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Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

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Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#321
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You just proved his point. Granted, it's not candy-color obvious. But for a developer working on Linux , "hard" should represent a different barrier than for Joe Sixpack, yes?

There is a distinction between "doable" and "usable". I should switch to Terminal every time I want to toggle hidden file visibility? Or write a service to install on my Finder toolbar. (I did this, because I'm not Joe Sixpack, but it's still annoying. If I wanted to write my own UI, I wouldn't have gone out and bought one.)

>I should switch to Terminal every time I want to toggle hidden file visibility?

You only need to run that command once.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever used a 30" display? Maximizing windows does not make a whole lot of sense there, especially considering the difference in window contents on Windows vs Mac (ie. self-contained menubar, etc).

That's where the newer Microsoft Windows method of maximizing into 1/2 the screen works well. I'd prefer if it were customizable to work in thirds, though. I maintain that people think of multi-windowed UI in terms of windows first. Resizing a window to fit the content makes less sense than resizing the content to fit the window. People also seem to get really upset when UI interaction isn't consistent, and the Mac a…

You can drag a window to a corner to get it to fill a quarter screen. Kind of hard to hit the lower corners (it is not the screen corner but the top of the taskbar).

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using both Linux and OS X regularly. Apt is awesome, without a doubt, particularly for the breadth of software available. And on the whole, I agree that Homebrew is considerably inferior. But there is one aspect I'm liking better about the Homebrew/Mac approach. With Homebrew I can have the latest software without a problem, because the OS itself is not so hooked in to the web of package manager dependencies. In…

In many cases on Linux I just wait until the next OS release to upgrade software - because toying with the huge dependency graph is not worth it. Maybe I should switch to a rolling release distro? I haven't tried that. When I most recently used Linux on the desktop, in 2010, I finally grew frustrated enough with Ubuntu's screen management setup (there was no way to get it to respect my wishes for it to turn off the s…

You want to use a distro with an LTS release. Switching to Arch and being surprised that pacman -Syu causes occasional breakage is not a failure of Linux at large.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#324
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology has existed for decades to install applications without having to make potentially dangerous alterations to systemwide shared state. There's only so much you can blame on app developers. In the year 2011, shipping an OS that allows an application to corrupt the registry is just as stupid, if not stupider, than shipping an OS that allows the application to grab or generate arbitrary pointers into memory…

The problem here is that you think 'corrupted registry keys' means that the computer is unusable. A corrupted registry key just means that a setting hasn't been saved right - it could be as trivial as whether an app starts fullscreen or windowed. The GP's statement did not say that the system was faulty, just that he was experiencing errors and he reinstalled. On enquiry, they weren't system errors, but errors around…

> The problem here is that you think 'corrupted registry keys' means that the computer is unusable.

Well, this guy's computer threw errors when he tried to install an app. "Unusable", no, just shitty. I would call that broken, but as you demonstrate, Windows apologists have always had lower standards.

> We're in 2011, no-one should have to know what 'engine oil change' means either, but someone still has to know how to do it.

That wouldn't be a very good argument if there was only one carmaker that made a car that required oil changes, while every other carmaker in the world had been selling perfectly functional no-oil-change-required cars since the 1990's.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#325
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i tend not to use it for this very reason. i've wished, on more than one occasion, that a user could customize this action to be a "maximize vertically", as one could in gnome2. maybe i'm one of the few who actually used this, as it seems to have been phased out in gnome3. but i found it very useful.

I think I use tools like Divvy http://mizage.com/#macdivvy more than I use the zoom icon, it makes it so much easier to position windows..

One of Divvy's coolest features is you can build preset window positions and attach them to keyboard chords. So for me, cmd-shift-space brings up divvy then hitting 1 makes the app fill the window, 2 is upper left 2/3 of the screen, 3 is upper right 2/3 of the screen, etc -- I have 7 or 8 presets. Full keyboard control of window position is awesome. It's the best $13 I've ever spent.

retailmenot also claims a $20% code, so that will knock some money off. But I happily paid retail and I use it 100 times a day. It's also particularly helpful if you use an external monitor at your desk and regularly resize windows as you attach or detach the monitor.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was pleasantly surprised because the Windows/Linux systems tend to mask Control-A for select-all. Linux maybe. I have never had it fail in windows and think you may be misremembering how it works.

I mean they mask control-A to select all instead of moving the cursor to the beginning of the line.

That's because control-A is supposed to select all on Windows.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

alt+left or alt+right doesn't work for me in Terminal out of the box (I usually use iTerm2 where it doesn't work either) - do you need to change any settings (such as emulation, terminal type etc) to get at that?

1) Go to the Terminal menu > Settings, click the Settings pane. 2) Select your preferred theme (left). It's probably the one listed as "default." 3) Click the Keyboard tab. 4) Click the "+" button to add a new Key to Action mapping. • Key: cursor left • Modifier: option • Action: send string to shell: • In the blank blank space: \033b Note: This is the ESC key followed by a lowecase “b“. • Click OK. 5) Click the "+"…

Or just click the "option as meta" checkbox!

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#329

I came from a windows background, tinkered with Linux for a few years on and off, and when I started my current job I was given a Macbook Pro. After a few months of using it I as so frustrated, and found myself spending more and more time in my Ubuntu virtual machine, that when they were ordering new MBPs for the design team I offered to give mine up to a designer and buy a ThinkPad, thus saving the company over $1,0…

I'm not hating on your preferences, but mac laptops are competitively priced. There's no way you got equivalent hardware for $1k less.

also, cmd-G lets you type a path in finder. That is, btw, on the first result page if you google "finder type path", without the quotes.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still better than Windows, where it just takes up your whole screen.

I disagree, because taking up the whole screen is what many people expect said button to do.

because they've come from Windows where that is the behaviour. Much like using ctrl or cmd as a modifier - when you become accustomed to one, the other takes some getting used to.
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