Mac OS X Switcher Stories

spid writes "Tim O'Reilly posted an interesting article about people switching from other OSes (Mac OS, Windows, Linux) to Mac OS X. The resounding consensus is that most folks appreciate how, compared to these other OSes, Mac OS X 'just works.' O'Reilly also makes an interesting point that UNIX/Linux users, rather than Windows users, would be the best target niche for Apple's 'switch' campaign."

Re:windows has the majority of the market

[chesapeake]

Apple, does in fact, advertise to Linux users. Inside the cover of New Scientist, 29 June 2002 (AU edition) there is a double page advertisement entitled: "Sends other UNIX boxes to /dev/null."

A copy of this ad can be seen here. [xahlee.org]

They really are targeting OS X at the scientific Unix crowd, even Linux, as the ad says: "'After two-and-a-half years of Linux, I've finally found joy in a UNIX operating system. And I found it when I purchased a Macintosh - the first one I've ever owned.' - John Hummel Jr., The Gamers' Press"

While I can see them winning business off expensive Unix hardware, I wonder how effective they will be in targetting linux users.

Re:Two sides...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with the price? You get high-quality hardware, fantastic engineering, and you don't have to know shit about shit to keep it running. Let's pick on the American auto industry for a minute. You can get a GM POS for $12,000, and it will probably get you where you need to go. It'll be a bitch to maintain, stuff will break, and you'll have a crappy experience. But it's cheap! On the other hand, you can pay a little more for a BMW, Mercedes, or even a Honda Accord. It's basically the same as the Geo Metro (box with wheels and motor), but there's a fantastic difference in the quality of that you get, and therefore in the overall experience.

You get what you pay for. Most computers are commodities, but Apple's are the exception. They can charge the premium, because what they sell really is better than the box of spare parts running Linux in the corner.

Re:Port it for crying out loud!

[Mr. Quick]

how many times does this idea need to be brought up, and then quickly shot down because it will never happen?

1. apple makes their money selling hardware. they will lose all that revenue if people can just use a walmart $400 pc.

2. apple is a systems company, using the fact that they develop both the hardware and the software as an advantage to them. how many times do you hear the words *it just works* when it comes to apple computers? that's a big selling point for the bulk of the population who don't like to tinker with hardware.

3. yet another architecture change? i think not. moving from 68K to ppc went well, it took some time but it was a success. os9 to os10 is going well, most apps are there and the open source/hobby coder population is booming. so to go from ppc to x86 after moving to a new OS, the big software companies are just going to say no. that's suicide.

4. ibm's new power4 desktop chip [com.com] is further evidence that apple is going to stay ppc. this chip has 160 vector ops (altivec has 162), that's another big indicator.

i can't see apple going x86 in the future.

Other OSX Switchers

[figa]

The only OSX switchers I know are the ones who have abandoned the Apple platform for Windows. My mom, a retired EE from Motorola, got tired of hassles with TurboTax on the Mac and was worried about using a 1.0 port for OSX. She figured she may as well learn Win2k if she's going to have to grapple with a new UI. She was a Mac user since the SE days.

My wife, a graphic designer and longtime Mac user, also hates the UI. The finder doesn't feel right to her, and she forgets about the doc at the bottom. iMovie even hides the doc from you. She started using my Vaio laptop, and she's ready to dump her iMac.

Everyone says the Mac "just works", but the iMac DV she has is cursed with the "sleep of death". It hangs at boot about one in every ten times, and it never comes back from sleep states.I just found the fix for it (after assuming it was the hardware controller going out over the last two years), and it's going to involve digging in the extensions and clearing the PRAM. This is no fun, and there's no diagnostic output. I'm just going to have to try a bunch of different combinations that Apple recommends and hope that something works.

My four-year-old daughter cried the first time she saw the new OS and wanted to know what happened to her computer. She still doesn't entirely understand why her games don't work well in OSX, and why she has to reboot into System 9.

I've been a longtime Mac user, and I did a lot of ThinkC and 68000 assembler programming in college. I stopped using Apple machines as my primary desktop when they killed the clones, but I kept maintaining my wife's system. I went out and bought OSX for her when they ported iMovie, mainly for iMovie2. I can't say I'm happy with the interface. I'm a WindowMaker user, so I know where it's coming from, but I constantly forget about the doc and lose my way in the administration app. Aqua looks pretty, but that doesn't make up for the quirky UI. A lot of my Linux-using friends show interest in it, but I can't recommend it to them, especially when Apple charges twice the price of a decent PC for half the computing power.

My guess is that the guys O'Reilly dug up have more money than they know what to do with and really only use their machines to browse the web and fill their iPods. Most were late adopters (though he touts them as "alpha geeks"), which makes me suspicious of their commitment to the platform. My guess is that, a year or so from now the next bit Microsoft marketing campaign will convince them to switch back to the PC.

Extension Manager

[The Mutant]

Mac crashes pre-OS X were almost always related to extension conflicts.

An extension in Mac OS is somewhat like a device driver in other operating systems; its a piece of software loaded at boot time, that either extends or provides basic functionality.

Now the underlying OS was in fact stable; problems arose when folks would install sw in an ad-hoc fashion, frequently ending up with dozens of extensions - sometimes not even needed because the hw wasn't being used - but all resident in memory.

Sometimes these extenions didn't play well together; the result was a crash, and it was a crash due to what's called an "extension conflict".

Apple provides a piece of sw called 'extensions manager', which allows you to maintain and create different set of extensions.

I had a large number of extension sets, depending upon what I was going to be doing with the machine, and each installed only the extensions that I needed for that task.

Example: a quake set, an online / net access set, a set solely for scanning and running photoshop, etc, etc.

Yeh, it was a pia, but we had to work around the limitations of the OS at the time.

FWIW, I never ran across a crashing Mac that I couldn't stablise by 1) creating extenions sets, and 2) educating the owner on how to install sw and use extensions manager. No, I take that back - the Macs I couldn't stabilise by rationalising the OS / sw had hardware problems. It was as simple as that.

Apple compounded the problem, IMHO, by shipping Mac OS with loads of extensions already installed. For example, and this is just off the top of my head, frequently there would be extensions to support as many as four or five different printers and types of printers (i.e., b&w, colour,etc) , all installed by default!

Great since just plug a printer in and it works, but bad because not only does it impact system stabilty (as previously explained), but all those little pieces of sw need processor cycles, and this would impact overall system responsiveness.

No, I don't miss extensions manager at all.

But don't claim it was an OS problem. It wasn't - it was a USER IGNORANCE problem.

Re:OS X still feels beta, to me.

[J. J. Ramsey]

"The menu bar. I hate, loathe, and despise the way OS X always puts the menu bar at the top of the screen."

The menu bar is at the top of the screen for a reason, Fitts's Law which says that the time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target. Menu bar items are in essence inch-wide but mile-high targets, so you can zip your mouse to the top of the screen as fast as you like and you won't miss the target (the desired item on the menubar). In contrast, menubars attached to windows present far smaller targets. You are just very used to Windows-style menubars.

"I tried to do an su. Wrong password. (My account has admin privs anyway; I shouldn't need to do an su at all.)"

OS X has three privilege levels, not two: superuser (root), admin, and regular user. Admin privs are partway between user privs and full root privs; the idea is that you can run with some of the same privileges as root (i.e. privileges to install software for all users), without the problems of running as root full time. That's why you needed to do an su.

The Mozilla folder should have had you UID, not someone else's. That OS X's problem. Obviously you forgot your root password. That is *your* problem.

Re:Ok I'm convinced [here's your links]

[Anonymous Coward]

You can install the Unix portion of OS X [known as Darwin] on your Dell and then if you demand a gui interface drop xwindows on top of it. I've found that Darwin handles processes and threads so much better than Linux that you won't look back :-)

http://www.gnu-darwin.org/x86.html

http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/ 1. 4/release.html

Gene
Software Engineer
www.genedavis.com

Re:Interesting Negative Switchers Story on Salon.c

[Corporate Troll]

Quel Suprise

It's "Quelle surprise", because "surprise" is female: it is "une surprise" and not "un surprise".
Not to bash you, just the friendly advice of your local frenchie. I get bashed for my english all the time here on slashdot.

Re:OSX upgrade costs

[softsign]

If you're an ADC member, you'll get Jaguar (and every other system software release) free.

ADC Student membership costs $100/year. If you're a student, it makes more sense to get ADC membership than to buy Jaguar.

Re:SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING: clusters and Xserve

[Anonymous Coward]

well OS X.2 includes GCC 3.1 and those geniouses at apple rewrote the math libararies to automatically use Altivec/VMX in any app compiled by the new GCC3.1 :P

Re:Who is switching

[IamTheRealMike]

Well, some of your points are good. But PLEASE don't make the mistake of assuming that simple is better. I've covered all these points many times before, but I'll do it again.

You will say apt-get and I'll say hallelujah, its a great thing, but why cant i just install the freaking app where I want it too, and delete it by trashing it. rpm --erase??? Who would think of that?

Oh please no! Not appfolders again! Appfolders have so many disadvantages it's not even funny. They are far, far, far too simple for even most apps, which is why there is not one, not even two but three different ways of installing software on the Mac: Drag'n'drop, Apple Installer, 3rd party installers (ie Wise). Appfolders don't meet many developers requirements. Some more disadvantages:

• No dependancies. This is the biggy. Contrary to seemingly popular opinion, sharing code is a good thing, and should be encouraged. Appfolders don't let you check if something the program needs is installed, so all apps are huge and monolithic. Eurgh. It also means that only Apple can really ship updates to the OS, as users would have to manually do the update themselves. And guess what? They charge a lotta cash for the updates.

• No install time customisation. Ever noticed that when you install Office, you can choose which features you want? That's a popular feature. So popular that the latest versions feature install-on-demand. Can't do that with appfolders. This makes the problem of monolithic apps even worse.

• No user interaction. How do you present EULAs? (hint: can't use DMG backgrounds as they must be click through). How do you check serial codes? Oh - you need an installer/

• Menu customisation anyone? I find this soooo irritiating with the Mac, I have to start all the apps from the Finder. Okay, now what if me and my brother want different list of apps? We both use lots of different apps, quite literally hundreds, and don't want them interfering with each other. The only way really is to create a subfolder and try and organise by "both use them", "I use them", "you use them". This doesn't scale to networks without all sort of horrid symlinking, which sort of defeats the point.

In short, appfolders seem like a good idea, but actually aren't.

The sad part is, most of what macosx has done could and still can be done on linux. Make a restricted distribution. Share earnings with app developers.

I don't understand this. What's a restricted distro? And last time I checked, SuSE and RedHat did actually pay their developers.

root should only be a single user mode thing. Like gentoo, make init scripts dependent on whats running and whats not. Simplify the runlevels to single-user, and multi-user. Reduce hardware complexity by certifying systems based on linux friendly manufacturers. run daemons not as root.

Huh? What? Even MacOS supports multi users not as root. Only 2 runlevels? Why???? It's not like the average user will even care. Why reduce flexibility for no increase in usability? Certifying systems? Sorry, this is the real world, a lot of people have systems that were modern once, then they upgraded, or that were built to order, or that they bought from the shop down the street and so on. The answer is to make Linux hardware support perfect - not to reduce user choice!

Get rid of the start, or hat, or whatever menu. Get rid of the XP like icons(see redhat8 beta). Give gtk a default look which dosent look like grey shit. Use a tasteful muted color scheme. Make sure pcmcia and usb and firewire just work on plug in. Use hotplug and devfs like mandrake do. Get rid of one million etc config files and use gconf and alchemist like redhat do. Simplify the gnome2.0 desktop

Wow. A lot more suggestions. Why get rid of the start menu? 95% of the world are used to it. You can always use Gnome, or E, or WindowMaker if you don't want one. The new RedHat null icons are hardly XP style, I've seen them. If you mean cartoony, well switch themes! There are plenty available. Yes, the GTK default theme is ugly, but changing that took me 1 minute on gnome 2. The theme files are tiny! Simplify Gnome 2? How simply do you want, it's about as simple as you can get. They need to add more features, which will mean more complexity! FYI GConf is just a front end to a load of XML config files ;) Devfs support is not yet 100% bug free, so not all distros use it yet - it's coming, be patient.

The rest of the ideas aren pretty good, but they are hardly necessary for a slick desktop. Unified mimetyping between shell and nautilus? Yeah, it's a cool idea, but hardly critical. You want to see them? Well, you know what'd I'd say ...