Linux is more like my ratcheting set. Sed, awk, bash scripts... they don't change. They were there 5 years ago. They'll be there 5 years from now. They're simple, dependable, and "just work"... Stop adding features. Make the product do one thing well, and then use the profits to make a completely different product if you need something else done well.
I'm in a devils' advocate mood today... I don't particularly like Adobe (nor do I hate them particularly), and I think reader is a bloated piece of crap.
But Reader changed not because Adobe has a PDF agenda to rule the world, but because Adobe economically needed it to change. To make money, gain market share, whatever.
A ratchet is a simple tool, one whose expectations won't change. But software (and cars) are much more fluid. Your ratchets may work on your 1950's car, but you won't like driving it. Engines are better now, tires are better, handling is better. You'll hate the boaty-ness of your 50's era driving, the gallons-per-mile you pay for driving it, the lack of safety features, the lack of DVD player dropping from the roofline for your kid in the back seat. I wonder simply how many safety regulations that would prohibit a "new" 50's tech car being sold. Adobe finds it difficult to get money out of a non-bloated Reader the same as any car company would go out of business if it sold nothing but 50's tech in cars.
What Adobe should have done is let some group without a profit motive - or a need to bloat it to hell - take over development. Such groups do exist - Apache being the best example. Adobe wants PDF to both be a universal utility, and a tool to bind you exclusively to Adobe. Those goals conflict.
Unless you want the bells and whistles that introduce security holes, Ghostscript is what you want as a PDF reader/writer. Reader *IS* the bloatware version. There's lots of other readers and writers out there that can handle the actual PDF standard; Reader just handles the bloat.
...and sometimes, the only compelling reason to upgrade Acrobat is because bug/exploit fixes are only available in the current versions of their products. On Adobe's side, they do add in improved data structures to the PDF standard as time goes on... using PDF-10 to create PDF/A documents of a reasonable size and clarity is much easier than using PDF-3....
..and I'd like to point out that the rendering hints in these forms have already been exploited by malware for executing malicious instructions on Windows and OS X. While Adobe hasn't documented it for third party users, it's trivial for malware attackers to fuzz the engine and discover methods of exploiting these features for their own use.
Interestingly, Apple got around some of this with their Preview app by treating any area of the display PDF that has a form-like decoration as if it were a form -- so LiveCycle PDFs are often viewable in Preview even though it doesn't really understand the defined structures. This also likely makes it resistent to many exploits targeting LiveCycle.
The method is: 1) send you a fake email telling you to log into your account to update your settings/read the policy change/etc. 2) link to a phishing site, which pulls all the assets from the legit bank, but redirects the password form 3) trigger an SMS event just like the real bank, to send you the token needed to log in to the phishing site 4) harvest your account info. 5) Profit!
However, it'd make more sense to just make the phishing site a proxy and let the actual bank send the SMS token to the customer. That way, the customer logs in for them, and they can then do whatever they want....
That reminds me: I've got to make myself a bunch of random keys and hang them around my neighbours house.
I wouldn't do it to my own, as anyone attempting to use them might eventually get frustrated and just break the lock or smash a window....
I agree though; the problem isn't that the iPhone can set the originating SMS value, it's that the receiving devices choose to trust the end user over the tower's data (which they also receive as part of the handshake).
Digital signatures can also be faked and sometimes even forged... it's just a bit more difficult. Are you really going to suspect a perfectly legit looking email signed as coming from "Blizzard Entertainment Plc."? Unless you happen to already know that all communication from them comes from "Blizzard Entertainment Corp." the signature likely wouldn't help much. Plus, I've seen a LOT of corporate stuff using signatures that are expired or do not belong to them -- and this is legitimate stuff.
Indeed... they would have injected rm -rf/. or even dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M otherwise.
Obviously, they were targeting specific machines, and those machines happened to run Windows. Phishing for escalation and destroying drives in such a brazen way is going to work on whatever system they target. Of course, why the energy companies are running Windows instead of something more unixy is a puzzler in itself.
One useful tidbit that may at least ease FFM raise-on-click frustration: command-clicking a window doesn't raise it. Option-clicking a window in a different app hides all windows in the current app and changes focus. It's possible to assign command-click to a different mouse button/gesture so that you can click background windows without bringing them to the front.
When selecting text, you can select text, start to drag it, and then either drop it in a background window (keeping it in the background), or hit a mouse/gesture/key combo to rotate app windows, rotate apps, jump to Expose/Mission Control, or with option held down, hide the current app and switch focus to the window under the mouse.
All these modifiers can be assigned to mouse presses, gestures and keystrokes, so you can set it up however you want.
It looks like I stand corrected; there appears to be no way to middle-select into a separate copy buffer by default on OS X. You can assign copy and paste to the middle button (or other guestures/clicks) however, and you can select with any button and drag the text to where you want it pasted.
I'm happy with click-drag and command-c/command-v, or else I might write an applescript to handle this -- it would be fairly easy to write an applescript that checks for selected content, and if found, copies it to a new clipboard -- and if no selection is found, pastes the contents of the clipboard to the mouse position. After saving the script, assign middle click to running that script, and you're set.
It seems to me that someone should be able to add the functionality into quartz-wm though -- it's an OSS project after all. You wouldn't have a GUI method of enabling it in Aqua, but defaults write should be able to enable it.
Actually, that agreement expired sometime around 2003 IIRC. Part of the agreement was to do with bundling Internet Explorer -- Apple came out with Safari shortly after the agreement expired.
From Wikipedia:
Until 1997, Apple Macintosh computers were shipped with the Netscape Navigator and Cyberdog web browsers only. Internet Explorer for Mac was later included as the default web browser for Mac OS 8.1 and onwards,[5] as part of a five year agreement between Apple and Microsoft. During that time, Microsoft released three major versions of Internet Explorer for Mac that were bundled with Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9, though Apple continued to include Netscape Navigator as an alternative. Microsoft ultimately released a Mac OS X edition of Internet Explorer for Mac, which was included as the default browser in all Mac OS X releases from Mac OS X DP4[6] up to and including Mac OS X v10.2.[7] On January 7, 2003, at Macworld San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had developed their own web browser, called Safari. It was based on Apple's internal fork of the KHTML rendering engine, called WebKit.[8]
The relationship between Apple and Microsoft changed quite significantly in 2003. However, you're right that they've since decided that cross-licensing their patents is much simpler than lawsuits.
Linux doesn't exactly have a reputation for working well on brand-new hardware. The new MacBooks only came out a couple months ago, give Linux some time!
Linux runs just fine on many types of brand new machines, especially if they have Intel video. However, Mac hardware has often been more problematic than others..
I think you'll find that actual new *hardware* takes as long for Linux support no matter what it is... unless it's what the people writing the support have upgraded to, in which case it gets support pretty quickly. Outside of Apple, new *systems* often support Linux right out of the box because the hardware inside is already in use in other systems, and so has had time to have the software kinks worked out. Since Apple usually pushes new components in their new systems (especially the case here), it often takes a while for some distributions to incorporate the software updates. However, the linux support is usually there already; it just hasn't been integrated into the distro-of-choice because nobody's had the need to do it -- and won't until some integrater or commercial entity gets some of the Apple hardware and decides to support it.
Mybe he has a program he needs to run that won't run on Apple's OS? I'm really not very familiar with apple, do they have a music player that will fetch and display lyrics from the internet as the song plays? Amarok does, and afaik it only runs on Linux. Of course, Apple is now UNIX based, will Linux binaries runnatively on an Apple? Even if so, I'd rather get my programs from the distro's repository; little or no chance of being trojaned no matter what your OS.
KDE runs on OS X, including Amarok. Amarok has run just fine on OS X for the past four years. Apple has had a UNIX based OS for the past 22 years (used to be A/UX) -- OS X has been around for ~12 of those as a POSIX-compatible OS. As Linux is not fully POSIX compatible, not all Linux binaries will run on OS X without tweaking... the same tweaking needed to make them work on any other Unixy OS, such as BSD. Hence why OS X uses the MacPorts system, which is pretty much the same as BSD Ports. MacPorts is a very decent repository for OS X -- as is the MacStore. For all else, you can still download from the author if you'd like, but there's more likelihood of trojans. The only place you really have to worry about trojans with 10.8's security model however is via warez distributed over torrents.
Because the bastards won't let me upgrade my hardware to OS 10.8 ("too old" they claim). Well maybe Apple is into planned obsolescene of good hardware, but Microsoft and Linux aren't. I have not done it yet but could install either of these OSes since Apple no longer thinks I'm worthy of support. (And yes this is another reason Apple is a "luxury" brand like Lexus or Acura.... high initial cost, plus short OS lifespan == high cost of ownership).
Um, you obviously don't have a 2012 MacBook Pro, which is what this story is about.
If you've got a PowerBook or an old MacBook that's too old for 10.8, that means your battery is shot and the device is at least 5 years old.
If this is the case, why upgrade past 10.7? It works perfectly fine with all current Mac software, and you can still run Windows and Linux in VMs on top. I know many people who are still running 10.6 because they see no compelling reason to change their OS.
Oh, and if you complain about Apple eventually dropping support for 10.6... look to support for Debian Woody.
When you can no longer run the software you need on your OS, THEN you can complain about your MacBook being "too old" and switching to Linux makes a LOT of sense... assuming that any modern Linux distro will run on it.
All the command line flags are BSD style instead of the GNU way I know and love.
I think this really sums up your issues. On OS X, you have to get used to the "export" and "defaults write" commands, as that's how everything non-standard is accomplished: the BSD way. I think I responded to the rest in my response to your other post.
There's no lack of configuration options... they just aren't GNU or Windows-style configuration options. You get a different tool, you need to learn how to use it. If it was exactly the same, why not just use the other one you're familiar with?
Of course, I was a BSD user before Linux showed up at the party, so I tend to have the same issues whenever I enter GNU land. This hasn't stopped me from appreciating Debian when used appropriately, however.
For me the largest frustration, is the number of applications *only* available via the MacStore, and how cumbersome the MacStore is itself. Not to mention, the default setting for 10.8 (Mountain Lion) was to only allow app installs from "known" developers on the MacStore
I only have 3 non-Apple apps installed from the MacStore, and I have hundreds of apps installed. I agree with how cumbersome the store is though. Just use MacUpdate.com or VersionTracker.com, and you'll find many applications available for direct download.
As for the default setting: 10.8's default setting is to only run downloaded software signed by a registered developer key. You can tighten it to allow only MacStore software, but this is NOT the default. You can also loosen it to allow unsigned software, OR just right click the stuff you want to override, select Open, and it'll whitelist that app.
This has nothing to do with installers by the way, it's the quarantine mechanism for any executable software downloaded through an application that supports the quarantine flag -- most major browsers, mail clients and some IM clients, but not much else. Anything acquired in any other manner won't have the quarantine flag set, and so will run just fine. This includes software you've compiled yourself, stuff from a USB stick or external drive, and even stuff via FTP or Bittorrent client.
My only complaint with 10.8 is the cloud/SaS integration -- I'd rather not have that stuff shoved down my throat, thank you very much. I want my stuff to stay on my hardware, and don't want any data leakage. This is still possible, but having to always check to make sure it's reality is something I'd rather not have to do.
Linux is fine as a "normal desktop OS". The problem here is redefining "normal desktop" to mean grandmas that really should just get an iPad. A GUI does not negate the possibility of power users. There are plenty of GUI power users and they tend to get annoyed but Apple's allegedly superior product.
Elaborate please... "power user" has traditionally been used as an epithet by people in my circles -- they're the ones who know enough to tweak things without understanding what they're actually doing or how to fix things if they break something using a third party script. You get these people on all platforms with all systems and applications.
GUI power users are generally people who have learned how to tweak their preferred GUI on their preferred OS. They're often entrenched in their workflows, and when presented with a new interface, try to re-create their old tweaked GUI instead of trying to optimize how to use the new GUI to accomplish the same tasks.
Apple tends to have a "superior product" but not superior components. The difference is that in Apple-land, all the components are designed to work together in the default configuration, even at the expense of functionality of some of the components. "Power users," those who like to tweak, get annoyed by this, because they want the whole product to work differently. Perfectly valid, but they tend to want it to work "that way" as opposed to "the best way it can for them."
Of course, I'd love to still be able to do everything the same way I did 20 years ago, but I've found some GUI enhancements to actually be an improvement, even with the time needed to re-train my muscle memory to incorporate them.
But what's with context-sensitive object placement??? ALL OSes have gone this route, and it's a pain to make ANY of them revert to persistent object placement. I want things to be where I put them, thank you very much. My brain is designed for that, and my muscles can drive that kind of interface without me even having to do more than glance at the images./rant
Odd; I've had no problems implementing middle click copy/paste using the default install, nor have I had a problem with my number pad in vim (until I started using a keyboard with no number pad xP --Fn-NP just doesn't cut it, so I had to update my vimrc to move the functions to other keys). Decent terminal apps: other than Terminal.app (which is definitely sub-par in some areas and superior in others), there's a number found here: http://www.macupdate.com/find/mac/terminal%20emulator -- of which MacTerm is the best. There's also Konsole, which runs just fine (as does most of the KDE environment, complete with focus follows mouse).
Personally, I always found FFM a bad idea, and haven't missed it; but then, I use my keyboard to change focus and do what I want, and don't want my mouse to be randomly messing with where my keyboard focus is going.
OS X defaults definitely target one kind of user, and there's a learning curve if you're coming from a Linux background. If you're coming from a BSD background, the transition is significantly smoother, as almost everything can be implemented in the same way if you want to.
That said, there's nothing wrong with OS X not being for you... there's lots of other OSes that run just fine on Mac hardware -- it appears with the exception of whatever distribution of Linux the story author used when it comes to the new MacBook Pro.
You had me nodding with you until you got to apt-get.
I run Ports on Macs; I *could* run apt-get, but I consider Ports to be a much better way of doing things.
Apple tends to have groupthink, but every OS has that -- Linux just has an easier ability to fragment that into smaller subgroupthinks.
While OS X does things differently than they're done on Linux (any flavour), I truly find some of the under-the-hood implementations more elegant for creative solutions. Of course, there are areas where Apple has chosen NOT to innovate, and no other developers have picked up the ball... and there are some kernel-based oddities that make rolling your own a complete headache every time a new point release of the OS comes out, but most difficulties with the OS come down more to ignorance than anything else.
OS X, Windows, Ubuntu: they all have decent default configurations for users wanting to just get things done, but have slightly different ways of doing that. All three require significant investments of time to really understand all the internals and how to use them optimally. Anyone who is more than a casual user but less than an expert user (often called "power users") is going to have a headache of a time migrating their expectations and workflows between the three OSes, as they know it's possible to do more than the defaults, but don't know enough to figure out how to best accomplish their task on any OS other than the one they're most comfortable with.
So... I'm curious what you mean by "remotely creative": I've been creative in how I customize OS X, I've been creative in what I accomplish on it (this usually doesn't even require modifications from the default install) AND I've been creative in how I implement my workflows.
The OpenStep legacy of the nu kernel and OS message passing causes some operations to be slower than on Linux and a bit more clunky to implement, but you have the benefit of an OS-wide object model with excellent inheritence: make a change once, and the entire system inherits it. It's a tradeoff, and Apple gambled on computers becoming fast enough that a minor speed hit in non-opimized code for certain actions would be negligible compared to the cleanness of the inheritance model. For the most part, I agree with them, except when I smack against a brick wall that logic from other platforms dictates shouldn't be there at all. Then it takes me a while to "think different" and realise that with an alternate approach, I could accomplish the task in a more efficient way.
In other words, With Macs you get shouted down for trying things that seem mundane on Linux or Windows, but on Macs you can easily do things that aren't even considered on Linux or Windows (even though they're possible if you try hard enough).
It's kind of like someone attempting to switch out the transmission from a Toyota with one from a Ford and getting shouted down for it; it's probably not the best thing to actually do to accomplish the goal that prompted you to do it in the first place. It doesn't mean you can't do it though... it's just going to take more work than you might expect, and give you virtually no gain in accomplishing your actual goal (unless the switch itself was your goal).
Also Apple, if you could sue over "Locking devices down to only run approved apps", "Mechanisms to prevent modders from replacing your firmware with their own on their own devices" and similar actions, hey, I might even start to like you again!
Yeah they can sue Nintendo, Sony and MS for copying them over this and I won't bat an eye.
...until N, Sony and MS just license the patent and then have a business case for making the license profitable.
The judge should keep his head and language cool, so neither of the parties can argue that they were unjustly treated and ask for a mistrial. It is like you bark back at a rude customer, it makes difficult to prove that you were right.
If the judge finds one or both sides deserve it, then he can present charges of "contempt of the court" or whatever fits. The judge is not at the court to get personal satisfaction, but to do his work.
She should really go after the lawyers and ignore the actual parties involved altogether. If the parties argue that they were unjustly treated in this case, they can sue their lawyers.
I do wish that more separation of counsel and client was to be had in the courtroom. If lawyers were penalized for misrepresentation (possibly even with jail time), we'd have more honest lawyers. There's a difference between defending a client you know to be guilty to the best of your ability, and attempting to game the court system to ensure your client wins, no matter the cost to all involved. A good lawyer should be able to keep most cases out of court altogether (but this doesn't make them as much money).
I wonder if it's possible to sanction ALL the lawyers.... Maybe that would set a precedent that if lawyers are abusing their privilege, they get sanctioned. This might clean up courtoom antics and make going to court much less painful, if the actual lawyers have to be continually responsible for their behaviour.
I was aiming for a communist joke, but upon recollection, we used to call the proponents of commercializing the.com TLD dotcommies back in the day... I remember getting annoyed when educational institutions started using {institution}.{cc} instead of.edu as well -- and when everyone started using.org and.net, even though.org was for nonprofits and.net was for infrastructure.
Slashdot Mirror
Linux is more like my ratcheting set. Sed, awk, bash scripts... they don't change. They were there 5 years ago. They'll be there 5 years from now. They're simple, dependable, and "just work"... Stop adding features. Make the product do one thing well, and then use the profits to make a completely different product if you need something else done well.
So you're not an emacs user then?
vi'e alway's thought of emacs as an OS....
I'm in a devils' advocate mood today... I don't particularly like Adobe (nor do I hate them particularly), and I think reader is a bloated piece of crap.
But Reader changed not because Adobe has a PDF agenda to rule the world, but because Adobe economically needed it to change. To make money, gain market share, whatever.
A ratchet is a simple tool, one whose expectations won't change. But software (and cars) are much more fluid. Your ratchets may work on your 1950's car, but you won't like driving it. Engines are better now, tires are better, handling is better. You'll hate the boaty-ness of your 50's era driving, the gallons-per-mile you pay for driving it, the lack of safety features, the lack of DVD player dropping from the roofline for your kid in the back seat. I wonder simply how many safety regulations that would prohibit a "new" 50's tech car being sold. Adobe finds it difficult to get money out of a non-bloated Reader the same as any car company would go out of business if it sold nothing but 50's tech in cars.
What Adobe should have done is let some group without a profit motive - or a need to bloat it to hell - take over development. Such groups do exist - Apache being the best example. Adobe wants PDF to both be a universal utility, and a tool to bind you exclusively to Adobe. Those goals conflict.
May I introduce you to GhostScript? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostscript
Unless you want the bells and whistles that introduce security holes, Ghostscript is what you want as a PDF reader/writer. Reader *IS* the bloatware version. There's lots of other readers and writers out there that can handle the actual PDF standard; Reader just handles the bloat.
...and sometimes, the only compelling reason to upgrade Acrobat is because bug/exploit fixes are only available in the current versions of their products.
On Adobe's side, they do add in improved data structures to the PDF standard as time goes on... using PDF-10 to create PDF/A documents of a reasonable size and clarity is much easier than using PDF-3....
..and I'd like to point out that the rendering hints in these forms have already been exploited by malware for executing malicious instructions on Windows and OS X. While Adobe hasn't documented it for third party users, it's trivial for malware attackers to fuzz the engine and discover methods of exploiting these features for their own use.
Interestingly, Apple got around some of this with their Preview app by treating any area of the display PDF that has a form-like decoration as if it were a form -- so LiveCycle PDFs are often viewable in Preview even though it doesn't really understand the defined structures. This also likely makes it resistent to many exploits targeting LiveCycle.
The method is:
1) send you a fake email telling you to log into your account to update your settings/read the policy change/etc.
2) link to a phishing site, which pulls all the assets from the legit bank, but redirects the password form
3) trigger an SMS event just like the real bank, to send you the token needed to log in to the phishing site
4) harvest your account info.
5) Profit!
However, it'd make more sense to just make the phishing site a proxy and let the actual bank send the SMS token to the customer. That way, the customer logs in for them, and they can then do whatever they want....
That reminds me: I've got to make myself a bunch of random keys and hang them around my neighbours house.
I wouldn't do it to my own, as anyone attempting to use them might eventually get frustrated and just break the lock or smash a window....
I agree though; the problem isn't that the iPhone can set the originating SMS value, it's that the receiving devices choose to trust the end user over the tower's data (which they also receive as part of the handshake).
Digital signatures can also be faked and sometimes even forged... it's just a bit more difficult.
Are you really going to suspect a perfectly legit looking email signed as coming from "Blizzard Entertainment Plc."? Unless you happen to already know that all communication from them comes from "Blizzard Entertainment Corp." the signature likely wouldn't help much. Plus, I've seen a LOT of corporate stuff using signatures that are expired or do not belong to them -- and this is legitimate stuff.
Indeed... they would have injected rm -rf /. or even dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M otherwise.
Obviously, they were targeting specific machines, and those machines happened to run Windows. Phishing for escalation and destroying drives in such a brazen way is going to work on whatever system they target. Of course, why the energy companies are running Windows instead of something more unixy is a puzzler in itself.
Man, that's bad. Bad. Really, really bad.
You know it!
One useful tidbit that may at least ease FFM raise-on-click frustration: command-clicking a window doesn't raise it. Option-clicking a window in a different app hides all windows in the current app and changes focus. It's possible to assign command-click to a different mouse button/gesture so that you can click background windows without bringing them to the front.
When selecting text, you can select text, start to drag it, and then either drop it in a background window (keeping it in the background), or hit a mouse/gesture/key combo to rotate app windows, rotate apps, jump to Expose/Mission Control, or with option held down, hide the current app and switch focus to the window under the mouse.
All these modifiers can be assigned to mouse presses, gestures and keystrokes, so you can set it up however you want.
It looks like I stand corrected; there appears to be no way to middle-select into a separate copy buffer by default on OS X. You can assign copy and paste to the middle button (or other guestures/clicks) however, and you can select with any button and drag the text to where you want it pasted.
I'm happy with click-drag and command-c/command-v, or else I might write an applescript to handle this -- it would be fairly easy to write an applescript that checks for selected content, and if found, copies it to a new clipboard -- and if no selection is found, pastes the contents of the clipboard to the mouse position. After saving the script, assign middle click to running that script, and you're set.
It seems to me that someone should be able to add the functionality into quartz-wm though -- it's an OSS project after all. You wouldn't have a GUI method of enabling it in Aqua, but defaults write should be able to enable it.
Actually, that agreement expired sometime around 2003 IIRC. Part of the agreement was to do with bundling Internet Explorer -- Apple came out with Safari shortly after the agreement expired.
From Wikipedia:
Until 1997, Apple Macintosh computers were shipped with the Netscape Navigator and Cyberdog web browsers only. Internet Explorer for Mac was later included as the default web browser for Mac OS 8.1 and onwards,[5] as part of a five year agreement between Apple and Microsoft. During that time, Microsoft released three major versions of Internet Explorer for Mac that were bundled with Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9, though Apple continued to include Netscape Navigator as an alternative. Microsoft ultimately released a Mac OS X edition of Internet Explorer for Mac, which was included as the default browser in all Mac OS X releases from Mac OS X DP4[6] up to and including Mac OS X v10.2.[7] On January 7, 2003, at Macworld San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had developed their own web browser, called Safari. It was based on Apple's internal fork of the KHTML rendering engine, called WebKit.[8]
The relationship between Apple and Microsoft changed quite significantly in 2003. However, you're right that they've since decided that cross-licensing their patents is much simpler than lawsuits.
Linux doesn't exactly have a reputation for working well on brand-new hardware. The new MacBooks only came out a couple months ago, give Linux some time!
Linux runs just fine on many types of brand new machines, especially if they have Intel video. However, Mac hardware has often been more problematic than others..
I think you'll find that actual new *hardware* takes as long for Linux support no matter what it is... unless it's what the people writing the support have upgraded to, in which case it gets support pretty quickly. Outside of Apple, new *systems* often support Linux right out of the box because the hardware inside is already in use in other systems, and so has had time to have the software kinks worked out. Since Apple usually pushes new components in their new systems (especially the case here), it often takes a while for some distributions to incorporate the software updates. However, the linux support is usually there already; it just hasn't been integrated into the distro-of-choice because nobody's had the need to do it -- and won't until some integrater or commercial entity gets some of the Apple hardware and decides to support it.
Mybe he has a program he needs to run that won't run on Apple's OS? I'm really not very familiar with apple, do they have a music player that will fetch and display lyrics from the internet as the song plays? Amarok does, and afaik it only runs on Linux. Of course, Apple is now UNIX based, will Linux binaries runnatively on an Apple? Even if so, I'd rather get my programs from the distro's repository; little or no chance of being trojaned no matter what your OS.
KDE runs on OS X, including Amarok. Amarok has run just fine on OS X for the past four years. Apple has had a UNIX based OS for the past 22 years (used to be A/UX) -- OS X has been around for ~12 of those as a POSIX-compatible OS. As Linux is not fully POSIX compatible, not all Linux binaries will run on OS X without tweaking... the same tweaking needed to make them work on any other Unixy OS, such as BSD. Hence why OS X uses the MacPorts system, which is pretty much the same as BSD Ports. MacPorts is a very decent repository for OS X -- as is the MacStore. For all else, you can still download from the author if you'd like, but there's more likelihood of trojans. The only place you really have to worry about trojans with 10.8's security model however is via warez distributed over torrents.
Long live the Quantum Poseur! You can either know who he is, or where he is, but not both.
Because the bastards won't let me upgrade my hardware to OS 10.8 ("too old" they claim). Well maybe Apple is into planned obsolescene of good hardware, but Microsoft and Linux aren't. I have not done it yet but could install either of these OSes since Apple no longer thinks I'm worthy of support. (And yes this is another reason Apple is a "luxury" brand like Lexus or Acura.... high initial cost, plus short OS lifespan == high cost of ownership).
Um, you obviously don't have a 2012 MacBook Pro, which is what this story is about.
If you've got a PowerBook or an old MacBook that's too old for 10.8, that means your battery is shot and the device is at least 5 years old.
If this is the case, why upgrade past 10.7? It works perfectly fine with all current Mac software, and you can still run Windows and Linux in VMs on top. I know many people who are still running 10.6 because they see no compelling reason to change their OS.
Oh, and if you complain about Apple eventually dropping support for 10.6... look to support for Debian Woody.
When you can no longer run the software you need on your OS, THEN you can complain about your MacBook being "too old" and switching to Linux makes a LOT of sense... assuming that any modern Linux distro will run on it.
All the command line flags are BSD style instead of the GNU way I know and love.
I think this really sums up your issues. On OS X, you have to get used to the "export" and "defaults write" commands, as that's how everything non-standard is accomplished: the BSD way. I think I responded to the rest in my response to your other post.
There's no lack of configuration options... they just aren't GNU or Windows-style configuration options. You get a different tool, you need to learn how to use it. If it was exactly the same, why not just use the other one you're familiar with?
Of course, I was a BSD user before Linux showed up at the party, so I tend to have the same issues whenever I enter GNU land. This hasn't stopped me from appreciating Debian when used appropriately, however.
For me the largest frustration, is the number of applications *only* available via the MacStore, and how cumbersome the MacStore is itself. Not to mention, the default setting for 10.8 (Mountain Lion) was to only allow app installs from "known" developers on the MacStore
I only have 3 non-Apple apps installed from the MacStore, and I have hundreds of apps installed. I agree with how cumbersome the store is though.
Just use MacUpdate.com or VersionTracker.com, and you'll find many applications available for direct download.
As for the default setting: 10.8's default setting is to only run downloaded software signed by a registered developer key. You can tighten it to allow only MacStore software, but this is NOT the default. You can also loosen it to allow unsigned software, OR just right click the stuff you want to override, select Open, and it'll whitelist that app.
This has nothing to do with installers by the way, it's the quarantine mechanism for any executable software downloaded through an application that supports the quarantine flag -- most major browsers, mail clients and some IM clients, but not much else. Anything acquired in any other manner won't have the quarantine flag set, and so will run just fine. This includes software you've compiled yourself, stuff from a USB stick or external drive, and even stuff via FTP or Bittorrent client.
My only complaint with 10.8 is the cloud/SaS integration -- I'd rather not have that stuff shoved down my throat, thank you very much. I want my stuff to stay on my hardware, and don't want any data leakage. This is still possible, but having to always check to make sure it's reality is something I'd rather not have to do.
Linux is fine as a "normal desktop OS". The problem here is redefining "normal desktop" to mean grandmas that really should just get an iPad. A GUI does not negate the possibility of power users. There are plenty of GUI power users and they tend to get annoyed but Apple's allegedly superior product.
Elaborate please... "power user" has traditionally been used as an epithet by people in my circles -- they're the ones who know enough to tweak things without understanding what they're actually doing or how to fix things if they break something using a third party script. You get these people on all platforms with all systems and applications.
GUI power users are generally people who have learned how to tweak their preferred GUI on their preferred OS. They're often entrenched in their workflows, and when presented with a new interface, try to re-create their old tweaked GUI instead of trying to optimize how to use the new GUI to accomplish the same tasks.
Apple tends to have a "superior product" but not superior components. The difference is that in Apple-land, all the components are designed to work together in the default configuration, even at the expense of functionality of some of the components. "Power users," those who like to tweak, get annoyed by this, because they want the whole product to work differently. Perfectly valid, but they tend to want it to work "that way" as opposed to "the best way it can for them."
Of course, I'd love to still be able to do everything the same way I did 20 years ago, but I've found some GUI enhancements to actually be an improvement, even with the time needed to re-train my muscle memory to incorporate them.
But what's with context-sensitive object placement??? ALL OSes have gone this route, and it's a pain to make ANY of them revert to persistent object placement. I want things to be where I put them, thank you very much. My brain is designed for that, and my muscles can drive that kind of interface without me even having to do more than glance at the images. /rant
Odd; I've had no problems implementing middle click copy/paste using the default install, nor have I had a problem with my number pad in vim (until I started using a keyboard with no number pad xP --Fn-NP just doesn't cut it, so I had to update my vimrc to move the functions to other keys). Decent terminal apps: other than Terminal.app (which is definitely sub-par in some areas and superior in others), there's a number found here: http://www.macupdate.com/find/mac/terminal%20emulator -- of which MacTerm is the best. There's also Konsole, which runs just fine (as does most of the KDE environment, complete with focus follows mouse).
Personally, I always found FFM a bad idea, and haven't missed it; but then, I use my keyboard to change focus and do what I want, and don't want my mouse to be randomly messing with where my keyboard focus is going.
OS X defaults definitely target one kind of user, and there's a learning curve if you're coming from a Linux background. If you're coming from a BSD background, the transition is significantly smoother, as almost everything can be implemented in the same way if you want to.
That said, there's nothing wrong with OS X not being for you... there's lots of other OSes that run just fine on Mac hardware -- it appears with the exception of whatever distribution of Linux the story author used when it comes to the new MacBook Pro.
You had me nodding with you until you got to apt-get.
I run Ports on Macs; I *could* run apt-get, but I consider Ports to be a much better way of doing things.
Apple tends to have groupthink, but every OS has that -- Linux just has an easier ability to fragment that into smaller subgroupthinks.
While OS X does things differently than they're done on Linux (any flavour), I truly find some of the under-the-hood implementations more elegant for creative solutions. Of course, there are areas where Apple has chosen NOT to innovate, and no other developers have picked up the ball... and there are some kernel-based oddities that make rolling your own a complete headache every time a new point release of the OS comes out, but most difficulties with the OS come down more to ignorance than anything else.
OS X, Windows, Ubuntu: they all have decent default configurations for users wanting to just get things done, but have slightly different ways of doing that. All three require significant investments of time to really understand all the internals and how to use them optimally. Anyone who is more than a casual user but less than an expert user (often called "power users") is going to have a headache of a time migrating their expectations and workflows between the three OSes, as they know it's possible to do more than the defaults, but don't know enough to figure out how to best accomplish their task on any OS other than the one they're most comfortable with.
So... I'm curious what you mean by "remotely creative": I've been creative in how I customize OS X, I've been creative in what I accomplish on it (this usually doesn't even require modifications from the default install) AND I've been creative in how I implement my workflows.
The OpenStep legacy of the nu kernel and OS message passing causes some operations to be slower than on Linux and a bit more clunky to implement, but you have the benefit of an OS-wide object model with excellent inheritence: make a change once, and the entire system inherits it. It's a tradeoff, and Apple gambled on computers becoming fast enough that a minor speed hit in non-opimized code for certain actions would be negligible compared to the cleanness of the inheritance model. For the most part, I agree with them, except when I smack against a brick wall that logic from other platforms dictates shouldn't be there at all. Then it takes me a while to "think different" and realise that with an alternate approach, I could accomplish the task in a more efficient way.
In other words, With Macs you get shouted down for trying things that seem mundane on Linux or Windows, but on Macs you can easily do things that aren't even considered on Linux or Windows (even though they're possible if you try hard enough).
It's kind of like someone attempting to switch out the transmission from a Toyota with one from a Ford and getting shouted down for it; it's probably not the best thing to actually do to accomplish the goal that prompted you to do it in the first place. It doesn't mean you can't do it though... it's just going to take more work than you might expect, and give you virtually no gain in accomplishing your actual goal (unless the switch itself was your goal).
Also Apple, if you could sue over "Locking devices down to only run approved apps", "Mechanisms to prevent modders from replacing your firmware with their own on their own devices" and similar actions, hey, I might even start to like you again!
Yeah they can sue Nintendo, Sony and MS for copying them over this and I won't bat an eye.
...until N, Sony and MS just license the patent and then have a business case for making the license profitable.
The judge should keep his head and language cool, so neither of the parties can argue that they were unjustly treated and ask for a mistrial. It is like you bark back at a rude customer, it makes difficult to prove that you were right.
If the judge finds one or both sides deserve it, then he can present charges of "contempt of the court" or whatever fits. The judge is not at the court to get personal satisfaction, but to do his work.
She should really go after the lawyers and ignore the actual parties involved altogether. If the parties argue that they were unjustly treated in this case, they can sue their lawyers.
I do wish that more separation of counsel and client was to be had in the courtroom. If lawyers were penalized for misrepresentation (possibly even with jail time), we'd have more honest lawyers. There's a difference between defending a client you know to be guilty to the best of your ability, and attempting to game the court system to ensure your client wins, no matter the cost to all involved. A good lawyer should be able to keep most cases out of court altogether (but this doesn't make them as much money).
I wonder if it's possible to sanction ALL the lawyers.... Maybe that would set a precedent that if lawyers are abusing their privilege, they get sanctioned. This might clean up courtoom antics and make going to court much less painful, if the actual lawyers have to be continually responsible for their behaviour.
I was aiming for a communist joke, but upon recollection, we used to call the proponents of commercializing the .com TLD dotcommies back in the day... .edu as well -- and when everyone started using .org and .net, even though .org was for nonprofits and .net was for infrastructure.
I remember getting annoyed when educational institutions started using {institution}.{cc} instead of
Once the .com floodgates opened, I gave up caring.