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The Mac Pro Lives

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Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#301

Post by yokohummer7 »

Operyl wrote: post #262
yokohummer7 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's terrible to script I'm pretty sure you didn't try PowerShell. It is at least as good as bash, if not better. > you need to use the mouse too much I find this more problematic on macOS. I was forced to use a mouse much more on macOS. It doesn't even allow me to press the yes/no dialog only using a keyboard. On Windows nearly every item has a shortcut, sometimes even better than GNOME (but worse than KDE, IMO).

I've yet to figure out what PowerShell can/can't do though really. Maybe I'm weird, but I like that it's bash on OS X, I already know it.

You're not weird. PowerShell does have barriers to entry and that's why I also had used Cygwin on Windows until recently. And it might not change because it is a very different monster than POSIX. It is unfortunate for sure, but still I think it's worth learning especially if you use Windows frequently.

Even if you don't, learning it is a fun experience. It's like learning Haskell just to feel another way to program, even though you're not using it in practice.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#302

Post by criddell »

mikestew wrote: post #295
csomar wrote: post #178

Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a har…

I'd be buying the new Macbook Pro in a month. I know one is discouraged from questioning whether a commenter read the article, but I'll point out that Gruber is on about the Mac Pro, which is a desktop machine. I'll doubt the new one will have "longer battery life".

He also said:

> most of their pro users use MacBooks and most of the rest use iMacs — and that they have big plans in store for the pro segment of both of those product lines

I think this makes talk about the Macbook Pro on topic.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#303

Post by weaksauce »

bathyspheric wrote: post #185
chefandy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since the whole virtual escape key thing– being a default layout vim user for 20+ years– I'd love to follow suit, but I need Adobe Creative Suite. The tools available on Linux aren't even ballpark. Getting OS X on a VM has always been fussy and frustrating, and if I wanted to work with Windows I'd just use a Windows laptop. On top of that, the apple magic trackpad is just great. Fussing with extracted boot…

My only vim customization is `:imap kj `. Takes 10s to write into a .vimrc on any new computer.

I remap jk too so you just mash them both at the same time and it doesn't matter the order.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#304

Post by sandGorgon »

csomar wrote: post #178

Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a har…

The UX on Linux is not lagging. I'm talking about fedora and gnome. I have had Mac toting people specifically ask me about my cool UX and what de was I using.

Oh and the XPS is better looking and non-hypey like the touchbar Mac book.

I really suggest you give the Fedora livecd a try.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#305

Post by School-Cotton »

dade_ wrote: post #168

Brand loyalty is silly. It does mean I need to avoid platform lock-in, but it is completely worth it. I buy the best machine available for me at the time. When it was time to replace my MacBook Pro 2011, it wasn't a machine from Apple. I bought a Surface Pro 3 and thought that I'd switch back to Mac when Apple sorted out whatever their problem is. Vapour Race 2017: Next Gen MacBook Pro or Surface Pro 5. It would be n…

Some people are basically forced to be on Apple machines because they develop iOS apps.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#306

Post by unethical_ban »

csomar wrote: post #178

Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a har…

Ubuntu Unity is actually pretty slick, and enables tiling prety easily.

I agree Canonical should have first-party laptops and demand quality.

But Apple not having an open package management ecosystem, where people can manage/create their own repositories, kills it for me.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#307

Post by slantyyz »

dade_ wrote: post #168

Brand loyalty is silly. It does mean I need to avoid platform lock-in, but it is completely worth it. I buy the best machine available for me at the time. When it was time to replace my MacBook Pro 2011, it wasn't a machine from Apple. I bought a Surface Pro 3 and thought that I'd switch back to Mac when Apple sorted out whatever their problem is. Vapour Race 2017: Next Gen MacBook Pro or Surface Pro 5. It would be n…

It is indeed silly. My own mentality is that I'm "Post-OS". I'm at the point that I could use whatever OS I want for my work stuff, including Windows. They all hit the bar of "good enough".

I happen to use Windows today, because it runs the most apps that I want to run (in particular, some Steam stuff not available on Linux or Mac), but with the help of dual boot, I could just as easily be on Linux or Mac (all other things being equal, I'd prefer single booting).

Personally, I left Mac after a bad experience with the 2011 MBP and not liking the design direction of Apple hardware, but I still consider Apple hardware (for the most part) to be the gold standard in build quality. Macs may not suit my use case, but thankfully there are plenty of other fish in the sea.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#308

Post by SonicSoul »

csomar wrote: post #178

Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a har…

I love OSX but never understood why people pay so much for those apple displays. we use them at work and they suuuuuck. super heavy, can't adjust height, can't put it in portrait mode which is .. I don't know useful 40% of the time, glares like a mofo, and cost 2x-3x similar quality displays from not Apple. Is the look of them that desirable?

i finally switched for same reso Dell units on my desk and really happy about that.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#309

Post by bobochan »

unoti wrote: post #227
phyrex wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's terrible to script, you cannot make use of the billion unix command line utilities (and there is no equivalent eco system either), you need to use the mouse too much, and it's awful to program with in any but a small number of sanctioned programming languages.

What language are you wanting to program in that is awful on Windows? And regarding your other points, Windows scripting story has come a long way in the last few years. Your concerns sound like they come from many years ago and that maybe you haven't taken a look lately.

What baffles me is that it is 2017 and Windows comes with less than it did decades ago. At least prior to Win2000 there was QBasic and edit.com, but now starting to work on a Windows machine means downloading and installing basic tools.

Need to SSH/SFTP? Download. Need to edit code? Download. Python? Download. Perl? Download. A reasonable terminal? Download.

Yes, I might have to go to the Mac App Store and get command line tools for C, C++, Objective-C, etc. It is unfortunate that XQuartz is no longer installed by default, granted. (PowerShell is very nice to work with though, I give MS full credit for that.)

I could live with having to download python, perl, etc., but someone please explain why having an absolutely fundamental ability to edit text and securely connect to work and transfer data to/from remote machines is something that any OS should be shipping without?

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#310

Post by gkya »

chmln wrote: post #242
csomar wrote: post #178

Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a har…

> They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). How can plaintext configs be confusing for a competent software engineer? On Linux, you can make your OS work for you just the way you like it. Good luck changing anything significant in Apple's walled garden

Plain text configuration comes in a million flavours. The differences in syntax goes from large to subtle, and it's easy to make mistakes and usually hard to debug. Documentation of both syntax and semantics varies wildly in quality. If only there was a convention...

Nowadays I'm on a Xubuntu box, and I've managed to have zero system-wide configuration. I've made a metapackage that depends on the software I use---and in the years I've optimised that to be a couple dozen---and installs a package repo for itself. Until recently I was running a FreeBSD box where all the desktop setup was my own (VTWM, dunst, many little programs; I ran Arch for a couple years before that). That's nice, but it becomes a baggage quickly. So many points of failure, and only me to maintain it. Now I'm back on (X)Ubuntu, all I have to do is configuration for my shell, git, mercurial, and then my emacs.d. It isn't even close to how plesurable it was to run BSD or Arch, but the minutiae is tiresome. I'd rather configure as small as possible and focus on my actual work and indispensable tools (Emacs, VCS, shell, in descending order) instead.

The usual Unix level of customisations are good on server, but for daily use they're hard. And the configuration files, with the lack of conventions makes it harder (one has to know tens of dialects and languages).

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