5 ms·

Just like PC's, Macs have entered the world of, what I call, "car guys." Car guys are always fiddling with things for a tiny performance or perceived security

Just like PC's, Macs have entered the world of, what I call, "car guys." Car guys are always fiddling with things for a tiny performance or perceived security boosts without really thinking things through. In the Windows world you'll hear them tell you how you must disable the UAC, must install registry 'cleaners', must use $av_vendor_x because $av_vendor_y sucks, fiddle with some obscure registry change, use drivers or utilities from sites laden with malware, etc, etc. As a sysadmin, these guys drive me crazy. Often, they're the dominant voice in PC or gaming forums and their advice is not only terrible, but actually makes things worse for the end user looking to solve an issue. At least in the Windows world we have ugly GUIs and other roadblocks to making these changes easy. With OSX's scripting, you could have one single script make all these changes. Its interesting to think how terrible some random person's advice on the internet can be to your machine if you decide to type in what they say. Worse, I'm seeing a lot of FOSS/Linux stuff that more or less asks you to wget a random file on a random server into your shell and run it as root. Umm, no thanks. The above wouldn't be so bad if they all came with well written undo scripts, but I think the "car guys" aren't even considering scenarios where their half-cooked advice would be wrong. If they did, they probably wouldn't be putting this stuff out there like this.

ChrisClark 12y ago
Yeah, people still recommend automatic task killers for Android and it has never been useful, just harmful on speed and battery life.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Huawei even builds this nonsense into the OS! The Mate 2 (which is neat because I get 30+hours battery) has this stupid easy-to-hit button on the app switch page that terminates everything. Despite my usage never going below a GB free, it gleefully proclaims "XXX MB freed!" Well shit, I can go buy a 1GB SODIMM and leave it on my desk and always have 1GB free.
- kristopolous 12y ago
  "Automatic"? Or do you mean an application that makes killing tasks fewer taps? Because the latter isn't that bad ... I have apps misbehave about twice a week; chrome, skype, yelp, google voice - they all need an occasional fresh start - a convenient way to do that I don't understand the objections against.
DrJokepu 12y ago
I recall that this sort of stuff was very prevalent on the Mac before OS X.
- ZeroGravitas 12y ago
  It's always been prevelant everywhere. The biggest one in Mac OS X history I remember is haxies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haxie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haxie "Haxies are a source of controversy among Macintosh software developers. Because haxies make changes to Mac OS X that Apple did not intend, they complicate the operating environment for other developers' applications, and are frequently the cause of system instability and unexpected crashes.[1] Applications by Bare Bones software display a dialog after crashing (or are force quit by the user) if haxies are detected on the system. The Omni Group routinely asks users to remove Application Enhancer modules before contacting customer support for help with their applications. According to a post by an Apple employee on an Apple mailing list, Apple ignores all crash reports submitted by users if they show that APE is installed." http://daringfireball.net/2007/10/blue_in_the_face http://daringfireball.net/2007/10/blue_in_the_face "Reports abound regarding users suffering from a “blue screen” after upgrading to Leopard: they upgrade, reboot, and get stuck at a blank blue screen. But, as far as I can tell, there is no mystery involved. There is one and only one known cause for this problem: old versions of Unsanity’s Application Enhancer, a.k.a. APE. Versions 2.0.2 and 2.0.3 of APE are apparently inert but harmless on Leopard. But at least some, if not all, versions of APE preceding version 2.0.2 are incompatible, and will render the system unbootable if left in place during an upgrade."
sanderjd 12y ago
This is a great analogy. In high school and college, I believe I was a Windows and then Linux "car guy". One of the things I liked when I (mostly) switched to OSX from Linux was that I no longer had to spend any time fiddling with stuff. I used to find it fun, now it just feels like there's way too many interesting things to be learning about and doing to spend any time tweaking crap on my computer!
- tkubacki 12y ago
  That's why I use Ubuntu's default Unity on desktop and OSX Macbook these days. For me it just works. Ubuntu has even more powerful window managing key bindings by default (on OSX I need Spectacle). For all other things I just don't care.
  - tuananh 12y ago
    try Amethyst on OS X : )
    - snotrockets 12y ago
      Still not a real window manager :(
      - afarrell 12y ago
        How so? Lack of focus-follows-mouse?
- lelandbatey 12y ago
  I feel there's two levels of the constant fiddler, one where their fiddling is fruitful, one where the fiddling is not. The difference, I feel, basically comes down to how much you document, test, and automate what you do. If treated like science instead of voodoo, messing with your computer becomes one of those "interesting things to be learning."
  - sanderjd 12y ago
cbsmith 12y ago
Gentoo is for Ricers!: http://fun.irq.dk/funroll-loops.org/ http://fun.irq.dk/funroll-loops.org/
- stefantalpalaru 12y ago
  Gentoo is for people who want their bash fixes in minutes/hours not weeks.
  - cbsmith 12y ago
    Agreed. I make fun of Gentoo because I use it (well, more like Funtoo).
peakdarkpattern 12y ago
Anyone who was ever 1k short of EMS to get TIE Fighter booting became a 'car guy' :)
- driverdan 12y ago
  Took me a moment to realize what you were talking about then visions of my game boot disks came flooding back. They're probably still in my parents' computer desk.
pongstr 12y ago
I think one of the things that the author forgot to mention is that you don't have to install these as `sudo` basically, homebrew does that already but with other things there no really need for it. As of the FOSS/Linux stuff you are seeing, these aren't random files, these are mac apps see: https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask

ChrisClark 12y ago

Yeah, people still recommend automatic task killers for Android and it has never been useful, just harmful on speed and battery life.

MichaelGG 12y ago
Huawei even builds this nonsense into the OS! The Mate 2 (which is neat because I get 30+hours battery) has this stupid easy-to-hit button on the app switch page that terminates everything. Despite my usage never going below a GB free, it gleefully proclaims "XXX MB freed!" Well shit, I can go buy a 1GB SODIMM and leave it on my desk and always have 1GB free.
kristopolous 12y ago
"Automatic"? Or do you mean an application that makes killing tasks fewer taps? Because the latter isn't that bad ... I have apps misbehave about twice a week; chrome, skype, yelp, google voice - they all need an occasional fresh start - a convenient way to do that I don't understand the objections against.

DrJokepu 12y ago

I recall that this sort of stuff was very prevalent on the Mac before OS X.

ZeroGravitas 12y ago
It's always been prevelant everywhere. The biggest one in Mac OS X history I remember is haxies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haxie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haxie "Haxies are a source of controversy among Macintosh software developers. Because haxies make changes to Mac OS X that Apple did not intend, they complicate the operating environment for other developers' applications, and are frequently the cause of system instability and unexpected crashes.[1] Applications by Bare Bones software display a dialog after crashing (or are force quit by the user) if haxies are detected on the system. The Omni Group routinely asks users to remove Application Enhancer modules before contacting customer support for help with their applications. According to a post by an Apple employee on an Apple mailing list, Apple ignores all crash reports submitted by users if they show that APE is installed." http://daringfireball.net/2007/10/blue_in_the_face http://daringfireball.net/2007/10/blue_in_the_face "Reports abound regarding users suffering from a “blue screen” after upgrading to Leopard: they upgrade, reboot, and get stuck at a blank blue screen. But, as far as I can tell, there is no mystery involved. There is one and only one known cause for this problem: old versions of Unsanity’s Application Enhancer, a.k.a. APE. Versions 2.0.2 and 2.0.3 of APE are apparently inert but harmless on Leopard. But at least some, if not all, versions of APE preceding version 2.0.2 are incompatible, and will render the system unbootable if left in place during an upgrade."

sanderjd 12y ago

This is a great analogy. In high school and college, I believe I was a Windows and then Linux "car guy". One of the things I liked when I (mostly) switched to OSX from Linux was that I no longer had to spend any time fiddling with stuff. I used to find it fun, now it just feels like there's way too many interesting things to be learning about and doing to spend any time tweaking crap on my computer!

tkubacki 12y ago
That's why I use Ubuntu's default Unity on desktop and OSX Macbook these days. For me it just works. Ubuntu has even more powerful window managing key bindings by default (on OSX I need Spectacle). For all other things I just don't care.
- tuananh 12y ago
  try Amethyst on OS X : )
  - snotrockets 12y ago
    Still not a real window manager :(
    - afarrell 12y ago
      How so? Lack of focus-follows-mouse?
lelandbatey 12y ago
I feel there's two levels of the constant fiddler, one where their fiddling is fruitful, one where the fiddling is not. The difference, I feel, basically comes down to how much you document, test, and automate what you do. If treated like science instead of voodoo, messing with your computer becomes one of those "interesting things to be learning."
- sanderjd 12y ago

cbsmith 12y ago

Gentoo is for Ricers!: http://fun.irq.dk/funroll-loops.org/ http://fun.irq.dk/funroll-loops.org/

stefantalpalaru 12y ago
Gentoo is for people who want their bash fixes in minutes/hours not weeks.
- cbsmith 12y ago
  Agreed. I make fun of Gentoo because I use it (well, more like Funtoo).

peakdarkpattern 12y ago

Anyone who was ever 1k short of EMS to get TIE Fighter booting became a 'car guy' :)

driverdan 12y ago
Took me a moment to realize what you were talking about then visions of my game boot disks came flooding back. They're probably still in my parents' computer desk.

pongstr 12y ago

I think one of the things that the author forgot to mention is that you don't have to install these as `sudo` basically, homebrew does that already but with other things there no really need for it. As of the FOSS/Linux stuff you are seeing, these aren't random files, these are mac apps see: https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask