Gettin' An iMac!

[paddy.]

Woo! I'm so happy! :beam:My parents are getting me a 17" iMac for my 19th birthday (which was today, 25th August). :love:

Here are the specs:

1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 1x1GB
250GB Serial ATA drive
Keyboard & Mighty Mouse + Mac OS X
17-inch TFT display
1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor
SuperDrive 8x (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW)
ATI Radeon X1600 - 128MB GDDR3 SDRAM
AirPort Extreme
Bluetooth 2.0:drool:
I'm so excited. :hugegrin: I've never had my own computer before but I'm going to live in Belfast soon and I need a computer for my course in tech.

I was wondering if any of you Mac users out there know of any good accessories or software I should be looking at, aside of course from AirPort stuff and Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash and Dreamweaver.

Any suggestions? :)

[Templarian]

Look up a thread McG beat you to it.

Its the I switched one.

(Where you buying the 2nd gig from?)

[ya3]

:thumb:

[Jeff Wheeler]

Congratulations! :D

Give Textmate (http://macromates.com)! It is by so much the greatest editor ever, that words can not express it. Seriously, whenever I go to school and have to use Eclipse, I feel like I'm in hell. There really is just no comparison to it's extensibility and power. It's simply breath-taking… really! I love it so much… :lol:

[paddy.]

(Where you buying the 2nd gig from?)
If you mean the extra 512mb of RAM, then the answer's Apple. I can't be bothered with the whole rigmarole of buying an iMac with 512mb RAM and taking it to another shop to get more RAM. It's easier just to pay Apple to do it right.

@ ya3 - so you approve then? ;)

[Theros]

they have 250gigs on a 17 inch? Nice... how heavy is it?

[ya3]

Hahah yes :P I'll send you a [ya3 approved] sticker for your iMac ;)

[Jeff Wheeler]

/me still can't find words to express love for Textmate… ;)

[paddy.]

You can go to a 500GB Serial ATA drive on the 17 inch model. I'm not sure what the 20 inch supports. Ihave no idea how heavy it is because I've never held one. But when I get it I'll let you know.

Thanks nokky. That looks like a handy piece of kit. :D

And :lol: at ya3

[McGuffin]

Whooooooo, 2 active Kirupans switch to Mac on the same day. Awesome :D

[paddy.]

Awesome indeed. Although it could be a few days before I actually get my hands on my Mac. :P

Good luck with your iBook, McGuffin! :thumb2:

[Butters]

^ MacBook ;)

Congrats on the iMac, I know you won't be disapointed, Macs rule :hr:

[evildrummer]

I only I finally purchase my own mac soon, I have to pay for it myself unlike you lot that get it from your parents :hitman: Oh well, I hope you dont get annoyed with it and throw it out the window.

[saxplayer13]

Get Smultron (http://smultron.sourceforge.net) (it's free and you can add languages in an afternoon)
Camino (http://www.caminobrowser.org) which is basically firefox except faster for Mac

Congrats on getting a new iMac... I might wait until spring to get Photoshop and Flash and stuff, because they aren't Universal Binaries yet, so they're half the speed they should be on Intel Processors, and the new version will hopefully work right on Intel.

-Saxplayer13

[Jeff Wheeler]

Yuck… Smulton :td:

Camino is okay, but it's a bit ugly, imo…

[saxplayer13]

I'm too poor for TextMate, what can I say?

[Jeff Wheeler]

It's worth every penny. I'd pay $200 for it.

[McGuffin]

I hate buying apps when there's near comparable freeware alternatives. I'm really really really cheap when it comes to applications. After you buy PS and Flash, there's only so much left over for other apps.

[Jeff Wheeler]

The thing is, Smultron doesn't have any of the features that Textmate has, and that's hard to understand until you've used it for about a week. The extensibility it has, Unix support it has, and the snippets are so powerful that ones in other apps shouldn't even be compared… :P

[paddy.]

Congrats on getting a new iMac... I might wait until spring to get Photoshop and Flash and stuff, because they aren't Universal Binaries yet, so they're half the speed they should be on Intel Processors, and the new version will hopefully work right on Intel.
Yeah, that's a real pain in the arse. I don't know what I'm gonna do till then. I might have to get them before then anyway from the education store and just upgrade later. It better be worth the wait. Damn Adobe and their "consistent track record of releasing major product upgrades every 18 - 24 months".

Smultron looks good. I like "free". And I'll be using it for HTML, CSS and PHP only so I don't need a truckload of features.

Nokrev, I don't know how you could describe Camino as ugly, but I'll most likely be using it 'cause I love FireFox.

[Jeff Wheeler]

Well, Camino doesn't support the plugins from Firefox afaik, and the form field elements don't appear completely native. Also, the Webkit rendering engine is superior (it passes Acid2 ;)).

Plus, the tabs are ugly imo, and they aren't visual.

[saxplayer13]

@nokrev:
What was the last version of Smultron you used? The one I have has snippets, which I use daily for templates... especially the AS3 Class one... I just type in the name of the class, right click and choose AS3 Class, and it builds all the code for me that I would be typing twenty times over...
Smultron does have a lot of extensibility as well- I wrote my own AS3 syntax file for it because I wasn't happy with it's actionscript one... and what's more extensible than an application that is free and open source?

@Paddy Duke:
I totally agree with the Adobe thing...Do you still have them on your old computer? I guess you could design on your PC... but no one really wants to do that... I'm still waiting for at least a Mac Beta of Flex Builder 2... and I think what is holding it up is the Universal Build problems... maybe... I don't know, but I promised myself not to make the switch until I have the promise of owning some Adobe apps (at least Illustrator and Flash... I've lived without Photoshop for 10 months now... hooray for Seashore/GIMP)

[hl]

TextWrangler's awesome.

[Jeff Wheeler]

I'm using the latest version off its site from today. Not only do I find the GUI hideous (“wtf?” is the only possible response to those icons), it takes the OS9/BBEdit-style approach. It has features from the start, but does not expand well. Sure, it has support for commands, but they're unorganized, and there is no huge library of tons of them for different languages (as there is in the >100 bundles for Textmate that you can get). I can't seem to find any way to add additional syntax highlighters, which seems like it should be at the very base of the application (there's a neat script where you can see the current scope in Textmate; it'll show you something like “string.quoted.double.php,” demonstrating how the syntax highlighter works).

Also, the snippets in Smultron only support keyboard shortcuts, and going through the menu. Tab-triggers are one of my favorite feature in Textmate: type `function` and tab, and it will bring up `public function FunctionName ( $value='' ) { # code... }`. The cool part is, though, that you can tab through different parts of it. For example, the default selected part is `public`, but I set the value I want for that, then tab, and it will select the next tab-part thing, `FunctionName`. Next, it will select ` $value='' `, then just `value` if I want to keep the argument, and then `=''`, and finally `# code...`. This allows you to set all the properties of it without touching the mouse, or using the arrow keys. Oh, and it's blatantly easy to define your own. I have created one called “Labeled Input,” activated by “input” (the “Input” snippet is also activated by the same thing, so Textmate handles this by giving me an easy choice that's hard to explain). I've used this code for my snippet…


<label for="${2:some_name}">${1:Field name}</label>
<input type="${3:text/submit/hidden/button}" name="$2" id="$2" />

Notice how in `name` and `id` I used $2? As I type into the tabbed field #2 (it starts at $1, with the default value “Field Name,” and then I tab to $2, with the default value “some_name”), these will automatically get the exact same value. I could have also used regular expressions to modify the value.

Overall, the Bundle editor is much, much more powerful than the simplistic one in Smultron, but it's also very easy to use, even for beginners. (Oh, and Textmate also supports putting the current selection into the snippet, just like Smultron. It has a few other variables, too, that you can use.)

The “commands” functionality in Textmate is well, much more powerful. I have one bundle of commands that let's me communicate with an xml-rpc server with metaWeblog, and do blogging through Textmate (of course, because Textmate is so minimal, this bundle isn't installed by default, although it is just so neat). I have another bundle I got which will upload and download Snipplr code, with just two little prompts in Textmate.

Edit: I forgot to mention the Unix functionality of Textmate, similar to that of Smultron. However, Smultron does not support nearly as much. Check out the man page for Textmate's functionality… it supports stuff like piping, opening directories (wow, I can't believe Smultron does not support that!), waiting (oh my, this is just so useful). I use the Textmate Unix scripts a ton, but the Smultron ones are unacceptably lacking. Oh, and Textmate supports the run-as-command thing to, but it simply puts the output on the next line - much better, in my opinion.

Overall, I feel Smultron is overly-bloated, unorganized and ugly. :(

[saxplayer13]

Adding/Modifying Syntax Definitions (http://smultron.sourceforge.net/syntaxColouring.html)

Anyway, I'm happy with Smultron, and I don't have money to invest in TextMate. It works fine for what I do so far, and that's all I need.

[Jeff Wheeler]

Yeah, but that's a really ugly approach. Plist files? :-/

[hl]

TextWrangler's still good.

[Jeff Wheeler]

We all know Textwrangler is the crappy, sissy little sister to the incredibly OS9-style, super-bulky BBEdit. :P

With that said, my best friend uses TextWrangler. ;)

[hl]

I don't mind TextWrangler... all I want is my syntax highlighting and I'm good :)

[paddy.]

So other than text editors, which seems to be a fiery topic in the Mac camp, is there any good (free where possible) software out there you can't do without?

[Jeff Wheeler]

Quicksilver (http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/) is awesome. I couldn't live without it… as Mike says, “that's one of the reasons [he] uses a Mac” :P

My middle button on my mouse activates it… :D

[BS]

Congrats, Paddy Duke
may the mac force be with you
I have the 2 inch model with the G5 intead of core duo

Heres a story for ya my friend went saved all his money for a year and 1/2 and he went out and bought the 20 inch G5 and 90 days later the intel came out
the reason this is bad is apple has a 90 day return policy
so......the moral is read the rumor site but congrats :thumb2:

[Jeff Wheeler]

Yeah, that's about as stupid as buying an iPod today. ;)

[paddy.]

Aww man, that sucks for your friend. Hopefully nothing like that will happen to me.

Nokrev, Quiksilver looks pretty nifty. That's going on my "To Get" list along with TextMate if I can afford it. :puzzled:

[Jeff Wheeler]

It's free. :D

Visor from the same people is great, also.

[paddy.]

No, I meant if I can afford TextMate. ;)

What's Visor?

[Jeff Wheeler]

Ah, ok… Visor is a little SIMBL plugin that brings a cool little drop-down keyboard-shortcut for Terminal.

It's really only cool if you use Terminal a lot… I leave the dev server for Django running in that shell, and then open other windows dedicated to other certain things.

http://docs.blacktree.com/visor/visor

[paddy.]

Can anyone recommend some small, good quality speakers (with a sub-woofer preferably) for around £100?

[paddy.]

Woohoo! My new 20", 1GB RAM, 250GB HD, iMac with 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor should be here in under 6 hours. It arrived at my dad's work today. :beam:

[Anogar]

Congrats! I'm sure you'll be happy with it. :)

Interesting that they put the Meroms (you have a T5600) in the iMacs, I kind of assumed they'd go with Conroe / Allendale. I guess the HSF must be too large, I know the stock HSF is taller than an iMac is deep.

So, I imagine that that other than select few things, it's nearly impossible to upgrade the iMacs due to their laptopish architechture? That's pretty much my biggest problem with Macs in general, I like building my own computers and being able to easily replace my own parts.

[paddy.]

Yeah you can't really upgrade the iMac much at all. Now the Mac Pro is a different story. There are 4 million possible configurations for that beast.

But I'm not a heavy user and I'm not very into building or customizing computers. I prefer eye candy and simplicity and an iMac suits my needs perfectly.

[Oli-G]

Apparently the iMac's can be upgraded to 4gb RAM, and the CPU/vid card are interchangeable (correct me if im wrong). Even the G5s'. Though it's just not marketed, as a service to their Mac Pro line...

I agree PD... beautiful things those 24" IMacs... i'm over the costly upgrade phase. Using a MacBook now, the experience is just that much better :). Does video, design, web, the lot.

[ya3]

Grrr... My laptop chokes on Photoshop :(

[Jeff Wheeler]

Really? What're the specs?

[Oli-G]

Grrr... My laptop chokes on Photoshop :(


Ugh... Illustrator for me. And opening up my large Freehand print files is a nightmare - rendering the screen takes forever. This was supposed to be a setp UP from my old Athlon box!

[ya3]

Really? What're the specs?
Heh, it's a Centrino 1.6Ghz, but only 256mb RAM. I RMA'd an incompatible 1gb stick that I bought and am waiting for the replacement :(

[Jeff Wheeler]

Oh, thought it was a Mac. :P