

How I ended up with Mac - gebe
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2013/Mar-05.html

======
Wilya
I'm always amused by these posts praising how everything just works on the
Mac, and how it's so nice not having to worry about [annoying linux/windows
stuff #351].

Am I really the only one blind to this effect ? I've used a mac. It's nice.
But it "just works" only until you want to productively use Finder, or you
want to connect to a Samba server, or you want to shuffle files with UTF-8
filenames around, or a dozen other things like that.

I suppose I'm just not the target market. But I would have expected someone
like the author not to be in it either, so.. _shrug_

~~~
meaty
Agreed. It doesn't just work. It works until you want an opinion, then it
stabs you in the face repetitively.

My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction iPhoto
decided to enforce upon me. After removing iPhoto, it was bearable. This
slowly cranked on until I ended up with basically OS-X as a window manager for
a terminal emulator, browser, ViewNX and Apple Mail connected to GMail (which
didn't work properly either and ended up just being done in a browser). As
iWork was shit and corrupted documents left right and centre, I had to use
Parallels with Windows Vista + Office 2007 as well. Granted I could have used
Office for Mac but it was the 2004 version which was a POS that relied on
Rosetta.

As for the iPhone, ugh that was hell. Nothing worked properly and each iOS
release was literally scary. My pregnant wife actually begged me not to
upgrade my iPhone in case it knackered the battery more and she got left
without being able to communicate with me (I'm dead serious there). I actually
bought a shit Nokia with a GiffGaff SIM in it to carry around in case the
iPhone died.

~~~
revscat
> My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction iPhoto
> decided to enforce upon me. After removing iPhoto, it was bearable.

This makes no sense. iPhoto stores your photos in a directory structure on
your system. This directory is like any other. If you want to extract the
photos from them you can. You can also just right-click on your photos from
within iPhoto and extract them.

> After removing iPhoto, it was bearable.

What was bearable? Why didn't you try and fix the problem? I've been using
iPhoto for almost 10 years, across ~6 different machines, and have never had
any issues with it.

~~~
meaty
It was unbearable because the abstraction was inconsistent when it came to:

a) talking to the library from the command line - the mapping between the UI
and the filesystem was completely abstract.

b) talking to the library from apps - the UI was horrible and inconsistent.

c) metadata was entirely non transparent and hard to get at.

Bearable was removing iPhoto and installing Nikon ViewNX which came with my
D70. This has no abstraction - the filesystem is the abstraction.

(I know how to access the source files BTW).

~~~
revscat
> a) talking to the library from the command line - the mapping between the UI
> and the filesystem was completely abstract.

So... doing "find . -type f -name '*.jpg' -print" is outside of your
capabilities?

> b) talking to the library from apps - the UI was horrible and inconsistent.

What were you trying to do?

> c) metadata was entirely non transparent and hard to get at.

man mdls

~~~
meaty
_So... doing "find . -type f -name '_.jpg' -print" is outside of your
capabilities?*

No but doing that when iPhoto stores backups of your images is a pain in the
arse.

 _b) talking to the library from apps - the UI was horrible and inconsistent_

Automator + Photoshop.

 _> c) metadata was entirely non transparent and hard to get at._

Yes but that doesn't deal with folders which aren't indexed. For example if
you do an iPhoto import it can lag for a while before Spotlight catches up.
Bang - synchronisation problem.

This shot me badly.

The whole solution is just bad.

~~~
revscat
> No but doing that when iPhoto stores backups of your images is a pain in the
> arse.

In what way?

> Yes but that doesn't deal with folders which aren't indexed. For example if
> you do an iPhoto import it can lag for a while before Spotlight catches up.
> Bang - synchronisation problem.

Moving goalposts. First you said the metadata was opaque. It wasn't. Now
you're saying there is lag.

What were you trying to do? I do a lot of photography, and while I am no means
a pro -- or even a semi-pro -- I have done automator scripts against iPhoto
with zero problems. You still haven't said what you were trying to accomplish.

~~~
jychang
The problem is, you're moving the goalposts too. "It just works" wouldn't
apply if you need to hack together automater script...

------
meaty
Perhaps I'm strange. I always seem to be going the opposite way to everyone
else.

I've fallen in love with Windows again. It just works. Power management rocks,
battery life is good (8 hours on my 2007 Lenovo T61!), the hardware is damn
cheap, the licenses cost me virtually nothing, literally everything I plug
into it works, the tooling is pretty damn good, utils I wrote for Windows NT4
literally 14 years ago _still_ just work flawlessly. My Linux machine is just
a VirtualBox VM.

Yesterday I bought my second Windows Phone (Lumia 820). This also just works.
Email is the same everywhere, all the apps just works, plays any mp3 without
complaining (my sodding iPhone never did!), Nokia Drive just works, maps
actually work (again something my iPhone shot down), talks to exchange without
problems, is exactly the same as my old Windows Phone 7.8 device (no who moved
my cheese), opens all my documents nicely, reads any pdf fine.

Seriously, it's just all boringly functional and uneventful these days.

Bear in mind I am coming from a background on hardcore UNIX machines (big
Solaris, HP-UX machines), through FreeBSD to Linux to OS-X.

The worst pain I had was with Solaris (on Tadpole SPARCbook) and just about
everything Apple, particularly their unreliable hardware (4 Macs returned for
repair!), app compatibility problems, piss poor battery life on iPhone 3/4,
shit crock of a POSIX environment and shoddy attempt at online services.

~~~
revscat
> I've fallen in love with Windows again. It just works.

You and I have had vastly different experiences.

I have spent the morning trying to get Rails installed on a Win7 box. This has
required numerous painful hoops to jump through, and I am actually not even
finished. I finally got 1.9.3 installed, but am hung on some OpenSSL
requirement. It has been a massive, huge waste of my day.

The default command shell sucks rocks, so I'm using (or attempting to use)
cygwin, specifically zsh. I have no access to tmux, and while screen works it
is not my preferred multiplexer. Even under zsh, though, the typical Ruby
commands (ruby/irb/gem/etc.) have to be run with their .bat equivalents, which
is a needless pain. The latest issue is with something related to OpenSSL, and
I'm still digging through that one.

These are all issues that have been specific to Windows. I ran this exact same
code with zero problems on my home OS X box not 4 hours ago. git
pull/bundle/rails server, good to go. On Windows this has taken the better
part of a day to get going.

You sound like an astroturfer, honestly. "I'm honest, I use other systems.
It's just that they all are just _awful_ compared to Windows. Here are generic
reasons why, with few specifics."

> shit crock of a POSIX environment

What does this even mean? OS X is POSIX certified. Windows is not. Are you
saying POSIX is crap, or that OS X's implementation of it is? Either way I
would challenge you to back up that statement up. OS X is the best Unix I have
personally had experience using.

~~~
blibble
believe it or not Windows has actually had a POSIX subsystem since the NT
days, and MS still provide it for Windows 8.

I'm not sure what POSIX certified means, but Windows is UNIX in the same way
Mac OS X is...

~~~
radio4fan
Wikipedia has this (and more) to say on POSIX:

Not to be confused with Unix, Unix-like, or Linux.

POSIX (pron.: /ˈpɒzɪks/ poz-iks), an acronym for "Portable Operating System
Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining
compatibility between operating systems...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posix>

The old MS POSIX subsystem was replaced by the amusingly named SFU (Services
for UNIX). Then that got replaced by the bought-in Interix.

Mac OS X is UNIX because it's certified under the Single UNIX Specification:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification>

Windows is not in any way UNIX. There aren't even any certified Linux distros
(AFAIK). Mac OS X is UNIX.

------
bad_user
My main gripe with Novel and now Xamarin is that they don't provide packages
for Debian and Ubuntu, arguably the most popular Linux distributions.

For instance if you go to Mono's download page to checkout the options, the
only Linux distribution supported by them is OpenSuse: <http://www.go-
mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html>

Of course one could argue that Debian (and Ubuntu that relies on Debian's
repository) has a culture of packaging stuff by themselves and indeed in the
case of Mono there are people that do just that. But those packages are always
behind the current version and you can't blame the maintainers for that. And
lots of software companies, including Google and Mozilla, are providing
packages for Debian/Ubuntu for the latest versions by themselves. It's
actually the norm with Ubuntu to setup third-party PPAs that provide packages
for something missing from the main repository.

So Miguel here complains about fragmentation on the Linux desktop. It's funny,
because they ignore the largest distributions around. At least if instead of
OpenSuse they supported Red Hat, I would understand.

Also, my experience with OS X has not be so pleasant. Miguel is a damn good
developer, but he must be using a really simple toolchain.

When you are working day-in day-out with Java, Ruby, Python, Javascript,
Mysql, Postgresql, GCC, Casandra, MongoDB, Memcached and dozens of other
technologies, installing that stuff and having it work on OS X is amongst the
most frustrating experiences I ever had, no matter if you're doing it by hand
or with MacPorts or with Homebrew. All available options on OS X suck. I
couldn't give a fuck about binaries of commercial software packages working,
as long as I can't manage the toolchain I depend on daily.

Another thing with OS X is that it just works, until it doesn't. After that
you're in Windows-land again, the preferred option being to just
reset/reinstall everything. Linux can be painful sometimes, but for most
problems you can find documented fixes.

Also, he's a little out of date. Ubuntu has been rock solid for me on my
Thinkpad for the last couple of months since I got my current laptop. Of
course, I preferred a model with Intel HD 4000 instead of a Geforce, so a
little research into hardware may be needed to ensure good compatibility, but
on the other hand you can't run OS X on anything else other than a couple of
Macbook models. Try building a Hackintosh sometimes and your appreciation for
Linux will change.

~~~
vsync
> When you are working day-in day-out with Java, Ruby, Python, Javascript,
> Mysql, Postgresql, GCC, Casandra, MongoDB, Memcached and dozens of other
> technologies, installing that stuff and having it work on OS X is amongst
> the most frustrating experiences I ever had, no matter if you're doing it by
> hand or with MacPorts or with Homebrew. All available options on OS X suck.
> I couldn't give a fuck about binaries of commercial software packages
> working, as long as I can't manage the toolchain I depend on daily.

As a non-Mac-user (and fellow ThinkPad user!) that occasionally gets roped in
to that crazy land, I feel your pain. MacPorts seemed the most useful option
before, simply because it seemed a direct port (heh) of the BSD ports system.
Honestly the whole thing reminded me of trying to get stuff to work on Solaris
10-15 years ago.... if you can just get your compiler working it works great,
just set up /my-usr over here and make sure nothing from the real system ends
up in $PATH.

Lately I heard that MacPorts isn't cool any more so I didn't use it for my
most recent Mac-oriented client project that needed some installs. I am a
stubborn goat, but if I've learned one thing it's that when the trendy open
source crowd on Mac wanders off, good luck getting _anything_ to work,
especially because Apple loves to change things. So I looked around and it
seems Fink is a really nice option. So far everything went great. If you are
familiar with Debian it's like that, and it carefully segregates everything
into /sw, so just make sure /sw/{bin,sbin} are first in $PATH and you'll be
good. I was recently reminded of Gentoo Prefix and wish I'd tried that out.

Now here is the thing that cracks me up. I am of all things a Gentoo partisan.
My workstations? Gentoo. Servers for my business? Gentoo. Client systems?
Gentoo. LAN server for a moderately technical friend? Gentoo. And I do get
some gentle mockery from friends for how much of my CPU time is spent on
compiling. Yet here are the Mac acolytes, with the most consistent hardware
and OS platform one could ever hope for, and they always have a fetish for
compiling things from source. Are they showing off that they know how to do
"./configure && make && make install"? Well congratulations, you got my
respect for that, now please make binary packages. I mean shit, the only
reason I am into Gentoo is I got tired of that rigmarole and managing $CFLAGS
manually on my precious Slackware boxen.

~~~
jff
You got tired of manually managing CFLAGS, so you moved to... Gentoo? Home of
"hope you didn't want to view a GIF in Firefox, because you forgot to build it
with that USE flag"?

------
chmars
Trivia:

 _Miguel de Icaza (born c. 1972) is a Mexican free software programmer, best
known for starting the GNOME and Mono projects._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza>

------
McUsr
I just want to add, that once you want packages and such, for a tool chain,
you'll at least discover some problems, as there is a package anarchy out
there compared to GNU/Linux! But <http://macports.org> has a solid repository
of packages. When it comes to "private packages" packages I have found outside
repos, I do install them as "account installs", that is ~/opt/bin,
~/opt/man/man1 .. and so on, so it is easier to upgrade the OS, and less
conflicts with the different packet managers.

Having said that, most things do work, and people are friendly and easy to
reach.

Most GNU packages just work, shouldn't you find what you are looking for
elsewhere.

I think Mac Os X, (or just OS X now adays), is the greatest platform for free
software ever!

My reason for starting out with a Mac was Applescript
(<http://macscripter.net>) and inter application communication IPC. I haven't
regretted that a single day.

~~~
chimeracoder
> But <http://macports.org> has a solid repository of packages.

The problem comes when you start wanting to use things that aren't on
Macports, and are only on homebrew (or maybe fink). But homebrew won't work
with macports! So either you have to install one package or the other
manually, or you have to install both macports and homebrew, which means that
not only are you dealing with an unsupported setup, but you're also dealing
with using _two separate_ package managers for the same operating system.

Oh, and don't forget that anything installed via the App Store is completely
independent of all of the above.

As a Linux user, I find this concept mind-boggling. I don't have time to keep
track of a thousand different package managers. I just want one that handles
everything.

~~~
xentronium
It's not that hard, really.

You install libraries and console stuff from homebrew, gui applications from
app store and forget about macports.

~~~
McUsr
I'd say the opposite, forget about Homebrew and keep Macports. The whole thing
may not be so easy to use at first, but when you have read the docs for the
port system, it all makes much more sense.

------
drewg123
I had nearly the opposite experience. In ~2007, after the birth of my first
child I had very little time. So I thought to myself "I don't have time to
keep up with maintaining a Linux desktop" and I bought a nice iMac, and moved
from Linux to Mac.

The experience I had was that everything that was a royal PITA on _nix at the
time (web browsing, audio, skype, video, photo management, suspend/resume,
printing) "just worked" on the Mac. Hurray!

But the problem I had was that the unixy stuff stuff I needed to do my job
(X11 across multiple monitors, emacs, serial console control, local command-
line tools, etc) did not just work, and was more a PITA to maintain on MacOSX
than the flashy stuff was to maintain on _nix. The final straw was when I
upgraded to Leopard, and multiple monitor support in X11 was totally hosed.

In the end, I wound up giving the iMac to my in-laws, building another
whitebox for 1/2 the price of the iMac, and I have been happy ever after.

------
kstrauser
So after Miguel did everything possible to fragment and screw up Linux
desktops, he's now complaining about fragmented and screwed up Linux desktops.

Color me surprised.

~~~
jff
Well, and after years of his project slavishly imitating Windows, its latest
iteration is slavishly imitating OS X. So, good work all around.

Edit: vvvv I stand corrected.

Double Edit: What exactly do you mean, anyway? Things like
<http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2002020601120OPGNMS>, dated 2010, seem to
indicate he's still active within GNOME.

~~~
gebe
That seem to be dated to 2002.

~~~
jff
What is wrong with my brain I don't even know

------
jsvaughan
This is ridiculous. The reason that things "didn't just work" in this case is
surely that the OS was fiddled with to the extent that the kernel was
recompiled more than once every 3 weeks.

It is hardly valid to compare that to a bog standard release of an OS.

If you are reading this and for some reason have not tried Linux, this
experience is not remotely representative.

The laptop I am typing this on (Thinkpad, Ubuntu) - sleep works, audio works,
camera works, wifi just works, 3g JUST WORKS, printers just work - better than
in Windows, DisplayPort just works, USB devices just work - and I have been
running and upgrading the OS for several years.

~~~
rodelrod
I have the same setup and the same experience. More importantly, I've had the
same setup for many years, so there's no pain, ever. I'm baffled as to why
people keep changing OS and setups and repeatedly incurring the cost of
change. It's just an OS, it's mostly a solved problem. Spend time fiddling
with stuff that can actually make you more productive.

------
jug6ernaut
I recently switched over to a MBP from using windows exclusively...ever. For
the most part it is awesome, really love it. But not everything "just works"
as people like to say.

The one thing that stands out to me the largest is A2DP, idk if this is
exclusive to the MBP(late 2011) but it is simply broken. Works 1/2 the time
and when it does the quality is horrible.

Another annoyance is theme engine is non existent.

My favorite is the trackpad + osx, such a pleasure to use compared to any
other laptop.

With that said i love both windows & osx, each has there advantages.

~~~
rrouse
What does A2DP stand for? I've likely never used the feature personally.

~~~
jug6ernaut
Advance Audio Distribution Profile [1].

I actually had to look up the name, but it is a bluetooth profile for passing
audio over bluetooth. I personally use it to connect my MBP to my audio system
wirelessly. It barely works even when the distance between between the MBP and
the receiver is less then 3 feet.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_profile#Advanced_Audi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_profile#Advanced_Audio_Distribution_Profile_.28A2DP.29)

~~~
rrouse
Yeah, I've definitely never used it. I barely use any of the bluetooth stuff.
That explains why I'v never run across any problems

------
elsewhere
Many open source advocates like Miguel a decade ago have really been motivated
by two things: Their love for Open source as a concept; and their love for
Unix. This particularly shows in Miguels great essay "Let's make Unix not
suck".

And the Mac achieves 2/3 of that. It made Unix not suck. It provides most of
the open source goodies on top (using something like brew). And it also
provides the kind of proprietary software that simply can't be matched by
available open source software (like most of the Adobe tools).

Although I can sense some bitterness in his recent essays, he simply
acknowledges the fact that the classic Linux desktop won't make it. (However I
think it may actually succeed even on the desktop in the form of something
Android related.)

As I see it, there will be a peaceful coexistence of proprietary and free
software. Free software succeeds a) where collaboration is needed (Webkit) and
b) to provide the kind of pluggable modules that OO programming promised to
deliver but never did. Just think of all the stuff on github that you probably
pull into your projects all the time.

------
gaving
This wasn't all that interesting until I read the authors name. Wow.

~~~
themstheones
Maybe he would have stuck with linux if gnome hadn't been so terribly managed.
Poor bastard.

------
nohuck13
I remember reading the Reddit AMA with Linus Torvalds where someone asked him
what his home computer setup was and Linus said MacBook Air. Running Linux of
course, but I thought that was interesting.

Good hardware can make a huge difference in the experience whatever you are
running. I sometimes think people don't give enough credit to Apple for the
power of sweet homogenous hardware to make a whole OS/software ecosystem that
much smoother. Or maybe they give too much credit to apple for the other parts
of the stack.

I run a Scientific Linux desktop at work and have a MacBook Pro for personal
stuff, with Virtualbox for (mostly) Ubuntu. Granted Ubuntu is pretty easy
wherever, but Virtualbox setup for me tends to have fewer kinks. I wonder if
it's down to the same environment homogeneity.

Props to Miguel de Icaza for writing this. Talk about being transparent.

EDIT: typos

~~~
mikeevans
Looks like he might be switching to the Pixel:
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/102150693225130002912/posts/dk1a...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/102150693225130002912/posts/dk1aiW4JjHd)

~~~
nohuck13
Nice.

> I despise widescreen displays, but I had gotten resigned to them. Until now.
> 3:2, baby!

Who knew.

------
bratao
I was always a windows developer. In my internship I was forced to use an
Macbook pro and simply hate it. I was doing an TCP stack for blackberry and
working with serial/Bluetooth communication for testing was a pain, in the end
I just installed Windows on parallels. I really don't understand this cult of
Mac. I really think that is a way to be "cool" and follow and wear the "nice
start-up guys" mask.

~~~
timc3
Thats because you are used to your environment.

------
ishbits
I can't believe all the talk about Finder here..

I bet Miguel is more like me than most of you, that is, living in a unix/linux
terminal for the last 15 years or more - AND doing file management in that
terminal!

I've also gone to the Mac from unix/linux as my primary machine as it just
works. What I mean by that is suspend/resume, wifi, and all that stuff that
you shouldn't think about anymore.

Sure, all I use on it is a browser, iTerm, emacs and dev tools installed from
MacPorts, but it provides me with a good environment - that just works.
Updates have never broken anything for me - not even the OS updates. Can't say
the same about Linux.

~~~
wes-exp
Absolutely. I don't use much more than iTerm2, a web browser, emacs + various
developer stuff, and Homebrew.

The base OS is rock f-ing solid. All my unix stuff works flawlessly. Time
spent f'ing around with drivers and random upgrade issues? Zero.

It even syncs with my phone (iPhone), which happens to work great!

Finder? Who gives a crap? That's what the terminal is for!

~~~
jff
This is the attitude that puzzles me. I install Debian. I launch X, with no
configuration. My WM starts in the optimal resolution. Sound, which has for
years been a major pain point, pretty much just works; Pulse and ALSA may
suck, but I've used both with great success and no fiddling of drivers

As for upgrade issues... I apt-get upgrade weekly because things are getting
fixed. OS X is still shipping the same out-of-date copy of BSD tools they've
been using for years.

------
austenallred
The interesting part about this part for me is how subtly differences in
software and hardware change what we use.

 _Without noticing, I stopped turning on the screen for my Linux machine
during 2012. By the time I moved to a new apartment in October of 2012, I did
not even bother plugging the machine back and to this date, I have yet to turn
it on._

That represents to me exactly how new technology is adapted and how old ones
die off. Fascinating.

------
zura
If I only could to quit mac apps with a single click...

~~~
epmatsw
Command+Q?

~~~
calgaryeng
This.

I don't see why you'd spend hours writing a system utility to close apps on a
Mac that provides a perfectly easy to use keyboard shortcut.

~~~
zura
Because I want to close apps with a single [mouse] click with my right hand,
without displacing my left hand to press that keyboard shortcut.

------
vicaya
I used to be a Mac basher, as my first MBP gave me a lot of trouble (ended
with video card recall). Then I got a beefy ThinkPad W520, which gave me even
more trouble (random power-offs at least once per week). Now my work laptop is
a 16GB RAM 500GB SSD 2.7GHz i7 late 2012 rMBP, I run VMware Fusion with
Windows, Ubuntu and CentOS VMs, which feel faster than my w520 running Windows
natively! Past lessons have taught me not to use OS X for dev besides for iOS
:)

Retina display is so much better for reading papers. There is no way I'd use
even a 1080p display given a choice! It has only given me minor issues so far
(failed to wake up in some external display combination in rare occasions).
Knock on wood :)

------
pheo
I am very disappointed to see this posted where, when, and how it is.
Comparing Linux to Mac is like comparing apples to Lamborghinis. I can get an
apple, cheaply if not for totally for free, locally, anywhere at any time.
Lamborghinis are very expensive, both in up-front cost and maintenance, and
truly don't perform relative to the cost. What i hear is someone moaning about
how much effort it takes to choose the best kind of apple, Gala? Granny Smith?
Sour Green? Golden? Macintosh? I'd rather have an apple than Apple.

------
trotsky
Someone should add (Miguel de Icaza) to the end of the title.

------
sologoub
This story sums up my own experience quite nicely as well. While I really
enjoyed using Ubuntu/Debian for almost 6 years, when time came for a new
laptop, I just didnt want to deal with yet another issue with nvidia cards or
any other oddity. Paying the Apple premium price was a bargain when compared
to hours spend getting little issues here and there worked out.

------
nicholassmith
I've had to use Windows again for a work project, it reminded me exactly why I
switched to OSX. People have really different needs from their OS, we should
be thoroughly glad we have 3 real contenders these days that you can use.

Although after using Explorer again I think Finder is no where near as bad.

------
fredsted
Reading this comment thread, it's as if Mac OS X is the most horrible
operating system in existence.

~~~
dagw
Well it's probably on the top 5 list of most horrible commonly used desktop
operating system in existence.

------
martinced
_(Note that I fully expect Mac OS X and Windows fanbois to vote this down for
stating unconvenient facts)_

That developer has always been _very_ controversial in the Linux world amongst
serious Linux users. He's been trying to poison Linux with mono and that was a
huge lot of energy lost (I'm sure some people will still come here and defend
mono and saying how great the CLR is and why C#/F# is the future, etc. But
sadly for these the world changed quite a bit since then [cough, iOs, cough,
Android]).

Now what I find _very_ ironic is that basically he says that in 2005 OS X
rocked because it had no virus, while Windows was full of viruses and that
this is why he switched to OS X.

And what do we have today? A _major_ OS X vulnerability issue due to Java
applets which infected a gigantic number of devs, giving access inside major
target companies like FaceBook to bad guys.

Besides that I can't possibly even begin to understand how OS X would be
better than Linux for a developer.

On Linux I can install Java in a user account without needing to be root.

On Linux I can install a browser in another user account, which has no access
to Java at all.

On Linux I can display that browser from that other user account to my
graphical session if I want to.

On Linux I can have several users and two graphical sessions (or more)
simultaneously and switch from one to the other if I want to.

On Linux I can set per-user ID firewalling rules using nothing else but
iptables (or whatever suits you):

iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -m state --state NEW,RELATED -m user
--user-ID 1001 -j ACCEPT

Here only one user (the one with the account which only has a web browser
installed, no Java, no nothing, just a browser) is allowed to emit trafic to
port 80.

etc.

There are just so many benefits from using Linux as a dev. Security,
performances, control, mutliple graphical sessions / mixing windows from
several user accounts, KVM, etc.

There's simply no way the walled garden that OS X is allows me to trivially do
all this.

Once again: we're talking about someone who's always been controversial in the
Linux community because of its love/hate relationship with Linux.

Honestly I don't want of a Linux developer who's telling the world that OS X
on the desktop is better for dev than Linux.

Thankfully virtually all of the _others_ Linux developers out there are eating
their own dog food.

And who are these others Linux developers? The ones who didn't try to poison
Linux with MS technologies.

~~~
micampe
You didn't answer my question here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5246603>

Also, OS X can run multiple sessions, install a browser with no root access
and Java is not installed by default.

But I see you are one of those users that drop their misguided wisdom and
ignore all the replies, so I won't expect you to reply here either and keep
believing your false facts.

------
cooldeal
>Once a virus got on your machine, that was pretty much it. And Microsoft
wasn't doing much to stop the infestation. For a long time they didn't even
see it as their problem. In retrospect, it was the computer equivalent of
Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.

They want to protect users with Secure Boot, and still they get a lot of crap
for it.

Remember Palladium? That would've stopped malware in its tracks. It was railed
against big time, and later the same people gave rave reviews the iPad/iPhone
more even though Apple implemented the Palladium spec pretty much to the
letter.

Also, wasn't Miguel supposed to be Microsoft's shill or something for
introducing Mono for Linux and pushing C# on Linux and Mac? Now here he is,
selling a Mac!

Maybe he was just a technology lover all along!

I am sure the anti-Microsoft folks' heads are exploding with the
contradictions!

~~~
rbanffy
> They want to protect users with Secure Boot, and still they get a lot of
> crap for it.

No. That's only to make it difficult/impossible to boot anything that wasn't
signed with a Microsoft key. It protects against one kind of rootkit and
that's it.

> Apple implemented the Palladium spec pretty much to the letter.

Apple wasn't trying to force the PC industry to implement Palladium (or UEFI
Secure Boot). If you buy Apple, you are buying Apple. When I buy Dell, I don't
expect to be forced to also buy Microsoft (although I often am).

> Also, wasn't Miguel supposed to be Microsoft's shill or something for
> introducing Mono for Linux and pushing C# on Linux and Mac?

People change careers.

> Maybe he was just a technology lover all along!

Maybe I just don't agree with his taste for technologies.

