[ic] Mac OSX viable as a development platform?

[Julia Jacobs]

On 3/5/02 6:01 PM, "Michael Stearne" <mstearne@entermix.com> wrote:

> That's only because everyone in the city is at home reading man pages
> and trying to figure out how to configure their modem.  : :-P
> 
> I'm kidding, but whatever slight Unix headaches there may be from OS X,
> there is no way you can touch the ease of use for the rest of the OS,
> including server administration. Try MacOS X server if you get a chance.
> http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/
> 
> Michael

After I bought my G4 box with Mac OS X Server 1.2 a year and a half ago as
well as Tenon's iTools and Timbuktu Pro to aid with remote administration
(my server was co-located), I spent well over. . . well I'm not going to
mention how much money I spent.  Granted I was not a command line guru and
I've learned a lot since then.  But even then I was mislead into believing
my set-up (with a local Mac OS X guru who administered a network with some
OS X boxes at a University in town for emergency backup - charging $50 an
hour) would allow me to serve my web design clients commercially.
I had just gotten married that year to my husband and business partner when
we started hosting with this infernal operating system.  Talk about testing
a new marriage!  To make up for all of the lost income going into the money
pit that was our Mac OS X server I even thought about exploiting our pain in
the form of a self help relationship guide for techies based on "Men are
from Mars, Women are from Venus".  My title was "Men are command line, Women
are GUI".
No, seriously, I can't justify paying for Mac OS X Server even now with its
server administration when I still have to modify open source software for
it.  I love Mac OS X.  I use it as a production machine big time.  But Linux
can't be beat as a server when it and so many cool apps that run and install
so easily are FREE.  Granted I had to suffer almost loosing all of my
clients and near bankruptcy.  Not to mention marital problems and the harsh
stench of personal failure before I would overcome my fear and intimidation
of Linux.  I thought Linux was only for . . . .well not for folks like me.
Its really not that tough and there are GUIs for it too. And Webmin kicks
Tenon iTool's butt. VNC a is fine replacement for Timbuktu Pro.  I could go
on.  And its so much fun to raid Sourceforge.net and freshmeat.net to see
what I can get.  Or some RPM repository.  Before when I was a Mac OS X
pseudo admin it was an exercise in frustration.
I personally think people who were like me are getting conned by the huge
marketing campaigns of Jobs and Gates.  Hopefully IBM, Hewlett Packard and
others supporting Linux will reverse the damage.

My 2¢
-- 
Julia Jacobs
Currant Media
407-977-4523
Fax 407-261-0176
http://www.currantmedia.com
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