Actually, OS X is very newbie friendly..
as well as catering to the geeky techno-user. The main people who seem to have problems with it are the ones who have customized their OS 9 environment to a gnat's-eyelash and have tuned their muscle memory so they waste as little energy as possible getting things done. (Primarily graphics and design folk, I think but I'm willing to be corrected.)
Anyway, there are two faces of OS X:
- Newbie-friendly: Big colorful photorealistic icons, a nice friendly toolbar on the Finder window, a simplified (single-window) Finder as a default choice, the Dock, animations and transparency effects to show you when something happens and what it probably was.
- Geeky Techno crowd: What can I say...BSD layer, complete with CLI, built-in Apache/Sendmail, built-in directory service (Netinfo) accessible to admins which can also be tied to NIS/LDAP, Java 2, GNU tools, so forth and so on.
So the level of complexity experienced by an OS X user varies by the user.
I'm reminded of Trip Hawkins (Of Electronic Arts) definition of a good computer game: simple, hot and deep.
simple - easy to get started without having to read 50 page manuals. Just jumpt right in.
hot - once you're in, you are pulled into the game experience and encouraged to continue playing.
deep - as your skill and knowledge grows, more of the game reveals itself to you, further drawing you in.
Speaking of OS X, I was trying to explain XML to a beginning CS student of mine tonight. I explained that XML was a markup language with roots in SGML (I pulled up a 10-Q filing on www.sec.gov and showed him the tags) Then it occurred to me where I could find a local example of XML.
OS X keeps it's configuration files (referred to as 'Preferences') in XML format. So you can edit them in a plain old text editor or use a GUI tool (supplied with the Developer Tools). So I pulled up the preferences for Appleworks and showed him the tags and the data.
As for multi-boot, I know you can dual-boot PPC-based Linux and Mac OS 9. Mac OS X dual-boots with Mac OS 9, so you can in theory triple-boot between OS 9, Linux and OS X. (Of course, if you log in as >console, you're dropped out of the Aqua GUI and into a Darwin text login prompt from which you can run XFree86, an X Window manager and all of your favorite *NIX tools.
So maybe that's quadruple booting.
Oops, forgot Virtual PC which will let you run:
- DOS
- Windows 3.x
- Windows 9x
- Windows NT 3.x/4
- Windows 2000
- Windows ME
- Windows XP
- OS/2
- x86 Linux
- x86 BSD
- x86 Solaris (I presume. I may try this myself)
Okay, by this time I'm just showing off.
I agree that Apple HW is pricey and a big step for Wintel users. (The price gap is beginning to close, however.) I think that in most cases, getting those folks a copy of Linux is a good step. But OS X and *NIX integrate so well that I hope that we reach a state of The Best Tool for the Job(tm), relying on common, open standards rather than common HW/SW to allow folks to work together.
Thus endeth the lesson.
Tom Sinclair
Speaker-to-Suits
It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In
fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of
a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side.
It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)