Use OS X you Git!
So rails is ditching trac and subversion in favour of git and lighthouse. Additionally they won't host git themselves but rely on github. Keeping in mind that the preferred development environment called OS X + TextMate, rails is now kneedeep in closed source land. Something I could care less about as I'm thankfully not using rails or any rails powered application. But what hit me was the discussion attached to that blog post. Apparently there are quite a few pissed of Windows users left. Gosh, they still exist!
David "Fuck You" Hansson could really care less as he stated in the past "that he would have a hard time hiring a programmer who was still on Windows". Skimming through the blog you can see enough mac users telling the windows crowd to switch and I think you can nowhere find as many mac users as in the rails community. He really did a great job converting proprietary windows developers into even more proprietary Mac users. There are some really great quotes in that blog:
The proper move is to stop using Windows for development of RoR apps.
or
Windows users, please stop complaining about others using the right tool for their jobs and just start doing the same.
You can get rid of this shit and use something serious. Really. Others are doing it and nobody ever looks back. So you can do it, too.
Yeah stupid folks. Why in god's name are you still using windows, that proprietary crap from redmond. DDH your Führer already told you to use OS X, do so and don't ask questions. Interestingly though is that Linus himself is not that happy of OS X (the link goes to another post, I was refering to the reply, but that one is good too) as their filesystem handling is beyond broken, at least for git's requirements.
So I'm asking. What exactly makes OS X better than Windows? Nicer hardware? I would count that as a major disadvantage of OS X as you're bound to vendor. The Apple support here is very weak (where weakhere is Austria) as far as I've noticed. Sending a notebook in for two weeks for a single broken key on the keyboard is ridiculous. Additionally you're paying a lot of money for it. I know that the design is the selling point of Apple computers but that doesn't mean all PCs are looking bad. A Thinkpad or one of the more expensive Sony Notebook next to an Macbook Pro and it's pretty hard to decide what looks better. Especially in terms of quality. My Macbook Pro is a bit more than half a year old and on the silver plastic you can spot where the palms of my hands are as the color is chipping off there. But even if the hardware was the selling point you could use other operating systems on it.
There is TextMate (which was the main reason why I personally bought one) but as it turns out, it looks better in the screencasts than in real world. If you're used to a different editor it's hard to switch. I tried multiple times and every once in a while i was cursing why :vs didn't work out. Together with the braindead keyboard layout on the apple computers (probably an issue you only have on German macs) gives you a ridiculous feeling. When I switch between Windows and OS X (which happens quite a lot recently) I permanently mix things up. Windows after OS X locks me out every once in a while while writing mails (as alt+l is windows+l on a windows pc, which apparently is equivalent to "lock workstation"). The other way round I close my mailer as alt gr + q (which on a German layout gives you the at symbol) is command + q on a mac, which means "close application". Can't count the times I killed my vim/thunderbird that way.
One point where OS X shines is font rendering. I think for artists OS X is a reasonable good choice as operating system. The system itself has a good understanding of fonts and all that but for me as developer the rendering freaks me out. In a regular gvim with bright fonts on dark backgrounds it's especially anonying as everything looks bold and there is no visible difference between bold and nobold. I know that Windows was flamed in the past dozens of times for aligning the fonts on the pixel raster but quite frankly, I prefer that over the OS X way. It might be true that Windows will block the 300dpi screen era for another ten years or so, but so will Linux and OS X. Most of the websites or applications still depend on pixel values, and even if web designers will switch to the SVG or better vector formats, you can't ignore the old websites. So the problems with high resolution screens are clearly not the windows font rendering. Beside that I want to point out recent ubuntu releases have got real good font rendering thanks to the turner patches for subpixel rendering and with some additional configuration and better fonts you get everything from the OS X to Windows ClearType like rendering.
But the real problem with OS X is that it tries to be Windows and Linux at the same time and fails miserably. For me as linux user the most important detail of linux is missing: the package manager. But at the same time the beloved setup.exes are missing. Dmgs with application bundles are a nice thing in theory but they don't work out that well. There are neither uninstallation tools norr do they provide a user experience that makes sense. The OS X mouse behavior is ridiculous and installing applications via drag/drop is just crazy. The first thing I did when I got my Mac was dragging the Firefox out of the DMG into the Dock. Then I noticed that I want to have it in the applications too and draged it there. What happened? I deleted it. The same way I managed to delete a file when moving from my harddrive to a network share. I lost the wireless connection and the file was lost. That's ridiculous and must never ever happen on an operating system. Application management on OS X is stupid anyways. To fully remove an application from your computer you better buy a shareware that is better as that. Seems like most functionallity you want to have on a computer comes as third party application on OS X.
And why in god's name is there no cut/paste of files in the finder? I don't want to start ranting about the finder as I think it's OS X weakest point anyways but that's a stupid limitation. Drag/Drop works but Cut/Paste not? Some 1337 terminal hackery later I got Cut/Paste support in Finder but then I had to notice why it's not enabled by default. Because the Apple implementation of this simple but useful feature is broken. If you cut a file, and cut another, not only the latter is cut. No! The first one is moved to the trash. WTF? Not even Nautilus does that wrong, and Nautilus does tons of things wrong right now.
Then OS X is inconsistent. ":" in the Finder is "/" in the terminal and the other way round. Fortunately you don't see location bars anywhere otherwise you would notice that. Unfortunately there are no location bars so you end up using the mouse all the time. Speaking of the broken mouse: mousing on OS X files like mousing through meter deep mud. Just google for "OS X mouse" and the first hit is "mouse acceleration problem" :-/. Oh and yes, you can fix that. Either buy a shareware or hack together an application that uses a deprecated interface in the IOkit. After one week of OS X mousing my hand hurt, something I don't have on any other operating system, no matter how hard I try. I ended up using the touchpad of my Macbook as the mouse acceleration is better there.
But back to application management for a second as that goes back to the original topic: development environment. On ubuntu you have that cool GNU userland I'm used to. Not only that, you also have a kick-ass package manager that keeps my whole system up to date. On OS X you have a BSD userland which is irritating if you're used to GNU tools. Many applications that seems to work out of the box on ubuntu and with a cygwin installation on windows too, work completely different on OS X. Like python. Why? Because of OS X bundles, frameworks and all that fancy stuff that you have to face when developing on OS X. For example on Tiger the python executable is in "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/bin/python2.3" and the standard library in "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3/site-packages". A non-framework Python comes via port which is installed to "/opt/local/bin/python2.3". The cool thing: it's a regular python executable like you know it from Linux or Windows. The problem? It's not in a framework, so no wxPython for you. What frameworks do? No clue man. It's a bundle, that's what I know. Quite frankly I don't want to know what's the fucking difference, it's just annoying. Teeworlds for example has a broken mouse behavior when started from a bundle. Why? No clue. But outside of a bundle it works. I won't argue that it's broken, it probably comes from the old Next times. But as windows or Linux user it's irritating. Windows is easy to understand, linux is not much more complicated once you groked where the stuff is located, OS X is just irritating.
And the biggest problem of all for me: It's slow. Freaking slow. Slower than ubuntu on my old notebook which was a 2GHz dothan with only 512 MB RAM. And GTK is slow, very slow. All kinds of gvims I tried on OS X are so slow that you can see the refreshing while scrolling, especially if more complex highlighting is activated. My python interpreter does something 0.3 seconds every startup, so does ruby. The network is slower here too. I don't know if it's the Wireless LAN chip or OS X in general, but if I start up my old notebook and the OS X one, transfering files is a lot faster. And by lot I mean I haven't benchmarked it, but I can see the difference.
Then let's come to security. Quite frankly I have no idea how secure the system really is, but the number of security updates is annoying. While I think it's cool that they are patched, you're downloading something like 300MB security updates per month I think and most of them require a reboot. Feels a lot like windows, just that I don't have to reboot windows when a Windows Media Player update is installed.
But what's the conclusion? It's certainly not that OS X sucks. If you like it, feel free to use it. But telling other people that they are stupid because they can't see the ingeniousness of all Apple products is just ignorant. OS X is just another proprietary operating system, and not the solution for all of your problems. It has it's problems too and it doesn't have any real advantages over Windows beside a nicer design and nicer application design and the fact that it has such a low userbase that you're not the target of malware authors. At least not currently, let's see if that changes the next four years. With such a homogeneous environment it will become a nice target for attacks at least.
Oh. And I don't think that linux on the desktop will be the solution either. As long as patents exist or the kernel doesn't allow binary drivers and KDE and GNOME people can't settle on one architecture and HIG linux on the desktop is on the best way to become the most sucking operating system on the desktop for the regular user. But for developers? A good choice!
So let's conclude: every OS sucks. And OS X is no exception. So don't judge users by their prefered operating system / desktop environment. And don't tell them to use something else just because you're too lazy to adapt.
I think I am most productive on Windows for the simple possibility to do almost anything with the keyboard. An area where OS X is not even attempting to go. I guess in the end it is what you are most accustomed to.
Very good conclusion (after your rather harsh beginning ;)
— Chris on Thursday, April 3, 2008 18:29 #
Thank you!,
You just earned the heaven, by telling us the truth :), I just want to point out that Mossberg(from WSJ) said that Ubuntu sucks because it didn't have a way to configure laptops touchpad... and now I read that they(OSX) sucks with the mouse... very funny.
I think Linux is the less sucking Operative System in the world. And there are efforts to make a better desktop like www.betterdesktop.org
— Igor on Thursday, April 3, 2008 19:02 #
Incredibly insightful rant, good to see people share 'real' experiences instead of sugar coating everything.
— sharms on Thursday, April 3, 2008 19:09 #
The link you attributed to Linus Torvalds actually points to a message by Theodore Tso.
— Michael R. Head on Thursday, April 3, 2008 19:09 #
@Chris: That way I can see where people stop reading ^^
@Michale: Yes. It should have been the followup to that post, but I think both are worth reading :-)
— Armin Ronacher on Thursday, April 3, 2008 19:20 #
Yes, all OSs suck. I like this "ad".
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id_kGL3M5Cg
I think the order of suckiness from least to most is
-Linux
-OSX
-windows
— jim on Thursday, April 3, 2008 19:21 #
Why is installing apps via drag/drop ridiculous? I wish I could install Linux apps (heck, Windows apps as well) the same way. It's much easier, I can drop my apps wherever I want (I hate, hate, HATE the "Start Menu" and anything similar).
— João Marcus on Thursday, April 3, 2008 19:28 #
You rock man!
— maks on Thursday, April 3, 2008 19:30 #
@João: First of all drag and drop is an operation many people don't get right. My little brother for example can work without a problem but drag/drop is constantly somewhere where i can see him making a weird hand movement, trying to keep the button clicked and moving the mouse around. But beside that, the idea is good: it's simple.
However applications are not that simple. An application doesn't just live in /Applications or where you drop it. Even on OS X where you have bundles the applications create data on other places too. Plugins (Flash), even some more complex applications (X-Code, X11, MS Office etc.) come with a setup too again and then it's not even clear where you find that application. I remember installing X-Code a second time because I didn't realize that the application was installed in /Developer which was confusing for me. As linux user it's weird having an application directly in the root folder.
— Armin Ronacher on Thursday, April 3, 2008 19:36 #
Ok, another extraordinary piece of FUD.
I'll try not to be much apologetic, we'll see.
First of all, no, Rails people don't say that you 'have' to use OS X. We only say that we enjoy using OS X + Textmate.
DHH says he wouldn't hire someone that only uses Windows "FOR HIS COMPANY". God dammit, its his company, he does whatever pleases him. If someone said 'I wouldn't hire a Windows guy for my Linux company', no one would complain.
You just picked and choosed a few rants on the blog post but completely missed the majority of other posts that says otherwise. Why is that? FUD. I alone have at least 3 posts saying the opposite: that it is a fantastic incentive to get more Git support on Windows.
I could care less that you don't use Rails or dislike the Mac. Your opinion. But as you went public with it, I feel compelled to respond.
Yes, the Mac is slower than Linux. Yes HFS+ is nowhere near NTFS (which I still think is better than EXT3, but I digress).
Good luck doing apt-get install photoshop or apt-get install office. MacPorts is no where near Apt Get, that's for sure, but it exists. If it was really a big problem, someone would already have ported apt get to the Mac. Seems like it's not an itch big enough to most developers to scratch, I don't know, but it is doable. Point in question, research for Cydia, which is apt-get ported to the iPhone, and it works like a charm.
setup.exe is nowhere near DMGs as well. First of all, the way most companies packages Mac apps is that it is self-contained. No Registry, no copying files do Windows\System32. You don't want it anymore, trash it. "Oh, but it leaves small preferences files behind". Not an issue. You can use AppZapper if you want, but those small files won't hurt you, not in our current era of +200Gb harddrives.
And again, no, the Mac is not trying to be Windows or Linux, it is the other way around. Everything they do today came from the original Macs. It hurts me that Ctrl-C in Windows is to copy stuff to the clipboard but in the command prompt it stops processes. There is a reason in the Mac we have Ctrl-C and Command-C. Read this for more info:
www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/11/how-apple-keyboards-lost-a-logo-and-windows-pcs-gained-one/
In this case, the Window Managers in Linux land are the ones trying to be both the Mac and Windows at the same time by having top level menu bars and bottom level start menus and so on. The Mac has kept its identity intact since forever.
It is always hard to learn new stuff. 'Old dogs don't learn new tricks?' Maybe. I am a former Windows and Linux user as well. I never felt so confortable in a OS before.
You complain that Macs have Security Updates? Damn, you don't do apt-get update?? It's the same damn thing. And don't start with the FUD that was CanSecWest. "Oh, someone ditched the Macbook Air in 2 fridging minutes". Go read this:
www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/03/29/mac-shot-first-10-reasons-why-cansecwest-targets-apple/
Again, you like vi or emacs? No problem, they are easily available in the Mac as well. As well as a plethora of other open source projects. I run Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL and many other tools everyday in my Mac without a problem. The good thing is that I can leverage the power of the open source community and still use a very confortable environment, one that I don't have to tweak every inch of the way.
And what I said in DHH's blog post fits here: you're annoyed? Please, feel free to contribute. That's how open source is supposed to work. Complaining alone is the same as being useless. "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem".
Apple is a for-profit company. So what? They do a good job most of the time. Or you will say that 79% approval of the iPhone is an accident and thousands of people are stupid and victims of hype alone? Apple is not perfect, though, I am the first to tell you that.
One example? The Mighty Mouse. When that damn ball gets dirty, it is a nightmare to try to clean it up. My Macbook Pro can easily fry an egg on top of it. I can't imagine why it has to sleep when I close the lid even if I have an external monitor hooked to it.
There's more. Good PITA is you ask me. But overall it still is much easier to deal than any other competitor. With Windows I would be really annoyed to have to update every single one of the half-a-dozen anti-virus, anti-spywares, anti-* I had to have installed. Not having Gnu-tools would annoy me a lot as well. In Linux, I would annoyed to find out I would like to buy a commercial software but it doesn't support my favorite distro. It would be still much better than using Windows, but then I would have trouble with lesser accessories I have without drivers. Unfortunally I am not a low-level C programmer, otherwise I would write those drivers myself.
That said, use Linux or use OS X, it doesn't matter. You don't see us, Mac users, trying to make Linux look bad. On the contrary, we like Linux tools, we use it everyday on the Mac.
Finally, if you want to write a fair article, don't just quote other people out of context. Makes you feel very bad and dishonest. It is very easy to pick and choose whatever snippet from someone else to make it fit your already set conclusion. That's a fallacy and just plain simple FUD.
— AkitaOnRails on Thursday, April 3, 2008 19:50 #
"The Apple support here is very weak (where weak is Austria)" So the support there is very Austria. Sounds good to me ;)
— Daniel on Thursday, April 3, 2008 20:03 #
FUD.
Git works with Windows.
And what's the problem with closed source/commercial software? As long as it does the job well and the owner doesn't use it to infringe the law by abusing of the market advantage (Microsoft), I'm ok with it.
No OS is perfect. But I like OS X the most. And you really shouldn't care about people saying that you just have to switch to get things working. That's passion, and makes us blind, be it with computers, sports or love. If you are confident about your work, do it with the tools you like.
— Lucas Húngaro on Thursday, April 3, 2008 20:13 #
It's true All OSes suck, but some suck more and some suck less.
I have many complaints about macs (the finder, the slowness, the weird way to manage applications, the BSD environment, the fucked file system, weird realtime behavior, proprietary closed in hardware/software, strange usability decisions handed down by a fucktard for a CEO, etc.).
I also have as many and likely more about Windows. I just don't have quite as many for linux, which is why I use:
And I think that says all about how "good" or "bad" something is, for me, personally.
— Florian on Thursday, April 3, 2008 20:22 #
@AkitaOnRails: Neither did I say that you said "you have to use rails" nor did I say that DHH is the rails team or rails community and that his oppinion is the oppinion of the community. And I also haven't said that Mac OS X is teh suck. Maybe you should read it once more and try not to ignore the final words.
And the quotes are not out of contex, they are from the comments of the blog post that announced the switch to git without further modification. Beside that I welcome the switch to git as I think distributed version control systems are superior to the traditional approach, just to clarify that.
— Armin Ronacher on Thursday, April 3, 2008 20:23 #
Every OS sucks, but not nearly as much as you might think. :)
— Stan on Thursday, April 3, 2008 20:28 #
@Armin, this article had the potential to get a fair conclusion, but you started really really bad. What do you think we would think reading this right at the beginning?:
David “Fuck You” Hansson could really care less as he stated in the past “that he would have a hard time hiring a programmer who was still on Windows”. Skimming through the blog you can see enough mac users telling the windows crowd to switch and I think you can nowhere find as many mac users as in the rails community. He really did a great job converting proprietary windows developers into even more proprietary Mac users.
And I didn't focus on the Git part but the Mac-bashing part. And you implying that DHH or any other Rails user makes pressure for people to switch to Macs. You're annoyed with something about the Mac. Understandable. Just don't put words in our mouths.
And yes, you quoted out of context. You used those quotes to justify your claims. Want to make it fair? Quote the other comments there that said otherwise. You make it look like the Rails community is represented by those 2 misplaced and unfortunate comments. People talk, whatever they want. Every community has pundits, not only Rails'. Making use of those for sensationalist articles on the other hand, is what creates hatred and disagreements.
— AkitaOnRails on Thursday, April 3, 2008 20:39 #
Damn it people, it's "could NOT care less"!
I could NOT care less if everyone and their monkey uncle says "could care less", it's just stupid. Saying "I could care less" indicates that you do, in fact, hold some amount of caring for whatever issue it is you're trying to indicate you do not care about. And that, given time, you might care less than you do currently.
As for your rant... Well, don't use Rails or OS X. Personally, I use Ubuntu for all my machines, but my wife and daughter use OS X. For them, it makes sense. Stuff just works, and they think of the machine as an appliance. I have enough to do without playing sysadmin for their computers too. Neither of them are Rails developers, though.
DHH is opinionated. He's abrasive. That doesn't automatically make him wrong, though. We'll know whether or not he found the best path in 5 years or so... Either Rails will still be going strong, or it will have been a passing fad.
— AngryMike on Thursday, April 3, 2008 20:39 #
More then half of all Os suck more then I should like; and I like less then half of them half as well they deserve.
— Florian on Thursday, April 3, 2008 20:40 #
I usually encourage people that are unhappy with windows to switch to mac os X. I'm a ubuntu fanatic but I believe that choice is good. And the problem in the OS landscape is that Microsoft holds 95% of the market where apple and linux have a low 5%. If apple grows and Microsoft starts to have real competition, everybody will benefit from it. So the more people switch away from windows, the better it will be for Windows, mac and Linux users. Operating systems would be way better if the market was 30% windows, 30% linux and 30% mac.
— guignome on Thursday, April 3, 2008 21:01 #
@Florian: you should stop complaining and learn how to use OS X instead of wanting it to work like Linux, if you really want to use it.
Don't get me wrong, I like Linux (before buying an iMac I had Ubuntu for work and WinXP for gaming, Ubuntu wins hands down here) and I just think that if you think that everything in OS X should work like in Linux (as you complained about Finder, the file system, the usability decisions, the way to manage applications), you shouldn't care about OS X and just be happy with Tux. :)
— Lucas Húngaro on Thursday, April 3, 2008 21:02 #
@Lucas: I think it's a bit shortsighted to dismiss critique of an OS as a matter of getting used to the idiosyncrasies of it. Of course it's not as simple as that, I'm not just an end user but also a programmer. As a programmer I can't really ignore the second most popular desktop operating system. Also I find mac books look sexy. But linux on macbooks sucks, linux on most notebooks sucks. I'm still waiting for some ingenious hardware company to figure out how to do a nice notebook with hardware there are linux drivers for that looks as sexy as a macbook.
— Florian on Thursday, April 3, 2008 21:35 #
@21 Florian: Try Dell Linux Laptops
— eizo on Thursday, April 3, 2008 21:40 #
@Florian: no doubt. As you may see, I only mentioned your complaints about some "features" (like the way to manage applications - it's not broken, it's just different). The other ones I found legitimates.
I'm a developer too and really like the power (BSD, even if it's modified) and consistency of the OS X's UI.
— Lucas Húngaro on Thursday, April 3, 2008 21:49 #
@eizo: I think Dell doesn't look good. It's just not sexy to look at, sorry, bad industrial design. Like most laptops.
— Florian on Thursday, April 3, 2008 22:01 #
@24 Florian: you sure you checked the (relatively) new Inspiron 1525 series?
— eizo on Thursday, April 3, 2008 22:35 #
My Thinkpad T61 worked almost perfectly OOB with Ubuntu.
It's perhaps not as "sexy" as a Macbook, but it certainly has its own Monolith-esque beauty. Plus, I would say it is built much more ruggedly and contains arguably superior engineering.
— MDL on Friday, April 4, 2008 0:28 #
Dell makes the Trabant of the laptop world. I would like to put my Dell from work in a tree chipper, but I'd have to pay for a replacement.
— SDC on Friday, April 4, 2008 3:04 #
@AkitaOnRails - I sat down last night and attempted to write the same reply that you've just done. Thanks for doing it instead, cause I really couldn't be arsed. One quote I particularly like: "Again, you like vi or emacs? No problem, they are easily available in the Mac as well. As well as a plethora of other open source projects. I run Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL and many other tools everyday in my Mac without a problem. The good thing is that I can leverage the power of the open source community and still use a very confortable environment, one that I don’t have to tweak every inch of the way." But would go on to add... Not only do I have the choice to use any number of open source apps on my mac, but I actually have to freedom to install proprietary software too!
— Oliver Lorton on Friday, April 4, 2008 7:54 #
I am very impressed with the detail on this post. For a very long time a friend (mac user) and I have always argued about which the better OS was. I use Ubuntu Hardy beta and even in beta I think it's better than the tiger can ever be. But of course he doesn't agree i'll have to send him the link to this post. Nice one!!!
— K. Aning on Friday, April 4, 2008 10:02 #
"And why in god’s name is there no cut/paste of files in the finder? I don’t want to start ranting about the finder as I think it’s OS X weakest point anyways but that’s a stupid limitation."
There's no need to cut and paste, there's "Spring Loaded Folders" functionality besides drag and drop. Much older than Gnome, by the way.
In my country we use to say "Ignorance is bolder than science", but I digress.
You can start ranting about this feature under this line:
-----------------------
— Aitortxu on Friday, April 4, 2008 17:55 #
no cut/paste of files in the finder? try selecting a file/folder and then look at the edit menu. or just command-c, go somewhere else in the file system, and command-v. just sayin'.
— cp on Friday, April 4, 2008 20:47 #
"installing applications via drag/drop is just crazy. The first thing I did when I got my Mac was dragging the Firefox out of the DMG into the Dock. Then I noticed that I want to have it in the applications too and draged it there. What happened? I deleted it."
This is comical! You deleted an alias to firefox on the DMG!! The Dock is not a directory to store files in!! It merely references items on your HD for easy access!! Real hard concept, I know.
"The same way I managed to delete a file when moving from my harddrive to a network share. I lost the wireless connection and the file was lost. That’s ridiculous and must never ever happen on an operating system."
??? Not sure how you lost a file during a COPY to a network share??? Sounds like you might be over your head :)
Application management on OS X is stupid anyways. To fully remove an application from your computer you better buy a shareware that is better as that. Seems like most functionallity you want to have on a computer comes as third party application on OS X."
I think you should be frustrated with yourself not wanting to do things different than what you are used to.
— Chris G. on Friday, April 4, 2008 20:54 #
aptitude install reason and shut up
— Florian on Saturday, April 5, 2008 14:32 #
I have been sitting in #git IRC channel for a while, since its my favorite SCM for years now and I see many stupid questions in the last couple days, all coming from Rails users, so that's sad, RoR people use the best tool, but that "tool"(osx) makes them really stupid users.
— Igor on Saturday, April 5, 2008 17:30 #
One of my friends uses OSX+TextMate for his RoR and Nu coding. We had yet another vi v. emacs argument in our last ACM meeting, and he said something which is totally true. If the thought of switching editors doesn't make you uncomfortable, you're not using yours right. I hit <escape> when typing in text boxes in Firefox. If I use any computer other than my own, I go nuts because <escape> is all the way at the top of the keyboard instead of replacing Caps Lock like it is on mine. I like my .Xmodmap and .vimrc and anything else just slows me down.
Armin: don't feel bad about the difficulty installing applications on OSX. I double clicked the DMG and saw the Firefox logo and double clicked that and it ran, so I figured it was installed (what other logical conclusion would there be?) and deleted the DMG. Um, oops. I had to ask around before I learned that it's apparently "intuitive" to drag the program to the /Applications directory. It's also apparently "intuitive" to throw your walkman in the trash when you want to eject the CD.
@AnitaOnRails: I don't have to tweak everything every which way to use Ubuntu. I want to tweak everything every which way. I want control. OSX tries to take away my control. If I ever own an Apple product, I will have splurged on a by-then antique Apple ][ and a pile of 5.25" floppy disks full of Oregon Trail and LOGO goodness. If I never use that blasted Photoshop again in my life, I will be happy. It has a more complex GUI than anything KDE could dream up! And we can indeed apt-get install openoffice.org, thanks. Yes, OpenOffice. OpenOffice's word processor is much better than Microsoft's, which doesn't even support frames for doing proper layout. That's one reason why after my boss paid too much money for MS Office for Mac, I installed NeoOffice. Regarding window managers, we have choice. KDE lets you do that infernal universal menu bar thing that drives me bonkers when using a Mac. GNOME keeps the menus in the applications to which they belong---where they belong. Aqua does not give you choice. This is a bad thing. I want to be able to shade my windows. I want to be able to do "set above." I want to use focus follow mouse. Aqua is extremely lacking in any useful features.
@Florian: Thinkpads have a very nice design. If you don't like hard edges and want something rounder, though, check out <a href="www.zareason.com/shop/product.php?productid=16159&cat=0&page=1" rel="nofollow">ZaReason's UltraLapSR</a>. I want that laptop.
— Mackenzie on Saturday, April 5, 2008 18:15 #
I'm sorry, but there are serious errors about OS X in the original post.
No package manager? How about Fink (& Fink Commander, based on debian packaging tools) and Darwin Ports?
I don't have any other comment, as I stopped reading the main article after realizing many things in it might be incorrect. Please check your facts better!
— Eric LEBIGOT on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 8:35 #
What I've recently found to be very annoying w/ my computer:
My computer does not like to move, change networks, or have a common interface for all it's applications! It's unlike me, that's the problem.
— Braydon Fuller on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 10:16 #