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The $80 web development workstation

skofo.github.io

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Re: The $80 web development workstation

#61
post #54
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does not work for me (Finder; 10.8.4). shift+green-button is the same as just the green button. do you have a plugin or something?

It depends on the app. It doesn't work on Finder, but does on Chrome, Sparrow etc

Non universal behavior in a universal button is a pretty sad state of affairs.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#62
Why oh why would "The de facto standard platform for web development is the Macbook"? Web is browser interpreted, last time I checked safari was not the most used browser (even it it has port for windows) http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

"especially among Ruby on Rails developers"

why? is there any feature tied to the macosx that makes it worth to pay the mac tax??? or even to the hardware (that it's a wintel platform (and can be have for way less money) since apple decided to abandon IBM cpus?)

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#63

Honest question here: Why would anyone ever think OS X has "world-class interface design"? It's missing basic interface features that have been bog standard in Ubuntu/Windows for years, like any sort of proper window management. Hell, the maximize button actually doesn't work - it has such inconsistent use that you have almost no hope of actually getting what you want out of it. To get even decent window management,…

"all useful things no doubt, but things you don't change on a per-folder basis that often- while literally not having an "up one level" button. At all."

Add the "path" menu to your Finder window toolbar. You now have access to all parent folders of the current directory in two clicks. It's one of the first tweaks I make setting up a new OSX install. Along with dumping "all my files" from the sidebar and as the new window default.

After using Ubuntu for most of the summer don't get me started on the UI inconsistencies I experienced there. I don't disagree with you that there are things in OSX which also don't make sense, by my overall impression is that the UI of OSX is much more refined than what's available for Linux out of the box. YMMV.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#64

Honest question here: Why would anyone ever think OS X has "world-class interface design"? It's missing basic interface features that have been bog standard in Ubuntu/Windows for years, like any sort of proper window management. Hell, the maximize button actually doesn't work - it has such inconsistent use that you have almost no hope of actually getting what you want out of it. To get even decent window management,…

Apple's thoughts on the matter (and on many other matters) is that the user shouldn't ever have to learn to do anything complicated, and rather than risk them not knowing how to do something, they'd rather remove the feature entirely. This is reflected in their window and file management: you get the bare minimum you need to do the job done.

The worst example of where this doesn't help is the Zoom button. Not the maximise button, as it's never been called that, and doesn't actually maximise - it resizes the window to the most useful size. For example, my BBEdit window gets resized to the width of the text, but the height of the screen. Of course, many apps just make it fill the screen (incorrectly), leading to the 'maximise' button instead.

(Also, you can command-click on a window title to get a menu that allows you to go up. Two clicks instead of one, but it's there. This works on folders, files, and URLs)

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#65
post #54
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does not work for me (Finder; 10.8.4). shift+green-button is the same as just the green button. do you have a plugin or something?

It depends on the app. It doesn't work on Finder, but does on Chrome, Sparrow etc

Which makes OP's claim of inconsistency even stronger.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#66
post #62

Why oh why would "The de facto standard platform for web development is the Macbook"? Web is browser interpreted, last time I checked safari was not the most used browser (even it it has port for windows) http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp "especially among Ruby on Rails developers" why? is there any feature tied to the macosx that makes it worth to pay the mac tax??? or even to the hardware (that i…

On the other hand I'm happy to discover I'm not the only one loving thinkpad hardware, even if I can't find a difference between the IBM and lenovo interpretations...

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#67

Honest question here: Why would anyone ever think OS X has "world-class interface design"? It's missing basic interface features that have been bog standard in Ubuntu/Windows for years, like any sort of proper window management. Hell, the maximize button actually doesn't work - it has such inconsistent use that you have almost no hope of actually getting what you want out of it. To get even decent window management,…

To go up one level press Command and click on the title bar. Pretty standard metaphor across the OS. Or alternatively if you are drilling back and forth through the folder hierarchy then switch to Column View.

And if you actually think that Ubuntu's woeful file manager is anyway comparable to OSX Finder then I really can't help you.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#68

I ran Linux on the desktop for almost 20 years, till recently taking a Rails job where EVERYONE used Macs, and finally bought a MBP. This refrain, "OSX is Unix," seems to be very common, but I'm not feeling it. As I just tweeted today: "How much 'Unix' is in OS X when I can't use CTRL-s to freeze the terminal? Pfft." For something that's supposedly got all the power of Unix, it sure doesn't seem to expose much of it…

As someone who runs OS X day to day, but still loves a traditional unix desktop to get work done, I can see where you're coming from. In my experience you have a couple of options for getting the best of both:

1. You can run XQuartz full screen, and can even run a nice wm like xmonad. This isn't perfect, but isn't entirely bad.

2. If you have VMWare, you can just run your workhorse of choice in a convenient vm. Full screen VMs under 10.8 are actually pretty great when you're just on the laptop - you can just three finger swipe from OS X into bsd/linux/whatever and then back again.

I personally like the VMWare option, since it means that OS X gets to do all the power management and all of that, and there's no fiddling to do in the virtual machine to make things work with the hardware. And you totally own the vm environment, so you can do whatever you like to it.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#69
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the app. It doesn't work on Finder, but does on Chrome, Sparrow etc

Non universal behavior in a universal button is a pretty sad state of affairs.

It IS universal behaviour. The green button maximises the window to the optimal size as dictated by the application.

For a browser this could be full screen. For a word processor this could be just enough to see the page.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#70
Sometimes it's fun to see what you can do with older hardware. I got an old HP Laptop for free (DV6409US) and decided to turn it into my 2nd Laptop for Startup Weekend / Hackathon events. I put in 4GB of Ram for $60 and installed Windows, Linux, and OSX just for the hell of it. The Windows Install is Windows 8 (ala Bizspark) and currently runs a BitNami DjangoStack with Aptana Studio 3 and Notepad++ (Web Dev), as well as the free Visual Studio 2013 Dev Suite (just messing with that for now). The Linux install is Ubuntu Desktop 12.0.4 LTS and I use it for Design with Gimp and Inkscape. The OSX install is an older osx86 release of 10.5.2 (Leopard) and that was just more for fun, not really used for Dev or any work because it's such an old version and will not run any recent versions of Xcode. The only real problems I had were with WIFI and USB Support on the Linux / OSX front (but I got those fixed). I use a ThumbDrive as my Code / Graphics Repository and just boot between OS's depending on what part of the project I'm on. With this $60 Frankenstien I can actually build some pretty good stuff.
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