Mac OS

what's a good way to learn Mac if you can't afford to buy one? some of the support jobs required exp. with it. any suggestions?

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Chris:/*

Help out at an educational institute, art school or public school.

Daniel333

Define, can't afford? I don't mean anything by that negative. But I am right in that boat with you. I couldn't get a new one either. Although Macs make up such small market share, they are the platform of choice for the wealthy, and the wealthy run the small businesses we support.

Personally I addressed the problem by doing some over time, buying a small Intel Mac Mini off ebay for $250 and a G3 laptop for $50. The G3 was outdated, yes. But the key things I needed to do to get the Macs talking were there.

Secondly, the command line on the Mac is basically BASH, that is the Command line from Linux. I suggest you start living in Ubuntu's command line until you can budget a Mac.

As far as gaining experience that is a tough one. They are few and far between out there. Check at your chuch and senior centers and see what they run. You also might want to see if there is a Apple users group in your area.

Best of luck!

petedude

Daniel333 wrote: »

Define, can't afford? I don't mean anything by that negative. But I am right in that boat with you. I couldn't get a new one either.

Personally I addressed the problem by doing some over time, buying a small Intel Mac Mini off ebay for $250 and a G3 laptop for $50. The G3 was outdated, yes. But the key things I needed to do to get the Macs talking were there.

As far as gaining experience that is a tough one.

+1 for that advice. Buy some used PowerPC Mac equipment, even if you have to start out with one of the old beige units.

You might also check with local school districts/community colleges to see if they have any running and would like some volunteer support.

/pub/beer/

I would find any intel mac you could and load 10.6 on it. Then get the support essentials 10.6 book from peachpit (apple training series). That would be the best way to get up to speed fast. As with anything, nothing replaces real world experience. However I wouldn't overlook Macs, I hated supporting OS 9 machines and took an 8 year break from them. But now a days you see them in huge companies like Kraft and being used more and more in a business setting. CLI Linux experience really helps too - but OS X has its quirks and doesn't act exactly like linux, in some ways its a little nicer.

demonfurbie

used mac minis arent all that bad and os 10.2 or higher is great for practice

if you want to go the ... ummm... alternative route ya can load osx in a vm just have to buy the os

cyberguypr

demonfurbie wrote: »

if you want to go the ... ummm... alternative route ya can load osx in a vm just have to buy the os

I hate to be a purist but technically even if you buy it the EULA states that you can't install on non-Apple equipment.

Jack2

demonfurbie wrote: »

if you want to go the ... ummm... alternative route ya can load osx in a vm just have to buy the os

Have you been able to successfully do this? Which VM, method etc.. For educational purposes only...

MentholMoose

Jack2 wrote: »

Have you been able to successfully do this? Which VM, method etc.. For educational purposes only...

There are many tutorials out there, just use Google to find them. I've seen guides for VMware Workstation as well as VirtualBox.

videguy

Jack2 wrote: »

Have you been able to successfully do this? Which VM, method etc.. For educational purposes only...

I wanted to learn more about the MAC OS and went this route. I have the 10.6.3 version of Snow Leopard running on a VM with VM Player on my PC. Only cost was $29 for the OS.

PC509

Check the Goodwill. I've found G3's there for under $20. Found mice, keyboards, etc. to finish the thing. Sometimes, you need to supply your own HDD, other times they say it's not in there, but it's just unplugged.

Whether or not you find them in the enterprise is not really an issue. You'll think that until the day you have to go work on one at the bosses desk and it's something simple that takes 3 hours... I say get one and install a recent OS and play.

I haven't tried the VM route in a while (over a year). If it has gotten better, it's worth it.

jibbajabba

You can get old but useful Macs on eBay or second hand somewhere else - I got an old G series (don't know which one it was tbh) for under $100 - it was slow, but it was enough to play with in. In my case we wanted a Mac in order to play with certain setup questions customer asked us (i.e. how to setup email / vpn etc.) - so that helps a lot.

Going the VM route - well - it still works but it is painfully slow - slower than an old G3 tbh.

stuh84

Yeah, you can pick up a Powermac G4 for next to nothing nowadays, so one of them would get you all the practice you'd need I expect.

westward

Hey!

macofalltrades.com

They sell used macs, especially if you don't need the newer models, they can have decent offers.