Russ Trotter wrote:
>Assertion: For that policy, I will *never* be installing a DP of *any*
>Apple JDK because I need the java env to always work.
I hope you're doing backups even if you're not making changes to Java env.
If you're not, it's just a matter of time until you regret not doing so.
Been there, done that.
>* does the fact that I will never be installing a DP create a chicken/egg
>situation where Apple won't finally come around to making 1.5 an official
>platform default due to testing but people like me not testing?
Apple has already said it will happen with the next J2SE 5.0 release.
Unless you can come up with a wide-reaching show-stopper bug that seriously
impedes that decision, the only one that suffers is you. And potentially
your customers.
But if you're not testing the J2SE 5.0 release, then you can't possibly
find any wide-reaching show-stopping bugs, so how could there be a
chicken/egg problem?
>* Apple says "do not install on critical systems". I have one Mac. I'd love
>to have more, but they cost money. Substantially more money than the wintel
>boxen that are more typically "lying around". Am I truly in the minority
>where I don't have spare mac's for one-time DP installations?
I, too, currently have a single Mac capable of running Mac OS X. But I
also added a 120 GB hard drive to it a long time ago, and partitioned it
into 5 partitions (unequal sizes, FWIW). It was the best $120 I spent on
this machine. The 40 GB HD it came with was partitioned into 4 even longer
ago. I currently have partitions for 10.0, 10.1, 10.2.3, 10.3.5, a few
10.4's, a big workspace, and a complete empty. And that's not counting
removable media.
This makes it very easy to boot under different OS and Java versions, and
also to install any software I care to without making an irrevocable
commitment. The last few big installs I made weren't even Apple updates,
but other products which I wasn't sure I wanted to irrevocably commit to.
Plus I tried 10.4.3, which I tossed after it conflicted with something I
used a lot, and I haven't gotten around to trying 10.4.4 yet. When I get
around to it, disk space and/or partitions simply won't be an issue.
An HD's $/GB cost is even lower now than when I bought that 120 GB unit.
And 100 GB or so is probably the low end of what would even be worth
installing these days. I don't think anything less than 80 GB is even
worth the trouble of opening the case and finding screws to mount the HD.
My 120 GB HD is internal, so I didn't pay the premium for an external case,
either. But that's still an option if I want to exercise it, even now.
As to "spare Macs", you can easily find reasonable prices for used
"obsolete" machines, like old G3 iMacs (the built-in-CRT models).
Sometimes people will even give them to you for nothing. I had one of them
here for a while, and although slow, it was quite useful. Oddly enough,
it's very slowness was useful, because it represented the low end of what I
expected from customer machines. It's always nice to know what low-end
customers will see, if for nothing else to be able to sympathize with their
plight.
Even my current "fast" Mac is a longobsolete slowpoke by today's standards
(dual 500 MHz G4). It's fine, though, because it really doesn't matter
much when it comes to anything practical. It takes maybe a few second
longer to do some things, which adds up over the course of a day, but what
would I do with those extra few minutes, read an additional 2 pages of "War
and Peace" 10 seconds at a time?
The main thing I feel most limiting now is screen space, not speed. But
that's not news to me ever since I opted to add a Radius FPD to my Mac
Plus, and settle for less than huge tracts of RAM (1 MB) with a mere 40 MB
of sprawling acreage on my one and only hard drive. These days I have more
storage space in the smallest CF card I plug into my camera, though the FPD
definitely had more screen real-estate than the camera's LCD.
Summary: it's not so much what you have as how you use it. Multiple
partitions is one of the most useful things a developer can do with a hard
drive. Not just because you can use them now, but because it gives you
options later. Retaining options is a fundamental development strategy.
-- GG
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