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How I ended up with Mac

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Re: How I ended up with Mac

#51
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who are limited by Finder use Terminal... The people who can't use Terminal don't need more than Finder. Apple is great at hitting sweet-spots that way.

I really could not disagree with you more. At any given time i have 3-4 iTerm2 windows open to which if someone closed i would freak and slap them silly. But just because i use the terminal does not mean i don't want a competent file browser. Im not against there dumbed down version, but Finder as it stands simply isnt practical for a developer, and no i don't want to jump into a terminal to do basic tasks that devel…

Plus, iTerm isn't even Terminal, and Terminal is pretty embarrassing.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#52
post #7

I'm always amused by these posts praising how everything just works on the Mac, and how it's so nice not having to worry about [annoying linux/windows stuff #351]. Am I really the only one blind to this effect ? I've used a mac. It's nice. But it "just works" only until you want to productively use Finder, or you want to connect to a Samba server, or you want to shuffle files with UTF-8 filenames around, or a dozen o…

When developing on a mac the Finder is probably the single largest annoyance. I never thought i would ever miss Windows Explorer, but WOW is Finder bad! With that said PathFinder[1] is an awesome replacement for Finder. Expensive but worth every penny. Still not as clean as Windows Explorer, but it is night & day better then Finder. [1]: http://cocoatech.com/pathfinder/

I've switched over to mac as well. However, Finder is my #2 annoyance. #1 being I so fricking love Winamp, and nothing has come close to that on a mac (or linux) for that matter. And sure, winamp did come out with a mac app, but it was useless I found...

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#53
post #19

Perhaps I'm strange. I always seem to be going the opposite way to everyone else. I've fallen in love with Windows again. It just works. Power management rocks, battery life is good (8 hours on my 2007 Lenovo T61!), the hardware is damn cheap, the licenses cost me virtually nothing, literally everything I plug into it works, the tooling is pretty damn good, utils I wrote for Windows NT4 literally 14 years ago still j…

8 hours from a a T61? Never got that much time with one, not even the first days.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#54
post #19

Perhaps I'm strange. I always seem to be going the opposite way to everyone else. I've fallen in love with Windows again. It just works. Power management rocks, battery life is good (8 hours on my 2007 Lenovo T61!), the hardware is damn cheap, the licenses cost me virtually nothing, literally everything I plug into it works, the tooling is pretty damn good, utils I wrote for Windows NT4 literally 14 years ago still j…

> I've fallen in love with Windows again. It just works.

You and I have had vastly different experiences.

I have spent the morning trying to get Rails installed on a Win7 box. This has required numerous painful hoops to jump through, and I am actually not even finished. I finally got 1.9.3 installed, but am hung on some OpenSSL requirement. It has been a massive, huge waste of my day.

The default command shell sucks rocks, so I'm using (or attempting to use) cygwin, specifically zsh. I have no access to tmux, and while screen works it is not my preferred multiplexer. Even under zsh, though, the typical Ruby commands (ruby/irb/gem/etc.) have to be run with their .bat equivalents, which is a needless pain. The latest issue is with something related to OpenSSL, and I'm still digging through that one.

These are all issues that have been specific to Windows. I ran this exact same code with zero problems on my home OS X box not 4 hours ago. git pull/bundle/rails server, good to go. On Windows this has taken the better part of a day to get going.

You sound like an astroturfer, honestly. "I'm honest, I use other systems. It's just that they all are just awful compared to Windows. Here are generic reasons why, with few specifics."

> shit crock of a POSIX environment

What does this even mean? OS X is POSIX certified. Windows is not. Are you saying POSIX is crap, or that OS X's implementation of it is? Either way I would challenge you to back up that statement up. OS X is the best Unix I have personally had experience using.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#55
post #19

Perhaps I'm strange. I always seem to be going the opposite way to everyone else. I've fallen in love with Windows again. It just works. Power management rocks, battery life is good (8 hours on my 2007 Lenovo T61!), the hardware is damn cheap, the licenses cost me virtually nothing, literally everything I plug into it works, the tooling is pretty damn good, utils I wrote for Windows NT4 literally 14 years ago still j…

"(no who moved my cheese)" Try migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Whole wheels of cheese are moved around and the flavor has changed... :)

I keep hearing that. Fortunately I haven't experienced it. When I used Windows 7 and wanted to open a program, I tapped "Windows" and started typing the app name. That still works in 8.

My only complaint is a "go back" problem, where opening something like a media file from the desktop opens a Metro/Modern app, and closing the app takes you to the Start Screen rather than back to your desktop. Otherwise, I spend my time on the dual screen desktop mode, using my programs, just like I did in 7. Only now with improved dual monitor support.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#56
post #19

Perhaps I'm strange. I always seem to be going the opposite way to everyone else. I've fallen in love with Windows again. It just works. Power management rocks, battery life is good (8 hours on my 2007 Lenovo T61!), the hardware is damn cheap, the licenses cost me virtually nothing, literally everything I plug into it works, the tooling is pretty damn good, utils I wrote for Windows NT4 literally 14 years ago still j…

"it's just all boringly functional and uneventful these days."

As it should be—they've had time to work on the issues and should be competitive by now.

OSX, meanwhile, is still Unix under the hood. I'm frankly stunned that someone coming from a straight FreeBSD background wouldn't value that highly. But your experiences with hardware, while I'm sure legitimate, do not mirror my own. I've owned two MacBook Pros (starting with the first Unibody model) for the last 6 years and both have been rock solid daily drivers, and "functional and uneventful," but also very nice to use—not really boring.

To each their own, is the moral of all these stories. If Windows is gaining stability and OSX continues to be high quality, it just gives everyone more options and lowers the barrier-to-entry of computing.

Twenty years ago you had to invest in your desktop and build it yourself, and laptops were rare. Ten years ago only nerds knew how to maintain Windows. Now you carry an always-connected computer in your pocket and a 4.9 pound supercomputer on your back. No part of this is bad.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#58
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When developing on a mac the Finder is probably the single largest annoyance. I never thought i would ever miss Windows Explorer, but WOW is Finder bad! With that said PathFinder[1] is an awesome replacement for Finder. Expensive but worth every penny. Still not as clean as Windows Explorer, but it is night & day better then Finder. [1]: http://cocoatech.com/pathfinder/

Why do you say that Finder is an annoyance? I find it pretty great for sorting, searching or connecting over afp or smb. And while developing, I just use the Terminal with pushd/popd and dired.

And then you want to access a hidden folder, which on Windows or Linux you could just go to the address bar and type in the name. On OS X, I have yet to figure out how.

That's assuming it saw my network computers in the first place, of course. If I try to get to them too soon after booting, they simply never appear.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#59
post #7

I'm always amused by these posts praising how everything just works on the Mac, and how it's so nice not having to worry about [annoying linux/windows stuff #351]. Am I really the only one blind to this effect ? I've used a mac. It's nice. But it "just works" only until you want to productively use Finder, or you want to connect to a Samba server, or you want to shuffle files with UTF-8 filenames around, or a dozen o…

Cmd-Space "Terminal" and bam, it's Unix.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#60

So after Miguel did everything possible to fragment and screw up Linux desktops, he's now complaining about fragmented and screwed up Linux desktops. Color me surprised.

As if the shell was the problem! It wasn't and isn't. The fragmentation that matters happens at a lower level, e.g. library versioning, the centralized software repositories, etc. Which is great on the server. But terrible on the desktop.
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