leyton.org

I spend much of my life sat in front of a computer, and for the last five or so years, those computers have - where possible - been those made by Apple. The main reason that drew me to Mac OS X was that, underneath the well designed user interface is the Unix command line that I like to think I know quite well.

I spent many years battling with Linux distributions - generally successfully I should add - but it was never quite the fluid, integrated, graceful and well designed experience I’ve had with Apple computers. I’d get things working, but all too often I was resorting to my years of Unix to get particular applications working. Since ’switching’ I’ve been very pleased and - I suspect - a bit more productive. Plus, I’ve found that I’ve actually stopped caring about getting the most out of every last bit of technology under my fingertips. I just want it to work, and let me get on my job (which is relentlessly technical as it is, without requiring me to go out of my way). Of course, I’m still able to fire up a prompt and ‘do stuff’ very easily indeed. The perfect match.

It’s mainly been Apple laptops to date, simply because I was (and still am) a consultant, flitting from client to client, in and out of the office, and not really needing a serious base system. That is until I moved up here to Scotland, and several years back now, bought the first revision of the flat-screen iMac. I didn’t want a big hulking computer given we were in a ‘temporary’ flat at the time (it lasted 15 months in the end!), and the iMac was great for somebody who is - at heart - a ‘console warrior’ - Terminal.app is frequently the main program I use.

Despite occasional problems, it’s served me well. But since Apple’s switch over to Intel, and the success of the Parallels virtualisation software, I realised I really needed to refresh my base computer. I now have my own office with space for it (presuming I have a bit of a tidy up), and do a lot more work these days in Windows for one of my main clients, all of which makes an Intel based Mac system a necessity necessary, rather than simply a nice-to-have.

So after waiting and waiting for the rumoured display refresh (I was hoping to get the integrated iSight to arrive in the professional display), I gave up waiting, and today ordered a scarily powerful Mac Pro. Geek friends will perhaps be disappointed that I didn’t go for the Eight core model (”just” the default quad core) but I really don’t think there’s either much use for that much power in my IT world, much less optimised software to take full advantage (other than backing up my DVD collection of course). But even benchmarks don’t show it to be the beast you might think. A slightly rushed Apple release perhaps? Four cores should do it for me, and last me a good few years more than an Intel iMac would.

I’ve certainly found that my consumer-focused iMac is struggling with all the things I need to run much of the time, and I now need to run remote desktop for windows access, so will need to run Parallels a great deal of the time. So yes, it’s a beast for a home computer. But, as my friend Adam put it, it’s also the single most important tool available to me, and it makes sense to get the best you can. Also a number of friends are still making good use of their equivalent PowerMac’s they bought years before I got my iMac. It’s a beast of an architecture that should last, and scale, over the following few years.

The only negative is it’s going to take a while to get here. At least a week. Mainly because it’s quite bespoke: for the first time I’m going to ensure my primary disks are mirrored (so I can survive a hard disk failure without losing any data), and I’ve selected a few other options (ie. wireless/bluetooth modules) that add a few days. But it should hopefully arrive next week!

Rest assured, dear reader, you’ll be hearing a lot more about the new toy when it arrives. Perhaps not unboxing pics (worry not, you get your geek pr0n here!!), but something… I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Now, what to do with my iMac G5… ?