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Penguin2Apple
Dark Paladin writes: "What happens when a Linux lover takes the plunge into a Mac for the first time in his life? Turns out he falls in love, to the point of abandoning Linux and taking up OS X full time. Read about the conversion in Penguin2Apple. And pray for mercy on his soul."
Did this guy have to pay for it?
Do they describe his reaction then?
OS X is better.......you get to use all your favorite CLI tools, all your favorite web and dev tools, all your favorite GUI tools, get to use MS Office (for those who like it) and get a realy smooth, out of the way GUI.
whats the problem....if you used Linux as just an alternative to MS or because you like Unix, and not becaue it was free as in speech.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
And pray for mercy on his soul.
I know this was meant as a joke, but really, whats the big deal here? He tried something else and prefers it to Linux. Good for him. Whatever floats your boat. Live and let live, etc etc.
Just as we accept the fact that we have people moving from other OSes to Linux, we'll also have to accept the fact that there may well be return traffic.
Actually, I've used nothing but Solaris on my Ultra10 at home for years. But, then when I had to move overseas, I sold everything, and bought a laptop. My friend works at Apple, and got me a good deal on an iBook. This things rock.
OSX really is the nicest Unix I've ever used. I can play The Sims and CivII, and with the adddition of Fink, you even get nice things like apt-get! It's great.
So, just for the record, I'm a old-skool-Unix-to-MacOS X boy, and it really does rock my socks. I recommend it to anyone. It's extremely Unix-y, but with a great frontend.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Interesting .. he mentions that after a Windows 2000 crash, the system wouldn't even power up. That sounds a LOT like a hardware issue, rather than a software problem. Windows isn't perfect (or even close), and sure, it crashes (tho Win2k/XP does so less than their predecessors ever did) but I have never had any machine crash on me so badly it wouldn't power up because the OS or some driver messed up. Sounds like he has a stick of bad RAM in his Windows box or something.
Anyway, while his article raises some good points, about 50% seems to be a huge advertisment for MacOS X, with lots of little screenies of all the features he says he's using, or not using. It got boring reading about after a bit.
Also, the site seems to have suffered from the slashdot effect already (web servers, they don't make'em like they used to), so for those of you who haven't read the article yet, here's a quick summary: "Used DOS, used Windows, it crashes all the time, boo hoo, Microsoft sucks, Linux is good but isn't what I want either, I read about MacOS X, love on first sight, MacOS rocks! MacOS rocks! MacOS rocks!, the end". That's about it, really.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
First of all, "Linux" in this case is vastly a misnomer, but bear with it for the moment. Linux is an operating system that is trying to fill many niches in many markets. Developers work hard to give it a wide range of hardware support and a wide range of functionality (everything in the range of a variety of desktops to a variety of servers configurations). However, the overall Linux experience is the result of a tremendous amount of contributions from many directions in a community.
Mac OS X, exclusive to the Macintosh and suitable for limited roles, on the other hand, is different but same. Beneath that stunning, pretty Aqua interface, you have a set of powerful core API's that essentially make up widget sets and abstraction layers. Beneath that however, is a traditional unix architecture (Darwin). When you look at Linux, BSD, Solaris, or whatever versus Darwin, you see pretty much the same thing.
So what's my beef with the comparison? Mac OS X is more appropriately pitted against KDE, GNOME, or [insert favorite desktop environment here]. Apple is focused on offering a user experience which is much different from offering an operating system and a million and one tools to make it useful. Linux offers an operating system and a huge suite of software for doing a lot of things. OS X from the perspective of comparison, is a very well polished UI.
I am certain that if all OSS developers turned their attention to making a Quartz for Linux, it could be done. But, that's not the case because we're dealing with two different offerings altogether. So, it's stupid to run out and say "Mac OS X is going to beat down Linux" or just that "it's better" and people should "move over to it". No. No. NO. NO!
Two completely different animals with their own uses, strengths, and weaknesses. This whole "Penguin2Apple" thing is just stupid. You're moving from an operating system to a machine with a different processor. Pfft.
Why bother.
... for using Linux. If you are using Linux because of an irrational devotion to the "open source - free speech and free beer" ideology, then moving to Mac OS X would be a violation of your principles.
If you are using Linux because you have evaluated the alternatives, and it provides the best bang/buck ratio for the application(s) that you are using or deploying, then using Mac OS X would also be wrong.
But if your goal is to have the power and flexibility of a Unix-like operating system and the device support, smooth, consistent GUI, and application support of a commercial mass-market operating system, then it would be illogical to just discount Mac OS X as a viable option.
Non impediti ratione cogitationis.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
What's there for a UNIX hacker not to love?
OSX just rocks.
From the BSD-ish UNIX underneath, to the amazing display layer and NextStep app framework,
to the commercial app support (can you say "Photoshop"[1]?) it's just super cool.
There's even source for the core OS for you open source freaks.
About the only thing that could be considered a disadvantage is that it only runs on Mac hardware.
(Which, granted, is a lot nicer and more elegant than PC hardware, but that doesn't help those of us that that have tons of PC hardware lying around.)
C-X C-S
[1] I'll reiterate once more: Gimp is nice, but doesn't come close to Photoshop.
"She was a hot redhead with large, firm breasts in most of my honors classes."
I think the real story here is about where this girl's breasts were the rest of the day. Did they take different classes? Did they work as a hall monitor?
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I've been in the sysadmin business for about 7 years now, which has brought me into contact with most free OS's (Linux, the BSD family) as well as some non-free (Solaris, BSDI) and of course, things like Windows and Macs (pre-OSX).
Over the years I've had many desktop systems with many OS's, several versions of Windows... most recently a Sparc Ultra10 running Solaris 8 and two different PC's running Redhat Linux. I recently switched to OSX after my Redhat box failed. It was a hardware failure, not a Linux issue. But the PC architecture itself has imploded on me enough times that I'd had it. My Ultra10 wouldn't boot up anymore either, which really torqued me off (that was my backup desktop which had been sitting in a closet).
Anyway, I went to Apple for two reasons: I've been told the hardware is very reliable, and not prone to bizarre crap like IRQ conflicts and such, and second because I've always liked the Mac UI, but until now couldn't really live inside it because the multitasking and memory management weren't good and there was no CLI available. Of course, the memory management, multitasking scheduler, and CLI availability issue are all "fixed" in OSX, and I'm in love. I spent nearly $2500 on the machine and it was worth every penny.
(For those who care this is on a 933MHz G4 tower).
I no longer spend hours every week just making the system happy - I just use it, and it doesn't require any fussing around. I have plenty to do making the systems I'm paid to admin work well; I don't need the added time drain of playing admin on my desktop (which should, IMO, act like an appliance and not a server).
Just my $0.02. My primary server environment is Solaris, and I stand behind it 100%. But on the desktop OSX is where it's at today, IMO.
The window management is so far inferior to anything you'll find in X, it's not funny. About a month ago, one slashdot poster was complaining about how it's difficult to run more than ten programs because it's hard to find the right one in the dock. Excuse me!? You're limiting yourself to two or three programs because you can't find the one you need immediately?
Consider this: OS X comes with an alt-tab action, but it cycles through all windows in a circular list, rather than using a stack like Windows or most X11 window managers. Why does it do this? Is the circular list "more intuitive" than a stack? No, it most certainly is not. There's a reason most window managers use a stack for the alt-tab list. When you use a stack, the most recently-used programs migrate toward the top of the stack. If you have seven programs running and you're continually switching between two of them, a switch takes two keystrokes with a stack, but seven kestrokes with a circular list. With the circular list, you have to actually look to see which program you're switching to. Result? it takes at least one second to switch between two programs on a moderately-loaded system. I am not going to remove my hands from the keyboard just to switch between two programs.
In addition, using the dock or alt-tab to switch applications only switches applications not windows. Look at IE or Terminal.app - these both have their own internal window management and it works differently in each. In Terminal.app, you hit cmd-1 or cmd-2 to switch between running windows, in IE it's something else.
I can hear you saying right now that this isn't a big deal. It is a HUGE deal. In my X system, I can run 15 different applications and (using workspaces and a proper alt-tab) I can get to any application in a few hundred milliseconds. I don't need to take my hands away from the keyboard just to go from typing into my browser to typing into a terminal.
What if I actually want to use OS X as a real unix system? For example, what if I need to add a user? Well, there are a number of ways to do this:
The last two are the only real viable options. In any case, the first time I need to add a user, I have to waste a half hour for this most basic administration task.
So what does it have to make it more enticing than a real unix system? Well, it has all the pretty pictures. It has a decent web browser. It has those "office" applications.
I honestly don't care for the pretty gel pictures. I'll admit that the first time I used OS X, I wasted a good half hour just looking at it (it is quite impressive). However, this gets old quick.
Linux now has some decent browsers (konqueror, mozilla), although this wasn't the case a couple of years ago.
I don't use "office" applications. Word? LaTeX. Excel? Awk and perl. Outlook? Mutt. Powerpoint? You've got to be kidding me. Yes, LaTeX and perl may have a steep "learning curve" but dammit, I can learn. I didn't spend years mastering unix administration and development just to have someone hand-hold me through basic adminstration tasks.
This is an argument that has gone back and forth. I laugh when someone tells me they can get a comparable PC for $1000, compared to the top of the line Dual 1GHz G4.
Yes, I think you could get it for cheaper, but not by much IF you are getting hardware of the same quality. Quality is really the key. The last time I dealt with that $1000 PC argument, I told the guy to go through the cost of the components. The first thing I pointed out was the video card (GeForce4 Titanium). That took away a lot of that $1000 budget right there. After going through it all, and me keeping him in check on quality of the PC parts, the equiv PC came out to about $3000-3500 with no monitor. The top-line G4 runs for about $4300.
Oh... that $3000-3500 for the PC... it doesn't include the licensing for Windows XP, and other applications to bring usability up to par. Yes, you could get Linux, but then there's a loss in hardware compatibility and main-stream application support. The Mac price was with pretty much all the software a typical person would use/need and be quite happy with.
Hope that kinda answered your Q...
-Alex
NeXTSTEP had a wonderful interface. For its time, it introduced an astounding number of things which we now take for granted (and some we still don't):
What NeXTSTEP's crown jewel was was its development environment. Heck, it introduced the concept of a UI builder, and astonishingly, InterfaceBuilder.app is *still* a better design for large-scale work than the current forms-based crap that is foisted on us by Java and C++ and Delphi etc. NeXTSTEP's API was OOP througout, highly dynamic, and very well thought out. It had a small set of very powerful, elegant classes, rather than (Java-style) a massive array of junk masquerading as a library. Even today it is matched by few as a UI development environment. Apple was damn lucky to get the opportunity to encorporate it into Cocoa.
Fair enough. :)
creation science book
As an ardent WindowMaker user (I couldn't stand the bloat of other desktops), I would say that half of this guy's problems would be solved if he were just to switch to WindowMaker, and learn about the middle mouse button. WindowMaker has a dock, you can collapse app's onto it, launch them from it, and even have neat dock apps. Adding apps to the dock is as simple as dragging their application icon (which is created for any application not already "docked") onto the dock.
I'll admit that the OSX dock is more graphically pleasing. And a little more flexible. But the big points are already there.
I also own an iBook (old clamshell), and wouldn't consider running OSX on it. OSX requires too much of your CPU and memory. WindowMaker under Linux runs as smooth on my iBook as it does on my Athlon.
A lot of things have been fixed since the 10.0 days. There were some things I wasn't as happy with them.
/etc directory in many situations.
As for not including the Dev Tools... that's messed up. I would have called Apple and asked, where is my Dev Tools CD!?!? Without the dev tools, you lose access to a large amount of the OSS stuff.
I feel yer pain, but I think your situation was less than common.
The directories are definitely a little different. It's like a combination of standard UNIX, NeXT (similar to many BSD's), and Apple's existing structure. I'd been a UNIX/Linux guy for a good number of years, and was thrown off a little, but quickly adjusted. In all honesty, I kind of like some of the differences... especially the way some of the local user directories are setup. But there are still a few things that are annoying, such as the lack of use of the
It was the strangest thing to not see my user account in the password file... then I discovered the NetInfo tools (similar to NDIS).
I am not waiting for my second Mac to show up (next week)... a low end Titanium Powerbook. Can't wait!
Cheers,
-Alex
You can download the DevTools for free, or call Apple and tell them that you never received the DevTools with you TiBook!
And pray for mercy on his soul
:)
like... why? is linus keeping a list of bad boys & girls?
I've played around with OSX on my boss's TiBook and I must admit it is very nice and all, but the problem is you are forced to buy Mac hardware. I don't care how good OSX is if I can't run it on a Box that I can build with my own two hands, OSX is useless to me. The great thing about Linux and to a much lesser extent windows is choice. Linux users are not limited to any particular hardware platform where OSX is made specifically to sell a particular hardware platform.
WRONG. You can't compare OSX to Gnome or KDE. With Mac, you get nthe whole deal. You get all or nothing (including the hardware). The fact that you split things up into these little architectural layers means that you'll
When I set up my new G4 Mac with OS X, I don't recall having to futz with X, or window managers, or desktops. I just got it.
Just try to explain to a reasonably intelligent person the difference between X-Windows, a Window Manager, and KDE/Gnome. It's ridiculous. You need all three things to make a decent desktop appear on the screen. No such bullshit with Mac (or Windows, for that matter).
I totally agree with your assertion that they are two totally different animals with different strengths. Mac is a desktop OS that can be used as a decent unix box now with OS X. Linux is a decent server OS, that SUCKS as a desktop. Will people give up with this linux desktop shit? It is over until someone comes out with a completely unified desktop/window manager package that can be installed with a wizard. It has to be that easy.
I use OS X at work and at home, and being in IT I work with a lot of Linux and Solaris devotees as well.
One of my interns, in particular, is a big Linux fan - like most undergrads, he has yet to realize that there are shades of grey, and that the "right tool for the job" is actually a workable principle much of the time.
Anyhow, he was haranguing me for not using Linux on my main box (although I have it, along with a lot of other *nix OSen, running on my home network). I told him that using OS X is a lot like using Linux/PPC, with the main difference being that all of my hardware is actually supported properly and the GUI is a bit more polished. The same Unix power is there if you need it, just as it would be under Linux or OpenBSD or Irix or Tru64 or whatever, and the OS is perfectly matched to the hardware. Ought to be, since they're from the same vendor.
--saint
Frankly, we don't care.
By "we", I'm going just going to assume you mean you. Thanks for talking for all of us. That's why we're reading this article and talking about it, because "we" don't care. OSX has its time and place, and this author makes an excellent case as to why he switched. I didn't know many things about it that he pointed out, and was interested because our backgrounds seem similar. Please troll elsewhere now.
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
I've had similar problems with Win2k, not to mention Win9x. The Win2k machine I had to use at work was beyond my administration, I couldn't swap bits of hardware in and out. These were high end machines, top-notch AMD/Intel processers, good mobos, brand-name RAM, fancy-pants Oxygen video cards, good SCSI drives and controllers.
Frankly, it's not worth my time or money to try a dozen motherboard/cpu/ethernet/RAM combinations to find the one that actually works without flaking out constantly, even if I could administer the machines I use at work.
Couple years ago, I switched to Mac hardware in anticipation of OS X from Linux/x86. I don't have those problems. It's funny, when you talk to Mac people, they don't think this is a special thing, because they're been used to it for years. But you mention it to a x86 person, and all of a sudden it's a big deal that you computer just works.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
What's good about OSX?
What's not so good about OSX?
If OSX were a Linux distribution, people would probably debate endlessly whether it was really ready for the desktop. I think overall OSX is neither better nor worse than Gnome or KDE on Linux. What it lacks in performance and consistency, it makes up in commercial support and simplicity.
The biggest advantages of OSX are that it's supported by a big brand-name. You can get MS Office for it. If a piece of hardware doesn't work, you take it back to the store and say "I plugged it in and it doesn't work; sorry--it says it's MacOS compatible". Presumably, there will be books around for it, and they will all document the one, standard version. And APIs and functionality change less rapidly than on Linux (which can be good or bad).
OSX is an operating system that a UNIX user can live with. I think it's good on a laptop, for PowerPoint presentations, as an iTunes jukebox, or to recommend to one's parents or manager. But it's no Linux killer.
OSX is just so much better than Windows XP. The OSX software architecture is much cleaner and the toolset you get with it is so much better. And the OSX UI is incomparably more consistent and easy to use than what Windows XP has.
Apple needs to address their performance issues (or release dual 2GHz iMacs :-), and they need to communicate a more coherent software strategy.
What the Linux community should do is study Apple's approach carefully and copy the good parts of it. KISS not only saves programming effort, it results in better software as well. A GUI with the simplicity of OSX but without the performance problems and OS9 compatibility would be great, and it would be less work to develop than the feature-laden KDE or Gnome desktops.
So, where I would grudgingly use Windows right now, I will probably now gladly use Macintosh. While OSX is no substitute for Linux, it brings a good, usable version of a UNIX-derivative into the mainstream, and that's good.
"Linux was a lot like a girl named Allison that I used to date."
Since when do Linux geeks go out on dates?
Only kidding,
Steve
What is GIMP missing that Photoshop Elements (i.e. Photoshop without CMYK, which web and game artists don't need) has?
Just because you don't use a certain capability (like CMYK), doesn't mean I don't either.
One size does not fit all.
C-X C-S
Can't deny the coolness factor of THAT. whew!
Dell Dimension 2100:
Total cost: $1488
Apple iMac:
Total Cost: $1499
So if he didn't want firewire, it'd be more like $1488 to $1499 (Or Free2ElevenDollars, as you put it). If he wanted firewire, add $70 for an Adaptec firewire board. If he wanted a better video card, add $60 for the one included in the iMac. In this case, it'd be $1608 for the PC setup to match the iMac, and the package still isn't as nice
So maybe an even better subject would be "Free2OneHundredNineDollarRebate"
.sig: file not found
Hmm... does the fact that it can be used by mere mortals count as a 'technical advantage'? (hint: you shouldn't have to learn how to use a shell in order to operate or administrate a computer)
Oh, and did I mention the GUI is ugly? Frankly, we don't care.
Speak for yourself -- I think the GUI is quite nice; certainly better than most of what I've seen in Linux-land, and I am quite interested. If you don't like it, fine, but don't claim to speak for me.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
So you're saying then, that if the OSS community created a functional equivalent of Quartz, which they have not, then Linux as a desktop OS would be just as good as Mac OS X. Therefore Linux is just as good as Mac OS X.
Oops! Quartz doesn't exist for Linux. Mac OS X has a one-year jump on it (longer if you count the public beta). Yes it could be done, but it's not there, so if you want Quartz, you have to run Mac OS X. Period!
To the consumer, Darwin is a kernel while Linux / BSD / Solaris are distributions, which include window managers and desktop environments. None of them compare to Mac OS X. Sorry... you can argue paltry little tidbits like multiple desktops and 3-button mouse support....As I look down at my OS X dock I see 31 apps that I use regularly. Plus my Apache web server and ftpd are always running while my laptop is on.
I would like to know: apart from costing less, is there a compelling advantage to running a Pentium/Athlon - based system with Linux versus a PPC system with Mac OS X? With all the benchmarks I see posted, I don't think either hardware platform is trouncing the other in performance. More open-source tools exist for Linux, but Mac OS X is more user-friendly, with more commercial apps. And so far I have seen very little open-source software surpass proprietary software in terms of usability. Don't get me wrong, I wish it could. I want open-source to be the way software as we know it exists. But by the time it does, your hardware (and mine) will be obsolete.
So in the meantime I've got work to do, and I'm not a programmer. This is why I own 3 Mac OS X machines (and two older Macs).
Uhh... I run OS X on a 300 MHz B&W G3, and it runs great. A 3 year old machine. Incidentally, GNOME and KDE runs OK on it (under Linux), but they're even less worth running when OS X is an option. OS X loves RAM- with 256MB of RAM, it runs like a champ.
Linux runs on a number of platforms, but it's far from practical. Sure, you can run it on a Palm, but it's not usable for anything other than the occasional embedded control (e.g. in a robot project).
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Eric Hoffer's book is about MASS movements.
We have that. And it's certainly not Mac or Linux.
Your information is a bit off on the "OS X runs well" part.
Mac OS X runs well on machinery as old as January 1999. I know--I'm writing this post from my Power Mac G4 Blue-and-White, where OS X is fine. I've also run it on older hardware with fair (but not suitable) results back in its beta days.
OS X, like any other OS, needs RAM. About 128MB is OK if you are NOT running any Classic apps. If you plan on doing Classic, add another 64MB minimum. OS X prefers a decent video card (the RAGE 128 16MB card built-in works fine) which is what causes slowdowns on older G3 hardware such as the Beige G3 desktop/tower and earlier iMacs which haven't great video at all.
The differences between a G3 and G4 chip are subtle. What makes the speed is the same as on a PC motherboard--RAM, video, bus, and processor. Sure, OS X screams on G4 iron, but you don't -have- to go there.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
GIMP is missing the nice interface.
I realize you can do anything (except CMYK, which people make too much of a big deal out of) in the GIMP that you can do in Photoshop, but generally you can do it quicker and more smoothly in Photoshop because its interface works so well.
One example of this is the layer effects: in Photoshop, you can give a layer a drop shadow, and that shadow will update as you add to the layer. In GIMP you have to run a separate plugin that creates a drop shadow, and if you change the layer you have to delete the shadow and create it again.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Not that it matters to the majority of Linux or MacOS X users.
It's too bad they made up all that wierd junk instead of using normal utilities, but that's just the suck of propriatory software for you. You know, goofey little aps that you have to learn again every two years. Think about how many different "assholes in the middle" you have to pay just to easily make a freaking home movie. If you can't figure out how to do this with free tools, you have to:
1. Buy some sucky OS, comes with a new computer that costs about $1000 too much.
2. Buy some kind of card or other device to capture the video.
3. Buy some software to make movies that replaces the software that came with the device that did not work.
4. Buy some CD's (which the RIAA/MPAA want to tax).
5. Go through parts of this or all of it every two years.
Or you could buy a Mac and use it for what it's advertised for. It will change too, and they have their own little upgrade train, but it's not so bad unless you make the mistake of putting that "office" stuff from Microsoft on it.
Yep, the software makers have bullied hardware vendors into bizarre, ever changing interfaces. All attempts at standardization and sanity are firmly smacked down. So there you have it. Enjoy your Mac. It's not a real unix, but it will see devices.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Geez, for an article written by someone who claims to be a techie, he sure spends a lot of time obsessing about breasts. I count no less than four references. I thought he was supposed to be talking about operating systems? (There's another comment that I'd like to make about people from Utah, but it'd get modded way down so I shall refrain.)
From this we can conclude that he is visually oriented, so it's no wonder he's fallen in love with the gorgeous looks of Mac OS X. Good for him. This doesn't make OS X inherently better than Linux, and someone else's choice doesn't make Linux inherently better than Mac OS X. It's his choice, and he shouldn't try to paint it as the only correct choice. The only wrong choice is Windows.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
OK, OK, hold on...it is true that you can't sit down at any of the *BSDs and bang out a shell script if your only unix experience is a few minutes of clicking around the Mac desktop. Even if you write a shell script that works for Solaris, depending on what files you touch you might have to re-write parts of it for Linux...and possibly re-write other parts as your Linux distribution moves toward LSB compliance.
Where the old commercial Unix vendors failed to deliver on the concept of Open, much of the current stuff is so open it's forcing the remaining propriatory Unix and Windows vendors to react. Every major OS has Posix support included or easily available. More graphics and widget sets are portable to nearly every OS. Virtual machines and other runtimes are abundant.
Yet, unix is Unix. Even if not by name. Even with the distribution snobbery, cliques, and infighting. Code is largely portable from unix to unix and machine to machine. Recursive acronyms aside, and no matter what your feelings are about the FSF, the GNU toolset is generally accepted Unix and acts as the core of the translation system.
IBM is mostly right when they claim 'Linux is lingua franca of the enterprise'. It's not just Linux, but any unix. Standardizing on Linux can be benificial, but Linux is still Unix...and in general Unix works so well, it's not impossible to switch to...another unix.
With that, I propose that if you want more Unix users -- for your flavor of unix or not -- make Windows as Unix-like as possible. They have the monster sized chunk of the market, and if one Unix system ends up replacing another, we may as well include Windows in that group.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I would have called Apple and asked, where is my Dev Tools CD!?!?
They would have told you: http://connect.apple.com/, or if you absolutely had to have the plastic, you can get it mailed to you for a $20 or so handling fee.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Unix? I thought the article was about pre-teen girl's breasts:
I played ball with my friends, rode my bike around the neighborhood, caught a glimpse of Stacy Baker's 6th grade breasts when she showed them to me
my insides twist around like I'm 12 years old and about to see a girl's breasts for the first time.
Linux was a lot like a girl named Allison that I used to date. She was a hot redhead with large, firm breasts in most of my honors classes.
I'm not sure why I'm writing this, since it will undoubtedly get flamed. I've run desktop linux since about 1998? Or so.. Back then, linux was a toy and I used NT for work. Linux was moving so fast, I had lots of time to develop and tweak code then - in university - and life was good. I was lucky in that when I graduated, I could run linux desktops at work for the most part, and I enjoyed it. I still use linux daily for compiling applications and in server roles. Solaris is another work companion, running high-end design tools for analog electronics. I also use Win2k daily as many of the prototyping boards I use for FPGA work are win-only, along with other embedded tools.
However, 8 months ago, one of the guys I worked with got a new toy - a Apple Titanium Powerbook. This thing is the sexiest piece of hardware I've ever seen. Hell, real live women have complimented me on it. Imagine that. I needed to get a notebook, looked around, and got a Tibook myself. At the time, I had every intention of blowing linux away and installing Yellow Dog linux. Honest! However, I decided I'd give OSX a fair shake, and I wanted to learn the OS anyhow. Learnign new things is never a bad thing from techie perspective, anyhow. I give it the quick test - is there a terminal? I'll be damned. "Hey, this thing is based on BSD", I think to myself. So I type in the magic two letter command that's inspired more flame wars than Bill Gates and Osama Bin Laden put together: "vi". F*ck me. It's there.
So, I start poking around on the Apple web site, and it's the best-organized thing I've ever seen. "why can't redhat do this", I ask myself. I click on developer, and gosh-be-damned, there's links to all this open source code I'm framiliar with - even a port of my ever-so-framilar BASH. So, I go looking for some developer tools and documentation, and get the shock of my life - not only are the APIs clearly documented, but there's example code for everying from Cocoa to Firewire right there - AND, there's a free IDE to tie all the development tools together. F*ck me. This jobs guy seems to be on to something, I think. 30 minutes after being exposed to this OS, I have OpenGL example programs compiling and running, hardware accellerated even. Wow.
Fast forward to six months later. I'm amazed every day at how well the mac works. It's has never crashed on me.. the GUI can be a little sluggish, but that doesn't bother me too much, as I'm a console monkey myself. Loads of developer support. I can plug in my perhiprials - digital camera, rio mp3 player, JVC DV camcorder - and not only do they work with NADA fiddling around, but I'm greeted by a well thought out application that is ready to talk to the device with no drama whatsoever. Here's to thoughtful GUI design. Microsoft Office for OSX was another surprise - I'm amazed they haven't killed it yet, because unlike it's windows cousin, it's uncluttered and efficient. Office X has, however, crashed on me a few times. No shocking revalations there.
However, what OS X made me do was assess how much work I was accomplishing relative to how much tinkering and configuring I was doing running linux on the desktop. As I get older, my time is more valuable, and I don't have a whole day to reconfigure things anymore. I don't have to reconfigure anything with OS X. It just works. Gnome and KDE have come a long way here, but they're not there yet. I imagine they will be in the future - but this is now. There is a sacrifice in terms of the hardware available, but what's available works very well. Games aren't there, but there are more than were there for Linux - including the Canary, Mac-only games. I solved that problem long ago with a games-only PC anyhow - apply the best tool to each task.
Sometimes, I think to myself - The motto for this OS should be "It Works". Because it does just that, with a minimum of drama. Something, after being involved with computers since I was 8, I find refreshingly new. Apple has done what Redhat should have done, take a solid open source core, make sure it's consistant and useable, put a reputation and corporation behind it's maintenance and support, AND do so without alienating the community of users that spawned it. Support from large projects like Mozilla have resulted in a great communications platform for OSX, and hopefully the upcoming OpenOffice will find it's way to OS X in a similar way as well.
Hats off to Apple, and I invite everyone here to try it. It's not all things to all people, but it's solved my general purpose computing needs in a way that nothing previous has, and brought back some of the excitement about a hardware platform that I felt in the Amiga days. The combination of an exciting OS with suprior hardware engineering is a real winner in my opinion. "To each, their own".
..don't panic
I played a little Dungeons and Dragons with my friends (until my parents, certain I would become a Satan worshiping pervert, brought an end to that one. Ha! Jokes on them - I became a Satan worshipper anyway.)
and he blames Linux for problems that hardware makers have created for His CTO, Bill Gates. Calling Linux hard to get close to while also talking about tits. What a strange... what is it? Ah yes, a perversion! That's it channeling your urges to inaproprate places.
It is right that you suffer, for your sins are great. Your punishment shall be to make my ATI video board work with my Soyo Dragon. It never did work right under windows 98. You may use the 30 pieces of silver, paid to write that article, if you would hire a real programer to do the work.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Hmm... does the fact that it can be used by mere mortals count as a 'technical advantage'? (hint: you shouldn't have to learn how to use a shell in order to operate or administrate a computer)
True story: My little brother's Mac and/or cable modem was acting up. He had been running OSX since the 'test drive'. I pulled up a console to check something and he asked "What's that?" I laughed at first but then it hit me; Apple has done such a damn good job on it's front end that the typical end user never had to worry about the chewy UNIXish creamy center.
Very very impressive job on Apple's part, and it can only get better..
(side note, the problem was with the cable modem, not his Mac or the OS)
Trolling is a art,
CMYK support is a huge deal for Photoshop's market.
Lowest
/. and config this and tweak that. You'll say rude things like RTFM, man this, grep that.
.ppt file their friends make. They never ever want to upgrade anything, ever. They simply expect their computer to work. They want to reboot when it doesn't. They never ever want to su root, or God forbid sudo.
/. and pissed and moaned about what an idiot he is.
/., are the minority. Mr & Mrs AOL in Middle America are the Majority. Mr & Mrs Church Newsletter have waaay more disposable cash than you and all your CS majors combined, right now. You should be furthering your cause, not fragmenting even further.
/. can do about it.
Common
Denominator
Simply put let me say that Dark Porkrind is a power user. He's a guru to the uniformed masses that actually USE computers. They don't compile kernals, they don't script anything, they dont ever configure, make, install. They'll be damned if AIM isn't available. Dark Raman is _their_ guy. There are a lot of Dark Paradigms in the world. Some of them are benevolent and some "know enough to be dangerous."
I give Dark Andstormynight the benifit of the doubt. I think he's a good guy. (Although he did go from Apple striaght to DOS without any AMIGA.. but I digress.) For the unwashed heathens who don't know what a regex is or how to setup mulitple IPs on their NIC card, he's who they listen to.
Now, why don't they listen to you? You know everything it is true. You really do. You can give them a million reasons to use Blah-Blah Linux over OS X. You won't though. You'll read
They don't care about any of that. They just want to chat with their friends and get their mail and open funny
So while Dork Hardon writes an article about how he broke free from the MS "monopoly" you sat here on
We, you,
OS X is never going to fragment. It may change entirely but it won't fragment. No one has to worry about Larry, or Miguel, or Linus, or anyone but Steve. OS X makes sense for a lot of poeple.
It's pretty.
It's fast enough.
It has advertising.
It has Office.
If Linux was OS X in 1996 we'd all be giggling about XP and OS X right now. But it wasn't/isn't.
Dark Paladin is right. He's hitting Linux with his +5 Mace Of OS Smiting and there isn't a damn thing you or your
Is there?
This
oh boy oh boy oh boy.
/boot? The power of linux lies in the fact that you can whether or not you have to.
:o)
Newsflash : self proclaimed "Open Source junkie" too stupid to uninstall an rpm[1] loves Mac OS.
Lets try to deconstruct this article in order.
I played text based games (most of them were never finished as I couldn't get the game to accept commands like "put egg in lake" or "drop egg in lake" or "slam egg into the damn lake you stupid computer!"
Try removing the preposition - drop egg should work if it's possible to do so.
And close your brackets.
Whenever I clicked on Wordperfect, the same DOS program filled the entire screen
In 386 enhanced mode, you can run DOS in a window.
I'm personally convinced that Microsoft never ported DirectX 5.0 to NT 4.0 just to get people to upgrade to Windows 2000
It requires a new kernel and drivers for all hardware. That's why.
the idea of recompiling a kernel is a terrifying idea to me
What's so terrifying about make menuconfig && make bzImage && cp arch/i386/bzImage
there were still things that just didn't work right. Like the Java plug in. I tried to install that so many times, and it just wouldn't work
And yet so many people can. Is this not a case of not RTFMing? I even have the java plugin on my ppc mozilla[3] even though Sun only produce an i386 version.
But the worst, the truly worst part, was cut 'n paste
Left click to select, middle button to paste. What's bad about that? It even works on a tty or a virtual console. And it's consistent throughout the entire system.
Linux was a lot like a girl named Allison that I used to date. She was a hot redhead with large, firm breasts in most of my honors classes. She was smart, she was cute - and she was totally crazy. I could only deal with her strange behavior for so long, no matter how much I loved the rest of her.
I'm really not qualified to say anything about this...
of its inability to handle virtual memory
Mac OS does handle virtual memory. It just makes it possible to disable it. (Now that is one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard).
even smarter than what I was used to in the Linux command line
The default shell in Mac OSX is tcsh, which has a different command completion behavior than bash by default. The behaviour you see in tcsh can easily be set in bash, and zsh does so by default too. It is not, however, smarter.
Example : you have both a directory and a file in your current working directory, named so that the file comes before the directory (eg after unpacking somefile.tar.gz you have a directory called somefile). To change to the directory you try cd some* to go into the directory. tcsh will find the file first, then complain, whereas bash will do the right thing.
Both bash and tcsh are available for linux, so the comparison is irrelevant anyway.
Right upon taking it out of the box, it just seemed so...pretty
This is why most people buy Macs. Mostly people (like my boss) who think that case is actually relevant to the design of the system.
I've never understood the big deal about "anti-aliasing"
And yet you seem qualified to write an objective comparison of it? Sure some of default linux fonts have terrible hinting, but get a copy of gdkpixbuf and the windows truetype fonts and you're laughing. Have you seen what cleartype looks like? Sub-pixel rendering is sweet. By comparison OSX just looks... blurry.
Running programs have a small black triangle underneath them, so it's easy to tell what's running and what's not
The key word here is "small". It's not easy to tell what's running and what's not. Both long time Mac users and new converts have a lot of pet hates about the Dock. I won't reiterate them here.
When I first went to install Microsoft Office X, there was something that surprised me about the installation procedure. Basically, it was "copy this folder into your Applications directory". Or Omniweb, a competing web browser. It's just one file
ls -l shows it as a directory called somefile.app. So which is it? That's the problem - the gui and prompt are inconsistent; changing any files name to somefile.app will make it always appear as application (with the file extension hidden) and it can't be fixed from the finder[2]. So installation is easy. For some programs. Others have their own installers, which variously put random files anywhere (eg Lightware) to nuking other partitions (iTunes 2) to crashing simply because you've moved an older version of the app.
And there's no uninstallation routine. No way to cleanly get rid of all files, system resources and preferences.
Compare this to linux. cast appname will install appname and all required dependencies from source, while dispel appname will remove it and all applications which depend on it.[3]
Compare also to Windows. msiexec appname.msi will install appname, repeated invocations will give options to modify repair or remove appname. Or you can get the same effect by clicking on appname.msi.
I've never figured out how to uninstall a RPM file
See again note [1]. Please now tell me how to uninstall apache from Mac OSX, because I don't need a web server. What do you mean I can't?
No messages about "I can't shut down the program" like you'd see in Windows
You mean "Unable to terminate process. Access denied"? This is no different from trying to kill another users process in any unix. You can't kill other peoples processes. This is natural. This is right.
Copying programs is much like Windows - select a file, and either drag it to another directory, or select Edit->Copy
Copying files by Edit/Copy didn't exist until Mac OSX. Maybe because they realised how useless the finder[2] was.
Since OS X does a great job with memory management
I sincerely doubt you have evidence to back this up. Better than Mac OS, certainly, but better than any other unix? No. Considering how the ui allocates stupid chunks of memory for any window which makes it take days to resize a window (due to its dynamic de- and re- allocation of roughly a gig per window).
It would be nice to have a setting like "if all windows are closed, end the program".
Don't even hope. This is Jobs' idea of usability, and it will not change.
Then there's the whole Metadata thing
Yes, that sucks. We're in agreement on something.
Every tried to cut and paste text from the Windows 2000 telnet program? Somebody decided to change all the cut and paste keys to piss of the users, I'm sure
So you've skipped back to something you mentioned earlier. Yes I have tried to cut and paste from Windows 2000 telnet. Left button to select, enter to copy, right button to paste. Almost identical to linux. This is needed since console programs have a habit of interrupting when they are sent a Ctrl-C
It's like running a DOS program in Windows XP. Only...it actually works.
Oh, you mean that Apple have done a better job at retaining backwards compatibility than Microsoft? Is that why, when they decided to use a new processor, all programs had to be shipped in two versions ("fat binaries", and they're still in use today)? Is that also why, in their new all-powerful operating system most programs won't run unless you have the older operating system installed alongside? Don't even mention how Classic allows "almost full speed" or "running natively" until you explain why Apple ditched a well used and well understood API in order to deliberately break compatibility. If Carbon can run OS9 programs properly under OSX, why not keep the entire API consistent. This is what Microsoft has done. The DOS API still exists. The Win16 API still exists. The OS2 and posix APIs still exist. The Win32 API has been continuously updated for the last seven years without breaking backwards compatibility. Why didn't Apple do the same?
I've noticed that 3D acceleration doesn't quite work for Classic programs running under OS X
If they had kept the API, this would not have been a problem.
Not only did all of my Unix programs install just fine under OS X and run like they've always done, but the OS X developers crowd have even ported many of them over just for OS X
Which begs the question, why build a gui on top of Unix if it is completely incompatible with X Windows? XDarwin is a stopgap solution. Any BSD program or one which uses configure correcly should work on Mac OSX, if it weren't for deliberately introduced incompatibilities.
I don't have to worry "can I get hardware X to work?" I never have to hear "oh, just recompile your kernel, or edit the configure script before you compile".
And why didn't you actually ever follow that advice?
If there was a way to edit this key combination (or if someone could tell me how to change those keys), I'd be a little happier
Sorry again. Jobs' idea of usability.
What do I fucking have to kill to get someone to make an OS X program that will let me mount some Novell volumes on my machine here?
Steve Jobs, I think...
ATI - personally, I think your cards are the bomb. I love my ATI TV-Wonder, and I've been eyeing those 8500 All-in-Wonder DV cards. So why aren't you spreading the OS X love? You have a TV USB device for Mac, but there's no OS X drivers. And where are the All-in-Wonder cards? You'd think that was a no-brainer on the Mac. I want that screen-capturing, straight to Quicktime movie ability that I know you can give me.
Now this bitching is directed at the wrong entity. ATIs hands are tied. Apple decided there would be a minimum level of hardware support, and all machines which are supported will work the same. Which means that features of more expensive cards such as the ATIs TV-out, will not be available because it is not available in lower-end machines. This is also the (stupid, stupid, stupid) reason why the nVidia cards don't do hardware T&L, of which they are more than capable (and indeed is their selling point).
I like OS X a lot, and I'm now a fully converted Mac user. It has all the power I remember in Linux, but it's easier to use, and far prettier
I got so sick of the OSX gui I installed Yellow Dog so I could go back to Gnome - and yes, I can apply themes!
It has all of the editing abilities of my Windows machine, without all of the crashes.
My Windows 2000 machine doesn't crash. The Windows 2000 machine I installed at work the day after starting (almost a year ago now) doesn't crash. In an office full of Macs, that (aside from my Yellow Dog box) is the only machine which doesn't crash. I guess your milage may vary, but the only reason for a Windows 2000 machine to crash is a hardware problem.
And if the other vendors can just get off their asses and realize that OS X is the future of Apple, and maybe they should be writing their drivers and apps to that system, then I wouldn't have anything to gripe about.
That's what they said about copeland and pink and taligent. Adobe didn't buy into it, and so those systems never took off. It's only because Photoshop now looks crap in their deliberately crippled "Classic" mode that they are producing a Carbon version.
Where the hell am I going with this? I don't know. I just hate it when people evangelise Apple, when they should know better, or in this case, clearly don't. But who am I to argue? A clueless user who can't RTFM on RPM using an Apple? They were made for each other.
[1]clue rpm -e. Try also rpm --help or man rpm. Or even rpmdrake.
[2] ever notice how the "finder" can't find anything? For that you need a completely separate app called "sherlock". Now, I ask you, is that intuitive?
[3]I am in the process of porting Sorcerer (mentioned on Slashdot a couple of times) to powerpc, because quite frankly, rpm sucks.
"I think he was truly surprised at how little I cared about how big a market the Mac had" - Linus on Jobs
...using OS X is a lot like using Linux/PPC, with the main difference being that all of my hardware is actually supported properly and the GUI is a bit more polished. The same Unix power is there if you need it, just as it would be under Linux or OpenBSD or Irix or Tru64 or whatever...
In my own experience, many Linux users (a group of which I include myself) have this notion that if an end user isn't forced to deal with a particular mechanism of the OS, that mechanism isn't there. Hence `use Debian, unlike Red Hat it allows you to get into the guts of the OS' or
`use gentoo, you can simply compile all your apps once you learn how the packaging system works'. These featurs are obviouisl;y avaliable in every Linux, but for some reason a lot of people (generally the IRC advocacy types) swear Red Hat doesn't have a modules.conf because it automatically detects hardware.
hahaha 3 people took the bait and wasted their moderator points on that post. Morons. Mod good comments up, don't mod bad ones down.
Oh, btw.. for you misinformed folk who think the Mac gui somehow makes it the only *nix accessible to "ordinary non-tech people," may I suggest that you check out KDE. I've yet to meet someone who was incapable of immediately using it after being familiar with Mac or Windows interfaces.
Id rather buy on Pricewatch or ebay, ubid or my favorite Computer Geeks
Ive see complete systems for 500 bux, or Imacs for 600. Add some ram and a new video card, very very useable. Hell, I bought some e-computers for some people for 400 bux with rebate, (no msn rebate, straight cash). Picked up a monitor for 99 bux at a local Computer Stop and they where set.
It helps to know what and where the deals are, Dell, Gateway, etc are NOT good deals. They are average deals. Side note, Want sticker shock? Check out PC's for hardcore gamers, AlienWare or Falcon NorthWest
How is text-editting the format of your output saving time? Where I work we use standard document templates, where you select the appropriate style per section. We use a lot of tables, and embedded spreadsheets and charts. I can't imagine any scenario where (essentially) programming the format I want saves me time. Point - click-macro are much easier.
As much as I love OpenSource many of the office tools are open-sores. Star office is good enough for me to use day to day. I can open my co-workers MS documents and I can save in MS format. This is the way most companies work because it's fast and efficient.
When I'm done with a document, BTW, that gets published, I don't send it out. It goes to a technical writer that formats it in (sometimes in Quark). This technical writer would have to learn LaTeX instead of a point-and-click program.
I use gcc, Makefiles and Emacs, because it's easier to code on Unix for Unix. But I don't have any illusions that VC++ isn't a faster development environment, just as I don't believe LaTeX could possibly be faster than word. If you use a GUI front end to LaTeX, then you're in the same boat as Word, and less stable.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
I don't doubt it. But that's my point, you have to find that special configuration of hardware and software makes Win2k/XP actually work decently. And one hardware/software configuration isn't sufficient for any and all users.
:P It could be a user issue, or another one of these hw-sw interplay issues. When I used Linux fulltime, I had no problems with stability, just had to deal with the inherent uglies of Linux. :)
I don't doubt you've had a lot of problems with linux.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Wow - what the hell are you doing on that computer? What kind of 'development' are you doing? I've had a system with W2k on it in use daily for a year with probably 20 reboots, mostly to swap to Linux for some reason. Less than 10 were due to hanging/crashing issues.
Honestly, what are you doing?
Im am sortof tired of people gushing about the stability of W2K. If you use a few client apps and dont install too much, or limit yourself to High level (VB) programming, yea sure itll be stable.
Do anything inteseting such as sending malformed UDP packets onto the ethernet, run IIS, play quciktime movies, any serious development, have the exchange server crash, install software with less than admin privledges, etc, and you may find it less stable than you imagine.
I use Windown 2000 for network programming, building/debugging embedded platforms, creating GUI appliciations, client apps, using differing hardware platforms an so on. I am unimpressed with its stability nor security. (sometimes itll go for a few weeks without freezing. sometimes it crashes several times a day. certain network traffic will always trash it. sometimes thing start acting flakey until a reboot. Contrast this to Unix, where reboots generally dont change anything, and they certainly arent recommended for fixing problems)
... unfortunately it reflects what most people are going to think about the whole darn thing.
I've subscribed to the linuxppc list (debian) and have read from time to time, a post saying more or less: "thanks and so long for the fish. I am moving to OS X."
That usually comes from people who have installed Linux to look cool and brag about it ("Hey dude! I run Linux"). So it's not a real waste to have these people moving to OS X. These guys are the ones bitching about Linux without even moving the little finger and contribute to anything: "Sound doesn't work on my iBook. whathehell?!?" I mean, one doesn't have to be an expert to even write an HTML describing some experience and post it. But these people, just nothing, nada. Only bitching.
So it's not surprising that they are moving to OS X. After all, you get support and SJ is in charge of the UI, so nothing can be wrong. Of course, some of them come back and ask on the same linux list, where is the openoffice for OS X !!! Because as soon as they made the move to OS X, well, they realize the meaning of the word "Free" (not the meaning that Stallman would like you to understand though.) I am talking about what you get for your money. On OS X, iTune and iPhoto, and maybe AppleWorks depending of your inclinaison to deal with shitty software.
For me, it works a little bit differently. Now I am on OS X, using IE (yuk!) and surfing the web. iBook goes to sleep and wake, then Airport is useless. I need to force quit IE. What do I do? Call M$? No, because they probably won't care. I use Mail.app and bitch at the moronic design of this email. Who do I complain to? To SJ? No, he designed the whole stupid app.
I go to Linux, problem with Evolution. Go to IRC and chat with people. Problem resolved in 2 minutes watch in hand. Conclusion: Apple support sucks! Apple community=zero. Where is eWorld when you need it? Linux on the support side just rock. But you got to RTFM and use your brains. Something certainely that many people won't like to do.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
Xnu is actually the name of the kernel itself. Darwin is actually the name of Operating System from Apple (and the core of Mac OS X). I vaguely remember some talk from mailing lists that X-Windows may eventually become bundled with Darwin.
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
Boy is this topic going to waste a lot of good electrons. I am a Linux user and Win2k user, just for the record.
... which is saying a lot. So this topic you just know is going to generate more heat than light. Nothing is going to be actually resolved ... just a lot of mud-slinging.
... because I have the source of everything Window Managers, Utilities, apps every-bloody-thing. But with OSX, zip ... nada ... nothing. Doesn't sound very interesting. Talking of Window Managers (which I can switch between) in Linux, with OSX do I just get Aqua and more Aqua or can I do the equivalent of switching between Window Managers ? And do I have the source so I can see how they do it ?
Everyone knows that Mac zealots are even worse than Linux zealots
I haven't used OSX. But being based on BSD (Darwin) I'm sure its a fine core. And it has a nice Window Man^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H GUI. Yeah it has Office and IE (good browser, but honestly I'm really starting to prefer Konq / Moz). But we only have the source for the core don't we ? Well lemme see. Why did I go from Windows to Linux ? It was because it was MORE FUN! Thats it. So why is Linux more fun
I'm sure I'd really like a Mac if I had one. But for how long. Windows 2000 became boring after a few days. How long for OSX ? Sure 95% (or more) of users would disagree with me. That's fine. However, I suspect the future of Linux is that the market will evolve into 2 kinds of desktop OS. One, for the masses (who just want to use it for apps). And one for real power users. Linux fits the latter and will continue happily in that direction (as does Win2K in a sense). Apple if it has any sense will target the first as does MSFT with XP.
Bitter and proud of it.
"Apple users, it would seem, are by and large kooks."
Or maybe that the Apple users who frequent the Apple shows are the kooks while the non-kook Apple users don't bother you?
When was the last time you honestly had to do this? Five years ago? Seriously... who doesn't use the package tools these days? Granted, you have to learn apt-get or dselect or RPM or RedCarpet, but software installs on linux are really easy these days when you overcome this (relatively simple) initial hurdle. It might not be "double click to install" but it's nearly as easy, and very clean to uninstall.
About the only time you would have to compile and tweak source is if you do a CVS pull of an app, which you wouldn't really be able to do at all given the Windows/Mac cultures. Sure, I love to be able to do a CVS pull of unreleased software, but it's by no means required for my day to day software management. Plus I can always package up the source myself and keep it friendly within the package manager. Say what you will about software installs in linux, but it's not really that hard any more.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
When I originally posted this, I was thinking that GNUStep would have aggregately fit the bill of everything that he wanted. However, I ended up just talking about WMaker, as it really has the key interface issues that he discussed. GNUStep would be the "whole environment" with the OpenStep compatibility, etc.
Ok, I could mod you down as the flamebait you are for this comment, but I'd rather respond instead.
A devotion to Free Software and free speech is far from irrational for many of us. I've told my story before, and it applies specifically to the Macintosh, so you might be interested.
I was a major Mac zealot for many a year. I believed, and still do, that the Mac was the best OS out there for a lot of reasons, most of them the reasons you state. I didn't have to mess with registries or himem or config.sys or anything of that sort, I was just able to get my work done. Granted, I was a student and not doing anything very heavy duty, but I was able to get on the internet, get my hardware working, play lots of games, and write documents all very easily. Yes, the Mac was fantastic and I could do a lot with it and was far more productive on it that my friends with PC's.
But then the dark times came. You see, back around '95-'98 or so, Apple really looked bad. Copland was nowhere to be seen and we were stuck with our crashy old OS (mine was pretty stable, but I had to work very very hard at it) with shitty multitasking. I was still very productive, but that was because I really knew what I was doing.
But in many ways that was the least of our problems.
Software vendors were disappearing in droves. I saw Mac software drop and drop from the shelves, and only-Mac stores either start selling PC products or shut down entirely. Microsoft's last Office product was crap (they later made amends with Office 98) and the games were also disappearing right out from under us. You could almost sense a deep-seated depression in the community as our apps dwindled down to those peddled by Adobe and Macromedia.
So where do I come in to this one? Well, I didn't use Adobe or Macromedia products. My copy of ClarisWorks didn't work well on friends' Office docs, I couldn't buy new games, and I couldn't afford much beyond the basic items to begin programming software.
Yes, this last was a big deal for me, because I really wanted to help. I wanted to contribute, to help heal the community by providing missing pieces. I'd seen great technologies like OpenDoc and QuickDrawGX float away, and I wanted to provide something, some way of helping. But I couldn't. The books in the store were expensive, limited, and I couldn't afford many anyway. The Apple developer docs were hundreds upon hundreds of dollars (although I later got a full CD of them for $100, but this was still very pricey) and I could only afford the cheapest tools out there. I couldn't possibly understand why Apple wasn't helping me... didn't they want people to write for their system?
So I finally broke down and tried this Linux thing my friend had been telling me about for a few years. I switched to the PC because I was sick of my crashy MP3 player and lack of searching tools (Sherlock wasn't going to help me download music!) and a complete lack of games like Quake II and Starcraft, which have since come out on the Mac. But i mainly bought a PC to try out Linux. I didn't know about Free Software when I did it, and I didn't know that all the source code was there, all I knew was that anything was better than Windows, and I was deeply disgruntled with my Mac.
This probably sounds a little absurd to you too, but think of it this way. What if the company that you depend on for all your computing needs, a company that you have invested thousands of dollars in software and documentation and time in to learning suddenly abandoned you? What then? All your practicality of "best bang/buck ratio" has suddenly gone down the drain because the system becomes a lot less useful. I could only watch as my platform became more and more inferior, first with Office, then with gaming, then with Web browsing, then with MP3 searching and playing. What next, when would my platform become totally useless?
Now, Apple is doing very very well now, and I applaud everything they've done since Jobs came back on board. But that feeling still lingers on me. What happens if they abandon me? How far in to insignificance do I want to slide? A devotion to Linux and Free Software means that I can help myself, that the community can and will help itself. We may be a step or two behind Microsoft or Apple in some areas, but we're self-reliant, and we're not slaves to anyone else. This is the rationale behind Free Software. This is why a devotion to it is both useful and practical. And this is why I'll stick with Linux despite Apple's wonderful product and Microsoft's overwhelming support. I never want to be helpless again.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
When you're at the logon prompt, type ">console" and whammo, no gui. CLI all the way.
--Mike
I use Debian not because it allows me to do things that Red Hat doesn't, but because it *doesn't* try to do things that Red Hat does.
In my experience all of these 'easy-to-use' layers tend to have the effect of making it more difficult to see what is actually happening, as you're never sure what certain installation tasks or daemons are doing.
(Of course, Windows takes this attitude to the extreme -- if the box starts screwing up, are you going to look through the registry and see if you can fix it, or are you going to re-install?)
deus does not exist but if he does
From my point of view, there are two major advantages to using LaTeX:
Whether or not LaTeX's "structure" makes large documents easier to work with is kind of subjective. I think the two above points are really the "killer" features of LaTeX; if you have no need of them, you're probably okay just sticking with Word.
I am not however reaching down into the company pockets to buy 6 new Mac (we just bought 6 new PC's however) until I see a usable OS, reasonably competitive speed hardware, and the notion that further spending on the Mac platform is warranted for a professional outfit.
For most people, the speed of the hardware isn't that important these days. If you want speed, just get a 2 GHz AMD and install windows 95. No messy overhead from the OS.
Seriously, most people want to run certain apps, and if its web browsing, eMail, word processing, etc, then speed is the least of their issues. If its video editing then a lot of RAM and HD space is probably more important than CPU speed, and gaming enjoyment relates more to the quality of your graphic cards and sound systems (and the quality of the game you are playing).
Of all the reasons to grumble about the iMac's, speed is probably the least important. Functionality is what counts - the most useful computer I have has 8 MB RAM and a 33 MHz processor - it fits in the palm of my hand and seems fast enough to me.
Just my 2c worth
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Rats, I just used up all my moderator points elsewhere.
Apple users, it would seem, are by and large kooks.
If only us Apple users could be as calm, rational, and utterly normal as ESR or RMS. That would certainly be something to shoot for.
--saint
That's a real shame. Over at MacOSRumors.com, they claim that Apple was all set to roll out their Pro 1GHz G4 line, but NVidia kept delaying the new GeForce. The result? Mac Users pissed at the perceived exclusion of pro users, and Apple and NVidia not on speaking terms at the moment.
There are a few limited things that make Linux easier than a mac, such as something that only a Pro would require.
It's like saying a BMW is worse for you, because you can't replace the spark plug wires at home as easy as you could on a Ford. True, but how many "regular" ie. not "pro hackers who use CLI exclusively" users will do that?
You have a legitimate complaint about the CLI, so if that's realllly important to you, than Apple isn't targeting you.
Did MS kill the Linux OS yet?
Have they actively hampered developments of the Linux OS and community?
Have they steered developers away from Linux?
Have they badmouthed Linux?
Mac users have more of a reason to dislike MS. MS is responsible for Apple's sharp decline in the 1990's, where people thought it would go out of business within 1 month. Linux is on an upswing, they think they can't be stopped because of the power of Open Source, which explains the then-camaraderie.
It sounds nice on paper, but all of a sudden...
/., saying how OS X treats the user like a baby, it gets in the way of work, it's worse than a Windows wizard, etc.
"Waah, Apple won't let me run my Applescripts that save me time reorganizing my home folders, wiping out old logfiles. Stupid OS, treating everyone like a newbie..."
It'll just break too much functionality. There have been examples, and they all flopped. Here's a hypothetical one: Every time you type in "rm" in the terminal, a dialog box pops up "Are you sure? This will permanently erase the file." I guarantee that you'll see hundreds of flames on