Confessions of a Mac OS X User 989
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?"
This article doesn't make sense..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
Answer: (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Linux has a loooong way to go as a desktop OS. The word from LinuxWorld was "It's not quite there yet.." which means that other people feel the same way.
Mac OS X just works. It has applications that I need to get along. I like having some games. I like having stuff like iSync & iTunes. Yes, I know there's Linux apps, but I like how everything works *together* and isn't an ugly kludge. See, at work, I need to get *work* done.. I don't have time to futz around with Xconfig.
I have never ever felt guilty about using Mac OS X instead of Linux on my Apple hardware.
Linux goes on the *x86* hardware anyway.
What a silly article.
Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell no. I only ever use Linux for servers.
Using any of the window managers that ship with Linux makes me love my OS X box even more.
And hardware lockin is a double-edged sword. If the hardware is of poor quality is is indeed a problem but I have never had an issue with any of the Apple hardware I have owned that I couldn't get fixed by an Apple tech in a few days.
Can't say that for some of the x86 beige box machines I've owned that I've had Linux on.
never felt guilty (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like programming: java, perl, c++ depends on the solution I need to solve.
Jonathan
Let's all step back for a minute. (Score:4, Insightful)
use what works (Score:5, Insightful)
And then I look at the current state of the Linux desktop: it's pretty much caught up to Windows, but it's got a long way to go before it matches the Mac. I switched from M$ to Apple when I realized how much Windows sucked in comparison to the MacOS, and I've never really regretted that decision, so why would I want to take a step backwards? At the end of the day, I'm a pragmatist, not an ideologue. Use what works, not what someone else tells you that you should use because it's morally superior (Linux) or what everyone else is using (Windows).
Right here, right now, OS X lets me get my work done faster, more efficiently, and more enjoyably than any other OS. If that changes, maybe my choice of OS will too. It hasn't happened yet, and honestly I don't expect that it will any time soon.
Feel guilty? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, I feel no guilt in using the right tool for the right job.
Re:This article doesn't make sense..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed... The "guilty" question is the really puzzling thing:
It also raises the obvious question: have you ever felt guilty over using Mac OS X instead of Linux?
Why would you feel guilty for not using a F/OSS operating system? This is just ideology run amuck. Programmers and engineers need to eat too. We can't all work for free.
I'm not even an Apple user, because of the cost. But Apple makes a good product and charges what it's worth. You get a well designed package, with hardware and software components designed by the same manufacturer to work together as a system. I can't go to Fry's, buy a cart full of cheap commodity PC hardware, and expect to (easily) run Mac OS X on it. So what? Avoiding vendor lock-in is one thing, but why would you feel "guilty" for using it?
Enjoy! (Score:5, Insightful)
So do I but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, I run 200 Macs, but I use Linux boot-CDs to image the ones from the pre-firewire days. It's just easier to have a respawning pair of 'netcat' processes listening on the server than fiddling with open-firmware or netrestore. I just boot the mac with the linux CD, netcat the file down and dd it to
Do I feel guilty about not using Linux? Sometimes, I feel bad for not using Linux on my x86 box here, but I need to run a windows app to track tickets on it. I feel bad for not running a few Linux boxes for the kids to toy with on campus, but if they show an inclination to geekiness I'll be showing them the way to OSS anyway.
No... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OSX is not open source (Score:5, Insightful)
Explain yourself.
Apple uses OSS as the foundation of Mac OS X. Apple uses open standards where it is possible in all aspects of the operating system and their applications. Apple even uses an open processor platform instead of IA-64 or IA-32.
I don't know of anyoen that says this. Monocultures are bad. Interoperability is good.
As far as Netflix Fanatic is concerned, Cricket still works for Apple. What does that tell you?
This guy just had bad luck with hardware. (Score:3, Insightful)
I've heard no hardware crap out stories so far about Apple, but what they DO need to make their offering rock solid is on-site support contracts like Dell has - where a person comes to you, bearing a replacement part. I've used this three times in two years, it's been great.
On the other side of the story, comitting to OSX (or any Apple product, or Microsoft product) is comitting to Vendor Lock In.
So stop your whining about "guilt" you little troll boy and use OSS and an more open hardware platform, and then contribute something to the community other than these stupid articles.
Re:Felt guilty for using Mac OS X? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, wait, they do!
Re:OSX is not open source (Score:5, Insightful)
You clearly havne't been visiting
Re:OSX is not open source (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This article doesn't make sense..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't base the quality of a PowerBook on problems people are having with iBooks, they are completely different animals.
I have a TiBook 1GHz and considering the hell that the cat put it through it can take more than "normal use".
Guilt. Linux. OS X. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This article doesn't make sense..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple has been having loads of problems with the iBook, but normally their hardware is rock solid. Their "Power" hardware is especially good. If I had a need for a new laptop right now, it'd definately be a Powerbook.
Um, who cares (Score:2, Insightful)
I have a Windows XP desktop and a LINUX desktop and they appear as one large desktop thanks to x2vnc.
Yeah this may be
-M
PS: This thread presupposes desktops... if you're talking about backend systems, I'm *NIX all the way.
Re:OSX is not open source (Score:2, Insightful)
But Apple does do good things. For example, there are at least two or three Apple people working full time on GCC, including integrating various things Apple has done locally back into the main tree. I hear they have roughly the same thing going on with BSD and probably some of the other OSS stuff they use. Self interest? Of course, if it's in the main tree they don't have to deal with re-integrating it each time they want to pick up a new upstream release. But when was the last time you saw MS or SCO or (insert supposedly evil company) do something like that?
Any model that fails to give you control of the hardware and software that you pay for is a bad one.
You only have full control of the hardware when you build it yourself, from stock parts. If you buy your boxen from Apple or Dell or IBM or whoever, you should pretty much expect some degree of hardware lock-in. That's the way it goes, especially with laptops. Deal.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Fashion is silly. (Score:1, Insightful)
iBooks, PowerBooks and other laptoops (Score:2, Insightful)
As far a hardware lock in is concerned, there is a degree of hardware lock in for all laptops. Apple uses the same SO DIMMS and hard drives as PC laptops, though I haven't tried to get a non Airport miniPCI board to work in an Apple. Now on the desktop side there is a lot of commodity hardware for PCs.
The real argument isn't hardware replacements, it's competition. Apple makes it's money on the hardware. It's why the OS is for their hardware, and as a technincal side benefit, gives them control over how the hardware and the OS interact. I don't think Apple could reasonably port OS X to the PC for business reasons. Right now, if you want to run OS X on a laptop, guess who you have to buy from? It's simple economic, only made slightly more complicated by the fact that the PC laptop market exists. You can think of it (simplisticly) as two different markets, a low compition market i.e. PC vs Apple, and a high compition market i.e. the PC laptop market. While Apple has to pay some attention to the PC laptop market, it is not bound to any individual vendor as a direct compeditor. If OS X was released for the PC, Apple could no longer take that stance.
Re:Never used an Apple product in my life. (Score:2, Insightful)
3 words caught my eye, "never used" and "looked", says it all, go to the apple store and try one but use it and do more than look. How you can say they are unintuitive is beyond me when they have guidelines for proper UI designs and they are known for their UI. I notice you didn't list any examples either.
Not flaming you, just giving you a nudge to open that mind. I'm on my 3rd in less than 12 months (not due to failures mind you), with windows I had 4 for 3 years!
Re:Makes perfect sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
Can't you just drop the Mac drive into another Mac?
Re:Makes perfect sense... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not with a laptop you can't. Dell and IBM use different form factors for their drives (even though the disk itself is the same). Now if you're talking about a desktop, they're just IDE drives. You can swap Apple drives in and out of Apple machines with ease. In theory, you could even swap them into PCs, but reading the filesystem might be a problem. (Same reason no one puts a Sun drive in a PC.)
What's that? You were trolling? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be a PITA. Wait. Yes I did.
Apple's not all that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of the stuff they do now is based on open protocols, and a lot of times these are protocols developed at Apple and then released. Rendezvous is probably the best example; this is something that computers users desperately need (yes, you too, even if you don't know it) and Apple's actually given us some hope we'll see it.
No, Aqua itself isn't open, but the Unix underpinnings are, and Apple does everything they can to give advancements back. Safari is based on an OSS rendering engine, and they've contributed back to that project quite a bit. They used an open (if not common) format for their audio (sorry, does Ogg have DRM? No? Then Apple can't use it).
As to the link you provided, that's totally unrelated. The guy is employed as a software developer at Apple. All employers have non-compete agreements with their employees, and all employers are somewhat harsh about employees doing things at home that are related to what they do at work. I'm currently under the thumb of a contract in which I'm modifying my own GPL'd code for the company but I can't rerelease the code. Incredibly stupid and annoying, but incredibly standard. And, of course, totally unrelated to this topic or to SCO.
As to control of the hardware and software, I guess it depends on your definition of "control". I can't think of any senses in which Apple has control of either my hardware or software. I can install whatever I want on my Macs, and it will only take <1 second to get through the BIOS, as opposed to the shite x86 boxes and their shite BIOS. I have control of the software too, in the sense that I've upgraded the crap out of OS X and strangely Apple hasn't seemed to mind. What do you mean by "control"?
Re:OSX is not open source (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony is that its the zealots (whatever banner they ride under) that are the first to accuse everyone who doesn't agree with them of zealotry.
Listen up, buddy, it's a fricking tool. Get over yourself and find something worthwhile to fight for. It's a shame that hordes of idiots--who don't even have a vested interest in it--flame and whine until you drown out all relevant and reasonable discussion of what makes one tool the right one for a particular task.
Re:This article doesn't make sense..... (Score:5, Insightful)
The all-too-common misconception again. I'm an engineer and a programmer, working only on free software projects, and I make a decent living off of it. (Before you ask, "only free software projects" means that for software that is released to the general public, I request that it is under a free license, otherwise I won't work on it. For internal software used only at a customer site, the question naturally doesn't apply. I do recommend using free software as infrastructure in these cases though. So all my work centers around free software, literally.)
It all depends on where you set your priorities, and whether you are willing to question the established way of dealing with software, and try something new.
A lot of big businesses are jumping onto the same bandwaggon right now. And when someone like IBM does it, believe me, there's a lot of money involved.
Guilt? (Score:2, Insightful)
I am an Apple user (Score:4, Insightful)
I would *love* to use Linux but I can't even get XDarwin and MacGimp to run on my powerbook. So yes, I do feel guilty sometimes. Is it aan overwhelming, mind numbing guilt? No, but it is there.
"Guilty?" Good God No. (Score:5, Insightful)
OS X gives me a nice solid UNIX with a much nicer interface and better vendor support (both software and hardware). Thank You Very Much.
Besides, Apple's laptops are Really Nice and I haven't yet had anything like the same number of little annoying problems that I've had with both Windows and Linux on laptops. (This may well be related to generally superior hardware than you find from PC vendors who are engaged in cutthroat competition, but whatever.)
I actually bought our household's first Mac for my wife because I got rather tired of reinstalling Windows (and all her apps) for her every 3 months when it puked all over itself. I wanted something that wouldn't require a lot of admin effort on my part, but that was still easy enough to use and with enough software that she wouldn't pull her hair out.
It worked, although there were some teething pains as we both learned to use it and dug up the applications she needed.
I ended up liking her laptop so much that when it came time to replace my Linux laptop I went with a Mac for myself too. The silly things work well.
apple's hardware lock-in (Score:1, Insightful)
I think this model is a double edged sword for apple. But if you think about the benefits, I really don't mind paying the extra $$$. Apple knows exactly what kind of hardware is in what platform, and it is just a small set of hardware to support. We don't have to deal with APIs with layers of drivers piled upon it. All the hardware works together very well, and is packaged together very nicely as well. As a result, you fire up OSX, OSX knows what to expect, and you have everything working right out of the box.
If you're concerned about competitive hardware and bargain prices, use a PC - hardware has only gotten faster, and cheaper. But if you don't mind paying the extra dough and settling with hardware that isn't bleeding edge/top of the line, but would like somethign that works, buy an apple.
I hate to bring in the age-old, cliche cars to computers analogy, but I'd much rather have a well built all-around car with parts that work together. You could buy the fastest engine, turbocharge it, but put on a crappy transmission with some incorrect gear rations and you're going to be running into a lot of problems.
Eh.. I'll stop ranting here. So pretty much, I don't feel any guilt using OSX, although I miss hacking around in linux once in a while. I guess that's what yellowdog linux is for.
Re:This article doesn't make sense..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Never used an Apple product in my life. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can explain how the little colored circles are intuitive is beyond me. Normally one would associate the colors with traffic colors, red is stop, yellow is caution, green is go. How that relates to their use in OSX is beyond me. Maybe that's the reason why they need to have those bubbles popping up with an explanation of their use when the mouse hovers over them?
I know it is considered leet these days to think of Apple as a sort of God in the computer industry, but I personally find Apple to be more of a curiosa than a serious player.
Re:Bad Batch (Score:1, Insightful)
That's not a testament to Dell's solidity, it's a testament to your girl's insanity
Re:This article doesn't make sense..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Vender lock in (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see this as being "Vendor Lock-in" because at the end of the day, I'm writing software that I can use anywhere.
The Apple component (in this case a TiBook) is nothing more than a tool. All the output of my efforts (Java, Perl, etc.), can be moved to Linux, Solaris, BSD, Win32, etc., and it's not a big deal.
I still have a choice, in the long run and where it really matters, and if Apple pulls some crap that I don't like, I can still bail without really losing anything but a bit of my time and some cash for new development apps/gear. Even then, most of my apps that I use for development are platform agnostic, and won't need re-licensing.
My end product will still have COMPLETE choice of where it wants to reside.
Now, if I want to do MS development (.NET, etc.), guess what, I'm seriously locked in. I have NO CHOICE on where to run my apps. If I don't like it, tough. For that matter, I'd be locked into the Dev environment for the most part as well.
Which brings up another issue... trust. I have way more faith in the business practices of Apple than MS. I don't believe that Apple will do anything that will piss me off, whereas I'm quite confident that with MS it will only be a matter of time.
Guilty? Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we've reached the point where we're no longer able to simply take or leave an OS on its own merits. I use Linux most of the time because it's cheap, stable, and I like the KDE desktop. At work, I use Windows for proprietary applications unavailable elsewhere. I also have a cool older iBook running OS X that has taken years of rough treatment without causing me much offense. I'll buy a G5 soon to run Photoshop.
It's all a question of the right tools for the job at hand. Operating systems aren't a religion. There's no need to feel guilty using one or the other. No divine laws are transgressed.
That being said, I think the Open Source movement is highly worthwhile. It provides the means to quality computing for those who might not be able to afford proprietary software, and it certainly keeps Microsoft, Sun, and Apple honest. Well -- mostly honest, in the case of at least one of those companies.
I'm grateful to all those who have freely contributed code to the stuff I use. Power to the People.
But guilty for using OS X? How silly. Mac users should probably feel good about contributing to the diversity of the commercial software industry.
They should probably also feel good about an OS that works right out of the box, and which supports some quality retail software. Not to mention the time they save without the hassle of resolving dependencies, looking up hardware compatability, or the forever tweaking many of us actually enjoy with Linux.
Re:Makes perfect sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why there's this nifty new invention called screws . They're used to hold the hard drive into the mounting bracket. The best part is that they're removable! Ain't it great all the technology we got from going to the moon?
Re:Makes perfect sense... (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you ever actually tried this with Windows? Aside from having to go through "activation" again because of the hardware changes, most of the time it won't work right (if at all) afterward. I've done this countless times on desktop machines, and always end up having to reinstall Windows to fix all of the little annoyances and random slowdowns that happen from switching machines.
But I will admit that at least most of the major distributions of Linux are much more capable at handling the switch.
Re:This article doesn't make sense..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, maybe a well known fault, but this is the sort of hyperbole I'm talking about. Those online petitions contain maybe a thousand names (many of them as original as 'donand.d.duck@disney.com' and 'mac-sux@domain.com'').
Apple has shipped something like 680,000 [macworld.co.uk] iBooks in 2003 alone (137,000 in Q4 according to that article) - so a measly few thousand people with logic board faults doesn't really mean all that much for overall build quality and customer satisfaction.
"there are a lot of people with this problem, look up the petitions" - I did, and I looked at the total number of iBooks sold too. The number of people on the petitions (being generous and assuming they're all legit) makes up a mere 0.2% of iBook users just using the 2003 figures for iBook sales.
Zero point two percent, if that. Out of proportion hype? I think so! How often do you hear of major problems with Dell, IBM, Gateway [some other random x86 box maker] because of hardware problems? Certainly not on issues affecting such a small subset of the users.
I submit that you sir, are the idiot.
Guilt? I Don't Think So (Score:3, Insightful)
Why anyone would feel "guilty" is beyond me. There is nothing wrong with using closed source software, provided you are willing to accept the pros and cons of such a decision. (Also, if I wasn't using Mac OS X, I would be using NetBSD. The open source world is larger than the Linux kernel.)
As for the hardware, all laptops users are pretty much dependent upon the vendor for help, as every vendor pretty much custom enginneers their laptops. (It's too bad that laptop components have never become standardized the way desktop parts have. It would be nice to be able to build a laptop.)
Re:This article doesn't make sense..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I am an Apple user (Score:2, Insightful)
it's a damned tool, not your fucking life. My 'principles' when it comes to tools can be summed up as "I want tools that perform as advertised."
Linux as a desktop operating system is a fun thing to mess around with, but when you decide to settle down and do some work with the damned thing, that sort of nonsense gets in the way. My ex-employer was a nearly 100% MS shop. In fact they're my ex employer because they tanked their UNIX servers (which I ran with over 400 days of uptime, with 24/7 workload) for NT/2000. I could never get a desktop (linux or FreeBSD) that I could run 100% of the time and not have to dual-boot back to Windows for something. When I started bringing my Powerbook to work, I didn't need to use Windows any more.
I could connect to the POS Exchange server, I could ssh to my UNIX boxes, I could open every stinking MS Word and Excel document on the network, etc. I gave my PC workstation back to the desktop support guys, and was happy with my dual-monitor setup with my Powerbook. Now, perhaps in a different environment, you could perform the same feats using Linux or FreeBSD. Believe me, over the course of 5 years, I tried pretty damned hard to keep from working in that unstable, virus-susceptible, insecure Windows environment.
Your F/OSS ideology can suck an egg. Those arguments aren't about which OS empowers the user more (the single user model, as set forth by CP/M and carried on through every MS product, versus the multi-user model as set forth by UNIX and UNIX-like OSes), or which one is better for some tasks but not so great for others. It's just a bunch of idealogical whining about open-source vs. closed-source. To top it off, the only license that gives true freedom to do whatever the fuck you want with the software (the BSD license, before someone screams that POS GPL) isn't even given a nod when compared to that fascist GPL shit. It's all well and good when it's an intellectual exercise, but when it comes to getting work done, I've found those arguments suddenly lose a lot of relevance.
Hell, if Windows didn't have so many problems, I would've used *that* at work, since I wanted to do a good job for my employer, even considering the lack of resources that they were willing to provide (like a decent UNIX workstation). Fortunately, since I was running a real desktop UNIX-like OS, which ran software that was compatible with the crap that my "enterprise" *cough cough* ran, I didn't have to. So roll that into a fatty and smoke dat shit...
Re:This article doesn't make sense..... (Score:4, Insightful)
It sucks that iBooks are failing, and I'm not denying there's a problem - there obviously is. It's just not as widespread as people seem to think or make out (although if my iBook kept failing I'd be pretty pissed off too!).
It would be a shame if you decided not to buy Apple again after your experience, although I can understand why you'd be reluctant. I've been an Apple user since the days of the 9600/300 - a machine that we still use 6 or 7 years on! I also look after a Beige G3, a Dual 450 G4, 12", 15" and 17" powerbooks, dual usb iBook and dual 2Ghz G5 - none have had any problems (aside from some booting issues with panther + ati graphics + g5 causing the display not to start, but that's been fixed now).
The author has a point (Score:3, Insightful)
RE: I lean more towards OS X than Linux too (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mac with OS X is the polar opposite of this, with a stunningly beautiful GUI and some of the most original GUI-related concepts I've seen on any platform. (Even Gnome and KDE couldn't seem to resist sticking to the Windows-esque concept of some sort of START type button in a corner of the screen with menu windows popping open from it, listing the applications you can launch. OS X bypassed that completely with the "dock" idea.)
If you really are a command-line "power user" in Unix OS's, then yeah, Mac OS X is currently not really for you. The thing is, I suspect relatively few of us really work from the CLI as much as we like to think we do. (I know for example, I have several good friends who are nearly Linux zealots, and they constantly like to point out the powerful things that can be done from the shell prompt. They're quite right, except I still see their machines running X and a window manager most of the time. Unless your system is primarily a server, being remotely accessed but not generally used locally, a GUI is usually more pleasing to the eye, and is the environment people would rather be in. (If nothing else, people like having nice looking pictures as their "wallpaper", instead of staring at a blank screen with white text and a blinking cursor on it.)
I think of Mac OS X as "Unix for the rest of us", sort of how the original Macintosh was supposed to be the "computer for the rest of us".
Re:This article doesn't make sense..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Up until recently, the Mac O/S wasn't really that geek-friendly in the sense that it didn't have a command line interface (the older ones had A/UX, but that went away for a while), it wasn't multiuser, it wasn't as powerful as Linux, and so on. So it has a reputation as "that user-friendly end user thing" among the kind of people who are into tweaking their Linux boxes. Plus there were all the cutesy touches that turned some people off, like calling their Java development environment "MrJ" (WTF???).
So the author is afraid the fact that he likes Mac OS/X means he "isn't worthy" like the old-time Pascal guys. He's afraid the spicy-Szezhuan devouring hackers are all going to make fun of him and throw fortune cookies at him while making rude noises. It's kinda funny, actually.
(Shameless advocacy section begins here)
I think it's bizarre that anyone would feel GUILT anyway, because OS/X is a great operating system. It gives you all the geek power of Linux (Perl, GCC, JDK1.4, a great IDE almost as good as Visual Studio) with none of the headaches. Turning on the firewall and turning off nonessential services can be done in one minute flat. Keeping the system up to date is a piece of cake, and because Apple is a profitable hardware vendor, you don't have to worry about them not having enough money to keep the patches flowing.
I was briefly annoyed that their filesystem isn't case-sensitive until I realized that it preserved case so it didn't break Java packages. So it turned out to be kind of a nonissue.
Finally, and this is where OS/X eats Linux's lunch, OS/X has perfect hardware support. Almost every piece of hardware on the market has an OS/X driver available. You don't have to kludge anything to work with a general purpose driver, you can use the manufacturer-supplied driver. So, you can spend your time USING your scanner, digital camera, and sound system instead of trying to make it work. That's priceless, ok? Not having to spend hours hacking away to get a scanner to work is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
Don't get me wrong. I love Linux. In fact, I use it on my other machine. But I love OS/X also, and I use that on this, my main machine. It's really about giving credit where credit is due. Apple's done a fantastic job.
Anyway, that's my
Re: I lean more towards OS X than Linux too (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a quick note for you: a CLI and a GUI are not mutually exclusive. The real question is - how many terminal windows are open at once on your friends' GUIs? At an average I'd say I have 5 or 6 terminals open at any one time using linux. And I often have two cygwin terminals open when using Windows.
Of course it's nice to have pretty wallpaper and a few bells and whistles. But they don't get the work done
Re:What?! (Score:3, Insightful)
- Kick-ass junk mail filtering (it uses Bayesian filtering, which is a very smart way to detect junk mail).
- Expose [apple.com]
- Applications use a consistent GUI, unlike Linux (and sometimes even Windows with its ideas like "To shut down, click on 'Start'"). One big difference from Windows and Linux is that most OS X dialog boxes have button text that is written in verbs (such as "Save file" and "Don't save file" instead of "Yes" and "No"). That way you can quickly look at a dialog box and know what to do without even reading the full text. When you have no time at all to get something important done, this truly helps.
- Default application settings often make sense. The amount of settings I need to change to set it up for my liking is minimal.
- For those times when default keyboard combos are crappy (rare), you can use keyboard combo remapping to custom-map menu options to keys (yet another Panther only option*) -- under System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts. Keyboard combo remapping is easier with GNOME, I'll admit, but I have always had trouble with it keeping the changes I make.
- Applications are self-contained, meaning they don't have their files scattered across multiple directories. You could copy your already-installed applications over to another computer and they would work perfectly. Most applications you can just drag into your "Applications" folder/subdirectory and be done with it -- no other step is necessary.
- iPhoto works very, very well with digital cameras. The prints you can order online from Kodak are excellent and easy to order.
- No product activation to worry about.
- Unlike Linux, the thing just works. There is no tinkering required to get the results I want. Unlike Windows, it doesn't crash and behave oddly. I can still get Windows 2000 and XP to crash and act quirky on occasion.
- Attention to detail -- lots of the OS software has intuitive features that make life easier. Try typing the first few letters of a long word (such as "unequivocally") into Mail or any program with a text box, and hit alt-Esc. It comes up with a list that lets you pick the words that start with those first few letters. Also, you can right click in any text box and tell it to "Check Spelling as You Type". Programs will remember this setting and apply it to future emails, web pages, text files, etc.
- FileVault can encrypt your home directory (wait a few versions to use this though, as it's kinda buggy right now). I know that Linux can encrypt its entire filesystem, but is it as simple as clicking a checkbox?
Anyway, the list goes on and on... I remember the first time I read Jamie Zawinski's quote, "Linux is only free if your time has no value", I completely disagreed with it... Although, I realized after a few years that I was only in high school when I was learning Linux back in '96, and my time pretty much had no value back then. Now that I've grown up somewhat, and my time does have more value, I don't really have the time to be tinkering with my computer for six hours a day. You know the process -- trying to get something to work, just so you can then get to work on what you were intending to work on in the first place... That doesn't cut it when you need results quickly.
Anyway, Apple has been great in filling the void for a very well-functioning UNIX laptop system, and I praise them for that.
Re:Don't ask me.. (Score:1, Insightful)
I was a Mac user before OS X, but I now consider the Classic Mac OS history - it had its place at one time, but OS X is where it's at now.
Sure, I could run Linux on a cheap Dell laptop. I did for awhile, but had to keep switching to Windoze a dozen times a day to work in MS Publisher and Word since my employer chooses to be ignorant about computing ("If everyone else is using Windows, there must be a good reason, so I will use it, too").
I am writing this in Safari, on a Rev. C iMac I bought in early 1999. I gave my Dell to my sister, who couldn't care less what kind of computer or OS she uses (though I did get her to start using iTunes instead of that other crap). I need a faster computer, and when I get one it will be a Mac, and I will run OS X. I have nothing against Linux, but it's incomplete and confusing for most casual computer users. I can see the advantages of it, and I'm a supporter of OSS, but there's just too much to screw around with to make a Linux box run the way I want it to.