Penguin2Apple

Dark Paladin writes: "What happens when a Linux lover takes the plunge into a Mac for the first time in his life? Turns out he falls in love, to the point of abandoning Linux and taking up OS X full time. Read about the conversion in Penguin2Apple. And pray for mercy on his soul."

Free2TwoGrand

[kiltedtaco]

Did this guy have to pay for it?
Do they describe his reaction then?

Re:Free2TwoGrand

[mgkimsal2]

Does OS X cost $2000? I dunno, but I suspect not. Was his previous Linux box completely free of cost? Again, I suspect not.

I'm not pointing the finger at you necessarily, but the computer itself isn't free. People who routinely spend hundreds on speakers, sound cards, 3d whatzamajigger graphics boards, etc. bitch and moan about the cost of an OS. Yes, 'free' as in speech is good, and 'free' as in beer is good too, but don't bitch about the 'beer' one if you've got a system that costs more than a few hundred bucks, please.

Re::Free2OneAndOneHalfGrand

[mgkimsal2]

Fair enough. :)

Re:Free2TwoGrand (try $1488 to $1499)

[petard]

Suppose he buys a comparably equipped PC from a reputable manufacturer. Let's say Dell, for the sake of argument.

• 
  Dell Dimension 2100:
  
• 1100 MHz Celeron Processor
• 256MB RAM
• 40GB HD
• 15" LCD Display
• Integrated Intel 3D Graphics
• NO IEEE 1394 (firewire) port
• Harmon-Kardon HK195 Speakers
• DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive
• 1 year warranty

Total cost: $1488

• 
  Apple iMac:
  
  
• 700 MHz PowerPC G4 Processor
• 256MB RAM
• 40GB HD
• 15" LCD Display
• nVidia GeForce 2 MX 32MB DDR
• Apple Pro (also Harmon-Kardon) speakers
• Firewire interface
• DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo drive
• 1 year warranty

Total Cost: $1499

So if he didn't want firewire, it'd be more like $1488 to $1499 (Or Free2ElevenDollars, as you put it). If he wanted firewire, add $70 for an Adaptec firewire board. If he wanted a better video card, add $60 for the one included in the iMac. In this case, it'd be $1608 for the PC setup to match the iMac, and the package still isn't as nice :-)

So maybe an even better subject would be "Free2OneHundredNineDollarRebate"

Re:Free2TwoGrand (try $1488 to $1499)

[BrookHarty]

Id rather buy on Pricewatch [pricewatch.com] or ebay, ubid or my favorite Computer Geeks [compgeeks.com]

Ive see complete systems for 500 bux, or Imacs for 600. Add some ram and a new video card, very very useable. Hell, I bought some e-computers for some people for 400 bux with rebate, (no msn rebate, straight cash). Picked up a monitor for 99 bux at a local Computer Stop [computerstop.com] and they where set.

It helps to know what and where the deals are, Dell, Gateway, etc are NOT good deals. They are average deals. Side note, Want sticker shock? Check out PC's for hardcore gamers, AlienWare [compgeeks.com] or Falcon NorthWest [falcon-nw.com]

Re:Free2TwoGrand

[RevAaron]

Amen. To say that Unix is only worth using because some implementations are it are RMS-allowed is to insult it. I use Unix because it's the best thing there is available out there that's still viable. It's incredibly primitive, inconsistent, and is 60s state of the art, but it's still the best option until something like OpenBeOS really takes off.

I've an iBook500- and I love it. I sold my G4 tower last summer to buy it, and I can safely say that it's the best computer I've ever owned. :)

hey

[the_2nd_coming]

OS X is better.......you get to use all your favorite CLI tools, all your favorite web and dev tools, all your favorite GUI tools, get to use MS Office (for those who like it) and get a realy smooth, out of the way GUI.

whats the problem....if you used Linux as just an alternative to MS or because you like Unix, and not becaue it was free as in speech.

Re:hey

[jaffray]

Unfortunately, you get one smooth GUI, and if you don't like it, you're stuck. Such are the joys of closed systems.

I tried MacOS X on a TiBook for a full day. The window management and (lack of) keyboard shortcuts were, to me, impossibly clunky. While preferences in keyboard vary, I found that the keyboard hurt my hands much more than my ThinkPad 600 or various Dell laptops - and because it's Apple, I don't have a wide choice of hardware. So, regrettably, I went with an ugly Dell Inspiron 4100 instead.

Re:hey

[grub]

Unfortunately, you get one smooth GUI, and if you don't like it, you're stuck. Such are the joys of closed systems.

If you don't like Aqua just run any of your favourite X window managers. Yes, OSX is capable of running X.

Re:hey

[Matthew Weigel]

Unfortunately, you get one smooth GUI, and if you don't like it, you're stuck. Such are the joys of closed systems.

The alternative in a free system being, you get lots of crap GUIs, crap hardware support, crap APIs....

Hey, I like Freenix and I have been a pretty happy camper using OpenBSD as my desktop system. But I didn't even hope to do things with it that I expect to simply work under OS X.

Also, I don't know about you, but a lot of my friends who rag OS X about being proprietary absolutely insist on using qmail. My apologies if you actually eat your own dog food.

The window management and (lack of) keyboard shortcuts were, to me, impossibly clunky.

I'm curious what your problem was? Cmd-H (hide), Cmd-~ (switch window within app), and Cmd-Tab (switch app) seem to do well enough. Of course I prefer Windows-style app-switching, but Apple decided a while back (OS8?) that they didn't.

While preferences in keyboard vary, I found that the keyboard hurt my hands much more than my ThinkPad 600 or various Dell laptops

Well, Thinkpads have the best keyboards bar none; I don't much care for Dell keyboards, but I did find that the iBook has a better keyboard than the TiBook - I'm not sure why Apple let that happen, but I've seen a lot of people agree with me on that.

Re:hey

[Enahs]

OS X is better.......you get to use all your favorite CLI tools, all your favorite web and dev tools, all your favorite GUI tools, get to use MS Office (for those who like it) and get a realy smooth, out of the way GUI.

If out-of-the-way is defined as in-your-face high-resolution-demanding and high-memory-consumption, then yes, I guess it's better.

whats the problem....if you used Linux as just an alternative to MS or because you like Unix, and not becaue it was free as in speech.

I think I understand what you're saying, though it needs a rephrase. No, I started believing in Linux because it was an alternative to the Big Two's ever-increasing bloat and let's-do-everything-kernel-level. OSX is mostly Old School, so I don't use it. And it has terrible hardware support (even the latest release.)

Re:hey

[larkost]

As both a MacOS X user, and someone who has hitchhiked in a Trabant, I think you are wrong here.

I am not sure what exactly you are complaining about in your UI rant, but I guess that it has something to do with the users/groups permission idea. If this is what is bothering you, then you need to realize that this sort of thing is required in a multi-user system in order to make things work. Just because you are unfamiliar with it does not make it bad... And if you think that Window's doesn't have the same complications... then you are right until you move onto an NT kernel, and then you are right back in the think of things. It does it a bit differently, but it is the same idea wrapped in a different cloak.

And I have been using MacOS since before version 1 (0.9.4 if memory serves), and feel that MacOS X is in the line of progression from that venerable OS. It is about as big a jump as 6 to 7 was in many ways. People complained then, as they do now, but it is all for the best.

NeXT, and it's OS failed because of market and pricing issues, not technical or ascetic ones, and I am not sure what there is to compare to NetInfo on MacOS 9 or Windows, unless you want to talk about Macintosh Manager or Active Directory, but those are just as arcane as NetInfo, and are not what "users are used to these days". I think you were trying something above your head, and feeling dumb because of it.

And Apple was trying things on their own, it was called Rhapsody (and Pink before that), and never went anywhere. Whithout Steve Jobs (or someone with equal vision) to hold the whip the project was going no-where, as was Apple in general. In buying NeXT apple got a injection of new talent, code, and vision.

I am not sure what it is you want in a UI.. and I think neither do you, but I am happy with where MacOS X is now, and happy with where is see it going.

Look, BS. Never thought you'd find *that* on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the UI in OS X, and by this I mean the interface as it runs to the core of the machine, including multiuser model, security, filesystem, etc. and not merely GUI, is inherently flawed and, I think, impossible to fix.

Nice of you to not give any specifics. The multiuser model is straight Unix. The security model is pretty dang good. And MacOS X can use a variety of filesystems in a modular fashion. Don't like HFS+ for some bizarre reason? Okay, switch to UFS. Whatever.

The UI concepts that were the heart and soul of the Mac since '84 should never have been cast aside, and the development of progressively better UI should never have been allowed to stagnate since the early 90's.

Interesting of you to provide two contradictory phrases in the same statement. No specifics again I see.

OS X is little more than a reheated version of NextStep, an OS that flopped dramatically. Was it always said to have a great UI? Sure... but again, only as far as Unix went. (e.g. NetInfo is vastly better than the equivalent tools on Unix, and a total POS compared to what most Mac and Windows users are used to these days)

Ah, I see. Someone who has never used NeXTSTEP. But that wouldn't keep you from ragging on it, would it?

NeXTSTEP had a wonderful interface. For its time, it introduced an astounding number of things which we now take for granted (and some we still don't):

• 3D widgets
• Drag and drop beyond just icons: images, colors, etc.
• A good graphics model (in this case, PostScript)
• Alpha compositing
• Non-modal dialogs
• Miller-column browsers
• System-level outline fonts
• System-level internationalization
• Unified printing architecture
• ....

...It goes on for quite a while. I'll cut short there. As to NetInfo, I've used Mac systems for a long time, and NetInfo is far superior to Timbuktu and other hacked up nonsense attempts at wide-system management. Windows mechanisms are rather worse than that still.

What NeXTSTEP's crown jewel was was its development environment. Heck, it introduced the concept of a UI builder, and astonishingly, InterfaceBuilder.app is *still* a better design for large-scale work than the current forms-based crap that is foisted on us by Java and C++ and Delphi etc. NeXTSTEP's API was OOP througout, highly dynamic, and very well thought out. It had a small set of very powerful, elegant classes, rather than (Java-style) a massive array of junk masquerading as a library. Even today it is matched by few as a UI development environment. Apple was damn lucky to get the opportunity to encorporate it into Cocoa.

Re:hey

[RevAaron]

If Apple had been willing to make hard decisions, such as dropping compatability with the Mac save through an emulator -- just as it is _now_ -- I think that they could've done better on their own.

Why would they have to drop it? Classic doesn't take away from the OS X experience at all, provided you're not using it. What would it add if it weren't there? Go ahead, delete it- it doesn't change anything other than your ability to run Classic apps.

No, OS X is a lot more (or less) than a "reheated version" of NeXTSTEP. You've obviously never used NeXTSTEP for any extended period of time. The NeXTSTEP experience was one that was way beyond what is in the Mac OS, OS X, and the Unices that use X11. I'm disappointed that OS X isn't more NeXTy, the UI and tools were killer.

Big deal.

[Psiren]

And pray for mercy on his soul.

I know this was meant as a joke, but really, whats the big deal here? He tried something else and prefers it to Linux. Good for him. Whatever floats your boat. Live and let live, etc etc.

Just as we accept the fact that we have people moving from other OSes to Linux, we'll also have to accept the fact that there may well be return traffic.

Re:Big deal.

[debrain]

Indeed. If he can find software for a computer that makes it work the way he expects it to, then he is among the luckiest of computer users alive, and if only the rest of us should be so fortunate.

Re:Big deal.

[Spackler]

And pray for mercy on his soul.
I know this was meant as a joke, but really, whats the big deal here?

It seems that you did not understand it was a joke.
I know that this is also OT, but did every poster on /. have a humorectamy lately?

Re:Big deal.

[Psiren]

My point is, why is this news? I'm sure he's not the first, and he won't be the last.

Re:Big deal.

[Snowfox]

My point is, why is this news? I'm sure he's not the first, and he won't be the last.

I'll play devil's advocate and burn some karma.

I suspect that Linux advertising isn't proving very profitable for Slashdot. Note the extra attention [slashdot.org] that Apple has gotten on Slashdot, coincident with their expanding revenue forms. It seems likely that Slash wants to become as much a Mac site as a Linux/free software site.

This isn't a dig. It's speculation, and it's probably good business sense. It'll even be interesting, perhaps even fun, so long as it doesn't impact the overall geekiness of the Slash blog.

Re:Big deal.

[KFury]

"I know this was meant as a joke, but really, whats the big deal here? He tried something else and prefers it to Linux. Good for him. Whatever floats your boat. Live and let live, etc etc."

The astute reader will notice that the "pray for mercy on his soul" comment was written by the story submittor "Dark Paladin" and "Dark Paladin" is also the author and subject of the article.

He's talking about himself in the third-person in an amusingly self-deprecating way. If we can't make fun of ourselves, who else is left?

Well, a prayer might be useful ...

[Erris]

He says he worships the Devil:

I played a little Dungeons and Dragons with my friends (until my parents, certain I would become a Satan worshiping pervert, brought an end to that one. Ha! Jokes on them - I became a Satan worshipper anyway.)

and he blames Linux for problems that hardware makers have created for His CTO, Bill Gates. Calling Linux hard to get close to while also talking about tits. What a strange... what is it? Ah yes, a perversion! That's it channeling your urges to inaproprate places.

It is right that you suffer, for your sins are great. Your punishment shall be to make my ATI video board work with my Soyo Dragon. It never did work right under windows 98. You may use the 30 pieces of silver, paid to write that article, if you would hire a real programer to do the work.

I did this...

[Dimwit]

Actually, I've used nothing but Solaris on my Ultra10 at home for years. But, then when I had to move overseas, I sold everything, and bought a laptop. My friend works at Apple, and got me a good deal on an iBook. This things rock.

OSX really is the nicest Unix I've ever used. I can play The Sims and CivII, and with the adddition of Fink [sf.net], you even get nice things like apt-get! It's great.

So, just for the record, I'm a old-skool-Unix-to-MacOS X boy, and it really does rock my socks. I recommend it to anyone. It's extremely Unix-y, but with a great frontend.

Re:I did this...

[garcia]

I saw an iBook. My History professor has one. It is the prettiest god damn thing I have ever seen (I am talking physical not OS).

I would still be partial to Linux. I could not bring myself to run an OS full time on my machine that costs money.

I want an iBook or a cube bad. I would still have to run Linux though.

That's me, what do I know?

Re:I did this...

[RevAaron]

I would still be partial to Linux. I could not bring myself to run an OS full time on my machine that costs money.

Huh? Macs come with OS X, pre-installed even. Or do you mean that you couldn't run software that is sold for money? People sell Linux too, perhaps you should just run HURD- there aren't any for-money distros of that yet, are there? Or are you under the impression that you have to insert a dollar into the computer every time you boot OS X? Or does the "that costs money" part refer to the fact that computer hardware isn't cost-free?

Me too. :-)

[basking2]

I'm using OSX as my primary system too. The reason is that as much as I like messing around with Linux, it just takes too long to set up a proper system. OSX is reasonable, pretty, and does everything I need and I can use a sizable number of Open Source programs on it.

Playing chess by voice doesn't hurt the system either. :-D

Oh well, just a positive opinion from some one who is extremely happy with Apple's products this past quarter.

That sounds about right...

[diverman]

Well, I still use my Linux boxes, but only as servers, and an occasional application (like GIMP). But in general... I love OS X. I can still do all the stuff I did in Linux, it comes with some fairly nice developer tools/IDE, I can use hardware that would be a pain in the ass to use under Linux, and I have new toys (apps) to play with, such as iMovie.

Better? Worse? I dunno... but I enjoy using OS X more than Linux, that's for sure... and I'd been using Linux regularly for the last 4 years or so.

-Alex

Re:That sounds about right...4 yer GIMP

[diverman]

I already tried GIMP on OS X, but there are a few more apps that I use on my Linux box... and quite frankly... why not farm out the CPU cycles to the Linux box? :)

I have XDarwin setup so that it remotely launches the GNOME tool bar from the Linux box onto my OS X desktop, when started up. Just about as good as having it run natively, and better, in terms of any load on the system.

This is my screen shot:
http://www.diverman.com/tmp/screenShot12210 1L.jpg

:)

-Alex

Broken computer

[W2k]

Interesting .. he mentions that after a Windows 2000 crash, the system wouldn't even power up. That sounds a LOT like a hardware issue, rather than a software problem. Windows isn't perfect (or even close), and sure, it crashes (tho Win2k/XP does so less than their predecessors ever did) but I have never had any machine crash on me so badly it wouldn't power up because the OS or some driver messed up. Sounds like he has a stick of bad RAM in his Windows box or something.

Anyway, while his article raises some good points, about 50% seems to be a huge advertisment for MacOS X, with lots of little screenies of all the features he says he's using, or not using. It got boring reading about after a bit.

Also, the site seems to have suffered from the slashdot effect already (web servers, they don't make'em like they used to), so for those of you who haven't read the article yet, here's a quick summary: "Used DOS, used Windows, it crashes all the time, boo hoo, Microsoft sucks, Linux is good but isn't what I want either, I read about MacOS X, love on first sight, MacOS rocks! MacOS rocks! MacOS rocks!, the end". That's about it, really.

Re:Broken computer

[Dark Paladin]

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's not (I wrote the article).

I've noticed with some regularity that when I tell Windows 2000 to reboot, it takes *forever* (well, not literally, but you know what I mean.)

Usually I wind up just killing the power to my Windows 2000 box rather than waiting for it to finish shutting down.

But that's just my opinion on it. I've had that problem on 2 different Compaq computers so far, so I'm pretty sure it's not a broken machine.

Not that your point isn't a valid one - I just don't think that's it.

Re:Broken computer

[W2k]

Windows 2000 waits for drivers to finish their thing before shutting down. This is what's causing the wait, it happens on some systems whose drivers don't clean up their act properly, so the OS takes ages waiting for them before finally shutting down anyway. My last computer had that problem, I then upgraded it to XP and the problem went away .. oh well. I think it was the VIA 4-in-1 drivers that caused it.

Linux versus Mac OS X is not a valid comparison.

[Lethyos]

First of all, "Linux" in this case is vastly a misnomer, but bear with it for the moment. Linux is an operating system that is trying to fill many niches in many markets. Developers work hard to give it a wide range of hardware support and a wide range of functionality (everything in the range of a variety of desktops to a variety of servers configurations). However, the overall Linux experience is the result of a tremendous amount of contributions from many directions in a community.

Mac OS X, exclusive to the Macintosh and suitable for limited roles, on the other hand, is different but same. Beneath that stunning, pretty Aqua interface, you have a set of powerful core API's that essentially make up widget sets and abstraction layers. Beneath that however, is a traditional unix architecture (Darwin). When you look at Linux, BSD, Solaris, or whatever versus Darwin, you see pretty much the same thing.

So what's my beef with the comparison? Mac OS X is more appropriately pitted against KDE, GNOME, or [insert favorite desktop environment here]. Apple is focused on offering a user experience which is much different from offering an operating system and a million and one tools to make it useful. Linux offers an operating system and a huge suite of software for doing a lot of things. OS X from the perspective of comparison, is a very well polished UI.

I am certain that if all OSS developers turned their attention to making a Quartz for Linux, it could be done. But, that's not the case because we're dealing with two different offerings altogether. So, it's stupid to run out and say "Mac OS X is going to beat down Linux" or just that "it's better" and people should "move over to it". No. No. NO. NO!

Two completely different animals with their own uses, strengths, and weaknesses. This whole "Penguin2Apple" thing is just stupid. You're moving from an operating system to a machine with a different processor. Pfft.

Re:Linux versus Mac OS X is not a valid comparison

[boxless]

WRONG. You can't compare OSX to Gnome or KDE. With Mac, you get nthe whole deal. You get all or nothing (including the hardware). The fact that you split things up into these little architectural layers means that you'll

When I set up my new G4 Mac with OS X, I don't recall having to futz with X, or window managers, or desktops. I just got it.

Just try to explain to a reasonably intelligent person the difference between X-Windows, a Window Manager, and KDE/Gnome. It's ridiculous. You need all three things to make a decent desktop appear on the screen. No such bullshit with Mac (or Windows, for that matter).

I totally agree with your assertion that they are two totally different animals with different strengths. Mac is a desktop OS that can be used as a decent unix box now with OS X. Linux is a decent server OS, that SUCKS as a desktop. Will people give up with this linux desktop shit? It is over until someone comes out with a completely unified desktop/window manager package that can be installed with a wizard. It has to be that easy.

You are not insightful.

[Steve Cowan]

Here's where you miss the boat:

I am certain that if all OSS developers turned their attention to making a Quartz for Linux, it could be done. But, that's not the case because we're dealing with two different offerings altogether. So, it's stupid to run out and say "Mac OS X is going to beat down Linux" or just that "it's better" and people should "move over to it".

So you're saying then, that if the OSS community created a functional equivalent of Quartz, which they have not, then Linux as a desktop OS would be just as good as Mac OS X. Therefore Linux is just as good as Mac OS X.

Oops! Quartz doesn't exist for Linux. Mac OS X has a one-year jump on it (longer if you count the public beta). Yes it could be done, but it's not there, so if you want Quartz, you have to run Mac OS X. Period!

When you look at Linux, BSD, Solaris, or whatever versus Darwin, you see pretty much the same thing.

To the consumer, Darwin is a kernel while Linux / BSD / Solaris are distributions, which include window managers and desktop environments. None of them compare to Mac OS X. Sorry... you can argue paltry little tidbits like multiple desktops and 3-button mouse support....

As I look down at my OS X dock I see 31 apps that I use regularly. Plus my Apache web server and ftpd are always running while my laptop is on.

I would like to know: apart from costing less, is there a compelling advantage to running a Pentium/Athlon - based system with Linux versus a PPC system with Mac OS X? With all the benchmarks I see posted, I don't think either hardware platform is trouncing the other in performance. More open-source tools exist for Linux, but Mac OS X is more user-friendly, with more commercial apps. And so far I have seen very little open-source software surpass proprietary software in terms of usability. Don't get me wrong, I wish it could. I want open-source to be the way software as we know it exists. But by the time it does, your hardware (and mine) will be obsolete.

So in the meantime I've got work to do, and I'm not a programmer. This is why I own 3 Mac OS X machines (and two older Macs).

Re:Linux versus Mac OS X is not a valid comparison

[RevAaron]

Uhh... I run OS X on a 300 MHz B&W G3, and it runs great. A 3 year old machine. Incidentally, GNOME and KDE runs OK on it (under Linux), but they're even less worth running when OS X is an option. OS X loves RAM- with 256MB of RAM, it runs like a champ.

Linux runs on a number of platforms, but it's far from practical. Sure, you can run it on a Palm, but it's not usable for anything other than the occasional embedded control (e.g. in a robot project).

Re:Linux versus Mac OS X is not a valid comparison

[Spencerian]

Your information is a bit off on the "OS X runs well" part.

Mac OS X runs well on machinery as old as January 1999. I know--I'm writing this post from my Power Mac G4 Blue-and-White, where OS X is fine. I've also run it on older hardware with fair (but not suitable) results back in its beta days.

OS X, like any other OS, needs RAM. About 128MB is OK if you are NOT running any Classic apps. If you plan on doing Classic, add another 64MB minimum. OS X prefers a decent video card (the RAGE 128 16MB card built-in works fine) which is what causes slowdowns on older G3 hardware such as the Beige G3 desktop/tower and earlier iMacs which haven't great video at all.

The differences between a G3 and G4 chip are subtle. What makes the speed is the same as on a PC motherboard--RAM, video, bus, and processor. Sure, OS X screams on G4 iron, but you don't -have- to go there.

Re:Mac nuts Vs Linux nuts

[Johnny Mnemonic]

For the record, I'm a Mac Nut. So I hope you will admire my restraint, and in fact my sacrifice of mod points, in my response.

Although I really do feel that criticism of OS X, the Mac, and Apple in general is good and healthy, when things are simply "ain't so" I have to speak up. When you say that the opensource presence in OS X is "zip ... nada ... nothing", you are ignoring the fact that the core of OS X is Darwin, and Darwin is, in fact, Open Source. [apple.com]

Sure, I realize that that excludes a lot of what makes OS X attractive vis a vis Linux, including Aqua and other layers, but the sum total of Darwin is a lot more than "zip." You do have the source for the network implementation, the I/O interfaces, memory usage, etc etc, and it is fairly well documented. Further, Apple accepts submissions back to the source just like any open-license software. If the omission of open code from OS X was one of the primary things keeping you away, you might want to take another look.

It all depends on your reason ...

[ssklar]

... for using Linux. If you are using Linux because of an irrational devotion to the "open source - free speech and free beer" ideology, then moving to Mac OS X would be a violation of your principles.

If you are using Linux because you have evaluated the alternatives, and it provides the best bang/buck ratio for the application(s) that you are using or deploying, then using Mac OS X would also be wrong.

But if your goal is to have the power and flexibility of a Unix-like operating system and the device support, smooth, consistent GUI, and application support of a commercial mass-market operating system, then it would be illogical to just discount Mac OS X as a viable option.

Re:It all depends on your reason ...

[JesseL]

Why is devotion to "the open source - free speech and free beer ideology" necessarily irrational? Honestly, for what I do, just about any recent os would be adequate for me. In my opinion Linux has a moral edge over the rest of what's out there, so Linux is what I use. You make it sound like I must be a frothing zealot for allowing my ideologies to have some factor in my decision.

Re:It all depends on your reason ...

[Chris Johnson]

Why would devotion to "the open source - free speech and free beer ideology" preclude OSX, either?

To me, being committed to Free Software has little to do with what you CONSUME. It's about what you produce. I write software, and that software is GPLed. I do it on MacOS, classic, with a non-free development environment because I'm NOT good enough to code straight C yet- though I did port one of my programs to C commandline and now use it in MPW. If I was on OSX, it would be running as a commandline program in a terminal window- and when I finally got my GPLed serious program ported to C, it'd be a lot closer to Linux ports and entirely free systems.

It's not about what systems _I_ choose to live in- it's about what I choose to put out there into the world. Which is better- coding on classic MacOS and adding ideas to the commons through GPL, or using entirely free systems and coding up DRM for them? Let's be clear on the concept.

Re:It all depends on your reason ...

[NumberSyx]

I meant that if one is using Linux over other, possibly more appropriate, operating systems, simply because of ideology, then that person is a zealot.

I think you use the word zealot too freely here. Someone who would cut off thier own hand rather than use another OS is a zealot. Picking Linux as your OS of choice based on ideology seems pretty reasonable to me. After all we choose many things based on ideology, religion and politics come to mind. Women who oppose abortion, will tend to choose doctors who also oppose abortion, even if thier are better choices. Ideology should not be the only reason someone should pick Linux, but it is a valid reason none the less.

Yes, Having Some Rationale Is A Good Thing

[krmt]

If you are using Linux because of an irrational devotion to the "open source - free speech and free beer" ideology, then moving to Mac OS X would be a violation of your principles.

Ok, I could mod you down as the flamebait you are for this comment, but I'd rather respond instead.

A devotion to Free Software and free speech is far from irrational for many of us. I've told my story before, and it applies specifically to the Macintosh, so you might be interested.

I was a major Mac zealot for many a year. I believed, and still do, that the Mac was the best OS out there for a lot of reasons, most of them the reasons you state. I didn't have to mess with registries or himem or config.sys or anything of that sort, I was just able to get my work done. Granted, I was a student and not doing anything very heavy duty, but I was able to get on the internet, get my hardware working, play lots of games, and write documents all very easily. Yes, the Mac was fantastic and I could do a lot with it and was far more productive on it that my friends with PC's.

But then the dark times came. You see, back around '95-'98 or so, Apple really looked bad. Copland was nowhere to be seen and we were stuck with our crashy old OS (mine was pretty stable, but I had to work very very hard at it) with shitty multitasking. I was still very productive, but that was because I really knew what I was doing.

But in many ways that was the least of our problems.

Software vendors were disappearing in droves. I saw Mac software drop and drop from the shelves, and only-Mac stores either start selling PC products or shut down entirely. Microsoft's last Office product was crap (they later made amends with Office 98) and the games were also disappearing right out from under us. You could almost sense a deep-seated depression in the community as our apps dwindled down to those peddled by Adobe and Macromedia.

So where do I come in to this one? Well, I didn't use Adobe or Macromedia products. My copy of ClarisWorks didn't work well on friends' Office docs, I couldn't buy new games, and I couldn't afford much beyond the basic items to begin programming software.

Yes, this last was a big deal for me, because I really wanted to help. I wanted to contribute, to help heal the community by providing missing pieces. I'd seen great technologies like OpenDoc and QuickDrawGX float away, and I wanted to provide something, some way of helping. But I couldn't. The books in the store were expensive, limited, and I couldn't afford many anyway. The Apple developer docs were hundreds upon hundreds of dollars (although I later got a full CD of them for $100, but this was still very pricey) and I could only afford the cheapest tools out there. I couldn't possibly understand why Apple wasn't helping me... didn't they want people to write for their system?

So I finally broke down and tried this Linux thing my friend had been telling me about for a few years. I switched to the PC because I was sick of my crashy MP3 player and lack of searching tools (Sherlock wasn't going to help me download music!) and a complete lack of games like Quake II and Starcraft, which have since come out on the Mac. But i mainly bought a PC to try out Linux. I didn't know about Free Software when I did it, and I didn't know that all the source code was there, all I knew was that anything was better than Windows, and I was deeply disgruntled with my Mac.

This probably sounds a little absurd to you too, but think of it this way. What if the company that you depend on for all your computing needs, a company that you have invested thousands of dollars in software and documentation and time in to learning suddenly abandoned you? What then? All your practicality of "best bang/buck ratio" has suddenly gone down the drain because the system becomes a lot less useful. I could only watch as my platform became more and more inferior, first with Office, then with gaming, then with Web browsing, then with MP3 searching and playing. What next, when would my platform become totally useless?

Now, Apple is doing very very well now, and I applaud everything they've done since Jobs came back on board. But that feeling still lingers on me. What happens if they abandon me? How far in to insignificance do I want to slide? A devotion to Linux and Free Software means that I can help myself, that the community can and will help itself. We may be a step or two behind Microsoft or Apple in some areas, but we're self-reliant, and we're not slaves to anyone else. This is the rationale behind Free Software. This is why a devotion to it is both useful and practical. And this is why I'll stick with Linux despite Apple's wonderful product and Microsoft's overwhelming support. I never want to be helpless again.

Here's the article

[W2k]

Slashdot effect hit the site [gamerspress.com], here's the article:

After 2.5 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 have ever owned. What could turn an Open Source junkie into a Mac-head? Click Read More and find out.

The Garden

How the Best Site on the Internet looks from OS X. Back in the '80's, I spent a lot of time doing many things that kids do. I played a little Dungeons and Dragons with my friends (until my parents, certain I would become a Satan worshiping pervert, brought an end to that one. Ha! Jokes on them - I became a Satan worshipper anyway.) I played ball with my friends, rode my bike around the neighborhood, caught a glimpse of Stacy Baker's 6th grade breasts when she showed them to me (I was in the 6th grade myself, and trust me, that fueled almost a year of fantasies) -

And I played some computer games. On an Apple II computer system.

That was really my first experience with computers. Playing games like Ultima III and Ultima IV (both bootleg copies, before I knew what "warez" was and that I should be avoiding it). I played text based games (most of them were never finished as I couldn't get the game to accept commands like "put egg in lake" or "drop egg in lake" or "slam egg into the damn lake you stupid computer!"

I went straight from the world of Apple II right into DOS. My father got a IBM computer, and I learned how to use Wordperfect 5.1 (which was the best word processor ever. I wrote the worst 12 year old 120 page book in the history of 12 year old books with that program.)

And then, one day, my father got Windows. I didn't get what the big deal was. Evidently you were suppose to be able to run multiple programs at once. I could never figure that out. Whenever I clicked on Wordperfect, the same DOS program filled the entire screen. (This was before I discovered the magic of the alt-tab command.) Right click, or click and hold down, and you can see the contents of folders you've put in the Dock.

When I left home, my father game me two gifts. Luggage, and a broken computer. From the broken computer I learned what is now my trade, moving into the world of Windows 95 and Wing Commander III.

But there was a problem. All the magic promised by Windows 95 never came. Maybe because every six months, I had to reformat the system and rebuild it. Oh, sure, Windows NT 4.0 was better - more stable, but you just couldn't run as many games on it. (I'm personally convinced that Microsoft never ported DirectX 5.0 to NT 4.0 just to get people to upgrade to Windows 2000. That, and because the company is composed of pricks.)

Even today with Windows 2000 and my development work, usually my day proceeds along "Work, work, crash. Reboot. Wait. Computer won't reboot. Shut down power. Work. Hang. Reboot. Boot into Linux for a few hours. Get some work done. Forced to reboot into Windows for some program. Crash." Dealing with Microsoft operating systems is like having the school president as your best friend. Yeah, he's pretty popular. But when you realize that you're just in high school, you realize he doesn't have the ability to do shit.

So I've suffered with Windows through the years, dealing with it because, well, that's all I had.

And then, I discovered Linux.

Want to run Xwindows programs in OS X? Get XDarwin.

A whole new world was opened to me. GNU/Linux, the Open Source operating system wonder. It seemed that this was the computing answer that I was looking for. People raged about how well it played Quake.

After trial and error, and learning my way through the system, I had a computer with Linux on it. And...it was good. I could do so many things. I learned how to use Fetchmail to get all of the mail from all of my mail accounts, and download it to the local box. I learned how to use IMAP so I could get my mail from anywhere in the world.

The mysteries of Perl became known to me, and I started to learn how I could edit files in gigantic sweeps, or how to tie it into Image Magick so I could edit the files on The Gamers Press at once instead of laboriously opening them all with The Gimp (which would take, literally, hours, as I resized, pasted logos, made thumbnails, and saved it all).

I learned the magic of the FTP server and SSH, or how I could plug my Linux box into the Internet and telnet into it from work so I could run programs and scripts. It was like magic. It didn't crash - even the day that the hard drive died, and the operating system kept running so that when I came home, I could repair the damage. I once made the mistake of accidently trying to open 500 1MB JPEG images at once in The Gimp - and the system didn't crash.

But...I still wasn't happy. Part of it was because I just couldn't get my Linux box do everything that I wanted. For one thing, no matter what I tried, I just couldn't get many games to run on it. I bought different video cards, purchased the Linux version of Quake, and Quake II, and other games. Who needs $400 for Photoshop when you can get the Gimp for, um, nothing?

For all of the instructions, I couldn't get my ATI TV-Wonder card, which I use to capture screen shots and movies from video games I'm reviewing, to work under Linux. People wrote about how I had to install patches into the Linux kernel, and recompile it.

You have to understand, the idea of recompiling a kernel is a terrifying idea to me. I've done it a few times, and each times my insides twist around like I'm 12 years old and about to see a girl's breasts for the first time. And even after all of that, obeying strange, cryptic comments like I was an alchemist trying to follow the instructions for turning lead into gold, still I couldn't get the ATI card to run under Linux.

And there were the other little things. As much as I love the Mozilla, the Open Source browser that Netscape is built on, I love it's stability, it's tabs (once you try tabs, you can't go back), there were still things that just didn't work right. Like the Java plug in. I tried to install that so many times, and it just wouldn't work. Or the ability to watch Quicktime videos from Linux. Or when people would send me Microsoft Word documents that StarOffice couldn't quite translate.

But the worst, the truly worst part, was cut 'n paste. Using Linux, I would tend to use Emacs, a wonderful text editor that takes me back to the Wordperfect days. Emacs is powerful, quick, does just about whatever I want. It also doesn't let me simply cut and paste text from itself into a Mozilla browser, which is how I post articles on The Gamers Press. I tried using different text programs in Linux. Staroffice wouldn't work, because it stubbornly tried to WYSIWYG all HTML encoded files, even if those files were labeled text. And for something like myself who likes to edit HTML directly, it was annoying to have anything between myself and the actual code. The KDE clipboard didn't always hold text from one program to the next. At one point, I got annoyed that it kept trying to open Konqueror every time I cut text with a web link inside, so I tried to edit the clipboard program to make it stop. Afterwards, I couldn't cut and paste links at all.

But there was so much to like, like GCC, a C/C++ compiler so I could build my own programs. Or my beloved Perl.

Linux was a lot like a girl named Allison that I used to date. She was a hot redhead with large, firm breasts in most of my honors classes. She was smart, she was cute - and she was totally crazy. I could only deal with her strange behavior for so long, no matter how much I loved the rest of her.

But what else could I do? My Windows machine was now only for games and my ATI-TV card, and the few times I needed a Windows only program. My Linux box did everything else, it did it with brutal effectiveness, but it just wasn't cuddly. It was a bulldog with hairs made of needles. It never let me down, but I could never get close to it. I was resigned to simply living with this.

Enter the Serpent

And then...I started hearing about OS X. It took about an hour to rip all 17 disks from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to 128 bit MP3 format. It took about 3 minutes to transfer them to my iPod. My iPod is the second sexiest thing that fits in my palm.

I first caught word of OS X through Slashdot. I had never used a Macintosh, well, unless you count a few days in high school. But it just wasn't for me.

But there was something that called to me. A Unix core...with the Apple GUI? What would happen with the power of Unix was combined with Apple's legendary GUI interface?

I started looking up all of the information I could. I read through the Ars Techana review from the point of view of a Macintosh lover, who both praised and criticized the operating system. Or the writings of Tales of a BeOS Refugee, which was from the point of view of a BeOS user going to Apple's new operating system. I even devoured The Register's comments about how much they didn't like OS X.

But there was something in common with so many of these articles. They were written from the point of view of people who had been using the Macintosh operating system for years, who had become use to its quirks and oddities, of its inability to handle virtual memory (though how you can have a decent operating system without virtual memory, I just don't know). These had good things to say about OS X, then mentioned all of their problems with the operating systems interface compared to the old OS 9 system.

But at the same time, I wasn't like any of them. I hadn't used a Macintosh before. (In fact, before today, I hadn't met anyone who had used a Mac for a long period of time. But more on that later.) I was coming from a perspective of an almost pure Unix user moving to Mac, not from a Mac user moving to a more Unix based system.

It was time for me to upgrade my Linux machine anyway. My two computers - the Pentium III 800 machine which ran Windows, and thus my games, and the Pentium II 450 which housed my Linux machine - were getting a little behind. The original plan was to purchase a new computer, keep Windows on it, and make the Pentium 800 into my new Linux box.

But still, the call of OS X kept coming to me. Since there's no Apple stores in Utah, I could stop by CompUSA and try out the Macintosh machines there. And it...just felt right.

There was something about OS X that just felt right to my fingers. I liked The Dock, the Start Menu/Program Launching system. I learned how to move folders and program icons in and out of the Dock, or how to navigate the file system. Use the iPod as an MP3 player, or as a disk drive. I nearly installed OS X on it just to boot from it - but then realized I didn't have a reason to do that.

And the terminal. Oh, the terminal. The command prompt that all Unix heads are used to. It's the mother's tit, the place where everything starts. Why cut and paste files, when a simple "mv" command words wonders? Or tab completion. Instead of typing "ren thefileiwanttochange.txt", a true Unix head knows they can type "ren thefile[TAB]" and the operating system would type in the rest fo the file name. Or typing "cd ~" to go back to your "home" directory.

And in OS X, it was all right there, and even smarter than what I was used to in the Linux command line. When I typed "cd dir[tab]", the computer didn't try to fill in the file "directly", but know that since I was using the "cd" command, I wanted to go to the directory called "directory". Or if I mistyped a command, typing in "emcs", the system would ask "emacs?", and I could just type Y and go on, comfortable that my finger fumbling would be caught.

I finally caved in, deciding that, if worse came to worse, I could always install a PowerPC version of Linux on the box. I wouldn't be any worse off, and I planned to spend the money anyway, so what would it matter if I turned out not to like OS X, since I would just have Linux back on it.

I ordered my machine, a PowerPC 933 system with 512 MB RAM and an 80 Gig hard drive. I agonized over that decision until I had the system perfect, then ordered it.

And then my real experiences began.

The Conversion During the time that I waited for my Power mac, pieces of it came in the mail. First was the software (BBedit and Office X), then the iPod. I played with the iPod for a few days, showing it to my friends even though I didn't have any music on it.

It was hard not to. It's just cool. It's small, and so user friendly, I didn't have to crack open the manual to figure out how to use it. I must have spent a few hours just rolling through the different options, hearing the little "clicking" noise it made just because I could. I even went so far as to rebuild an old Sony laptop computer that used to have Linux on it back to Windows 98 to try out a software program that's suppose to make the iPod work with Windows. (But since the laptop's rescue CD didn't only had Windows 98, not Windows 98 SE, that cut that endeavor short). iDisk - Apple's free, online storage/email/web page system. I haven't had a reason to use it. Yet.

When my Power mac finally arrived in the mail, I took it into work and set it up there. Right upon taking it out of the box, it just seemed so...pretty. I guess that's the only way to put it. The grey/silver looking package has rounded curves and a handle that makes it easy to carry around. I opened up the side just because I could - one flick of the lever, and I was peering at the guts of my new system.

I decided to use my old trusty optical Intellimouse instead of the standard mouse Apple sends with it, and plugged the system into my monitor, plugged in the clear Apple speakers I had ordered (and discovered with some chagrin that they only work with a new Apple computer), and turned it on.

The first thing I noticed was the sound through the speakers, then the little smily face Mac computer in the middle of my monitor. A few seconds later, and I was at a registration page. No entering in serial numbers or cryptic commands - it simply wanted to know who I was to register the computer, and then proceeded to launch into OS X.

The next thing I noticed is just how sharp everything looked. Using the same monitor for my Windows 2000/Linux machine at work, and my Linux/Windows 98 setup at home, the OS X just looks sharper. The images look a little cleaner and brighter, and the text - I've never understood the big deal about "anti-aliasing" until I read web pages under the Mac. The text, which was readable before, was nearly perfect here. Under Linux, I usually had to enlarge the font to 150% to read pages at CNN. Under OS X, I could leave the pages just as they were, and they were even more readable. Maybe it's because the system uses Adobe PDF rendering at the core to delivery almost page-like displays. Or all the Aqua pieces that Apple talks about to give the cool transparency. Whatever it is, OS X just makes things look good. Disk images. Like zip files - only better.

OS X is probably the easiest system I've ever had to use. There's so Start Menu, but something called the Dock, which holds all of your currently running programs (well, not all, but more on that in a moment), as well as holding your minimized windows.

Sounds like just the one you'd see in Windows 95/95/2000/XP, right? Well, yes and no. The biggest difference is that the Dock is a dynamic system. You see, it is possible to drag programs directly into the Dock, so you can launch them later with one click of a button. Running programs have a small black triangle underneath them, so it's easy to tell what's running and what's not.

But it holds more than just programs. It can also hold folders or files, which go on the right side. In my case, I have three folders - a link to my Home directory, one to a folder with shortcuts to programs I usually run, and one more to the main Applications folder. A single click brings up the folder, holding down the mouse button brings up a menu of all that the folder holds.

It's something that just makes sense. And OS X really gets the idea. It has to, the way that it's programs are installed.

When I first went to install Microsoft Office X, there was something that surprised me about the installation procedure. Basically, it was "copy this folder into your Applications directory". Or Omniweb, a competing web browser. It's just one file.

Well, not really. It's called a "package", where that one file, like a zip file, contains other files. Instead of an executable surrounded by dll's, it simply has all the dependancies it needs right inside itself. Again, simple. Elegant.

Coming from a place where to install a program on Red Hat can involve using a RPM (and I'm sorry, I've never figured out how to uninstall a RPM file), having the entire program contents in one file is just a wonder. Want to get rid of the file? I don't have to go wandering through directories to find all the files I have to delete, or worry about an uninstall program that can't seem to get all of the necessary parts out of the directories and registries. If I want to uninstall, I just drag one file to the Trash.

And thanks to the Unix bits of OS X, program stability is a snap. For those who are used to Linux, the command "ps" is a standard - it shows the "processes", or running programs. Have a program that's out of line? Just start up the old "Process Listing" program, and give it a little "kill" command. Program stops running. No messages about "I can't shut down the program" like you'd see in Windows. It dies. The end. It's something I've grown used to in Linux, and having it in OS X is just natural.

All of the other weird bits

You can't just close the windows to end a program - you actually have to tell it "Quit". There is a lot to like about OS X, including the parts that are both convenient and a little weird. If you want to eject a CD-ROM, you can either press the eject button the keyboard (no, the computer doesn't have an eject button), or you can drag the CD-ROM icon on your desktop to the trash.

Copying programs is much like Windows - select a file, and either drag it to another directory, or select Edit->Copy. But oddly, there's no "Cut" command. A weirdness that's taken some getting used to.

Or that Finder windows, each of which have the name of the title of the directory, if you click and hold the title, you can use that to move the folder somewhere else. Rather nice, even if its different.

You can minimize a window, and it's image will show up in the Dock. The first time I did this with a terminal window, I almost had a heart attack as I noticed that the little window kept updating as the program ran, so I didn't have to check it all the time.

Or you can just "hide" a program. Since OS X does a great job with memory management, it's often best to start a program (like Mail or iTunes, the MP3 player), then just "Hide" it. The program icon still stays in the Dock, but the window itself just...vanishes. Click on the program icon, and it comes right back.

In fact, the whole "hiding" a program versus "closing" it is another weirdness. You can close all of the windows for a program, but that doesn't actually "exit" the program - you still need to press Apple-Q, or right click on the program in the Dock and select Quit. It would be nice to have a setting like "if all windows are closed, end the program".

Then there's the whole Metadata thing. Most of us who have used Windows or Linux are used to have file extensions tied to a program. We all know that if a file ends in MP3, and we double click on it, XMMS or WinAmp will launch.

Under OS X...it depends. I've only seen a little bit of it, and for the most part it's been fine, and a little annoying at other times. Take a .jpg image. If the image was downloaded from the Internet, odds are, the standard "Preview" program will work. But if that program was made with Image Converter, then the next time you click on that particular .jpg file, Image Converter will launch, since that was the program the file "Created With". I've only had one program running an old Groupwise program (which runs in Classic, which is really an OS 9 emulator), and it thinks it owns a Word document someone emailed me.

I've been using Internet Explorer since I moved onto the Mac, and I haven't decided if I'm going to reinstall Mozilla. I'm planning on playing with it soon, since IE has some weird quirks of its own. Sometimes when I click on a bookmark, it wants me to rename it instead of jumping to the site. I haven't figured out if it's the way I click it , or something else.

Update: Since this writing, I've dumped Internet Explorer after it wouldn't let me paste this entire article into the text window. Seems it has a space limit on how large an amount of text you can paste into a window. Mozilla doesn't have that problem. And it has tabs. I missed my tabs.

And cut and pasting. It just works flawlessly. I can cut from terminal and paste into a browser window. I can copy from BBEdit, the text-based HTML editor, and paste it into an email. And it's even easier than cutting and pasting in Windows. (Every tried to cut and paste text from the Windows 2000 telnet program? Somebody decided to change all the cut and paste keys to piss of the users, I'm sure.)

The Games of the X

To get rid of a disk image, just eject it. Oh, and Cardcaptors is so cute. Ah, yes. The games. This was something that I was worried about. I do have a few games that run on both Windows and Mac, like Diablo, the Myth games, or the Myst games. And I've ordered some other games, like the Bungie Mac Action Sack which holds the old Marathon series of games. And Baldur's Gate, that RPG modern classic.

All of these games were made for OS 9 and below, which really means it's going to run in Classic, the OS 9 emulator that runs in OS X. It's like running a DOS program in Windows XP. Only...it actually works. Most gamers know that under the newer Windows operating systems, often old games just refuse to run (like Ultima VII, for example, unless you're using the Exult, which doesn't count since it's a rewrite anyway).

I haven't had an old Mac program fail to run. I've had some odd quirks, like Baldur's Gate running a little quick, or times I need to shut down the Classic environment and restart it, but otherwise, the programs run just fine. I've noticed that 3D acceleration doesn't quite work for Classic programs running under OS X, but since the only game I've tried it Myth: The Fallen Lords, I can't answer whether other older Mac games will work. (Like Alice, or Red Faction. I'll have to try those later and see what happens.) In order to get 3d acceleration to work, I've had to actually reboot into OS 9 - an experience I usually avoid when I can. No Unix there.

Enter our friend Unix

Of all of the reasons why I went to OS X, this was the biggest one. If I couldn't run my mail server, Fetchmail, Perl scripts, and all the rest, I might just as well format the system and install Yellow Dog Linux. Switchpic - allowing people to manage huge collections of desktop backgrounds everywhere. (The new Version 2.0 lets you handle them in iTunes like collections. Very snazzy.)

Not only did all of my Unix programs install just fine under OS X and run like they've always done, but the OS X developers crowd have even ported many of them over just for OS X. Installing Samba was a breeze - I just downloaded the OS X specific binaries and installed. Getting The Gimp was simple after installing XDarwin, a rootless XWindows system. Even Image Magick came up perfectly. And I didn't even have to change any of my Perl scripts. I just copies them from my Linux box, and off they ran.

In fact, my old Linux hard drive is now a backup drive in my OS X box. I just shut it off. Why keep it on? OS X does everything it did - only prettier, easier, and with more little tricks. I don't have to worry "can I get hardware X to work?" I never have to hear "oh, just recompile your kernel, or edit the configure script before you compile".

And that's what I wanted. I'm not begrudging the folks who use Linux or FreeBSD or the other systems. I still use Linux as the web servers at my work, and have no plans on changing that. Open Source is driving the true innovation, bringing greater stability and power to computer systems.

But I'm a lazy son of a bitch, and I just want to use the programs, not fiddle with it for hours to get it to run. And that's what OS X gives me. Power, and simplicity.

And with the power of Unix comes the ability to tweak OS X just the way I like. I've already discovered how to make my Dock fully transparent (which looks pretty damn cool), or how to use Switchpic to give the same "rotate desktop backgrounds" ability I had under KDE and Linux.

Bitch like an old lady

VNC - lets me take control of my OS X box from work over the Internet. No, I'm not telling you the IP address. Or the password. Or where I keep my, er, my daughter's copy of Beach Playmates Romp. If there is one gripe about OS X itself, it's about the way to open files. Apple-O opens a file/runs a program. Pressing Enter on a file renames it. If there isn't a more counterintuitive method of doing it, I don't know what is. When I look at a directory and type "Tales of the" to jump to "Tales of the Sword Coast", then hit Enter, I mean "Launch Tales of the Sword Coast". If there was a way to edit this key combination (or if someone could tell me how to change those keys), I'd be a little happier.

That said, I do still have some gripes about OS X. But the gripes aren't about the operating system itself, but the support, or lack of it, from other vendors.

Novell, let's start with you. I took my Power mac into my day job because I was tired of booting between Linux and Windows 2000 all day long. Novell, I realize that over the last few years, your primary goal has been to lose market share as fast as possible. This is why there's no novell administrator, unless you run Windows (what moron thought up that idea?), why you haven't come out with an OS X client for Groupwise, or even a Novell client for OS X. What do I fucking have to kill to get someone to make an OS X program that will let me mount some Novell volumes on my machine here?

ATI - personally, I think your cards are the bomb. I love my ATI TV-Wonder, and I've been eyeing those 8500 All-in-Wonder DV cards. So why aren't you spreading the OS X love? You have a TV USB device for Mac, but there's no OS X drivers. And where are the All-in-Wonder cards? You'd think that was a no-brainer on the Mac. I want that screen-capturing, straight to Quicktime movie ability that I know you can give me.

I like OS X a lot, and I'm now a fully converted Mac user. It has all the power I remember in Linux, but it's easier to use, and far prettier. It has all of the editing abilities of my Windows machine, without all of the crashes. (I haven't had OS X crash once since I've run it.) And if the other vendors can just get off their asses and realize that OS X is the future of Apple, and maybe they should be writing their drivers and apps to that system, then I wouldn't have anything to gripe about.

For now, I'm just a guy who started loving a penguin, then discovered true love with an Apple.

As always, I'm John "Dark Paladin" Hummel. And that's my opinion.

Re:Here's the article

[mgkimsal2]

Even today with Windows 2000 and my development work, usually my day proceeds along "Work, work, crash. Reboot. Wait. Computer won't reboot. Shut down power. Work. Hang. Reboot. Boot into Linux for a few hours. Get some work done. Forced to reboot into Windows for some program. Crash."

Wow - what the hell are you doing on that computer? What kind of 'development' are you doing? I've had a system with W2k on it in use daily for a year with probably 20 reboots, mostly to swap to Linux for some reason. Less than 10 were due to hanging/crashing issues.

Honestly, what are you doing?

I've been in that boat, at a prior company, and I'm convinced it was because they gave me crappy hardware - especially network card. I would literally reboot twice between 9 and 10 am every day (NT4). NO ONE ELSE HAD THAT PROBLEM. But that's been my worst MS experience. Many other systems (95, 98, 2000, etc) have all worked pretty darn well. Not perfect, but Linux ain't perfect either.

Really, what are you doing? Have you tried to swap some hardware or troubleshoot this at all?

This connotation is overplayed

[Srin Tuar]

Wow - what the hell are you doing on that computer? What kind of 'development' are you doing? I've had a system with W2k on it in use daily for a year with probably 20 reboots, mostly to swap to Linux for some reason. Less than 10 were due to hanging/crashing issues.

Honestly, what are you doing?

Im am sortof tired of people gushing about the stability of W2K. If you use a few client apps and dont install too much, or limit yourself to High level (VB) programming, yea sure itll be stable.

Do anything inteseting such as sending malformed UDP packets onto the ethernet, run IIS, play quciktime movies, any serious development, have the exchange server crash, install software with less than admin privledges, etc, and you may find it less stable than you imagine.

I use Windown 2000 for network programming, building/debugging embedded platforms, creating GUI appliciations, client apps, using differing hardware platforms an so on. I am unimpressed with its stability nor security. (sometimes itll go for a few weeks without freezing. sometimes it crashes several times a day. certain network traffic will always trash it. sometimes thing start acting flakey until a reboot. Contrast this to Unix, where reboots generally dont change anything, and they certainly arent recommended for fixing problems)

Re:Duh I'm blind

[RevAaron]

I've had similar problems with Win2k, not to mention Win9x. The Win2k machine I had to use at work was beyond my administration, I couldn't swap bits of hardware in and out. These were high end machines, top-notch AMD/Intel processers, good mobos, brand-name RAM, fancy-pants Oxygen video cards, good SCSI drives and controllers.

Frankly, it's not worth my time or money to try a dozen motherboard/cpu/ethernet/RAM combinations to find the one that actually works without flaking out constantly, even if I could administer the machines I use at work.

Couple years ago, I switched to Mac hardware in anticipation of OS X from Linux/x86. I don't have those problems. It's funny, when you talk to Mac people, they don't think this is a special thing, because they're been used to it for years. But you mention it to a x86 person, and all of a sudden it's a big deal that you computer just works.

Re:Here's the article

[bay43270]

My work machine crashes at least once a day Why don't all you people look into geting your computers fixed? Everyone here seems perfectly content to edit 4 tab delimted files to get their sound cards working in Linux, but they won't spend five minutes to look under the hood when windows crashes. If windows crashes more than once in the same month, chances are you have a problem that you should be able to fix. Rather than pointing the finger at the evil empire, you should fix it.

No wonder he's using a Mac

[The Evil Troll King]

"Linux was a lot like a girl named Allison that I used to date."

Since when do Linux geeks go out on dates?

Only kidding,

Steve

So?

[Pope Slackman]

What's there for a UNIX hacker not to love?
OSX just rocks.
From the BSD-ish UNIX underneath, to the amazing display layer and NextStep app framework,
to the commercial app support (can you say "Photoshop"[1]?) it's just super cool.

There's even source [apple.com] for the core OS for you open source freaks.

About the only thing that could be considered a disadvantage is that it only runs on Mac hardware.
(Which, granted, is a lot nicer and more elegant than PC hardware, but that doesn't help those of us that that have tons of PC hardware lying around.)

C-X C-S
[1] I'll reiterate once more: Gimp is nice, but doesn't come close to Photoshop.

Re:So?

[jaffray]

Any GUI application for OSX, and most other applications as well, are going to call the closed-source parts of the system. For all practical purposes, it's a closed-source system. Quite a nice one, but just as unmodifiable and prone to vendor lock-in as any other proprietary OS.

And because it's Apple, the vendor lock-in is for not only the software but the hardware as well. While the current Mac hardware is nice, it doesn't meet everyone's needs; if it did, I'd be typing this on a PowerBook G4 and not an Inspiron 4100.

Re:What is GIMP missing?

[Pope Slackman]

What is GIMP missing that Photoshop Elements (i.e. Photoshop without CMYK, which web and game artists don't need) has?

Just because you don't use a certain capability (like CMYK), doesn't mean I don't either.
One size does not fit all.

C-X C-S

Re:What is GIMP missing?

[PurpleBob]

GIMP is missing the nice interface.

I realize you can do anything (except CMYK, which people make too much of a big deal out of) in the GIMP that you can do in Photoshop, but generally you can do it quicker and more smoothly in Photoshop because its interface works so well.

One example of this is the layer effects: in Photoshop, you can give a layer a drop shadow, and that shadow will update as you add to the layer. In GIMP you have to run a separate plugin that creates a drop shadow, and if you change the layer you have to delete the shadow and create it again.

Re:What is GIMP missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

CMYK support is a huge deal for Photoshop's market.

Re:So?

[Pope Slackman]

sure paths to karma
Oh come off it.
I've been at the cap forever. Karma is not why I continue to play the "Slashdot RPG".

but if you're like me and most other people, it won't effect you in any way
I'm not, and I just happen to be posting from my viewpoint, not yours .

two things which I consider to be relatively unimportant
(my emphasis, FYI)
That arrogance is why linux on the desktop is going nowhere.

C-X C-S

Hmmm

[NiftyNews]

"She was a hot redhead with large, firm breasts in most of my honors classes."

I think the real story here is about where this girl's breasts were the rest of the day. Did they take different classes? Did they work as a hall monitor?

I'm another convert

[scsiboy]

I've been in the sysadmin business for about 7 years now, which has brought me into contact with most free OS's (Linux, the BSD family) as well as some non-free (Solaris, BSDI) and of course, things like Windows and Macs (pre-OSX).

Over the years I've had many desktop systems with many OS's, several versions of Windows... most recently a Sparc Ultra10 running Solaris 8 and two different PC's running Redhat Linux. I recently switched to OSX after my Redhat box failed. It was a hardware failure, not a Linux issue. But the PC architecture itself has imploded on me enough times that I'd had it. My Ultra10 wouldn't boot up anymore either, which really torqued me off (that was my backup desktop which had been sitting in a closet).

Anyway, I went to Apple for two reasons: I've been told the hardware is very reliable, and not prone to bizarre crap like IRQ conflicts and such, and second because I've always liked the Mac UI, but until now couldn't really live inside it because the multitasking and memory management weren't good and there was no CLI available. Of course, the memory management, multitasking scheduler, and CLI availability issue are all "fixed" in OSX, and I'm in love. I spent nearly $2500 on the machine and it was worth every penny.

(For those who care this is on a 933MHz G4 tower).

I no longer spend hours every week just making the system happy - I just use it, and it doesn't require any fussing around. I have plenty to do making the systems I'm paid to admin work well; I don't need the added time drain of playing admin on my desktop (which should, IMO, act like an appliance and not a server).

Just my $0.02. My primary server environment is Solaris, and I stand behind it 100%. But on the desktop OSX is where it's at today, IMO.

They'll never get me

[Permission Denied]

So I'm the hardcore unix type and I tried this (a full conversion to OS X). Of course, nobody wants to hear that OS X has some very real problems, but here goes...

The window management is so far inferior to anything you'll find in X, it's not funny. About a month ago, one slashdot poster was complaining about how it's difficult to run more than ten programs because it's hard to find the right one in the dock. Excuse me!? You're limiting yourself to two or three programs because you can't find the one you need immediately?

Consider this: OS X comes with an alt-tab action, but it cycles through all windows in a circular list, rather than using a stack like Windows or most X11 window managers. Why does it do this? Is the circular list "more intuitive" than a stack? No, it most certainly is not. There's a reason most window managers use a stack for the alt-tab list. When you use a stack, the most recently-used programs migrate toward the top of the stack. If you have seven programs running and you're continually switching between two of them, a switch takes two keystrokes with a stack, but seven kestrokes with a circular list. With the circular list, you have to actually look to see which program you're switching to. Result? it takes at least one second to switch between two programs on a moderately-loaded system. I am not going to remove my hands from the keyboard just to switch between two programs.

In addition, using the dock or alt-tab to switch applications only switches applications not windows. Look at IE or Terminal.app - these both have their own internal window management and it works differently in each. In Terminal.app, you hit cmd-1 or cmd-2 to switch between running windows, in IE it's something else.

I can hear you saying right now that this isn't a big deal. It is a HUGE deal. In my X system, I can run 15 different applications and (using workspaces and a proper alt-tab) I can get to any application in a few hundred milliseconds. I don't need to take my hands away from the keyboard just to go from typing into my browser to typing into a terminal.

What if I actually want to use OS X as a real unix system? For example, what if I need to add a user? Well, there are a number of ways to do this:

1. Physically go to the machine and use the little gui tool. Not an option when the server is inaccessible, as is usually the case with a regular unix server.
   
2. VNC into it. OS X doesn't use X, so the only way I can run these GUI tools from my FreeBSD laptop is to use VNC. Try this yourself - it does not work properly.
   
3. SSH into the box and use niutil, etc. You then have to walk through the netinfo tree to see exactly how a user environment is supposed to be set up. The first time you do this, it will take a half hour.
   
4. Download some perl script that works like "useradd."
   

The last two are the only real viable options. In any case, the first time I need to add a user, I have to waste a half hour for this most basic administration task.

So what does it have to make it more enticing than a real unix system? Well, it has all the pretty pictures. It has a decent web browser. It has those "office" applications.

I honestly don't care for the pretty gel pictures. I'll admit that the first time I used OS X, I wasted a good half hour just looking at it (it is quite impressive). However, this gets old quick.

Linux now has some decent browsers (konqueror, mozilla), although this wasn't the case a couple of years ago.

I don't use "office" applications. Word? LaTeX. Excel? Awk and perl. Outlook? Mutt. Powerpoint? You've got to be kidding me. Yes, LaTeX and perl may have a steep "learning curve" but dammit, I can learn. I didn't spend years mastering unix administration and development just to have someone hand-hold me through basic adminstration tasks.

Re:They'll never get me

[Anonymous Coward]

3. SSH into the box and use niutil, etc. You then have to walk through the netinfo tree to see exactly how a user environment is supposed to be set up. The first time you do this, it will take a half hour.
---
Yes, LaTeX and perl may have a steep "learning curve" but dammit, I can learn. I didn't spend years mastering unix administration and development just to have someone hand-hold me through basic adminstration tasks.

Eh? You spent years learning unix administration and you are upset that adding a user the first time under OS X took you 1/2 hr?

Sounds like you're willing to spend the time to learn unix but not to spend the same time learning OS X.

Re:They'll never get me

[SmittyTheBold]

Know what? This is absolute FUD on both parts. At least you're both ill-informed. These complaints apply to OS X, yes - but that's the client OS. Buy the Server [apple.com] and get the server tools [apple.com]. It's very easy to do pretty much everything remotely, through a Apple-provided GUI tool.

If I wanted to add a user to one of our OS X servers right now, I could. Remotely. Through a GUI. Without VNC. If people would look into using a "Server" as a server, people would be much happier.

Re:They'll never get me

[Sentry21]

I don't use "office" applications. Word? LaTeX. Excel? Awk and perl. Outlook? Mutt. Powerpoint? You've got to be kidding me. Yes, LaTeX and perl may have a steep "learning curve" but dammit, I can learn.

This strikes me as remarkably similar to someone complaining about how a Geo Metro is 'flawed' because it can't haul 60 cinder blocks around, can't haul a ton of gravel, etc. That's not what it's meant for.

Me, I'd rather use my computer than learn my computer. LaTeX? Sure, I could use it, but why would I want to waste my time marking something up in LaTeX when I can open Word, type it out, spend four seconds formatting it the way I need, and then save it to any of five dozen file formats (most importantly, Word).

As for Awk and Perl as replacements, you'd have to do a lot more work to do 90% of what I do in Excel in awk and perl. Takes me ten seconds to make a graph out of a set of data, I can move cells around drag 'n' drop, I can add styling and so on if I'm sharing my .xls file, I can put graphs and tables into Word or Powerpoint. Awk and Perl for this are cheap hacks. Sure, it can all be done, but it's still a cheap hack.

I didn't spend years mastering unix administration and development just to have someone hand-hold me through basic adminstration tasks.

Fine, then don't use OS X, and don't whine about it. It's not meant for every task under the sun, it's meant for people who want what it offers. If it doesn't offer you what you want, then use something else, and don't complain, but some of us are glad that we can point, click, and have new user accounts added everywhere it counts.

I had fun with Linux, but eventually I got tired of managing my computer, and wanted just to use it. OS X gives me this, but still gives me the power I need to run things like perl, vim, and so forth. If you don't want this, then don't use OS X, and we'll all get along fine.

--Dan

Re:They'll never get me

[King_TJ]

Yep Dan, I totally agree with you (although I'm not a Mac user at this time). Actually, I did experiment with a Mac (Performa 6300) once, and had a fairly "blah" experience with it. Of course, OS X and the current crop of Mac systems is a good bit better than that old Performa....

I still stick to what I've been saying for quite a while now. Linux or BSD is the best and most cost-effective solution for a server today. That's one reason you see so many Novell houses migrating to a Linux or BSD environment. They're used to the concept of dedicated servers and aren't generally afraid of using a command line when it's the quickest way to get a task done.

For a workstation, for the typical user (or many power-users, even), the key thing is making your work easier, and providing the most pleasurable experience possible when using it for entertainment. Linux still pales in comparison to Windows or MacOS X in this.

Like you said, sure - some people already invested the time to learn VI, EMacs, and LaTeX.
They're obviously going to champion the OS that gives them the tools they're used to using. Great, but don't cram it down the throats of those who haven't learned (or mastered) those tools. The important thing is the end results. When my document is printed out, nobody can look at it and say "Ah yeah, he typed this up using VI."

Re:They'll never get me

[Goonie]

Basically, the idea is that you use a markup language to describe the structure of a document, and then (for any custom elements), you specify how to render that structure.

The idea is somewhat similar to DocBook, but it's more pragmatic in that it will give you tight control of elements where a human can make visual formatting better than the machine can.

Word can sort of do structural formatting with styles and templates, but it's very much a half-assed structural formatting system pasted over the top over the basic visual paradigm. LaTeX has it built in.

There a lot of "packages" - standard sets of formatting tools to lay out most things you'd ever want to do without the bother of having to design the format yourself. If you're doing anything vaguely mathematical, LaTeX's math-typesetting capabilities are unparalleled. Equation editor doesn't come within cooee. LaTeX's citation, cross-referencing, and sectioning abilities are extremely good.

LaTeX does have its downsides. Customizing the look of your document can be quite hard work, and it's not particularly well-suited to highly graphical documents it can include figures perfectly well, but its placement algorithms aren't great and highly graphical documents require a great deal of visual formatting that a visual tool is better at.

LaTeX (and TeX, which it is built on top of) is highly stable. You can be guaranteed that your documents will be editable and rewritable for generations into the future. Word's file format keeps changing, and more importantly embedded objects seem to not cope very well with version changes.

The other thing that can be important in some cases is that LaTeX is a batch system, and it's not hard to write computer programs to generate output in LaTeX format which can then be processed into high-quality layout. The Docbook tools do just this, IIRC.

LaTeX isn't for all applications. If your documents are long, structured, contain mathematics, require consistent formatting, and are for long-term use, LaTeX is the choice, no question. If you're sending out one-page marketing memos with colour and lots of pretty drawings, Word is far superior.

If you do decide to give LaTeX a try, you might need LaTeX : A Documentation Preparation System by Leslie Lamport (the designer of LaTeX), and possibly The LaTeX Companion, by Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin. They're a little expensive, though.

promise?

[Erris]

Never get you? Sounds like they already got you. How else were you able to make this post? Obviously the thing is filling some need or desire you have.

It's too bad they made up all that wierd junk instead of using normal utilities, but that's just the suck of propriatory software for you. You know, goofey little aps that you have to learn again every two years. Think about how many different "assholes in the middle" you have to pay just to easily make a freaking home movie. If you can't figure out how to do this with free tools, you have to:

1. Buy some sucky OS, comes with a new computer that costs about $1000 too much.
2. Buy some kind of card or other device to capture the video.
3. Buy some software to make movies that replaces the software that came with the device that did not work.
4. Buy some CD's (which the RIAA/MPAA want to tax).
5. Go through parts of this or all of it every two years.

Or you could buy a Mac and use it for what it's advertised for. It will change too, and they have their own little upgrade train, but it's not so bad unless you make the mistake of putting that "office" stuff from Microsoft on it.

Yep, the software makers have bullied hardware vendors into bizarre, ever changing interfaces. All attempts at standardization and sanity are firmly smacked down. So there you have it. Enjoy your Mac. It's not a real unix, but it will see devices.

Re:They'll never get me

[telbij]

Okay, you seem pretty smart with unix, but you don't seem to have a great concept of top-down design and economic principles. The trivial points you make are valid, but why are you so incensed over it? Do you really think Steve Jobs called a board meeting discussing the merits of circular vs stack-based window changing?

Let's just put things in a business perspective. Apple has a niche market of which only a very few are hackers. Apple's OS is stagnating and falling behind Windows. Apple has come to realize the importance of adopting standards instead of making everything proprietary. Apple buys NeXT in an attempt to inject UNIX stability and open-source efforts into their own platform. Apple's new OS solves dozens of annoying issues that have plagued desktop OSes since the early days. Creative professionals who work with media rather than code rejoice at all the benefits Apple has bestowed.

So you see, Apple is still making a desktop OS. The really cool thing though is that now Mac users can harvest the benefits of UNIX without having to spend all their time learning it. Your argument only makes sense if most users are hackers, but that hasn't been true for over a decade. I am like you, I like to learn, but we should both be happy that Apple is bringing Unix to the masses, because otherwise you'd have to spend more time helping your friends fix their Windows boxes :)

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:They'll never get me

[Permission Denied]

If it takes you more than 2 minutes to figure out how to add a user under netinfo then you aren't a hardcore unix type.

Alright asshole, tell me this: where do you find out to even use niutil? Try typing "man passwd." What do you get? A manual page from FreeBSD. Nowhere in the man page does it mention that that command does absolutely nothing in OS X. Try typing "man vipw." What do you get? Another FreeBSD manpage, and again, it doesn't tell you that the command does absolutely nothing. You'll finally get somewhere after you type 'apropos netinfo.' How do you create a new group and change a user's default group? Like this:

niutil -create / /groups newgroup
niutil -appendprop / /groups/newgroup passwd '*'
niutil -appendprop / /groups/newgroup gid 7777
niutil -appendprop / /groups/newgroup users ''
niutil -destroyval / /users/username gid 70
niutil -insertval / /users/username gid 7777 0

Now, don't you wish 'vipw' actually worked? Or that maybe it was removed from the system along with its useless manpage? Or perhaps that the manpage was updated to put a pointer to niload in the SEE ALSO section?

Re:They'll never get me

[jaffray]

No, it boils down to "the default window management is massively less efficient than other systems and cannot be configured." You acknowledge that your preference in window-switching isn't all that efficient, and maybe it works for you, but it doesn't work for everyone. Window management was a major problem for me when I used OS X for a day.

This goes straight to the heart of the problem with proprietary systems like MacOS X. You can't change them. You can get any window management behavior you want under Linux; under MacOS X you're stuck with Apple's defaults.

GNUStep?

[darkwiz]

As an ardent WindowMaker [windowmaker.org] user (I couldn't stand the bloat of other desktops), I would say that half of this guy's problems would be solved if he were just to switch to WindowMaker, and learn about the middle mouse button. WindowMaker has a dock, you can collapse app's onto it, launch them from it, and even have neat dock apps. Adding apps to the dock is as simple as dragging their application icon (which is created for any application not already "docked") onto the dock.

I'll admit that the OSX dock is more graphically pleasing. And a little more flexible. But the big points are already there.

I also own an iBook (old clamshell), and wouldn't consider running OSX on it. OSX requires too much of your CPU and memory. WindowMaker under Linux runs as smooth on my iBook as it does on my Athlon.

os x bad?

[InsaneCreator]

And pray for mercy on his soul

like... why? is linus keeping a list of bad boys & girls? :)

choice

[asv108]

I've played around with OSX on my boss's TiBook and I must admit it is very nice and all, but the problem is you are forced to buy Mac hardware. I don't care how good OSX is if I can't run it on a Box that I can build with my own two hands, OSX is useless to me. The great thing about Linux and to a much lesser extent windows is choice. Linux users are not limited to any particular hardware platform where OSX is made specifically to sell a particular hardware platform.

My analogy.

[saintlupus]

I use OS X at work and at home, and being in IT I work with a lot of Linux and Solaris devotees as well.

One of my interns, in particular, is a big Linux fan - like most undergrads, he has yet to realize that there are shades of grey, and that the "right tool for the job" is actually a workable principle much of the time.

Anyhow, he was haranguing me for not using Linux on my main box (although I have it, along with a lot of other *nix OSen, running on my home network). I told him that using OS X is a lot like using Linux/PPC, with the main difference being that all of my hardware is actually supported properly and the GUI is a bit more polished. The same Unix power is there if you need it, just as it would be under Linux or OpenBSD or Irix or Tru64 or whatever, and the OS is perfectly matched to the hardware. Ought to be, since they're from the same vendor.

--saint

Many Linux users won't see something unless forced

[Nailer]

...using OS X is a lot like using Linux/PPC, with the main difference being that all of my hardware is actually supported properly and the GUI is a bit more polished. The same Unix power is there if you need it, just as it would be under Linux or OpenBSD or Irix or Tru64 or whatever...

In my own experience, many Linux users (a group of which I include myself) have this notion that if an end user isn't forced to deal with a particular mechanism of the OS, that mechanism isn't there. Hence `use Debian, unlike Red Hat it allows you to get into the guts of the OS' or
`use gentoo, you can simply compile all your apps once you learn how the packaging system works'. These featurs are obviouisl;y avaliable in every Linux, but for some reason a lot of people (generally the IRC advocacy types) swear Red Hat doesn't have a modules.conf because it automatically detects hardware.

another Linux user's experiences with OSX

[tom7ca]

I use Linux for most of my work, but recently bought a Mac running OSX (and, yes, I also have a Windows XP machine). I think, overall, Apple did a good job. But, in my view, Linux still compares quite well.

What's good about OSX?

• It installs and works easily. Part of that is that there is only one hardware vendor.
• It seems like a well-tested and a pretty stable platform to deliver code on.
• Device drivers really do install dynamically (with Linux, you usually end up having to recompile the kernel at some point).
• It has great Java support out of the box.
• Things like automatic network location selection work out of the box.
• There is a reasonable amount of polished, commercial software available for it.
• Both the hardware and the software looks very stylish and pretty.
• It comes with a complete set of BSD tools.
• It comes with standard networking tools and protocols like ssh, NFS, and lpr.
• You can download a complete development environment from Apple, including GUI designer.
• Applications like iTunes and iPhoto are really well designed. They do less than their KDE and Gnome equivalents and that is good. Apple has thought carefully about what you need and what you don't need.
• Standard GUI aplications are scriptable using OSA (although it's a bit messy).
• Mach allows user-level device drivers.
• You get X11, as well as the Debian package tools and packages (fink.sourceforge.net).
• Apple is somewhat less nagging about "download this" and "sign up for that" than Microsoft.

What's not so good about OSX?

• Driver availability: there are very few drivers available (some of the ones that are are ports of Linux drivers); this will presumably get fixed over the next 6-12 months.
• The UI is enormously resource intensive and slow. The kernel is no speed daemon either on things like disk I/O. On a 600MHz G3 iMac running OSX 10.1.2, applications are annoyingly sluggish. It's mostly the GUI; X11 applications running on the same screen and hardware are much faster.
• It isn't quite as stable as Linux.
• There are some usability bloopers in the UI (as there are in previous versions of MacOS); I guess if you have a 15 year history, you need to accomodate some historical idiosyncracies.
• Software installation is a mess. Some applications come with installers, some come as archives that you need to drag somewhere, some come as loopback mountable disk images. Linux is much better in this area, and even Windows XP seems a little better.
• There are almost no books available (BN doesn't even have a Mac section anymore, while their Linux and open source section is quite large).
• Cocoa/Objective-C are nice, but somewhat aging technology. It's not clear to me what Apple's future vision is.
• Device access is inconsistent. For example, audio and video have no device nodes; the APIs for accessing are messy.
• Keyboard access and editing keys are pretty primitive.
• No "strace" (the kernel isn't compiled for it).

If OSX were a Linux distribution, people would probably debate endlessly whether it was really ready for the desktop. I think overall OSX is neither better nor worse than Gnome or KDE on Linux. What it lacks in performance and consistency, it makes up in commercial support and simplicity.

The biggest advantages of OSX are that it's supported by a big brand-name. You can get MS Office for it. If a piece of hardware doesn't work, you take it back to the store and say "I plugged it in and it doesn't work; sorry--it says it's MacOS compatible". Presumably, there will be books around for it, and they will all document the one, standard version. And APIs and functionality change less rapidly than on Linux (which can be good or bad).

OSX is an operating system that a UNIX user can live with. I think it's good on a laptop, for PowerPoint presentations, as an iTunes jukebox, or to recommend to one's parents or manager. But it's no Linux killer.

OSX is just so much better than Windows XP. The OSX software architecture is much cleaner and the toolset you get with it is so much better. And the OSX UI is incomparably more consistent and easy to use than what Windows XP has.

Apple needs to address their performance issues (or release dual 2GHz iMacs :-), and they need to communicate a more coherent software strategy.

What the Linux community should do is study Apple's approach carefully and copy the good parts of it. KISS not only saves programming effort, it results in better software as well. A GUI with the simplicity of OSX but without the performance problems and OS9 compatibility would be great, and it would be less work to develop than the feature-laden KDE or Gnome desktops.

So, where I would grudgingly use Windows right now, I will probably now gladly use Macintosh. While OSX is no substitute for Linux, it brings a good, usable version of a UNIX-derivative into the mainstream, and that's good.

hmmm why?

[SomeOtherGuy]

Anything we can learn from OSX. From what I see (no PPC here for a first hand test) is that underlying *nix finally has a professional UI that has valid commercial software being released for it....I know that many millions were lost trying to do this during the Linux love fest of a few years back...How can apple hit the nail on the head with just one swing of the whip?? I don't know?

Re:hmmm why?

[ArsSineArtificio]

How can apple hit the nail on the head with just one swing of the whip??

Maybe they used a hammer instead.

See above posts about "using the right tool for the job" :-)

Erm...

[Snowfox]

My iPod is the second sexiest thing that fits in my palm.

At this point, I so completely stopped reading the linked article. Guh.

YAMT (yet another me too)

[weston]

I learned computing on Commodore PETs, TI-994A's, and Apple IIs. Then lucked out -- my high school had a minicomputer running UNIX, and that's what I did two hears of high school/AP CS on.

After I graduated, I moved onto PCs for programming and Macs for MIDI/Multimedia. I missed UNIX. I got to use it a bit in the Math and Engineering labs in college, but not much.

When I got a job at my first .com in 1996, they were using Linux and BSD as their servers -- and their workstations. I fell in love. When LinuxPPC came out, I took it home (I had a Mac as my computer because of the audio stuff). Though I was occasionally frustrated with having to do system administration when I wanted to get work done, I was happy to put up with it to have UNIX goodness.

When OS X Public Beta came out, I bought a copy. Within a month, I erased my LinuxPPC partition, and never thought about it again.

System administration is easy with OS X. Drooling easy. But I'm drooling happily as I spend more time coding and doing multimedia and less time sysadmining. And can use just about any commercial or open source app I'm interested in getting my hands on.

Yeah, it cost me $100. I don't care. I think it was JWZ who said "Linux is only free if your time isn't worth anything". I don't agree wholly with the sentiment, but I definitely save time by using OS X.

(Which I then waste on slashdot, of course)

hardware

[bcrowell]

Excellent article in general, but:
I don't have to worry "can I get hardware X to work?

Say what? If he thinks hardware support in MacOS X is great, that's a pretty sad commentary on Linux. Probably he hasn't run into as many problems as a lot of people, because he bought a new box, and doesn't have any legacy hardware. But even a lot of new hardware doesn't work. For instance, I have to boot into MacOS 9 in order to print on my brand-new Lexmark printer. (Yep, Lexmark claims to have a MacOS X driver. Nope, it doesn't actually work.) Getting an external CD burner of any kind to work is generally impossible (especially if it's SCSI).

Wordperfect and Emacs...

[Raskolnk]

Using Linux, I would tend to use Emacs, a wonderful text editor that takes me back to the Wordperfect days.

WTF?

Sex sells... OSX reviews?

[Tony.Tang]

Okay, this was kind of an interesting article. I thought the funniest thing was how he has all these metaphors to sex: "My linux box was like a girl I used to date -- hot, firm breasts, but crazy!" or "Ahh... the terminal! Like a mother's tit!"... and so on (i'm paraphrasing).

LOL!

I think you should read the article for them, because it makes it funny.

It maks me wonder: am I the only one that doesn't think of sex when I think about my computer? Or did the editor, somewhere along the line, say to the guy, "Dude, put some sex in it! Sex sells! Even in reviews!"

LOL

Re:Sex sells... OSX reviews?

[snake_dad]

I'll tell you a secret. I thought of sex while reading your post.

It gets old quick, it really does

[IamTheRealMike]

Ah, yet another, "wow, OS X is so much better than Linux" article. I've used both OS's and don't buy it.

Firstly, as has already been pointed out in this comments section, OS X has real problems that aren't apparent until you try and use it a lot. Window management really is poor - the other day my Mac-loving best mate asked me what the keys to switch between windows in Mozilla was. "Eh?" was all I had to say. Now I understand what he was going on about.

Secondly, yes, Aqua is amazing, but after about an hour you don't notice it any more. It's eye candy, it's nice, I like it, but what does it do? Nothing of course. It's also not hardware accelerated at all. In fact, said Apple-loving best mate recently tried to skin OS X cos he got bored of the default look: whoops, the skin he tried wouldn't completely leave. OS X wasn't meant to be skinned, the hack didn't work, time to reinstall. Again.

Thirdly, OS X has some technical deficiences that aren't immediately obvious. Like the non-existance of shared libraries. Now I'll admit I haven't done any Cocoa/Carbon development, but I have researched the matter, and as far as I can see, OS X apps don't share code. At all. Appfolders are great and all that, but of course it does mean that no software can reuse DLLs/SOs from another. Result: big apps. On my Windows/Linux box, Mozilla is about 15mb. On Paul's OS X G4, it's 35.

Finally, it doesn't run well at all on old hardware. My mate tried the PPC versions of Linux because OS X speed on his old iMac was so bad. Eventually he went back to OS X, but that says more about the contrast between ease of use and his willingness to learn more than anything ;)

But after that rant, here's why I really don't like OS X any more than Windows - it's the process. I believe in capitalism and competition and all, but at the end of the day I don't believe anyone should control something as core as the operating system. No matter what people tell me, I have a hard time believing that Apple would be any less tyrannical than Microsoft if their positions were reversed. Maybe our computers would look better, but hey. I prefer Linux, I put up with all its strange and curious habits because I believe that at the end of the day, a technology as important as computers should not be under anybodies single control at any level. So I'm sticking with my hard-to-use, but strangely satisfying Linux box.

thanks -mike

Re:It gets old... One correction

[iPaul]

OSX does support shared libraries and so much more. First, the .dynlib extension is the shared library (not .so) but it's the same thing. (i.e. not complied staticly to the executable.)

Second, it support frameworks. A framework is a shared library that's possibly versioned, and my include header files. Everything comes in one folder, which is nice.

Third it supports bundles. Bundles are dynamic that you can load on demand, like modules into the kernel. They appear as a single file to the O/S although they are actually a directory with a bunch of stuff, including non-code resources.

You can also

Finally you can include bundles, frameworks and resources into your application. Now this doesn't bloat the in-memory size of your application, because these resources are loaded dynamically. But it does make it easier to distribute an app. You don't have to worry what versions of what libraries someone has installed.

To quote:

[dimator]

Coming from a place where to install a program on Red Hat can involve using a RPM (and I'm sorry, I've never figured out how to uninstall a RPM file)

Huh? I'm not freaking clueless, and "shininess" only impresses for about 10 minutes, so I think I'll stick with Linux.

OS's or breasts?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Geez, for an article written by someone who claims to be a techie, he sure spends a lot of time obsessing about breasts. I count no less than four references. I thought he was supposed to be talking about operating systems? (There's another comment that I'd like to make about people from Utah, but it'd get modded way down so I shall refrain.)

From this we can conclude that he is visually oriented, so it's no wonder he's fallen in love with the gorgeous looks of Mac OS X. Good for him. This doesn't make OS X inherently better than Linux, and someone else's choice doesn't make Linux inherently better than Mac OS X. It's his choice, and he shouldn't try to paint it as the only correct choice. The only wrong choice is Windows.

Unix eats it's young...an argument for integration

[Spoing]

The compelling thing about unix systems is how similar they are.

OK, OK, hold on...it is true that you can't sit down at any of the *BSDs and bang out a shell script if your only unix experience is a few minutes of clicking around the Mac desktop. Even if you write a shell script that works for Solaris, depending on what files you touch you might have to re-write parts of it for Linux...and possibly re-write other parts as your Linux distribution moves toward LSB compliance.

Where the old commercial Unix vendors failed to deliver on the concept of Open, much of the current stuff is so open it's forcing the remaining propriatory Unix and Windows vendors to react. Every major OS has Posix support included or easily available. More graphics and widget sets are portable to nearly every OS. Virtual machines and other runtimes are abundant.

Yet, unix is Unix. Even if not by name. Even with the distribution snobbery, cliques, and infighting. Code is largely portable from unix to unix and machine to machine. Recursive acronyms aside, and no matter what your feelings are about the FSF, the GNU toolset is generally accepted Unix and acts as the core of the translation system.

IBM is mostly right when they claim 'Linux is lingua franca of the enterprise'. It's not just Linux, but any unix. Standardizing on Linux can be benificial, but Linux is still Unix...and in general Unix works so well, it's not impossible to switch to...another unix.

With that, I propose that if you want more Unix users -- for your flavor of unix or not -- make Windows as Unix-like as possible. They have the monster sized chunk of the market, and if one Unix system ends up replacing another, we may as well include Windows in that group.

Another Linux Deskop User Convert to OSX

[xtal]

I'm not sure why I'm writing this, since it will undoubtedly get flamed. I've run desktop linux since about 1998? Or so.. Back then, linux was a toy and I used NT for work. Linux was moving so fast, I had lots of time to develop and tweak code then - in university - and life was good. I was lucky in that when I graduated, I could run linux desktops at work for the most part, and I enjoyed it. I still use linux daily for compiling applications and in server roles. Solaris is another work companion, running high-end design tools for analog electronics. I also use Win2k daily as many of the prototyping boards I use for FPGA work are win-only, along with other embedded tools.

However, 8 months ago, one of the guys I worked with got a new toy - a Apple Titanium Powerbook. This thing is the sexiest piece of hardware I've ever seen. Hell, real live women have complimented me on it. Imagine that. I needed to get a notebook, looked around, and got a Tibook myself. At the time, I had every intention of blowing linux away and installing Yellow Dog linux. Honest! However, I decided I'd give OSX a fair shake, and I wanted to learn the OS anyhow. Learnign new things is never a bad thing from techie perspective, anyhow. I give it the quick test - is there a terminal? I'll be damned. "Hey, this thing is based on BSD", I think to myself. So I type in the magic two letter command that's inspired more flame wars than Bill Gates and Osama Bin Laden put together: "vi". F*ck me. It's there.

So, I start poking around on the Apple web site, and it's the best-organized thing I've ever seen. "why can't redhat do this", I ask myself. I click on developer, and gosh-be-damned, there's links to all this open source code I'm framiliar with - even a port of my ever-so-framilar BASH. So, I go looking for some developer tools and documentation, and get the shock of my life - not only are the APIs clearly documented, but there's example code for everying from Cocoa to Firewire right there - AND, there's a free IDE to tie all the development tools together. F*ck me. This jobs guy seems to be on to something, I think. 30 minutes after being exposed to this OS, I have OpenGL example programs compiling and running, hardware accellerated even. Wow.

Fast forward to six months later. I'm amazed every day at how well the mac works. It's has never crashed on me.. the GUI can be a little sluggish, but that doesn't bother me too much, as I'm a console monkey myself. Loads of developer support. I can plug in my perhiprials - digital camera, rio mp3 player, JVC DV camcorder - and not only do they work with NADA fiddling around, but I'm greeted by a well thought out application that is ready to talk to the device with no drama whatsoever. Here's to thoughtful GUI design. Microsoft Office for OSX was another surprise - I'm amazed they haven't killed it yet, because unlike it's windows cousin, it's uncluttered and efficient. Office X has, however, crashed on me a few times. No shocking revalations there.

However, what OS X made me do was assess how much work I was accomplishing relative to how much tinkering and configuring I was doing running linux on the desktop. As I get older, my time is more valuable, and I don't have a whole day to reconfigure things anymore. I don't have to reconfigure anything with OS X. It just works. Gnome and KDE have come a long way here, but they're not there yet. I imagine they will be in the future - but this is now. There is a sacrifice in terms of the hardware available, but what's available works very well. Games aren't there, but there are more than were there for Linux - including the Canary, Mac-only games. I solved that problem long ago with a games-only PC anyhow - apply the best tool to each task.

Sometimes, I think to myself - The motto for this OS should be "It Works". Because it does just that, with a minimum of drama. Something, after being involved with computers since I was 8, I find refreshingly new. Apple has done what Redhat should have done, take a solid open source core, make sure it's consistant and useable, put a reputation and corporation behind it's maintenance and support, AND do so without alienating the community of users that spawned it. Support from large projects like Mozilla have resulted in a great communications platform for OSX, and hopefully the upcoming OpenOffice will find it's way to OS X in a similar way as well.

Hats off to Apple, and I invite everyone here to try it. It's not all things to all people, but it's solved my general purpose computing needs in a way that nothing previous has, and brought back some of the excitement about a hardware platform that I felt in the Amiga days. The combination of an exciting OS with suprior hardware engineering is a real winner in my opinion. "To each, their own".

How LCD make an OS "better"

[ellem]

Lowest
Common
Denominator

Simply put let me say that Dark Porkrind is a power user. He's a guru to the uniformed masses that actually USE computers. They don't compile kernals, they don't script anything, they dont ever configure, make, install. They'll be damned if AIM isn't available. Dark Raman is _their_ guy. There are a lot of Dark Paradigms in the world. Some of them are benevolent and some "know enough to be dangerous."

I give Dark Andstormynight the benifit of the doubt. I think he's a good guy. (Although he did go from Apple striaght to DOS without any AMIGA.. but I digress.) For the unwashed heathens who don't know what a regex is or how to setup mulitple IPs on their NIC card, he's who they listen to.

Now, why don't they listen to you? You know everything it is true. You really do. You can give them a million reasons to use Blah-Blah Linux over OS X. You won't though. You'll read /. and config this and tweak that. You'll say rude things like RTFM, man this, grep that.

They don't care about any of that. They just want to chat with their friends and get their mail and open funny .ppt file their friends make. They never ever want to upgrade anything, ever. They simply expect their computer to work. They want to reboot when it doesn't. They never ever want to su root, or God forbid sudo.

So while Dork Hardon writes an article about how he broke free from the MS "monopoly" you sat here on /. and pissed and moaned about what an idiot he is.

We, you, /., are the minority. Mr & Mrs AOL in Middle America are the Majority. Mr & Mrs Church Newsletter have waaay more disposable cash than you and all your CS majors combined, right now. You should be furthering your cause, not fragmenting even further.

OS X is never going to fragment. It may change entirely but it won't fragment. No one has to worry about Larry, or Miguel, or Linus, or anyone but Steve. OS X makes sense for a lot of poeple.

It's pretty.

It's fast enough.

It has advertising.

It has Office.

If Linux was OS X in 1996 we'd all be giggling about XP and OS X right now. But it wasn't/isn't.

Dark Paladin is right. He's hitting Linux with his +5 Mace Of OS Smiting and there isn't a damn thing you or your /. can do about it.

Is there?

Oh boy..

[flegged]

oh boy oh boy oh boy.

Newsflash : self proclaimed "Open Source junkie" too stupid to uninstall an rpm[1] loves Mac OS.

Lets try to deconstruct this article in order.

I played text based games (most of them were never finished as I couldn't get the game to accept commands like "put egg in lake" or "drop egg in lake" or "slam egg into the damn lake you stupid computer!"

Try removing the preposition - drop egg should work if it's possible to do so.
And close your brackets.

Whenever I clicked on Wordperfect, the same DOS program filled the entire screen
In 386 enhanced mode, you can run DOS in a window.

I'm personally convinced that Microsoft never ported DirectX 5.0 to NT 4.0 just to get people to upgrade to Windows 2000
It requires a new kernel and drivers for all hardware. That's why.

the idea of recompiling a kernel is a terrifying idea to me
What's so terrifying about make menuconfig && make bzImage && cp arch/i386/bzImage /boot? The power of linux lies in the fact that you can whether or not you have to.

there were still things that just didn't work right. Like the Java plug in. I tried to install that so many times, and it just wouldn't work
And yet so many people can. Is this not a case of not RTFMing? I even have the java plugin on my ppc mozilla[3] even though Sun only produce an i386 version.

But the worst, the truly worst part, was cut 'n paste
Left click to select, middle button to paste. What's bad about that? It even works on a tty or a virtual console. And it's consistent throughout the entire system.

Linux was a lot like a girl named Allison that I used to date. She was a hot redhead with large, firm breasts in most of my honors classes. She was smart, she was cute - and she was totally crazy. I could only deal with her strange behavior for so long, no matter how much I loved the rest of her.
I'm really not qualified to say anything about this...

of its inability to handle virtual memory
Mac OS does handle virtual memory. It just makes it possible to disable it. (Now that is one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard).

even smarter than what I was used to in the Linux command line
The default shell in Mac OSX is tcsh, which has a different command completion behavior than bash by default. The behaviour you see in tcsh can easily be set in bash, and zsh does so by default too. It is not, however, smarter.
Example : you have both a directory and a file in your current working directory, named so that the file comes before the directory (eg after unpacking somefile.tar.gz you have a directory called somefile). To change to the directory you try cd some* to go into the directory. tcsh will find the file first, then complain, whereas bash will do the right thing.
Both bash and tcsh are available for linux, so the comparison is irrelevant anyway.

Right upon taking it out of the box, it just seemed so...pretty
This is why most people buy Macs. Mostly people (like my boss) who think that case is actually relevant to the design of the system.

I've never understood the big deal about "anti-aliasing"
And yet you seem qualified to write an objective comparison of it? Sure some of default linux fonts have terrible hinting, but get a copy of gdkpixbuf and the windows truetype fonts and you're laughing. Have you seen what cleartype looks like? Sub-pixel rendering is sweet. By comparison OSX just looks... blurry.

Running programs have a small black triangle underneath them, so it's easy to tell what's running and what's not
The key word here is "small". It's not easy to tell what's running and what's not. Both long time Mac users and new converts have a lot of pet hates about the Dock. I won't reiterate them here.

When I first went to install Microsoft Office X, there was something that surprised me about the installation procedure. Basically, it was "copy this folder into your Applications directory". Or Omniweb, a competing web browser. It's just one file
ls -l shows it as a directory called somefile.app. So which is it? That's the problem - the gui and prompt are inconsistent; changing any files name to somefile.app will make it always appear as application (with the file extension hidden) and it can't be fixed from the finder[2]. So installation is easy. For some programs. Others have their own installers, which variously put random files anywhere (eg Lightware) to nuking other partitions (iTunes 2) to crashing simply because you've moved an older version of the app.
And there's no uninstallation routine. No way to cleanly get rid of all files, system resources and preferences.
Compare this to linux. cast appname will install appname and all required dependencies from source, while dispel appname will remove it and all applications which depend on it.[3]
Compare also to Windows. msiexec appname.msi will install appname, repeated invocations will give options to modify repair or remove appname. Or you can get the same effect by clicking on appname.msi.

I've never figured out how to uninstall a RPM file
See again note [1]. Please now tell me how to uninstall apache from Mac OSX, because I don't need a web server. What do you mean I can't?

No messages about "I can't shut down the program" like you'd see in Windows
You mean "Unable to terminate process. Access denied"? This is no different from trying to kill another users process in any unix. You can't kill other peoples processes. This is natural. This is right.

Copying programs is much like Windows - select a file, and either drag it to another directory, or select Edit->Copy
Copying files by Edit/Copy didn't exist until Mac OSX. Maybe because they realised how useless the finder[2] was.

Since OS X does a great job with memory management
I sincerely doubt you have evidence to back this up. Better than Mac OS, certainly, but better than any other unix? No. Considering how the ui allocates stupid chunks of memory for any window which makes it take days to resize a window (due to its dynamic de- and re- allocation of roughly a gig per window).

It would be nice to have a setting like "if all windows are closed, end the program".
Don't even hope. This is Jobs' idea of usability, and it will not change.

Then there's the whole Metadata thing
Yes, that sucks. We're in agreement on something.

Every tried to cut and paste text from the Windows 2000 telnet program? Somebody decided to change all the cut and paste keys to piss of the users, I'm sure
So you've skipped back to something you mentioned earlier. Yes I have tried to cut and paste from Windows 2000 telnet. Left button to select, enter to copy, right button to paste. Almost identical to linux. This is needed since console programs have a habit of interrupting when they are sent a Ctrl-C :o)

It's like running a DOS program in Windows XP. Only...it actually works.
Oh, you mean that Apple have done a better job at retaining backwards compatibility than Microsoft? Is that why, when they decided to use a new processor, all programs had to be shipped in two versions ("fat binaries", and they're still in use today)? Is that also why, in their new all-powerful operating system most programs won't run unless you have the older operating system installed alongside? Don't even mention how Classic allows "almost full speed" or "running natively" until you explain why Apple ditched a well used and well understood API in order to deliberately break compatibility. If Carbon can run OS9 programs properly under OSX, why not keep the entire API consistent. This is what Microsoft has done. The DOS API still exists. The Win16 API still exists. The OS2 and posix APIs still exist. The Win32 API has been continuously updated for the last seven years without breaking backwards compatibility. Why didn't Apple do the same?

I've noticed that 3D acceleration doesn't quite work for Classic programs running under OS X
If they had kept the API, this would not have been a problem.

Not only did all of my Unix programs install just fine under OS X and run like they've always done, but the OS X developers crowd have even ported many of them over just for OS X
Which begs the question, why build a gui on top of Unix if it is completely incompatible with X Windows? XDarwin is a stopgap solution. Any BSD program or one which uses configure correcly should work on Mac OSX, if it weren't for deliberately introduced incompatibilities.

I don't have to worry "can I get hardware X to work?" I never have to hear "oh, just recompile your kernel, or edit the configure script before you compile".
And why didn't you actually ever follow that advice?

If there was a way to edit this key combination (or if someone could tell me how to change those keys), I'd be a little happier
Sorry again. Jobs' idea of usability.

What do I fucking have to kill to get someone to make an OS X program that will let me mount some Novell volumes on my machine here?
Steve Jobs, I think...

ATI - personally, I think your cards are the bomb. I love my ATI TV-Wonder, and I've been eyeing those 8500 All-in-Wonder DV cards. So why aren't you spreading the OS X love? You have a TV USB device for Mac, but there's no OS X drivers. And where are the All-in-Wonder cards? You'd think that was a no-brainer on the Mac. I want that screen-capturing, straight to Quicktime movie ability that I know you can give me.
Now this bitching is directed at the wrong entity. ATIs hands are tied. Apple decided there would be a minimum level of hardware support, and all machines which are supported will work the same. Which means that features of more expensive cards such as the ATIs TV-out, will not be available because it is not available in lower-end machines. This is also the (stupid, stupid, stupid) reason why the nVidia cards don't do hardware T&L, of which they are more than capable (and indeed is their selling point).

I like OS X a lot, and I'm now a fully converted Mac user. It has all the power I remember in Linux, but it's easier to use, and far prettier
I got so sick of the OSX gui I installed Yellow Dog so I could go back to Gnome - and yes, I can apply themes!

It has all of the editing abilities of my Windows machine, without all of the crashes.
My Windows 2000 machine doesn't crash. The Windows 2000 machine I installed at work the day after starting (almost a year ago now) doesn't crash. In an office full of Macs, that (aside from my Yellow Dog box) is the only machine which doesn't crash. I guess your milage may vary, but the only reason for a Windows 2000 machine to crash is a hardware problem.

And if the other vendors can just get off their asses and realize that OS X is the future of Apple, and maybe they should be writing their drivers and apps to that system, then I wouldn't have anything to gripe about.
That's what they said about copeland and pink and taligent. Adobe didn't buy into it, and so those systems never took off. It's only because Photoshop now looks crap in their deliberately crippled "Classic" mode that they are producing a Carbon version.

Where the hell am I going with this? I don't know. I just hate it when people evangelise Apple, when they should know better, or in this case, clearly don't. But who am I to argue? A clueless user who can't RTFM on RPM using an Apple? They were made for each other.

[1]clue rpm -e. Try also rpm --help or man rpm. Or even rpmdrake.
[2] ever notice how the "finder" can't find anything? For that you need a completely separate app called "sherlock". Now, I ask you, is that intuitive?
[3]I am in the process of porting Sorcerer (mentioned on Slashdot a couple of times) to powerpc, because quite frankly, rpm sucks.

Re:how much cheaper?

[diverman]

This is an argument that has gone back and forth. I laugh when someone tells me they can get a comparable PC for $1000, compared to the top of the line Dual 1GHz G4.

Yes, I think you could get it for cheaper, but not by much IF you are getting hardware of the same quality. Quality is really the key. The last time I dealt with that $1000 PC argument, I told the guy to go through the cost of the components. The first thing I pointed out was the video card (GeForce4 Titanium). That took away a lot of that $1000 budget right there. After going through it all, and me keeping him in check on quality of the PC parts, the equiv PC came out to about $3000-3500 with no monitor. The top-line G4 runs for about $4300.

Oh... that $3000-3500 for the PC... it doesn't include the licensing for Windows XP, and other applications to bring usability up to par. Yes, you could get Linux, but then there's a loss in hardware compatibility and main-stream application support. The Mac price was with pretty much all the software a typical person would use/need and be quite happy with.

Hope that kinda answered your Q...

-Alex

Re:I went the other way

[diverman]

A lot of things have been fixed since the 10.0 days. There were some things I wasn't as happy with them.

As for not including the Dev Tools... that's messed up. I would have called Apple and asked, where is my Dev Tools CD!?!? Without the dev tools, you lose access to a large amount of the OSS stuff.

I feel yer pain, but I think your situation was less than common.

The directories are definitely a little different. It's like a combination of standard UNIX, NeXT (similar to many BSD's), and Apple's existing structure. I'd been a UNIX/Linux guy for a good number of years, and was thrown off a little, but quickly adjusted. In all honesty, I kind of like some of the differences... especially the way some of the local user directories are setup. But there are still a few things that are annoying, such as the lack of use of the /etc directory in many situations.

It was the strangest thing to not see my user account in the password file... then I discovered the NetInfo tools (similar to NDIS).

I am not waiting for my second Mac to show up (next week)... a low end Titanium Powerbook. Can't wait!

Cheers,
-Alex

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I went the other way

[Knobby]

You can download the DevTools for free, or call Apple and tell them that you never received the DevTools with you TiBook!

Re:Stupid

[erasmus_]

Frankly, we don't care.

By "we", I'm going just going to assume you mean you. Thanks for talking for all of us. That's why we're reading this article and talking about it, because "we" don't care. OSX has its time and place, and this author makes an excellent case as to why he switched. I didn't know many things about it that he pointed out, and was interested because our backgrounds seem similar. Please troll elsewhere now.

Re:Stupid

[Jeremi]

It is a proprietary, non-free, non-open OS with no technical advantage whatsoever over Linux or modern BSD kernels

Hmm... does the fact that it can be used by mere mortals count as a 'technical advantage'? (hint: you shouldn't have to learn how to use a shell in order to operate or administrate a computer)

Oh, and did I mention the GUI is ugly? Frankly, we don't care.

Speak for yourself -- I think the GUI is quite nice; certainly better than most of what I've seen in Linux-land, and I am quite interested. If you don't like it, fine, but don't claim to speak for me.

Re:Stupid

[grub]

Hmm... does the fact that it can be used by mere mortals count as a 'technical advantage'? (hint: you shouldn't have to learn how to use a shell in order to operate or administrate a computer)

True story: My little brother's Mac and/or cable modem was acting up. He had been running OSX since the 'test drive'. I pulled up a console to check something and he asked "What's that?" I laughed at first but then it hit me; Apple has done such a damn good job on it's front end that the typical end user never had to worry about the chewy UNIXish creamy center.

Very very impressive job on Apple's part, and it can only get better..

(side note, the problem was with the cable modem, not his Mac or the OS)

Re:Stupid

[Ogerman]

hahaha 3 people took the bait and wasted their moderator points on that post. Morons. Mod good comments up, don't mod bad ones down.

Oh, btw.. for you misinformed folk who think the Mac gui somehow makes it the only *nix accessible to "ordinary non-tech people," may I suggest that you check out KDE. I've yet to meet someone who was incapable of immediately using it after being familiar with Mac or Windows interfaces.

Re:what's with the juvenile breast obsession?

[Chris Johnson]

I just liked how apparently Linux is a hot redhead with large, firm breasts, but insane :)

Can't deny the coolness factor of THAT. whew!

Re:Read Eric Hoffer's "True Believer"

[Chris Johnson]

...hence the great success of Windows and the behaviors involving spastic galumphing about shouting 'Give it up for meeeeee!' and leading chants of 'developers developers developers developers' and 'Microsoft, kill 'em! Microsoft, kill 'em!'.

Eric Hoffer's book is about MASS movements.

We have that. And it's certainly not Mac or Linux.

Re:Well

[Gorobei]

Unix? I thought the article was about pre-teen girl's breasts:

I played ball with my friends, rode my bike around the neighborhood, caught a glimpse of Stacy Baker's 6th grade breasts when she showed them to me

my insides twist around like I'm 12 years old and about to see a girl's breasts for the first time.

Linux was a lot like a girl named Allison that I used to date. She was a hot redhead with large, firm breasts in most of my honors classes.

Re:No, GNU/Linux and MacOS are not UNIX

[Dahan]

Well, according to this [unix-systems.org], the Open Group considers Apple to be one of the "platform vendors supporting the Single UNIX Specification."

Not that it matters to the majority of Linux or MacOS X users.