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Nerds Switching from Apple to Ubuntu?
Mindpicnic writes "The recent switch of two lifelong Mac nerds to Ubuntu hasn't escaped Tim O'Reilly's radar. He cites Jason Kottke: 'If I were Apple, I'd be worried about this. Two lifelong Mac fans are switching away from Macs to PCs running Ubuntu Linux: first it was Mark Pilgrim and now Cory Doctorow. Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.'"
I've actually seen far more developers switch from Linux to OS X than vice-versa. I think there are definitely switchers in both directions, but I'm not sure that there are more in one direction than the other, and I'd be doubtful that there are more switching away from OS X than those switching to. (Full disclosure: I run Linux on my desktop PC and OS X on my media center PC and haven't touched Windows in years.)
~ roscivs
Recently, I've made the opposite migration (from Ubuntu to Mac OS X). Now, while I love Ubuntu, and continue to use it on my desktop, I must say that Mac OS X has a lot going for it. There's nothing really wrong with the platform inherently. However, given the particular people in question, Ubuntu seems better suited for their needs than OS X does. Furthermore, with the latest release, things are quite easy to use on most hardware sold for Windows. Of course, the reason I removed Ubuntu from my MacBook is because I'm familiar with GRUB, which doesn't work on EFI. Perhaps I'll dual-boot the MacBook again when they've had time to work out that particular issue. I'd like to have an Ubuntu environment on here that isn't emulated over Parallels, too.
So honestly, between Ubuntu and OS X, to me, it's an even trade, based on what one needs. If you're doing heavy programming, Ubuntu is the place to be. However, if you're looking for a simple user-oriented Unix-like system, Mac OS X is just fine.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
What kind of gamer are you that your needs are satisfied on Ubuntu? I recently switched to Ubuntu (Dapper), and yesterday installed vmware-player with a WinXP virtual machine, and then installed 2 games (first is PopCap's Dynomite and the second is Civ4), and although both of them installed, neither would actually play. Maybe I'm missing something, but Ubuntu looks to me as underwhelming as any other distro when it comes to gaming (although overwhelming on everything else).
What's the best way to get games to play on Ubuntu? I still need to dual-boot with Windows because of games, and I would really, really like to get rid of that.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
So Ubuntu 6 got all the great buzz, so I grabbed a copy and installed it on a spare Windows box I had.
Gee, I think, this looks pretty good. Finally some attention to nice graphic detail. A good installer. Software install that includes "blessed" prebuilt exes.
But then the rough edges showed up again.
First... this is an nForce2 machine with built-in video, and the default config refused to let me select a screen-res larger than 1024x768. I know, the nerds out there are saying "just edit your x config file", right? OK, but here's the thing:
(1) that's an INEXCUSABLY STUPID AND LAZY way to design operating system software
(2) it's too easy to screw up your x config file and break x (and by "too easy" I mean "remotely possible")
Second... I discovered that the oh-so-lovely disk partitioner has the added feature that on some systems (including mine) it borks the MBR of the resized Windows partition in such a way that Windows will refuse to boot. Even after uninstalling Ubuntu. And even after applying various fixes via UBCD and friends. (Right now this system is sitting disconnected under my desk because I refuse to reinstall Ubuntu, but reinstalling Windows is a horrible half-day affair on its own...)
Look, I know I'm gonna get flamed and burn karma for this, but the whole point is that for a system that I want to use mainly for surfing the web and playing games, it has to Just Work.
Not "mostly work with some crap I have to hand edit", it has to be freakin' bulletproof against a stupid user who neither knows nor cares that "sudo gedit foo" is required for some otherwise-seemingly-trivial configuration options.
No, this is not an apology for Windows, whose install and configuration is a nightmare of its own, but when you're the underdog, you can't just play catch-up, and you can't make boneheaded mistakes like those listed above.
No but they're leading the pack, and Apple will miss the masses when they do the same. Only the masses will not be going to Linux, they'll be going back to Windows.
I know a LOT of people who have switched back, including myself. I'd run Linux for ten years as my desktop OS until I switched to OSX, and I've switched back. Why? Not the ease of use of Ubuntu, although its nice to run Linux and not have to worry about things working or not. I switched back because of the horrid quality of Apple hardware the last few years. I've wasted a large number of thousands of dollars on Apple hardware that died immediately out of warranty. (iBook, two iPods, two Mighty Mice, and my old 17" G4 iMac was flaky but still works most of the time).
Apple is riding a wave of popular hype, but popular trends can switch away from a company as fast as they can switch TO a company. And there's a LOT of people in the last year or two who will start learning about Apple hardware quality as their iPods die, or they talk to people like myself who will be happy to tell them how Apple has such a long history in the 2000's of having known common defects in their hardware and not supporting their owners. (My iBook is dead at 14 months from a failed logic board, a very common problem in all the post-Clamshell iBooks, but Apple has only chosen to support customers when threatened with class action lawsuits)
Not quite, I'd probably be considered a Mac Nerd. You never hear from us because we (Well, I) hate most Mac users. I love OSX, but I'm tired of everyone who has an orgasm every time they see a Macintosh. Computer = a tool. Computer != a religion. It's usually not important enough to talk about. I don't know what it is about the less common operating systems, but they seem to attract the asses. (Free/Open/DietBSD etc. seem to be immune to this, not sure why.)
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Not really. Mark Pilgrim, Sam Ruby, and Tim Bray all have very strong influences on an extremely important segment of the market. Cory Doctorow has a very strong influence on a slightly different segment of the market. In the former group's case, we're really talking about the fact that the architects of some major systems are switching to Ubuntu. This will ultimately have virtually zero effect on Apple's market share, and honestly, I don't think anyone believes it will. However, it does mean that Apple may start losing PowerBook market share at certain conferences. Instead of 90% PowerBooks at the next RailsConf, we may only see 80% instead.
At least in my case, I know that ever since Sam and Mark started talking up Ubuntu, I've been wanting to find an excuse to set up an Ubuntu box. I doubt I'll leave Apple for my primary machine, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to explore Ubuntu. But who knows? I might really like it.
While I won’t even attempt to address specific numbers, the service life of a Mac is markedly longer. Five times as long? Frequently, yes. Both of my Macs are about that old, a G4 tower and a G3 iBook dating from 2001. And my previous desktop machine was a 7500 that orginally shipped with a PPC601 chip that I later replaced with a 604 and then a G3 chip when I moved to OS X. Granted, I’m not typical, but then again neither is the typical Mac user. I find that ten year old Macs are not uncommon in the real world. In fact, my girlfriend is hoping I’ll get one of the new Core Duo iBooks later this year and give her my G4 tower. I’ll either do that or put dual G4s in it, not quite sure yet. But it’s still a great machine even if it’s used primarily for running Opera and doing Access development work under VirtualPC. I would appreciate more than a single 533mhz G4 for using Canon’s RAW software, but Photoshop runs just fine, even when I start going all layer-whore on high-res photos.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
It's also interesting that the Mark Pilgrim blog article linked to from the main one can be summarized thus:
I don't like Apple anymore because:
1) There are some open source apps that I like better than the ones that come with OS X. I am going to mention how great they are without noting that Apple also think they're great enough to list them on their web-site together with links via which they may be downloaded.
2) I have been writing open source apps for Macs since 1993, when MacOS was entirely proprietary and closed source. They are much more open now, so I am abandoning them because they aren't open enough.
3) After over 20 years advocating Macs, I have discovered that Apple are more expensive than some other PC manufacturers, especially as they refuse to give me an IBM employee discount. Of course, they used to be massively more expensive rather than merely a bit more expensive, but I supported them then even though it sometimes meant paying thousands of dollars more instead of a couple of hundred.
4) Having bought a laptop from Lenovo, I am pissed off to discover that nasty old Apple won't let me run MacOS X on it. Of course, I've been happily supporting Apple since 1983, despite the fact that they did everything possible to stop people from running MacOS on Atari STs and Amigas which had compatible hardware but lacked Apple ROMs, sued anyone that dared to attach a mouse to something vaguely graphical, and generally behaved like arseholes. I used to justify it on the grounds that Apple weren't obliged to support people whose computers weren't made by them; this time however it's me that's affected, so I'm going to condemn Apple for it.
5) I don't like iTunes and iPhoto, and have said so for years (well, one and-a-bit years actually, but longer in reality, as my wife will tell you if you could ask her, which you can't). My main reasons for this are that they lost some of my settings, but not my songs or photos. Of course, I completely neglected to make any backups because alpha geeks don't do that sort of crap, but now put all my photos in other directories _on the same machine_ as well, despite the fact that iPhoto didn't lose any photos, only some metadata that my cleverly constructed directory system also completely lacks. These directories are organized by date because despite my alpha-geek status and all the amazing software I've written, I cannot write a small program to read the date information in each photo's EXIF header and automatically display them in that order despite the fact that there are libraries in a variety of languages that do most of the work for me.
Meanwhile, the Doctorow blog in the link says he's _going to switch_, but so far has only ordered a machine (again from Lenovo!). He has not yet actually tried installing or using Ubuntu, but intends to do so on his Lenovo, apparently because Mark Pilgrim's done it on _his_ Lenovo.
So the sequence goes thus: Mark Pilgrim gets pissed off at Apple for behaving just like they always have during the many years that he defended and justified their actions. He buys a Lenovo, and after discovering that he can't run MacOS X on it, decides to use Ubuntu instead. Cory Doctorow reads Mark's blog, and buys a Lenovo because that's what Mark has. He already knows he can't use OS X on it because Mark's told him, and therefore decides to use Ubuntu because that's what Mark is using. He's never actually tried it out for himself, and has no idea if there are any better distros out there for his purposes -- Ubuntu is for him because Ubuntu is what Mark's using, and Mark is so clever that he never needs to back stuff up at all.
If these are what pass for influential Alpha geeks in the Mac world, then their versions of Gamma and Phi geeks must have trouble pulling their knuckles of the floor to wipe away the drool that constantly run down their chests.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.