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I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX. In the late 90s I got so worn out with stability issues inhe

I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX. In the late 90s I got so worn out with stability issues inherent to Win98 on laptops that I switched to the Mac, largely because a co-worker was using one and I could SEE how much it didn't crash, and how sleep actually WORKED, and how good the hardware was, etc. Since my job at the time was primarily project management, and I lived in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, I had no compatibility issues, and my work life got better. Then the dot-com crash happened and I found myself coding again as a freelancer on web projects, all of which were LAMP-stack efforts. My Mac had shipped with OS 9, but by then I'd upgraded to OS X -- which could run the same frameworks we were using on the server. My dev environment was my actual laptop, which was GREAT. I feel like that was the moment that the Mac pulled in a lot of very technical and very influential people, with good reason. If OS X hadn't happened, I suspect desktop Linux would be further along because lots of people like me would've been kinda forced into it ca. 2001-2002 instead of having the Apple option.

devereaux 8y ago
> I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX. (…) > I feel like that was the moment that the Mac pulled in a lot of very technical and very influential people, with good reason You can look right now at what's happening to these very technical people. The ones I know are giving up on Apple and moving to Microsoft instead: because the WSL subsystem works, and the keyboard has most of the keys they want. We are living in interesting times!
- chrisfinazzo 8y ago
  WSL certainly helps as the same or very similar toolchain works everywhere, but what does the keyboard have to do with anything? Any keyboard issues w/ Apple are hardware reliability concerns, but that's really a separate issue, I think.
  - aasasd 8y ago
    > what does the keyboard have to do with anything? https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/59pipx/apple_touch_bar_for_developers_will_look_like_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/59pipx/app...
    - chrisfinazzo 8y ago
      Has anyone ever tried to measure share among the various text editors on the Mac? The vi/emacs crowd makes a bunch of noise because it messes with their workflows, but the rest of us just soldier on with BBEdit/VSCode/Sublime/etc.
      - aasasd 8y ago
        Funny thing is, with proper use of touch typing you wouldn't need the top row: Esc is either Ctrl-[, or some map it to Caps Lock. And hardcore Vim users are definitely supposed to be deep in touch typing. So this ‘noise’ is actually just people making fun of Vim's idiosyncrasies in light of the touch bar thing. Emacs, afaik, doesn't need the top row at all.
        chrisfinazzo 8y ago
        Touch typing would be OK, if Apple's keyboards (going back into the 90's) didn't suck, because flat keys are terrible. Almost all keyboards have gone this way save for the mechanical nerds, so I might take another look at that soon. Emacs is powerful, but Stallman's love of Ctrl prefixed commands and hatred for mice make it a challenge and Vi's key combinations are obtuse as hell (compounded by Apple's hardware). I'm more than happy with a real Mac application like BBEdit, but it's interesting to see how the other half lives.
  - walterbell 8y ago
    Escape key
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- ubermonkey 8y ago
  Well, some folks are. I find Windows abhorrent at every level; there's just something missing about the way it's put together, and its evolution has been slapdash in the extreme. Apple avoided this fate by effectively starting over with OS X, but Win 10 is still beholden to design choices made decades ago, and it shows. The technical Mac folks I know aren't switching. They're just yelling a lot, and if they're on pre-butterfly keyboard Macs, they're putting off upgrades. Of course, the VERY nerdy/technical folks can and do sometimes switch to full time Linux, but if you're used to the level of out-of-the-box just-works functionality you get out of OS X that's a hard sell.
ghaff 8y ago
At some point in the 2000s, it may have been an OSCON, I observed the incredibly high proportion of MacBooks being used by attendees. It was effectively a *nix laptop that worked. It’s at least plausible to think that absent OS X, a lot of developers would have made do with then still very rough around the edges (desktop) Linux and, given that level of interest, it would have improved at a greater rate.
chrisfinazzo 8y ago
It's not hard to imagine Apple would have died in very short order. If this happened, and Jobs was still there, I suspect some number of those people who eventually switched might have given NeXTSTEP serious consideration, as all the underpinnings of a good UNIX system were in place.
zwayhowder 8y ago
Funny I'm old enough to remember when Mac stood for "Most Applications Crash" and the even older Macintosh: "Most Applications Crash, if not the operating system hangs". Of course it was competing against my DOS environment that didn't have a mouse, which was clearly the root cause of all the issues.

devereaux 8y ago

> I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX. (…) > I feel like that was the moment that the Mac pulled in a lot of very technical and very influential people, with good reason You can look right now at what's happening to these very technical people. The ones I know are giving up on Apple and moving to Microsoft instead: because the WSL subsystem works, and the keyboard has most of the keys they want. We are living in interesting times!

chrisfinazzo 8y ago
WSL certainly helps as the same or very similar toolchain works everywhere, but what does the keyboard have to do with anything? Any keyboard issues w/ Apple are hardware reliability concerns, but that's really a separate issue, I think.
- aasasd 8y ago
  > what does the keyboard have to do with anything? https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/59pipx/apple_touch_bar_for_developers_will_look_like_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/59pipx/app...
  - chrisfinazzo 8y ago
    Has anyone ever tried to measure share among the various text editors on the Mac? The vi/emacs crowd makes a bunch of noise because it messes with their workflows, but the rest of us just soldier on with BBEdit/VSCode/Sublime/etc.
    - aasasd 8y ago
      Funny thing is, with proper use of touch typing you wouldn't need the top row: Esc is either Ctrl-[, or some map it to Caps Lock. And hardcore Vim users are definitely supposed to be deep in touch typing. So this ‘noise’ is actually just people making fun of Vim's idiosyncrasies in light of the touch bar thing. Emacs, afaik, doesn't need the top row at all.
      - chrisfinazzo 8y ago
        Touch typing would be OK, if Apple's keyboards (going back into the 90's) didn't suck, because flat keys are terrible. Almost all keyboards have gone this way save for the mechanical nerds, so I might take another look at that soon. Emacs is powerful, but Stallman's love of Ctrl prefixed commands and hatred for mice make it a challenge and Vi's key combinations are obtuse as hell (compounded by Apple's hardware). I'm more than happy with a real Mac application like BBEdit, but it's interesting to see how the other half lives.
- walterbell 8y ago
  Escape key
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
ubermonkey 8y ago
Well, some folks are. I find Windows abhorrent at every level; there's just something missing about the way it's put together, and its evolution has been slapdash in the extreme. Apple avoided this fate by effectively starting over with OS X, but Win 10 is still beholden to design choices made decades ago, and it shows. The technical Mac folks I know aren't switching. They're just yelling a lot, and if they're on pre-butterfly keyboard Macs, they're putting off upgrades. Of course, the VERY nerdy/technical folks can and do sometimes switch to full time Linux, but if you're used to the level of out-of-the-box just-works functionality you get out of OS X that's a hard sell.

ghaff 8y ago

At some point in the 2000s, it may have been an OSCON, I observed the incredibly high proportion of MacBooks being used by attendees. It was effectively a *nix laptop that worked. It’s at least plausible to think that absent OS X, a lot of developers would have made do with then still very rough around the edges (desktop) Linux and, given that level of interest, it would have improved at a greater rate.

chrisfinazzo 8y ago

It's not hard to imagine Apple would have died in very short order. If this happened, and Jobs was still there, I suspect some number of those people who eventually switched might have given NeXTSTEP serious consideration, as all the underpinnings of a good UNIX system were in place.

zwayhowder 8y ago

Funny I'm old enough to remember when Mac stood for "Most Applications Crash" and the even older Macintosh: "Most Applications Crash, if not the operating system hangs". Of course it was competing against my DOS environment that didn't have a mouse, which was clearly the root cause of all the issues.