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0 pointshollerith13y ago0 comments

>On other systems I would waste days after days of my life to set things up 'just the way I want' only to find that it's never gonna be quite that way. Macs just let me accept the things as they are and get back to work.

This. It's almost as if Linux is a collection of parts and tools from which a sufficiently good designer can build a usable desktop whereas OS X is a usable desktop. That's an exaggeration, but for me there is some truth to it.

Note that Linux was my only desktop from 1997 through 2009.

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DeepDuh13y ago

OSX seems to have had this design paradigm: 'Make everything work in the most streamlined way possible for the default use case (80%). Give some limited options for a few more specific use cases (18%). Cover everything else with CLI integration / defaults system, such that the final 2% can get around with a bit of googling'

This has been highly successful, only I'm afraid that the Unix people inside Apple are loosing influence. The sandboxing in ML looks like a mess to me. Not that its a bad idea per se, but look what it did to our beautiful '~/Library/[ApplicationSupport|Preferences]'! It's tacked on and it's obvious that this has been a political decision from management rather than engineering. Makes me angry.

On a different note: I've never really used it extensively because I switched to macs in '05, but wasn't Ubuntu pretty close before they switched to Unity? I remember last time I installed it that for the first time I could have a Linux that worked out of the box, including network and graphics drivers.

rahoulb13y ago

I've actually switched to doing my work on Ubuntu (using xmonad - I can't stand unity) and iOS (iPad as SSH client) as OSX only cares about the 80% use case now.

Which is fine, it's Apple's decision to take, but it's no longer for me.

(As for Ubuntu - I'm using pretty standard hardware and never had a problem)

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