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Confessions of a Mac OS X User
An anonymous reader writes "Here's an interesting commentary on OSDir.com about one Mac OS X user's guilt over using it instead of Linux on his laptop, and how he's been burned by the dreaded iBook logic board problems so much that it underlines the tyranny of hardware vendor lock-in: it's not that Mac OS X isn't F/OSS, but that it only runs on Apple hardware. It also raises the obvious question: have you ever felt guilty over using Mac OS X instead of Linux?"
What, are you crazy?
I would so much rather run this than just about any Linux distro out there. Mainly because I can guarantee my vendor is available on the phone when I need them to troubleshoot any of the funky ass things servers tend to do.
And no, you can't come to my site or have a look at my logs because it's secure, just tell me what error code -16246 means in your software, ok, thanks, bye.
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
Now this is personal opinion, and I am sure I am inviting plenty of flames, so... here goes.
I don't think anyone should feel ashamed for not using linux as their desktop. Fact of the matter is, any OS claiming to be linux is just a mess of free software utilities and applications, on a unixy type setup.
While there have been a few noble attempts at actually building an OS from the linux kernel, it ends up being no more then repackaging the same crap in a more "shiny" way.
The linux kernel is a good base for an OS. Until something other then a Unix clone is made from it, I will stand tall to the fact that I wont use it for my desktop.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I've been a medium-level Linux sys admin for a number of years. But I'm also a web designer, and recently I decided that I needed to get a notebook. The decision to go with an iBook was almost a no-brainer: I wanted professional applications instead of almost-professional, and I didn't want to worry about incompatibilities, libraries, GNOME buggering itself, etc. And it has been marvelous. Now that I've replaced my linux box with a dedicated DSL router, I hardly ever turn it on.
Overall, perhaps I do feel a bit guilty. I wish Sodipodi, The Gimp, and Bluefish were more stable and competitive with FreeHand, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver. And while I've used all of those applications to do some advanced things, it is simply easier and faster for me to use my Macromedia apps. Sure they cost me a few (student) dollars, but they've been worth every penny. (and yes, I started with MacGIMP, which at least is better than WinGIMP).
But the best part is that I've stopped screwing around on the computer, thus freeing me up for other more important life activites (wife, for instance).
...he just did not do a good job of making the point.
His main point is that if this happened to you on a PC, you could easily go to another vendor and run the same software on different hardware. Your Dell died and you think it's not going to recover? Drop the drive (or dd, or rsync, or whatever) into an IBM and you're basically good to go.
Because Apple does not let you run OS X on any other hardware, you are completely dependent on them for making your software work. If you get used to a certain environment and certain applications but then the hardware fails, you're screwed.
Not so with anything on the x86 platform. It may not be easy, but linux, Windows, and others can be moved to different hardware from different vendors pretty easily.
In other words, using Apple's software is _both_ software and hardware lock-in, and he hates it.
I thought the guilt thing was silly, tho. Use what works best for you; I find it takes hours more a month to maintain my stupid linux box (often just because it's x86) than my powerbook, even though I do much more crap to the powerbook. I'm certainly not going to feel guilty for just using my computer, instead of maintaining it.
Why is vender lock in for Apple ok when it's considered bad for anyone else?
I'm guessing you're a troll, but the reason I look favorably upon Apple is that they contribute back to the open source community (KHTML) and give exposure to many open source projects (Mozilla).
True story.
You know, I don't know what these people consider "normal use" but as an iBook owner for 3 years (died from an accident involving electricity and water) and a powerbook owner for a year and a half, and as someone who carries his laptops in a book bag to classes, to work, and on planes and such, I have never had the sort of hardware problems people describe. And I'm not the only one. I know people who still have original TiBooks that put them through the same stuff I do and they're still working fine. And this thing does everything I've thrown at it, from compiling applications to running games to editing audio and video.
The more I hear these stories, the more I wonder if people try to boot their machines by throwing them against a wall. These aren't windows machines people, put away the sledge hammers.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I knew a student of "indigenous oppression" in colonial Africa who claimed that tribal chiefs with the authority to oppress maybe 250 people, living in grand, dirt-floor huts with four times the dirt-floor-space of their oppressed serfs, were in the same league as European empires.
Maybe they wished they were in the same league as England or France, but they weren't. Wake me up when Apple has >50 percent market share and its piddly little evil deeds take on the coercive power of M$. Then I'll be all outraged. Until then I will sit, not very oppressed and quite happy, at my Powerbook.
(I only replied to the M$ aspect---SCO is not really worth whining about unless you get too close when they're sucked down the toilet)
Guilty? What an odd question. Correction...What a meaningless question
"Have I felt the *need* to use Linux instead of OS X?" Not even once. Heck, ever since I got a 12"PB to replace the Sony laptop that I had been carting around for 2 years, I don't even feel the need to use Win2K. OS X just works, which allows me to get work done, instead of twiddling/tweaking/patching.
Well, to be completely truthful, I did fire up the old VAIO the other day so that I could get on XBConnect and play some Halo on the ol' XBox.
But other than that, I've been OS (se)X-ing it, 24x7.
---anactofgod---
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
I'm getting myself an IBook. :-)
I'm not gonna ditch Panter, since I have some stuff to do in Flash. Other than that I'll stick with OSS and use Java. After all, the Java integration in MacOSX is phenomenal. I'm looking forward to just firing up JEdit without skinning and all and have it not look like someone did doo-doo on my screen but instead really cool with native AA fonts and all that stuff. Jippeee!
It might be that I install Debian PPC on a different Partition though. Probably sometime later.
Apart from MacOSX being proprietary Apple did just the right thing, imho: Use a refernce grade OS with solid OSS support as base and design a high end GUI around it. To me OSX and Linux aren't that far apart. I used it the other day and it even has ZShell installed! OSS *nix goodness with Apple Eyecandy and high end design tools and Java run natively. Just how cool is that? No, I probably won't feel guilty.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
This joke is so not funny anymore.
It all depends on whether the particular mod laughed or not really.
Under the right circumstances slipping on a banana peel is still funny.
As the 2000 year old man once noted:
"Tragedy is when I bang my thumb. Comedy is when you fall down a manhole and die."
It's all in your perspective. IAIYP in the modern way of phrasing things.
When dealing with the sort of humor that is based on language and spelling the appreciation of a certain cleverness is part of the humor response, so if you've seen something over and over again it loses something. On the other hand one can take a completely tired old pun in a new situation, give it a little twist, and it will be funny, at least in part, because the joke was already tired.
In this case the author of the joke didn't just put an "i" in front of everything and say "see, funny, huh?" He constructed a very simple sentence that used the "i" in a grammatically correct way and apropo to the subject.
I got a mild giggle out of it.
SCO sue me.
KFG
have you ever felt guilty over using Mac OS X instead of Linux?
No, because I have one of each sitting on my desktop.
When I got the 17' Powerbook, I decided that I would give it the best chance I could, by refusing the temptation to install things like the X-Windows server and other Open-Source tools. I'd use Apple's tools and teach myself to use them. Only when I could use something without thought would I compare it with the corresponding linux tools.
Over the months, I've gotten quite comfortable with the PB, OSX, and the whole package. But when I lean back and compare them critically, I have to admit: Nearly everything is simpler, faster, and easier on the linux box. The Mac is generally prettier. And in a few cases (such as plugging in USB gadgets), it does a better job.
But so far, despite my best intentions, the Mac has turned out to be slow and clumsy compared to linux. I've even made my linux life more difficult by switching WMs occasionally. KDE one week, Gnome the next, then Enlightenment, then FVWM. This slightly slows down my linux use and sometimes produces stumbles. But still, the linux box wins on most comparisons.
One biggie is that text windows work much better on linux. One of the embarrassments of the GUI world is how much faster and more productive a CLI user is than a GUI user, for almost all tasks. And a CLI user can work on machines anywhere on the Net as easily as the onee on their desktop.
On the Mac, as on Windows, the text window is an orphan. On linux, like all unixoid systems, the text/CLI approach is well developed, and is the best way to do most tasks. On OSX, although it is a kind of unix, most of the system only works from the GUI. This is a real disappointment, and relegates it to the "toy" classification for many purposes.
It's too bad. But maybe it'll improve. Apple has only recently gone the unix route. Give them a few years of hanging with the unix crowd, and maybe they'll pick up some of the things that make linux better than OSX.
And maybe the linux gang will learn how to recognize USB gadgets smoothly and painlessly.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The big advantage in my view is that I feel better and work better when my screen's an aesthetic delight than otherwise.
So I'm delighted with all my Macs - I switched almost totally away from Linux and Irix, my previous systems, and in terms of computing environment, I couldn't be happier. The Mac isn't perfect, but it's as close to a hassle-free computing environment as I can get.
And that's worth its weight in gold, at least for me.
Just out of curiosity, could you give a few examples of things you can't do from the command line? I'll bet there actually are ways around it that you haven't heard.
D
open gets you into bundles (Program.app), as well as to documents tied to particular programs.
softwareupdate and defaults cover a bunch of ground. Now that there's a decently usable Carbonized Emacs, I don't even use an X server most of the time: Terminal, Emacs, and Camino cover 99% of my needs. Oh, and Preview for looking at compiled TeX.
But that said, you're unfairly biasing the comparison by not using X11 and free software. One of the big advantages of the Mac is that it provides *both* (MS Office, iChat, Finder and other GUI tools for business) and (Emacs, an X Server, a good free programming environment). Cutting half of that off isn't a Mac any more; it's more like a 1997 Mac. For example, I have a custom-built Postfix install with TLS support on my laptop, using client certificates to authenticate to my home MTA: perfect mail relaying no matter where I am. And it lets me tell Mail.app to just use the localhost as an SMTP server. Now I get good S/MIME and GnuPG support, in-line spelling checking, and a nice UI *and* the technical features I want. AND, since it's standard-based IMAP, I can hand that system off to friends and family, and use it at work, but use Gnus for my personal mail.
-- Brian T. Sniffen