4 ms·

I agree with the gist of your post, however I must say that in my experience Apple products are manufactured to a standard that is 170% that of competitor's (re

I agree with the gist of your post, however I must say that in my experience Apple products are manufactured to a standard that is 170% that of competitor's (really, just put a Macbook next to a Dell, or an iPhone next to a Blackberry and pore over the differences). On the features, I would say that roughly 75% more features are accessible to a casual user: you can simply do more without even thinking about it. However, to the professional user, only 15% of the features are available. (!) A professional user who got a degree in this subject can simply do literally six and a half times as many things on an Android or on a Linux desktop than with an iPhone or Mac OS X. On pricing, I don't have any figures but do not consider it out of line to consider an Apple product as being a durable replacement for several cheap plastic versions. An investment in OS X in the guise of a $1800 MacBook Pro could easily take the place of a $700, a $500 and a $600 laptop bought over the same period of time. By the end of the period the specs of the MacBook would be severely out of date, however in other respects its usage may be preferable to the usage of the new $600 laptop. If you are not comparing on this basis, Apple products may be up to 300% as expensive as their competition, again as shown by the laptop example. These numbers are scientific, have high statistical confidence, and good to eighteen decimal places. I show them with only one or two significant figures, however the full figures are going through a process of peer review and should appear soon in the IEEE Spectrum. Or not...

pooriaazimi 14y ago
> A professional user who got a degree in this subject can simply do literally six and a half times as many things on an Android or on a Linux desktop than with an iPhone or Mac OS X. I almost agree with you on Android/iPhone (though 6.5 times is a big, big exaggeration, more likely 40%), but absolutely disagree with you about OS X/Linux. To me (I don't do kernel debugging, but use tons of 'pro' development tools daily), they're on par, with Linux a tiny bit (a few percent) in the lead. OS X is more shiny and is more pleasant to use as a development machine, but in Linux your hands are freeer.
- smsm42 14y ago
  If only Mac OS X ever got a proper packaging system (one not for installing nice GUI apps, but for deploying infrastructure things like libraries) - then it would be on par. Right now, unfortunately, it's still subpar - doing the same things takes more time. I know theres ports and fink and homebrew, but each of them has its deficiencies, and they regularly step on each other's toes and make a mess of the system.
  - krrrh 14y ago
    I might be out of line here but it sounds like you may not have given homebrew a decent enough chance. Fink and macports have always had problems, but a fresh Lion install + homebrew has about the same number of issues as a package manager as apt-get/dpkg on a stock Debian system, which is to say, not many. It definitely doesnt mess up the system without a great deal of willful effort to do so. Give it another chance.
    - smsm42 14y ago
      I had a lot of trouble explaining homebrew difference between i386 and x64 builds and getting it to build the right ones. It does not mess up the system by itself, but getting it to do the right thing requires some serious digging into the config formats - or at least it did when I needed it about a year ago.
  - quarterto 14y ago
    There's a simple answer to that one. It's "don't use multiple package managers, you numpty". Use Homebrew. If it's missing a package, write a formula. Fork the repo on Github, brew-tap it [1], and if you think other people could use it, open a pull request. [1]: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/wiki/Homebrew-0.9 https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/wiki/Homebrew-0.9
    - smsm42 14y ago
      > If it's missing a package, write a formula. That's exactly the problem. I don't want to write formulas. Just as on Linux I don't have to write RPMs - I just download them and install them. Yes, I can write a formula. Yes, it is not hard (in 90% of the cases). But it takes time, and I don't have extra time for it. And it takes learning yet another thing, which I don't need - and I have enough things to learn already that I do need. I don't want to spend mental energy on it - I just want it to work. Linux achieved it, to a great degree, and Mac OS X still didn't.
stephencanon 14y ago
> A professional user who got a degree in this subject can simply do literally six and a half times as many things on an Android or on a Linux desktop than with an iPhone or Mac OS X. They offer degrees in using a smartphone? Amazing that I've been able to get along with one for so long.

pooriaazimi 14y ago

> A professional user who got a degree in this subject can simply do literally six and a half times as many things on an Android or on a Linux desktop than with an iPhone or Mac OS X. I almost agree with you on Android/iPhone (though 6.5 times is a big, big exaggeration, more likely 40%), but absolutely disagree with you about OS X/Linux. To me (I don't do kernel debugging, but use tons of 'pro' development tools daily), they're on par, with Linux a tiny bit (a few percent) in the lead. OS X is more shiny and is more pleasant to use as a development machine, but in Linux your hands are freeer.

smsm42 14y ago
If only Mac OS X ever got a proper packaging system (one not for installing nice GUI apps, but for deploying infrastructure things like libraries) - then it would be on par. Right now, unfortunately, it's still subpar - doing the same things takes more time. I know theres ports and fink and homebrew, but each of them has its deficiencies, and they regularly step on each other's toes and make a mess of the system.
- krrrh 14y ago
  I might be out of line here but it sounds like you may not have given homebrew a decent enough chance. Fink and macports have always had problems, but a fresh Lion install + homebrew has about the same number of issues as a package manager as apt-get/dpkg on a stock Debian system, which is to say, not many. It definitely doesnt mess up the system without a great deal of willful effort to do so. Give it another chance.
  - smsm42 14y ago
    I had a lot of trouble explaining homebrew difference between i386 and x64 builds and getting it to build the right ones. It does not mess up the system by itself, but getting it to do the right thing requires some serious digging into the config formats - or at least it did when I needed it about a year ago.
- quarterto 14y ago
  There's a simple answer to that one. It's "don't use multiple package managers, you numpty". Use Homebrew. If it's missing a package, write a formula. Fork the repo on Github, brew-tap it [1], and if you think other people could use it, open a pull request. [1]: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/wiki/Homebrew-0.9 https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/wiki/Homebrew-0.9
  - smsm42 14y ago
    > If it's missing a package, write a formula. That's exactly the problem. I don't want to write formulas. Just as on Linux I don't have to write RPMs - I just download them and install them. Yes, I can write a formula. Yes, it is not hard (in 90% of the cases). But it takes time, and I don't have extra time for it. And it takes learning yet another thing, which I don't need - and I have enough things to learn already that I do need. I don't want to spend mental energy on it - I just want it to work. Linux achieved it, to a great degree, and Mac OS X still didn't.

stephencanon 14y ago

> A professional user who got a degree in this subject can simply do literally six and a half times as many things on an Android or on a Linux desktop than with an iPhone or Mac OS X. They offer degrees in using a smartphone? Amazing that I've been able to get along with one for so long.