I'm A Potential Convert From GNU/Linux

I was in the same boat - I have built PC's since the early '90's, but like you said - life started getting in the way, and I decided I didn't want to invest all the time and effort into making something work. I just wanted something that does work.

I remember the feeling of knowing exactly what hardware was inside the machine, but honestly, I still feel that way about my Macs - and actually, if two people buy a stock Mac of the same build/generation, their machines are more or less identical. So it's not really so far-fetched to say you still "know your machine inside and out."

Hope this helps!

 

I used to build, gave it up with the mac...apple does a better job of building than I can AND I don't waste so much money on what is generally crap. My spares box stopped filling up the day I got the Mac.

Forget packaging, you just download stuff and use it...novel concept eh?

If your tired of wasting time with Linux then a Mac with its L/Unix underpinnings is just great.

 

On its own, the Mac doesn't really do package management. When you download the Mac native version of firefox, you get it as a disk image file and you drag the executable .app package into your Applications folder, or wherever you want it to be.

You can set up macports or a similar system I believe, for GNU software you want to use through the terminal or through the X11 windowing system, but I'd say that for 90% of what's out there, you can get a native Mac application.

In terms of knowing the hardware, it's not quite as good as building yourself, but you are able to get a pretty good feel for what type of hardware a Mac has by going into the system profiler (Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Information), and sometimes, just taking a wild guess. Knowing what Intel has available pretty much means knowing what Apple has available.

In terms of having things to configure... The Mac has things to configure if you want to, but they typically come set up for you. What I've found is that when I'm on my Mac I spend less time problem solving the computer, and more time problem solving my work, or my school assignment, or actually doing what I need the machine to do. On the other hand though, the Mac is not without it's little idiosyncrasies.

The good news is that you can put linux into a virtual machine (Sun xVM/virtualbox, Q, VmWare, Parallels), and I think you can even install it into bootcamp or a usb2 disk, so having a linux playground won't be too far away. If you decide you dislike Mac OS, I do believe you can boot from a linux CD and wipe the whole hard disk and use it just as though it were a fancy, silver x86-based PC. Although I'm not 100% sure about that.

 

I found it very easy to give up building my own PCs personally. I was a former ricer. Life got in the way for me, so it was easier to just have a Mac to check my emails, surf, watch porn, photoshop ect. ect. and not have to think about anything.

Packages..lol leave that to the linux world. In the mac world, just go to Apple website and download software from there . Its drag and drop installing, literally

Despite what PC builders will say you can get to know you mac inside and out, even the powerPC models. Components are not that different than PCs. motherboard,proc,ram HDD, GFX card, fans, and dvd drive. There are plenty of documents online on how to fix and maintain Macs, even the all-in-ones

hope that helps.