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How I ended up with Mac

tirania.org

151–160 of 199 posts

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iPhoto is an application. Not the OS. This is needless (and incorrect ) semantics. An OS is just a collection of applications (perhaps the distinction you were trying to make was the kernel or "base OS"). As far as the end user is concerned, when they get a new Mac it comes with iPhoto, which is made by Apple, the same people that make the rest of the OS (unless they get the ONE configuration of the Mac Pro which i…

> This is needless (and incorrect) semantics. Incorrect in what parallel universe? > An OS is just a collection of applications (perhaps the distinction you were trying to make was the kernel or "base OS"). Yes. OS X is just a collection of applications of which iPhoto is NOT one. IIRC, they don't even bundle iLife anymore (you're supposed to get it from the App Store) but that's beside the point. > As far as the end…

* >Incorrect in what parallel universe? >Yes. OS X is just a collection of applications of which iPhoto is NOT one. IIRC, they don't even bundle iLife anymore (you're supposed to get it from the App Store) but that's beside the point.*

iPhoto IS one. As I distinctly explained in my previous post, iPhoto comes installed on every every single Mac that Apple sells with the sole exception of the server configuration of the Mac Pro. Go to the Apple web page and click on any Mac and look at the "Built-in Apps" section, you will see iPhoto displayed right alongside "system" apps like Mac App Store, Mail, and Messages. iLife is just a marketing name. iTunes used to be part of iLife too. Now they're just apps, apps that 99.9% of people that purchase a Mac will find on their computers pre-installed when they open them. That was half my point: that iPhoto today is just about as much a part of a default installation of Mac OS X as any.

>Are you some naive end user OR an HN commenter that CAN tell the different between OS X and iPhoto, and doesn't complain about the latter on a thread about the first?

Now that we've gotten the fact that iPhoto will almost certainly be on my machine when I open it, it should be clear to you that it doesn't matter which of these I am. For better or worse, iPhoto is a part of the Mac experience. Drawing an imaginary line around a subset of applications and calling them "OS" or "not OS" does not take away from the fact that a bad iPhoto experience will understandably contribute to a bad Mac experience. As such, both by technical and laymen's understandings of OS, the critique is valid.

Edit: My mistake, iPhoto is included in the server one as well. So it turns out iPhoto comes installed on every single Mac.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is needless (and incorrect) semantics. Incorrect in what parallel universe? > An OS is just a collection of applications (perhaps the distinction you were trying to make was the kernel or "base OS"). Yes. OS X is just a collection of applications of which iPhoto is NOT one. IIRC, they don't even bundle iLife anymore (you're supposed to get it from the App Store) but that's beside the point. > As far as the end…

* >Incorrect in what parallel universe? >Yes. OS X is just a collection of applications of which iPhoto is NOT one. IIRC, they don't even bundle iLife anymore (you're supposed to get it from the App Store) but that's beside the point.* iPhoto IS one. As I distinctly explained in my previous post, iPhoto comes installed on every every single Mac that Apple sells with the sole exception of the server configuration of t…

> . As I distinctly explained in my previous post, iPhoto comes installed on every every single Mac that Apple sells with the sole exception of the server configuration of the Mac Pro. Go to the Apple web page and click on any Mac and look at the "Built-in Apps" section, you will see iPhoto displayed right alongside "system" apps like Mac App Store, Mail, and Messages

However, reinstall MacOS, and you will notice it doesn't install iLife.

Similarly, most Windows computers seem to ship with that 30 day trial of MS Office these days; does that mean that 30 day trials of MS Office are part of Windows?

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#153
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And yet "locate" is banned by default.

Because it's redundant. man mdfind

If you want, of course, you can turn on locate, but it seems strange to have two local indexing things.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#154
post #132
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How is Terminal.app embarrassing? In most of the ways that a traditional terminal is important, it acts exactly as expected, and still has convenient "new" terminal things like tabs and profiles.

I think the last time a lot of people used it before jumping ship for iTerm was about 10.4, where it was pretty horrible.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#155
post #50

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.

Well, and after years of his project slavishly imitating Windows, its latest iteration is slavishly imitating OS X. So, good work all around. Edit: vvvv I stand corrected. Double Edit: What exactly do you mean, anyway? Things like http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2002020601120OPGNMS , dated 2010, seem to indicate he's still active within GNOME.

That seem to be dated to 2002.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#156
(Note that I fully expect Mac OS X and Windows fanbois to vote this down for stating unconvenient facts)

That developer has always been very controversial in the Linux world amongst serious Linux users. He's been trying to poison Linux with mono and that was a huge lot of energy lost (I'm sure some people will still come here and defend mono and saying how great the CLR is and why C#/F# is the future, etc. But sadly for these the world changed quite a bit since then [cough, iOs, cough, Android]).

Now what I find very ironic is that basically he says that in 2005 OS X rocked because it had no virus, while Windows was full of viruses and that this is why he switched to OS X.

And what do we have today? A major OS X vulnerability issue due to Java applets which infected a gigantic number of devs, giving access inside major target companies like FaceBook to bad guys.

Besides that I can't possibly even begin to understand how OS X would be better than Linux for a developer.

On Linux I can install Java in a user account without needing to be root.

On Linux I can install a browser in another user account, which has no access to Java at all.

On Linux I can display that browser from that other user account to my graphical session if I want to.

On Linux I can have several users and two graphical sessions (or more) simultaneously and switch from one to the other if I want to.

On Linux I can set per-user ID firewalling rules using nothing else but iptables (or whatever suits you):

iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -m state --state NEW,RELATED -m user --user-ID 1001 -j ACCEPT

Here only one user (the one with the account which only has a web browser installed, no Java, no nothing, just a browser) is allowed to emit trafic to port 80.

etc.

There are just so many benefits from using Linux as a dev. Security, performances, control, mutliple graphical sessions / mixing windows from several user accounts, KVM, etc.

There's simply no way the walled garden that OS X is allows me to trivially do all this.

Once again: we're talking about someone who's always been controversial in the Linux community because of its love/hate relationship with Linux.

Honestly I don't want of a Linux developer who's telling the world that OS X on the desktop is better for dev than Linux.

Thankfully virtually all of the others Linux developers out there are eating their own dog food.

And who are these others Linux developers? The ones who didn't try to poison Linux with MS technologies.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#157

My main gripe with Novel and now Xamarin is that they don't provide packages for Debian and Ubuntu, arguably the most popular Linux distributions. For instance if you go to Mono's download page to checkout the options, the only Linux distribution supported by them is OpenSuse: http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html Of course one could argue that Debian (and Ubuntu that relies on Debian's repository) has…

I couldn't give a fuck about binaries of commercial software packages working, as long as I can't manage the toolchain I depend on daily. - Java, Ruby, Python, Javascript, Mysql, Postgresql... Memcached

I've had no trouble installing Ruby, Python, Javascript, Mysql, Postgresql, GCC, Memcached on Mac OS X, mostly binary installers are available, or you can just use homebrew for stuff like memcached if not, I use rvm for Ruby as it's easier and ties in with server setups but you can install from source. So be aware that if you have run into problems it is not a universal failing of Mac OS X and was specific to you/your setup. I haven't seen many glitches with the above stack, and answers are usually googlable if you do run into something (for example after installing memcached I googled how to set up the plist homebrew provides to run it on startup). Can't say I've noticed much difference with upgrading/installing packages on linux, but then I tend to manage servers rather than desktops there.

I agree the package manager situation is more sane on Linux though if you're using open source code; it's one of the things Linux gets right (when it works), as opposed to commercial operating systems. That doesn't mean it's impossible or even difficult to use an open-source stack on Mac OS X though, quite the opposite.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#158
post #69
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.

Windows explorer allows you to drag a file from any folder on your system to any other folder in single window. This turns out to be something I do a lot. So I wind up opening another finder window to do this. Inevitably I wind up with finder windows of different shapes and sizes all over the place. It boggles my mind that the Apple UI team can't see how inferior Finder is.

I've worked with different utilities, and combined with spaces sort of have a file browsing system that works.

Even Pathfinder can't do this magic easily using the GUI to drag files quickly between folders. Harrumph.

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#159
post #8

>Once a virus got on your machine, that was pretty much it. And Microsoft wasn't doing much to stop the infestation. For a long time they didn't even see it as their problem. In retrospect, it was the computer equivalent of Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. They want to protect users with Secure Boot, and still they get a lot of crap for it. Remember Palladium? That would've stopped malware in its tracks. It was railed…

He wasn't a technology lover.

He tried to poison Linux using Mono and that turned out to be an utter fiasco.

So he failed in destroying Linux and he's pissed that he failed. As a result he's now trying to cast some more bad light on Linux: this time Linux isn't an OS whose purpose would be to run CLR app but an inferior desktop/laptop app which shouldn't be used because OS X would be superior.

I'm a very long time Linux user (since the Slackware) days and honestly I've got zero love for that person (and, no, I'm not a Gnome user).

Re: How I ended up with Mac

#160
post #35
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…

No matter how awful iPhoto is, it's still better than almost anything you can find on Linux. I know because that was one of my biggest gripes while I was using Ubuntu up to about 5 months ago.

And it's not about how Macs just work, it's that you have apps for almost anything that actually work.

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