Re: Mac mini

On Jan 12, 2005, at 12:02 PM, Roger Binns wrote:
>> But, there is demand, so I do it. :-)  It's VERY unfortunate that 
>> Apple is going to really irritate you when they ask you to pay them 
>> $129 in a few months to buy a copy of Tiger.
>
> I spoke to someone who said it will be $19.99.  And it won't irritate
> me because I won't pay $129.  It will be up to the users of BitPim to
> supply me with a legal licensed copy if Apple wants that much.

  There you go. I fear that you were mis-informed, but at the same time  
I hope you were given accurate information.... Although that means I 
might have to order a mini now as well. :-)

> Seperately I will be prepared to do 10.2 if someone sends me an 
> external bootable drive with a legal licensed copy installed.

  Here is a very reasonable deal on the purchase of a fully-legal MacOS 
X Jaguar license:

  Only $34.99 with iLife 03, which you'd hardly need, and only $27.95 
without:

  http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/osx-center/software-and-more/

  Maybe someone who cares about a Jaguar version of BitPim could be 
motivated to help fund that.

> My keyboard is a PC keyboard and doesn't have an option key :-)

  ALT :-)

>>  When you get it preloaded, you'll either have to boot from the 
>> included DVD and use the Disk Utility program to repartition it and 
>> then do a restore to the new smaller partition,
>
> That I can do.  I assume I can backup to an NFS server.

  Yes and no...  Some Mac files still have vestiges of the old MacOS 9 
resource forks in the files and those particular parts that can only be 
stored on an HFS type filesystem, unless your software that makes the 
copy knows how to break them apart, save them out, and put them back 
together when you restore.  Some do.  There is a great freeware program 
called "Carbon Copy Cloner" at http://www.bombich.com that would take 
your source drive, make a disk image file (which can be stored on NFS 
and alleviate the resource fork issue) for backup.

  Since the core stuff that is installed is all (to the best of my 
knowledge) on the recovery disks as well, I probably wouldn't bother to 
make the initial backup, I'd just repartition it and go.

> I was curious if GarageBand would be suitable for making ringtones.

  I don't know... Although their MIDI support is better, I understand 
you still cannot export a MIDI file from it.  It's really a program 
more akin to a scaled down Logic or ProTools, not so much a small 
audio/midi editor. There are some decent MIDI editor apps as well as 
audio apps, though. Audacity comes to mind for simple audio work.




-------------------------------------------------------
The SF.Net email is sponsored by: Beat the post-holiday blues
Get a FREE limited edition SourceForge.net t-shirt from ThinkGeek.
It's fun and FREE -- well, almost....http://www.thinkgeek.com/sfshirt