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I mortgaged my future with a Mac

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#91

Post by WiseWeasel »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #85
WiseWeasel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Amazon's downloadable videos aren't? All online video "purchasing" services are DRM-laden crap. Blame the publishers.

Amazon's videos are available on a wide-variety of hardware platforms, so I'm much more confident purchasing from them.

Meh, I don't see much difference, and I won't kid myself into thinking that I'm actually "purchasing" anything from either of those services, rather than a semi-long-term rental at a higher price. I'll stream DRM video for a cheap monthly fee but I won't "buy" it since it's never mine, given that the purchases can be rendered worthless at the flip of the service provider's switch. If I want permanent access to a movie, I get the shiny disc and rip it to a standard format.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#92

Post by eric-hu »

dechols wrote: post #28

It does not matter the platform you use. The data you use is far, far more important. I use Windows 8, Linux, and Mac OSX boxes on a daily basis. I play music from all of them. I watch movies, view photos, and browse the web from all of them. I code on all of them. The reason I'm able to do this is because I've relentlessly managed my data and set up systems to allow that data to be shared effectively between environ…

If I may ask, what do you code on each platform?

I've got my vim files set up to be mostly cross compatible between OS X and Ubuntu, but I recently borfed my build process on Ubuntu (12.04) by upgrading vim to a newer version on a custom PPA.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#93

Post by johnminter »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #8
ybaumes wrote: post #2

This post would constitute a good/constructive reply to the latter article : 25 Years to Mac - How Ubuntu Pushed Me Away from the PC[1] [1][ http://randomdrake.com/2013/02/23/25-years-to-mac-how-ubuntu... ]

Based on that article, I think Ubuntu probably would push me away from the PC, too. I used a variant called "Goobuntu" (guess where...) during my tenure at one particular company, and it was a mixed bag. I'm not sure how much was due to Ubuntu itself and how much was from the local meddling, but it was wonky in ways my Linux boxes normally aren't. Put it this way - my machine at work was some beastly multi-proc Penti…

One significant point that you made in your original post was that you did your Linux upgrades on your own schedule to meet your own needs. This cannot be overstated.

I understand David Drake's issues with Ubuntu 12.04 with the bloated GUI that comes out of the box - but there are less problematic alternatives, such as Xubuntu. Still, he was right about the time he spent searching for how to fix configuration issues. I would love to hear his take 6 months after he has been on MacOSX if he uses it for serious coding outside of the Apple ecosystem. I use Homebrew on my MacBook Pro and do just as much searching for how to get some code to port because of idiosyncrasies in OSX. Still, I do like my 2009 MBP on Mountain Lion.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#94

Post by revelation »

rayiner wrote: post #23

Sitting here, still using a Mac as a dev/everything machine. I know Lion is supposed to suck and all, but my 2010 MBA still gets insane battery life under OS X, the tool chain is top-notch (Clang, LLVM, etc), there have been a ton of improvements under the hood (TLS support being a big one), and I actually appreciate full-screen XCode or Emacs given the 13" screen. Even Xcode seems to, in 4.6, be getting back to the…

Not an OSX user, but many of the complaints seem to stem from Apples crusade on filesystems. For many (even not power users) this can lead to data loss; you open a file and sketch out some changes, and everything was magically written to the disk without you ever noticing so now you can't get the old data back.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#95

Post by astrodust »

philiac wrote: post #52
miles wrote: post #36

But, I'm stuck. All of my music is in iTunes, having been re-imported from the original CDs over a period of time. I can just re-rip all of it on my Linux box, but that's going to suck. Or, I can try to grovel around in their grungy database and try to make sense of it and "export" things, but I'm sure that will be even worse. You'll find all of your music neatly organized here: /Users/ username /Music/iTunes/iTunes…

The author seems to desire a needlessly complicated way to make these things happen.

When you're working for a company that has priorities other than you fussing around with your open-source this and open-source that, then naturally the OS X way of doing things becomes easier.

When you're on your own and might appreciate a distraction from the day-to-day coding by, you know, source-patching your open-source media player to fix an irritating bug, the Linux ecosystem provides endless opportunities.

There's a lot to be said for both environments. If you want to be an active participant in building the software you use on a daily basis, Linux is certainly more open in that regard. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of first-class open-source packages on OS X that can be contributed to.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#97

Post by nirvana »

The idea that Apple has her data all locked up is completely asinine. Frankly, saying so is dishonest. Apple has been careful to not do what she describes. It's hypocrtical to say that Linux which stores stuff in a directory structure is good while, Macs, which do the exact same thing with the data she's complaining about are "opaque"

Mountain Lion was the first of a once-a-year update cycle, and contrary to "not even talking about it anymore" they are updating it more frequently than ever. (we're due for the announcement of the next version in a few weeks.)

iTunes - Stores music you ripped in standards based format, AAC or MP3. It's easy to get at as it all lives in folders on your machine that aren't exactly opaque (it even organizes your music by artist, etc.) The database file is just an index of the music that keeps track of play counts, etc. You don't need that.

iPhoto - Again, stores all your images in standard formats. You can export the photos with all your changes if you want. They, again, live on your hard drive in a reasonable standard directory structure, and if you want you can export within iPhoto. Not only is there no opaque database it is QUITE trivial to get your data out.

iPhone Syncing- you don't need a machine to do that anymore you can do it online, including backing up to the cloud if you wish. Maybe because she deliberately hasn't updated its software it doesn't have that feature, but that's her choice, not a problem with the product.

iCloud- the idea that you'd have to be "crazy" to do that is BS.

Her saying the mac isn't good for development makes me question her tech skills. Either that or she just cant' be bothered to discover homebrew or to notice that all the open source projects support the mac for development these days.

Sigh, just another mindless, dishonest, ant-Apple rant.

The thing is, if Apple was so bad, you could bring up legitimate criticisms, rather than use "I can't be bothered to spend 2 minutes goggling therefore it cant' be done" type claims.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#98

Post by nirvana »

spindritf wrote: post #72
epistasis wrote: post #4

I'm not sure I understand the specific complaints in the post. The metadata in iTunes is stored in a standard way, attached to the audio files themselves. All the playlists, repeated track infromation, etc, is stored in an XML file with simple structure. This should be as easy to convert as if the music database had been stored anywhere else. Similarly, for iPhoto, much of the metadata is attached to the photos thems…

> Storing data in any application results in some restrictions in how that data can be transformed and/or used in the future. And not all applications are equal in that regard. I store plenty of data in Dropbox, never run into any problems. Same with git, mutt, Shotwell, Rhythmbox... Usually, exporting doesn't involve any action. All the data is just stored in files that can be used by any application. There is a str…

Except that in the case of all the data she's complaining about the Apple products DO use conveneint data formats. The MP3 structure supports tags in the files as a standard going back to the 1990s and Apple supports it.

I don't think Linux storing MP3s in a directory is superior to iTunes storing them in a directory structure (organized by artist name).

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#99

Post by rachelbythebay »

nirvana wrote: post #97

The idea that Apple has her data all locked up is completely asinine. Frankly, saying so is dishonest. Apple has been careful to not do what she describes. It's hypocrtical to say that Linux which stores stuff in a directory structure is good while, Macs, which do the exact same thing with the data she's complaining about are "opaque" Mountain Lion was the first of a once-a-year update cycle, and contrary to "not eve…

My tech skills are sub-par. 10 year old children code circles around me. I sob when I see a command line. Circular data structures make me dizzy.

I am a fraud.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#100

Post by blub »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #76
blub wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see what you mean. All my music in iTunes is neatly organized inside the Music folder - DRM free and easily copied to any device. The iPhone is a different matter, you have to accept that you will lose (a lot of) freedom for the syncing convenience. There are some apps that allow you to exchange data over wifi through FTP/WebDav when one does not want to use iTunes at all.

I guess I'm thinking of TV shows and movies, which are DRMed.

The only DRM-free providers of Tv shows/movies that I know of are pirates. It's especially sad outside of the US because a ton of content is simply not legally available.
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