How I ended up with Mac • Hacker News Board

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#111

Post by coldtea » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 4:57 AM UTC

Wilya wrote: 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…

>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 other things like that.

Don't know, I've had productively using Finder for 8 years, shuffling UTF-8 filenames around, and connecting to Samba servers without problems. Heck, I've had more problems connecting to Samba during when I used Windows that I have on the Mac. And don't get me started on the tedium that was connecting to SMB from Linux when I used that (circa 1997-2003).

"It just works" is relative. Compared to Linux/Windows, most things just work.

And I'm not a guy that just used Macs all his life. I started with DOS and SunOS on SparcStations.

>I suppose I'm just not the target market.

Well, considering that tons of alpha level developers, from people like Miguel De Icaza to Rob Pike and the majority in most US based programming-conferences, from the audience to the speaker, use a Mac, I wonder what that "target market" is.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#112

Post by cgh » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 4:59 AM UTC

meaty wrote: post #77

calinet6 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 (start…

As it should be—they've had time to work on the issues and should be competitive by now. Yes this is it. But I wasn't getting that with OSX. In '06, it was pretty good compared to say Windows XP but since '08 it's been declining rapidly into whack-a-mole problems. OSX is a bastardised version of UNIX under the hood which is "even worse than HP-UX when you haven't paid for the compilers" to deal with I found. Getting…

You click a button marked "Install" in XCode and it installs the tools into /usr/bin. That sure is tough.

OS X userland is pretty stock BSD. It may be unfamiliar if you are used to Linux.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#113

Post by coldtea » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 5:02 AM UTC

meaty wrote: post #35

Wilya wrote: 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…

Agreed. It doesn't just work. It works until you want an opinion, then it stabs you in the face repetitively. My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction iPhoto decided to enforce upon me. After removing iPhoto, it was bearable. This slowly cranked on until I ended up with basically OS-X as a window manager for a terminal emulator, browser, ViewNX and Apple Mail connected to GMail (which didn't w…

>My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction iPhoto decided to enforce upon me.

iPhoto is an application. Not the OS. Tons of apps in Windows and Linux that work with similar abstractions as iPhoto. If you don't like the abstraction use another app. There are around 10-15 for photo management on the Mac, from big guns like Lightroom and Aperture to tons of lightweight image managers.

That said, what you write makes no sense. You might as well have written: "My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction PostgreSQL decided to enforce upon me" (I want my tables in plain CSV files, damnit!).

>This slowly cranked on until I ended up with basically OS-X as a window manager for a terminal emulator, browser, ViewNX and Apple Mail connected to GMail (which didn't work properly either and ended up just being done in a browser).

I fail to see how it "didn't work properly". Been using Gmail and Mail.app for 7 years. Any particular real-world problem?

>As iWork was shit and corrupted documents left right and centre

Never had that.

>Granted I could have used Office for Mac but it was the 2004 version which was a POS that relied on Rosetta.

Ever thought of upgrading it?

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#114

Post by ilmare » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 5:48 AM UTC

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #52

jug6ernaut wrote: post #16

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/

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...

Try vox player

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#115

Post by ishbits » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:18 AM UTC

I can't believe all the talk about Finder here..

I bet Miguel is more like me than most of you, that is, living in a unix/linux terminal for the last 15 years or more - AND doing file management in that terminal!

I've also gone to the Mac from unix/linux as my primary machine as it just works. What I mean by that is suspend/resume, wifi, and all that stuff that you shouldn't think about anymore.

Sure, all I use on it is a browser, iTerm, emacs and dev tools installed from MacPorts, but it provides me with a good environment - that just works. Updates have never broken anything for me - not even the OS updates. Can't say the same about Linux.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#116

Post by Jam0864 » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:23 AM UTC

__--__ wrote: post #108

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It's been a while since I've used Winamp, but from what I remember, VLC has a similar interface and functionality.

...no it doesn't

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#117

Post by stephenhuey » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:24 AM UTC

revscat wrote: post #69

simonh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I came to Mac back in 2007 I assumed my dislike of Finder was just a matter of what I was used to. Six years of using Mac at home and Windows at work and nope. I do like column view, and you'll get my new Mac Mini out of my cold dead hands, but if I had a choice I'd have Windows Explorer on my Mac in a second. No hesitation.

Why? What differences are there between the two? Also, Finder has Quick View, something Windows sorely lacks and is highly useful, as well as the integrated Spotlight search.

Exactly. Ever since I got one of those lil' white Macbooks in 2006 I've been so happy to be able to simply search for files with Spotlight and find them instantly, something Windows had never given me the ability to do.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#118

Post by eropple » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:35 AM UTC

cgh wrote: post #112

meaty wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it should be—they've had time to work on the issues and should be competitive by now. Yes this is it. But I wasn't getting that with OSX. In '06, it was pretty good compared to say Windows XP but since '08 it's been declining rapidly into whack-a-mole problems. OSX is a bastardised version of UNIX under the hood which is "even worse than HP-UX when you haven't paid for the compilers" to deal with I found. Getting…

You click a button marked "Install" in XCode and it installs the tools into /usr/bin. That sure is tough. OS X userland is pretty stock BSD. It may be unfamiliar if you are used to Linux.

Putting the GNU tools on is pretty easy with Homebrew or MacPorts, though. Getting those is first thing I do when I set up a new Mac: grab Xcode, install the command line tools, get Homebrew, brew install coreutils, findutils, and gnu-sed.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#119

Post by wes-exp » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:47 AM UTC

ishbits wrote: post #115

I can't believe all the talk about Finder here.. I bet Miguel is more like me than most of you, that is, living in a unix/linux terminal for the last 15 years or more - AND doing file management in that terminal! I've also gone to the Mac from unix/linux as my primary machine as it just works. What I mean by that is suspend/resume, wifi, and all that stuff that you shouldn't think about anymore. Sure, all I use on it…

Absolutely. I don't use much more than iTerm2, a web browser, emacs + various developer stuff, and Homebrew.

The base OS is rock f-ing solid. All my unix stuff works flawlessly. Time spent f'ing around with drivers and random upgrade issues? Zero.

It even syncs with my phone (iPhone), which happens to work great!

Finder? Who gives a crap? That's what the terminal is for!

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#120

Post by sologoub » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:53 AM UTC

This story sums up my own experience quite nicely as well. While I really enjoyed using Ubuntu/Debian for almost 6 years, when time came for a new laptop, I just didnt want to deal with yet another issue with nvidia cards or any other oddity. Paying the Apple premium price was a bargain when compared to hours spend getting little issues here and there worked out.