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Being a hardcore geek, I love running on top of a "unix" like environment. I should flock to Linux, but Mac OS X is just prettier, and more stable. I don't kn

by Ben65 18y ago

Being a hardcore geek, I love running on top of a "unix" like environment. I should flock to Linux, but Mac OS X is just prettier, and more stable. I don't know better fonts maybe? For that reason, and I know it seems small, I prefer Mac. BTW. I only use emacs and Firefox most of the time anyway.

omouse 18y ago
If you were a hardcore geek you'd try and find a BeBox :P http://www.josephpalmer.com/BeBox/BeBox.shtml http://www.josephpalmer.com/BeBox/BeBox.shtml
- unalone 18y ago
  I know you're joking, but: when did "geek" become synonymous with "doesn't care about rich user experience?" Can't you be a geek and care about things working beautifully? Because according to some people on HN (not you, omouse, this isn't against you), the minute you start worrying about aesthetic you abandon being a TRUE geek, and that's stupid and demeaning.
  - omouse 18y ago
    Well I just meant to point out that there are other operating systems and other hardware.
    - unalone 18y ago
      Yeah, I know. Sorry if it seemed like it was you I was ranting at.
sfk 18y ago
I cannot refute the bold statement about stability, since I have no experience with Mac OS X. However, I have extensive experience with Linux and OpenBSD and I've had zero stability problems with Linux. OpenBSD is a different story. The funny thing is that BSDs have this nimbus of being ultra-stable and bug-free; my experience is just the opposite.
josefresco 18y ago
My iPod is pretty, but "stable" and OSX are not two words I use in the same statement. I think my iPod has gone down more than my two Vista machines since I've owned them.
- unalone 18y ago
  An iPod isn't the same as Mac OS X. My computer crashes once every week or two, but it does that when I'm running ten stressful applications at once. Before my computer I'd never have thought of trying to burn a CD, create a movie, run diagnostics on my library, and several other things all at once. Things on Windows crashed haphazardly, unpredictably. I can run my Mac for days straight and they still go well for the most part, and when they crash it takes one reset to get it all working again. iPods have a much lower standard, sadly, though my iPod touch hasn't crashed once since the software update.
James_Johnson 18y ago
I recently acquired a MacBook after using a variety of standard laptops with Linux installed on them. In my experience, the Mac is better as a /consumer/ laptop, while the Linux box is better as a /geek/ laptop. I'm sure that I'll get better at getting under the Mac's hood at some point, but right now it's frustrating to have to use GUI tools for everything. In general, everything (apps, UI) in Mac are prettier and easier to use than their *nix counterparts, but /far/ less functional. Also, Mac OS X is internally UNIX-y enough to make me /think/ that things still work in the same way, but are different enough to make me sorely disappointed when I find out that I was mistaken.
Herring 18y ago
OS X is prettier than linux? When was the last time you tried linux? It has come along way in the past year or two. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI-ye1oa4N8&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI-ye1oa4N8&feature=relat... http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=934741 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=934741
- unalone 18y ago
  I'm sorry, but you're going to be the brunt of this small mini-rant about Linux users being incredibly unaware of what we mean when we say pretty. Fuck Compiz. It's wholly unfunctional. A rotating cube does not make something pretty, it makes it resource-intensive. Wobbly windows are not functional and they serve no purpose. Pretty is something that looks good WHILE having a definitive meaning. The "genie" effect, for instance: it shows me exactly where I have to go if I need to restore a window. Or Expose: seeing my windows fly out and reveal themselves. Or stacks in Leopard, giving me one-click access to whatever I want one-click access to. Pretty is trying to do something and realizing you can. It's my being in iTunes, talking to a friend about a song that came on, and realizing I could just drag the song out of iTunes to send a copy to him. That's not an advertised feature of iTunes. It's just something that you can't do in Windows Media Player or Amarok. It's something that made my life a wee bit simpler. Pretty is my searching Help for something, being given a menu item instead of just a result, and having that item highlighted with a spinning arrow to point out the result. Pretty is spring-loaded tabs. It's picking a color and being given a set of crayons as a visual metaphor. It's opening TextEdit for the first time and realizing that it's not just Notepad, it's a fully-featured visual text editor that can produce pretty beautiful results. Pretty is CMD-Space-s-a-enter opening up a web browser, or CMD-Space-s-h-e-space-l-enter opening up a song. Out of the box. Without any fiddling, having an ultrafast system for opening files. When we Mac users talk about pretty, we don't mean the fact that our windows look beautiful, although let's be honest, they do: they're minimal, they look very pretty even though they're gray, and I love how menu options appear as part of the chrome instead of having two distinct dividers apart from content (not to start talking about the lozenge button or the top menu). Pretty is how things just work. It's things making perfect logical sense as you do them. It's about whenever you wonder if you can do X, you find that you CAN do X. Linux is not pretty. It's not it's not it's not. It takes a good screenshot nowadays, and that's more than it used to be able to do. But that doesn't make something pretty. That makes something PRETEND to be pretty. It's what's on the inside that counts, not what's on the outside. I'm not anti-Linux. I ran Ubuntu for a year before I got OS X. I like it more than Windows, when it works, when my audio and graphics don't get messed up (and they ALWAYS do, of course). It is not pretty, though. It's pretty on the surface, pretty before you realize just how incapable it is of doing some things easily. And some Linux users are honest. My friend says that he cares only about if Linux does what he wants at no price. That I can respect. But don't say that your wobbly cubes make your OS pretty. That's like saying Vista is pretty because of Aero. tl;dr: OS X is much, MUCH prettier than Linux. Period.

by Ben65 18y ago

omouse 18y ago

If you were a hardcore geek you'd try and find a BeBox :P http://www.josephpalmer.com/BeBox/BeBox.shtml http://www.josephpalmer.com/BeBox/BeBox.shtml

unalone 18y ago
I know you're joking, but: when did "geek" become synonymous with "doesn't care about rich user experience?" Can't you be a geek and care about things working beautifully? Because according to some people on HN (not you, omouse, this isn't against you), the minute you start worrying about aesthetic you abandon being a TRUE geek, and that's stupid and demeaning.
- omouse 18y ago
  Well I just meant to point out that there are other operating systems and other hardware.
  - unalone 18y ago
    Yeah, I know. Sorry if it seemed like it was you I was ranting at.

sfk 18y ago

I cannot refute the bold statement about stability, since I have no experience with Mac OS X. However, I have extensive experience with Linux and OpenBSD and I've had zero stability problems with Linux. OpenBSD is a different story. The funny thing is that BSDs have this nimbus of being ultra-stable and bug-free; my experience is just the opposite.

josefresco 18y ago

My iPod is pretty, but "stable" and OSX are not two words I use in the same statement. I think my iPod has gone down more than my two Vista machines since I've owned them.

unalone 18y ago
An iPod isn't the same as Mac OS X. My computer crashes once every week or two, but it does that when I'm running ten stressful applications at once. Before my computer I'd never have thought of trying to burn a CD, create a movie, run diagnostics on my library, and several other things all at once. Things on Windows crashed haphazardly, unpredictably. I can run my Mac for days straight and they still go well for the most part, and when they crash it takes one reset to get it all working again. iPods have a much lower standard, sadly, though my iPod touch hasn't crashed once since the software update.

James_Johnson 18y ago

I recently acquired a MacBook after using a variety of standard laptops with Linux installed on them. In my experience, the Mac is better as a /consumer/ laptop, while the Linux box is better as a /geek/ laptop. I'm sure that I'll get better at getting under the Mac's hood at some point, but right now it's frustrating to have to use GUI tools for everything. In general, everything (apps, UI) in Mac are prettier and easier to use than their *nix counterparts, but /far/ less functional. Also, Mac OS X is internally UNIX-y enough to make me /think/ that things still work in the same way, but are different enough to make me sorely disappointed when I find out that I was mistaken.

Herring 18y ago

OS X is prettier than linux? When was the last time you tried linux? It has come along way in the past year or two. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI-ye1oa4N8&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI-ye1oa4N8&feature=relat... http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=934741 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=934741

unalone 18y ago
I'm sorry, but you're going to be the brunt of this small mini-rant about Linux users being incredibly unaware of what we mean when we say pretty. Fuck Compiz. It's wholly unfunctional. A rotating cube does not make something pretty, it makes it resource-intensive. Wobbly windows are not functional and they serve no purpose. Pretty is something that looks good WHILE having a definitive meaning. The "genie" effect, for instance: it shows me exactly where I have to go if I need to restore a window. Or Expose: seeing my windows fly out and reveal themselves. Or stacks in Leopard, giving me one-click access to whatever I want one-click access to. Pretty is trying to do something and realizing you can. It's my being in iTunes, talking to a friend about a song that came on, and realizing I could just drag the song out of iTunes to send a copy to him. That's not an advertised feature of iTunes. It's just something that you can't do in Windows Media Player or Amarok. It's something that made my life a wee bit simpler. Pretty is my searching Help for something, being given a menu item instead of just a result, and having that item highlighted with a spinning arrow to point out the result. Pretty is spring-loaded tabs. It's picking a color and being given a set of crayons as a visual metaphor. It's opening TextEdit for the first time and realizing that it's not just Notepad, it's a fully-featured visual text editor that can produce pretty beautiful results. Pretty is CMD-Space-s-a-enter opening up a web browser, or CMD-Space-s-h-e-space-l-enter opening up a song. Out of the box. Without any fiddling, having an ultrafast system for opening files. When we Mac users talk about pretty, we don't mean the fact that our windows look beautiful, although let's be honest, they do: they're minimal, they look very pretty even though they're gray, and I love how menu options appear as part of the chrome instead of having two distinct dividers apart from content (not to start talking about the lozenge button or the top menu). Pretty is how things just work. It's things making perfect logical sense as you do them. It's about whenever you wonder if you can do X, you find that you CAN do X. Linux is not pretty. It's not it's not it's not. It takes a good screenshot nowadays, and that's more than it used to be able to do. But that doesn't make something pretty. That makes something PRETEND to be pretty. It's what's on the inside that counts, not what's on the outside. I'm not anti-Linux. I ran Ubuntu for a year before I got OS X. I like it more than Windows, when it works, when my audio and graphics don't get messed up (and they ALWAYS do, of course). It is not pretty, though. It's pretty on the surface, pretty before you realize just how incapable it is of doing some things easily. And some Linux users are honest. My friend says that he cares only about if Linux does what he wants at no price. That I can respect. But don't say that your wobbly cubes make your OS pretty. That's like saying Vista is pretty because of Aero. tl;dr: OS X is much, MUCH prettier than Linux. Period.