Apple have always built stellar hardware, but...

I have found a fatal flaw. I have no serial port. This is a problem. A big one.

I live and die on machines and appliances whose only way to talk when they are in trouble or have yet to be configured is via rs232. Routers, firewalls, high end Sun and SGI hardware...all of them have a network connection and a serial console. I normally use one of the rs232 <-> cat5 converters that Sun, Juniper and Cisco ship in every box (so I have far too many) to run the console to the quad cat5 block in my office, and convert back to 9pin serial there, which conveniently plugs into my laptop. Even if the Mac had a serial port, there's no application to actually talk to it. I could compile Seyon (my personal favorite X based terminal emulator) except for that pesky lack of serial device entries for it to connect to, but it's far easier to just drop the laptop into FreeBSD and use cu (cli) or Seyon (gui).

A major failing of OS X that's really starting to grate on my nerves is the lack of focus follows mouse. Windows doesn't do this by default, but installing XP Powertoys gives me the option (which I take full advantage of). There are many times when I need the window I'm reading to be on top, but not be the focus so I can type in another window simultaneously. If any of my fanbase who are Mac users have a suggestion on how to do this, I'm all ears.

And why am I posting about this? Because I'm at work today, upgrading our primary NIS/NFS/DNS/SMTP/HTTP/SMB/NTP/etc. Unix server. I could do that during normal hours, but I suspect the rest of the unix boxes being lumps of expensive silicon when people are trying to work wouldn't go over very well.

Apple have always built stellar hardware, but...

I have found a fatal flaw. I have no serial port. This is a problem. A big one.

I live and die on machines and appliances whose only way to talk when they are in trouble or have yet to be configured is via rs232. Routers, firewalls, high end Sun and SGI hardware...all of them have a network connection and a serial console. I normally use one of the rs232 <-> cat5 converters that Sun, Juniper and Cisco ship in every box (so I have far too many) to run the console to the quad cat5 block in my office, and convert back to 9pin serial there, which conveniently plugs into my laptop. Even if the Mac had a serial port, there's no application to actually talk to it. I could compile Seyon (my personal favorite X based terminal emulator) except for that pesky lack of serial device entries for it to connect to, but it's far easier to just drop the laptop into FreeBSD and use cu (cli) or Seyon (gui).

A major failing of OS X that's really starting to grate on my nerves is the lack of focus follows mouse. Windows doesn't do this by default, but installing XP Powertoys gives me the option (which I take full advantage of). There are many times when I need the window I'm reading to be on top, but not be the focus so I can type in another window simultaneously. If any of my fanbase who are Mac users have a suggestion on how to do this, I'm all ears.

And why am I posting about this? Because I'm at work today, upgrading our primary NIS/NFS/DNS/SMTP/HTTP/SMB/NTP/etc. Unix server. I could do that during normal hours, but I suspect the rest of the unix boxes being lumps of expensive silicon when people are trying to work wouldn't go over very well.

Apple have always built stellar hardware, but...

I have found a fatal flaw. I have no serial port. This is a problem. A big one.

I live and die on machines and appliances whose only way to talk when they are in trouble or have yet to be configured is via rs232. Routers, firewalls, high end Sun and SGI hardware...all of them have a network connection and a serial console. I normally use one of the rs232 <-> cat5 converters that Sun, Juniper and Cisco ship in every box (so I have far too many) to run the console to the quad cat5 block in my office, and convert back to 9pin serial there, which conveniently plugs into my laptop. Even if the Mac had a serial port, there's no application to actually talk to it. I could compile Seyon (my personal favorite X based terminal emulator) except for that pesky lack of serial device entries for it to connect to, but it's far easier to just drop the laptop into FreeBSD and use cu (cli) or Seyon (gui).

A major failing of OS X that's really starting to grate on my nerves is the lack of focus follows mouse. Windows doesn't do this by default, but installing XP Powertoys gives me the option (which I take full advantage of). There are many times when I need the window I'm reading to be on top, but not be the focus so I can type in another window simultaneously. If any of my fanbase who are Mac users have a suggestion on how to do this, I'm all ears.

And why am I posting about this? Because I'm at work today, upgrading our primary NIS/NFS/DNS/SMTP/HTTP/SMB/NTP/etc. Unix server. I could do that during normal hours, but I suspect the rest of the unix boxes being lumps of expensive silicon when people are trying to work wouldn't go over very well.