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I'm not quite sure what the point of this article is. He's quite clearly not the target market, and is shocked and enraged by this. This is clear right from the

by 542458 11y ago

I'm not quite sure what the point of this article is. He's quite clearly not the target market, and is shocked and enraged by this. This is clear right from the get-go: >Be customisable. I want to be able to replace any part of the system I would like So you're going to use a closed-source OS that's notorious for enforcing homogeneity wherever possible? >Be transparent in its workings Again, so you're going to use a closed-source OS? He then complains about a lot of optional features that can be turned off in a few minutes (Gestures, SIP) and have clear use cases for the remaining 99% of the system's users. His complaints about SIP are particularly bizarre. It's obvious what the utility is, it's trivial to disable, and yet it's "the sort of decision that is endemic to a system which is designed to lock you into a software prison"?

mattkrea 11y ago
Yeah, he seems to completely miss the idea that Macs are meant for the everyday person.. particularly with that can't modify system files bit.
- pdpi 11y ago
  He also misses the part where Macs are perfectly fine for a wide range of developers (I almost said 'most' but there's plenty of people out there writing code in environments I'm no authority on). If you're a kernel hacker, then yes. I imagine it's shit. But writing Go works fine, despite his protestations to the contrary. I'm also happily running GCC in parallel with Clang. And a ton of other programming environments too. Problems like the lack of a package manager are more of an easily-solved annoyance than they are a fundamental flaw. The problems I've had with HFS being case insensitive were more the fruit of people doing stupid shit on case sensitive file systems than they were fundamental 'sky is falling' problems. All in all, this reads like someone trying to emulate one of Linus's shitstorms, while missing the fact that Linus gets away with it because his ranting is usually backed by pretty substantial arguments.
  - bluetomcat 11y ago
    OS X is arguably more Unix-y in its low-level programming interface than Linux, being fully POSIX-compliant and certified. Any Linux userland tool which doesn't rely on specific kernel features and Linux-specific libraries can be built under OS X with rarely any issues.
  - mattkrea 11y ago
    Hah, this is exactly the first comment I was going to write. I work in Node, Go, and occasionally Python or other things and it works great.
jscheel 11y ago
Yes, it's fairly obvious that the author wasn't go to like osx from the start. However, I really do appreciate him giving it a go for a week. It's mind-blowing how many supposedly open-minded people refuse to try something before knocking it. Seriously, this is Green Eggs and Ham level stuff: try it try it, and you may. But geeks are some of the most stubborn people out there. Good for him for giving it a whirl, even if it was inevitable that he was going to hate it.
Ianvdl 11y ago
Is transparency and customisability really so fundamentally incompatible with closed source software? The fact that the source code is not available does not prevent the availability of clear documentation detailing system functionality (whether or not you can verify whether the two correspond is another argument). Detailed documentation can allow for customisability by swapping out closed-source defaults. I agree that the OP was never going to be happy with OS X, but were his expectations really so misguided? His requirements were not unreasonable.
- mangecoeur 11y ago
  Well it's not really clear what he was hoping to modify in OSX that found impossible to change. Many of the settings mentioned are readily toggled off, you can install most linux software (Homebrew is necessary, i readily concede that without it OSX packaging is a problem), I'm not really sure what he wants apart from that. Not sure what he means by "developer workflow"... Maybe it was more UI customization - there are definitely things which would be nice to tweak which are not tweakable, although there are a good range of apps and plist hacks to do so too. Mostly get the feeling he was primed to dislike it and, surprise surprise, disliked it.
  - Ianvdl 11y ago
    I haven't given OS X a try yet, so I don't have the experience to know whether his rant is validated, but how about his example: using gcc. Is it difficult to get gcc running smoothly?
jfb 11y ago
Also, how is OS X not transparent in its workings? Underdocumented, yes. But Linux's man pages aren't exactly a model of consistency and clarity, either.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Assuming your program of choice even has a manpage at all.
mangecoeur 11y ago
Indeed - one of the main selling points of OSX has always been its UI (where swipy gestures are rather handy), simplicity, and 'it just works' appeal. If you don't care about any of those things it's clearly going to lose a lot of it's appeal. Personally I ran linux for years before deciding I had wasted altogether too much of my life recompiling kernels and got a mac, where I can do Unix-y things with better hardware and less headaches.
deleted 11y ago
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by 542458 11y ago

mattkrea 11y ago

Yeah, he seems to completely miss the idea that Macs are meant for the everyday person.. particularly with that can't modify system files bit.

pdpi 11y ago
He also misses the part where Macs are perfectly fine for a wide range of developers (I almost said 'most' but there's plenty of people out there writing code in environments I'm no authority on). If you're a kernel hacker, then yes. I imagine it's shit. But writing Go works fine, despite his protestations to the contrary. I'm also happily running GCC in parallel with Clang. And a ton of other programming environments too. Problems like the lack of a package manager are more of an easily-solved annoyance than they are a fundamental flaw. The problems I've had with HFS being case insensitive were more the fruit of people doing stupid shit on case sensitive file systems than they were fundamental 'sky is falling' problems. All in all, this reads like someone trying to emulate one of Linus's shitstorms, while missing the fact that Linus gets away with it because his ranting is usually backed by pretty substantial arguments.
- bluetomcat 11y ago
  OS X is arguably more Unix-y in its low-level programming interface than Linux, being fully POSIX-compliant and certified. Any Linux userland tool which doesn't rely on specific kernel features and Linux-specific libraries can be built under OS X with rarely any issues.
- mattkrea 11y ago
  Hah, this is exactly the first comment I was going to write. I work in Node, Go, and occasionally Python or other things and it works great.

jscheel 11y ago

Yes, it's fairly obvious that the author wasn't go to like osx from the start. However, I really do appreciate him giving it a go for a week. It's mind-blowing how many supposedly open-minded people refuse to try something before knocking it. Seriously, this is Green Eggs and Ham level stuff: try it try it, and you may. But geeks are some of the most stubborn people out there. Good for him for giving it a whirl, even if it was inevitable that he was going to hate it.

Ianvdl 11y ago

Is transparency and customisability really so fundamentally incompatible with closed source software? The fact that the source code is not available does not prevent the availability of clear documentation detailing system functionality (whether or not you can verify whether the two correspond is another argument). Detailed documentation can allow for customisability by swapping out closed-source defaults. I agree that the OP was never going to be happy with OS X, but were his expectations really so misguided? His requirements were not unreasonable.

mangecoeur 11y ago
Well it's not really clear what he was hoping to modify in OSX that found impossible to change. Many of the settings mentioned are readily toggled off, you can install most linux software (Homebrew is necessary, i readily concede that without it OSX packaging is a problem), I'm not really sure what he wants apart from that. Not sure what he means by "developer workflow"... Maybe it was more UI customization - there are definitely things which would be nice to tweak which are not tweakable, although there are a good range of apps and plist hacks to do so too. Mostly get the feeling he was primed to dislike it and, surprise surprise, disliked it.
- Ianvdl 11y ago
  I haven't given OS X a try yet, so I don't have the experience to know whether his rant is validated, but how about his example: using gcc. Is it difficult to get gcc running smoothly?

jfb 11y ago

Also, how is OS X not transparent in its workings? Underdocumented, yes. But Linux's man pages aren't exactly a model of consistency and clarity, either.

jacquesm 11y ago
Assuming your program of choice even has a manpage at all.

mangecoeur 11y ago

Indeed - one of the main selling points of OSX has always been its UI (where swipy gestures are rather handy), simplicity, and 'it just works' appeal. If you don't care about any of those things it's clearly going to lose a lot of it's appeal. Personally I ran linux for years before deciding I had wasted altogether too much of my life recompiling kernels and got a mac, where I can do Unix-y things with better hardware and less headaches.

deleted 11y ago

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