Dell D620. My first impression was somewhat favorable, but read more below.From an aesthetic perspective, it looks nice. However, Apple has adapted OS X to conform with the way their desktop interface has always been presented. A big part of this design forces the active Window's menu to be located at the top bar and "untied" from the window itself. This is just wrong, a bad design. Too bad they didn't correct it when they had the chance at the cretaceous/tertiary boundary layer - oops, I mean at the v9 to v10 transition. (Aside: It's funny that MS Vista and Windows 7 have somewhat copied this error and have removed perfectly functional menus in the name of a "cleaner" look. I am definitely in the "minimalist" design school, but removing the menu entirely is wrong, too.) From the Law: Every application that uses a menu should place it below its own title bar.
Continuing on, I downloaded some core and essential applications to make comparisons. I chose Firefox, Skype, and OpenOffice as representative cross platform applications. I found that each of these are truly cross platform and work the same way across all three platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows). Notably, OpenOffice is now a native "Cocoa" application under Mac OS X and no longer requires the X11 layer. In the end all of these are equally "functional" and equally "beautiful" regardless of platform. This category is more or less a tie.
Next, I gave quicktime and iTunes the abiility to play ogg files with the quicktime component. (By the way, I think you need to logout after installing the xiph library thingy; otherwise, it doesn't become active.) When I wasn't sure this was working, I downloaded a more general sound program, sox. Interestingly, this program just segfaults. This is strange and smacks of direct breakage/interfence from Apple. Aye, there's the rub. I am not ready to trade one monopolist's tactics for the other's.
Continuing on, I took a quick glance around the environment to see if there was any thing which is driving the masses to switch in droves to the new and cool platform. The calendar application, iCal looks very nice. The Dashboard thingy is nice but I don't know how to set it into a usable desktop background mode. Its default behaviour "returns" it to the dock- what's the point of that? I had been more or less avoiding it, but finally opened iTunes, Apple's flagship application. I was immediately assaulted by the expletive-ing billboard that appears for Apple's "chosen". It is definitely in the Real Player, Microsoft Media Player school of design which copies the television metaphor for both passive activity, and ad supported content. Really, that's it? That's the greatest thing since sliced bread?
But just for the sake of argument, let's say you can ignore its flaws and its blatant commercialism, and you just want to use it as another "unix" platform and adapt it for your intended purpose. OS X (Darwin at its core) is a FreeBSD derivative, therefore, I assume you should be able to use "ports" to compile new applications from source. To do this, the first thing you'll need is a compiler. I found that you can get the tools necessary from something Apple calls xcode. But to get that, you'll have to register as an Apple developer first. Its's ironic when you jump through that hoop, the payoff is the GPL licensed toolset, with the gcc compiler at heart. (It's not clear to me if FreeBSD has its own compiler, or also relies on the GPL toolset.) Obviously, Apple doesn't have any qualms about taking "free" tools, and not worrying about giving back- either in the spirit or letter of the law.
I've seen enough. There is nothing compelling and I'll be sticking with Slackware.
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