would and I would be missing OS X which is the only operating system I would probably use over Linux.

For these reasons it is why I am going to get the MacBook Pro sometime in the future. I'm waiting to see what is going to happen to them once Merom is out. Will Apple use these in their MacBook Pros along with more of a selection in size by then? I can only hope. Until then, I'll be here drooling over how cool it would be to run Ubuntu (or even OS X...woops, I shouldn't have gone there! ) on my wife's Dell.

Good things come to those who wait....I keep trying to convince myself of that.

[fryke]

As for the future of MacBooks, Merom etc.: There's always going to be progress. By the time Merom makes it into the MacBook line(s), we'll know about yet the next generation and might dream of quad-core notebooks instead of "those lowly Meroms". So I'd skip that thought and buy new hardware when you need it (of course not the week before Merom is officially unveiled, because _then_ Apple will at least produce one model making use of the new chip, I guess). For what it's worth: intel expects Merom to show 20% performance increase at the same clock speed while maintaining battery life. I'd say that's not _that_ big a jump. More important, I guess, will be the step when Apple has the whole notebook lineup complete on intel (whether that's Yonah or Merom matters less in my opinion). Then you'll have to decide based on your needs and the money. Since I personally want to go 'smaller' for my next notebook, I'm really looking forward to those rumoured 13" widescreen notebooks. Whether they'll belong to the "Pro" line or not - I don't really care. Even a Core Solo Yonah is a big step forward from the G4 (talking univeral binaries here, not Rosetta).
I'd say the next 3-6 months will be an interesting time for the notebook market and Apple.

[Dark Dexter]

I think I'm gonna chill for a few months... gonna take a good look where Intel is going when the Intel iBooks are released and decide to wait a bit longer and go for merom. As far as a production machine... I built my own AMD 64 4000+ gaming rig booting Gentoo Linux and XP so as far as having a machine to work on at home I'm fine... as far as being mobile, I'll get a war driving kit and do some fun mods to this giant old laptop to somehow integrate the antanee into the case.... gonna be a wild design frenzy but a good thing to keep my mind off my lack of a good mac attack. I convinced about five of my friends to get macs and one to even use Linux (sorry nixgeek but I got them running on MEPIS Linux, Ubuntu is great but it was too big of a gui shock for him). The penguin has done me well and I think I can manage a few more months.... Thanks for all the help, if you all have anymore thoughs lay em down.

And on a side note, the most mobile gaming I'm gonna be doing is StarCraft... I love that game... And maybe some Warcraft III or other RTS... The big first person shooters like Doom3 and Call Of duty 2 can stay on my desktop.