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Return of the Mac (2005)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Return of the Mac (2005)

#101

Post by officemonkey »

akent wrote: post #42
jot wrote: post #5

[2] Y Combinator is (we hope) visited mostly by hackers. The proportions of OSes are: Windows 66.4%, Macintosh 18.8%, Linux 11.4%, and FreeBSD 1.5%. The Mac number is a big change from what it would have been five years ago. I'm interested to know what the proportions of OSes are today.

Results of a HN poll from a few months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2303726 Total responses: 1539 Linux: 564 (36.65%) Mac: 557 (36.19%) Windows: 365 (23.72%) Other: 53 (3.44%)

Polls can be aspirational. I'd rely more on the server logs say.

Re: Return of the Mac (2005)

#102

Post by bdunbar »

walexander wrote: post #19

OK, someone convince me to go Mac. I've had essentially zero issues with Windows. I do 99% of my development in Linux (access my devbox through VNC). For desktop use, I have absolutely no problems. I work very fast zooming around with keyboard shortcuts. I don't get viruses or bloatware. Everything is calm and familiar. Every time I get my hands on a Mac, even to simply Google something, I immediately hit issues. Pas…

So, go ahead, someone sell me on Macs.

I can only tell you why I use one: OS X just gets out of my way and lets me get at my work.

What I do is systems administration - Windows, Solaris, Linux, BSD. Some light coding on the side.

Your mileage may vary.

Re: Return of the Mac (2005)

#103

Post by systemtrigger »

iaskwhy wrote: post #85
masklinn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time I get my hands on a Mac, even to simply Google something, I immediately hit issues. You seem to hit issues because you want to hit them. > Paste is crazy squiggly hash v (or maybe apple v?) The key is called "command". Does "Command V" not make more sense than "Control V"? And free up the Control key for more interesting stuff? > I can't right click You can, unless it's a 4+ years old machine it's just a…

Why is a package manager useful? (I really don't know what's wrong with the default environment of OSX, if there's anything wrong at all.)

Speed and reliability. Take open source. You could manually find, download, untar, configure, make, install and track dependencies. A good package manager lets you do that in one command e.g.:

  $ brew install package_name
OSX includes a package manager for proprietary packages blessed by Apple. It's fast and reliable but its curators forbid most open source and proprietary packages. It's called App Store.

Re: Return of the Mac (2005)

#104

Post by parenthesis »

js2 wrote: post #84
joelhaasnoot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Home and End keys? I used a Mac for 6 months, but really really really missed the Home and End keys to go to the beginning and end of lines... Terminal is hell without them...

Ctrl-a, ctrl-e for beginning/end of line. Standard emacs keybindings work almost everywhere in OS X. But, you can also rebind the home/end keys - http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html Edit: On a Macbook Pro, home/end are fn-left/right-arrow and page-up/down are fn-up/down-arrow.

>>> Ctrl-a, ctrl-e for beginning/end of line.

Alternatively: Command+← and Command+→ .

Re: Return of the Mac (2005)

#105

Post by pedalpete »

pclark wrote: post #8

I have always used Macs and good lord, the days of Mac OS X being out but the processors not being Intel were truly some of the most embarrassing years for Apple computing. I remember owning (and loving - for some reason) an iBook G3 that was basically unusable for a few months whilst I awaited more RAM for it. I think this was when their laptops had 64Mb RAM but Mac OS X really needed 512Mb. And remember when Mac OS…

Your comment about 'I remember owning (and loving - for some reason)'... is amazing. This to me is the power of Mac. I have both windows and PC and do most of my work on pc. But the number of people talk about the LOVE of mac, but then when you talk to them about it, have no idea that they don't know how to do simple things.

Like all Love, it seems mac love is often irrational.

Re: Return of the Mac (2005)

#106

Post by walexander »

masklinn wrote: post #38
walexander wrote: post #19

OK, someone convince me to go Mac. I've had essentially zero issues with Windows. I do 99% of my development in Linux (access my devbox through VNC). For desktop use, I have absolutely no problems. I work very fast zooming around with keyboard shortcuts. I don't get viruses or bloatware. Everything is calm and familiar. Every time I get my hands on a Mac, even to simply Google something, I immediately hit issues. Pas…

> Every time I get my hands on a Mac, even to simply Google something, I immediately hit issues. You seem to hit issues because you want to hit them. > Paste is crazy squiggly hash v (or maybe apple v?) The key is called "command". Does "Command V" not make more sense than "Control V"? And free up the Control key for more interesting stuff? > I can't right click You can, unless it's a 4+ years old machine it's just a…

Thanks. A lot of people are telling me how to do the keyboard shortcuts in Mac. Well, I realize you can do them, I realize I'll have a small learning curve. My point was: that's a saved cost if I don't switch, so what's the ROI for taking that time? I'm not trying to start a holy war or point out how "ridiculous" macs are to use. I'm simply stating I have to go grok mac, I see a lot of other people have, and wonder if I should.

I'll say, cmd.exe is complete shit and almost enough. The OSX terminal has essentially been the only thing I've seen in the past that makes me want to switch and maybe one day that will do it.

Also, I guess the compatibility mode and admin mode constant switching around is a bit of a PITA. So, that's probably a good reason as well.

Maybe it will come down to apps though. So far, I'm quite happy with Win desktop apps, but I guess I can get most in OSX anyway.

Thanks for your comments.

Re: Return of the Mac (2005)

#107

Post by evilduck »

iaskwhy wrote: post #100
evilduck wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're coming from a linux environment, you're probably used to having Apt or Yum available. OSX has no built in package manager so you've either got go out and find compiled binaries somewhere or install from source, both of which are tedious and searching the web for it is time consuming vs. the `brew install wget` commands that you can probably guess and it'll take care of installation in the background while y…

Oh, I see, so you cannot use yum on OSX? I never realised it (or its packages) wouldn't be compatible.

No, Yum isn't available or compatible, it's coupled to Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS linux distributions like Apt is coupled to Debian/Ubuntu/Mint distributions.

Homebrew/MacPorts/Fink are nearly the same thing, they just don't come installed by default on OSX.

Re: Return of the Mac (2005)

#109

Post by evilduck »

Jach wrote: post #77
masklinn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time I get my hands on a Mac, even to simply Google something, I immediately hit issues. You seem to hit issues because you want to hit them. > Paste is crazy squiggly hash v (or maybe apple v?) The key is called "command". Does "Command V" not make more sense than "Control V"? And free up the Control key for more interesting stuff? > I can't right click You can, unless it's a 4+ years old machine it's just a…

Good points. Though it seems like you and the other repliers are selling him based purely on downsides of Windows. A modern Linux such as Ubuntu has more or less all of the things you've mentioned, and as a biased Gentoo Linux user I'd argue in many cases Linux does it better. ( http://www.thingsfittogether.com/2011/08/start-developing-fo... ) So it seems like you're arguing "Mac is a better environment to use VNC fo…

Until you want to go mobile. Linux on a laptop is still a hit-or-miss experience w.r.t fully functioning power management, wifi without workarounds, and integrated/discrete graphics cards. I know there are perfectly working laptops available out there, but it's still a hassle to track down, find reviews, verify compatibility as stated, then actually install linux since almost nothing ships preinstalled. Then you might want to run QT/GTK/Wx/Tk stuff all side by side on the same machine and that lacks cohesiveness and makes a linux desktop feel very hacked together.

Also, trackpads.

Re: Return of the Mac (2005)

#110

Post by benologist »

joelhaasnoot wrote: post #79
masklinn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time I get my hands on a Mac, even to simply Google something, I immediately hit issues. You seem to hit issues because you want to hit them. > Paste is crazy squiggly hash v (or maybe apple v?) The key is called "command". Does "Command V" not make more sense than "Control V"? And free up the Control key for more interesting stuff? > I can't right click You can, unless it's a 4+ years old machine it's just a…

What about Home and End keys? I used a Mac for 6 months, but really really really missed the Home and End keys to go to the beginning and end of lines... Terminal is hell without them...

The home and end keys drive me crazy.
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