Hands on Apple Macbook pro

Today I got a hands on opportunity to play with sexy apple macbook pro. My cousin, Sreejith recently bought macbook pro :) It looks really awesome with metallic finish and white shiny effect. Even though it weighs enough, the interface for macbook is really awesome. At a glance it looks like a thin metallic box. The awesome Human Interface is the first thing makes apple products different. He showed me the speciality of charger pin, which was magnetic such that if accidently the charger cable is pulled it wont make the laptop fall down, but the pin is removed from jack immediately and also if pin is kept near it would suck the pin into the jack by magnetic force. There are also some light source inside the keyboard, which would lit up if the it is dark outside.

I switched on the macbook, immediately an apple logo is splashed for a while, then user login dialogue was displayed. I went through the awesome eyecandy desktop and several applications packaged with it. ichat, time machine, safari , all looks nice. Being a Mac lover, my cousin brother Sreejith showed me the desktop effects and several features, the perfection of sound and picture. But I wasn’t excited much enough even though I expected much more in OSX. But.. I’m a proud GNU/Linux user. I was having a much similar desktop under my tweaked ubuntu desktop with Mac4Lin theme and Compiz-fusion. Compiz is much more than all mac osx effects all together.

In a couple of minutes of search I found out the bash terminal :), which is the favourite utility for me under *nix. I checked the kernel issuing $ uname -a. It was Darwin. Mac OSX is based on FreeBSD operating system, which is yet another unix based system. I peeped into the directory structure and felt ooph. They have changed the structure a lot by adding their on directories like adding Users directory /Users unlike in linux the /home/user concept. I didn’t like these people made this directory structure mixed with dirt. But I would appreciate the big brains of interface design. I could find most of the command line utils found under GNU Operating system also in Mac OSX. When I had little research with google I found out that it is possible to install even Gnome and Kde to Mac OSX. That sounds nice. Also there are some ported utils from debian community like apt-get and dpkg called fink. Altogether its an optimum system with power of *nix environment.

I’m never impressed by the proprietary policy of Apple. Mac OSX is a proprietary OS built on FreeBSD utilizing many free software utilities. That isn’t fare. Even though they have some side business projects such as Open Darwin, they hides their code. The Safari browser, which is the default mac osx browser is built on K Desktop environment’s konqueror browser library. But comparing with crap M$ handicapped Windows operating system, Mac OSX is really awesome. Being a free software and *nix enthusiast I would say, Mac OSX doesn’t rock. It has a rock solid OS which gives only less possibility for innovation and customization. I have a operating system, which is based on GNU system and Linux kernel, the GNU/Linux which is the ultimate universal operating system. It gives me the unlimited freedom for learning and fun!. I am happier with the power of GNU/Linux. I can tweak it, customize it, slim it, thicken it, paint it. whatever. Its my choice. The user’s freedom.

The apple hardware really rocks. Kudos to Steve Jobs and team for excellent interface design and hardware.

More fun out here. Look at this video, 165 applications opened simultaneously on a Mac OSX like tweaked Linux OS. :D Think. What if it were a M$ Windows !!!!