
Switchers – Irony and Operating Systems - bketelsen
https://brianketelsen.com/blog/switchers/
======
eltoozero
I find these articles and the recent trend of "Macs used to be cool" kind of
strange.

Macs have terminal.app, bash, a handful of proprietary command-line tools
(hdiutil) and that's about it.

Never had inherent package management, we have homebrew and macports to thank
for that. App Store isn't quite the same and doesn't fulfill the same needs.

You can _still_ run Linux on your MacBook, if that's what you want.

macOS is fine and it's not Windows, that's what this is about right?

Apple makes some pretty decent hardware when it comes to build quality,
appearance, and battery life, if it's not your cup of tea maybe look into
ThinkPads, they're great machines too!

------
bketelsen
author here - not just email, it's plugging a projector into a linux box (I'm
a trainer) and praying it might work. There are a dozen small things like that
making linux great for dev, not so great for everything else.

------
billylindeman
I have to agree, microsoft is on their game. The surface book and surface
studio are the sexiest pieces of hardware that have come along in a LONG time.

Just look at the microsoft surface product family photo
[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/surface)?

This is a clear and concise vision for a computing family reminiscent of Steve
Jobs' apple. Three form factors, all unique and with their own purpose, all
with touch input and pen input. Their operating systems are now all united
under the universal windows platform (which means that software is compatible
across ALL their platforms, not just their pc platforms). As someone who's
been anti m$ with a vengence for the past 13 years or so, I'm astounded at the
progress they've made, and I for one betting on them continually making waves
for the next few years while everyone else just iterates on the same old crap.

~~~
eltoozero
Except I've not once seen anyone use a surface in any configuration but
"laptop".

And plugged in, always plugged in, is battery life really that bad on those
things?

I recall a fellow consultant in the field whipping his out mid-day at a job
and it's totally flatlined.

------
andrewclunn
Email is the hold up? I must be missing something because that's never been
the "must have" app situation to prevent a user from going linux in my
experience.

~~~
WildUtah
A lot of weird fringe non-standard email systems like Exchange work hard to
maintain incompatibility with Linux.

~~~
taylodl
Yet another reason to _avoid_ Microsoft rather than embrace them.

------
jsz0
> The OS itself is still visually superior to anything else, but it’s been
> showing the signs of neglect for a few years now.

Can you elaborate on this? Without going into any detail your post reads a bit
like a paid promotion. Probably not but you gotta be careful because of stuff
like this:

[http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/stealth-marketing-
micr...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/stealth-marketing-microsoft-
paying-youtubers-for-xbox-one-mentions/)

[https://uncrunched.com/2014/06/17/microsoft-paying-
bloggers-...](https://uncrunched.com/2014/06/17/microsoft-paying-bloggers-to-
write-about-internet-explorer/)

~~~
godDLL
I'm not being paid, and not the OP.

Typing this reply on a Thinkpad R50e, which my SO rescued from the
neighborhood bin when taking trash out. I put a Debian (Tanglu) on it, and use
it for everything.

My beloved Mini is sitting in it's corner of the room, looking as hipster as
ever, but it's not the same.

Apple used to have a clearer, more cohesive vision for the UX it's software
provides. I feel that they have become more daring with the kind of stuff they
let in now. And the stuff that they let go of.

Tiger was amazing, a smooth UNIX, half-way there in each way it mattered but
so clearly pointed at the right targets. Leopard was more of everything, and
Snow Leopard was the first, I feel that went nowhere in particular. And so it
goes.

Stuff keeps changing for reasons of business goals, or background
architecture; but not because of matters of taste, or doing more with less.
I'm not feeling it.

What Sierra is, in my eye, is a Snow Leopard sitting on the Shared Apple
Device Cloud batting it's many eyelashes, whereas before I knew exactly where
it was, and what it was about.

------
wtbob
Why not just switch all the way to Linux? It runs Chrome (and Firefox!) just
as well as Windows, and with a browser it has the email and calendaring apps
folks are using these days anyway.

~~~
tonmoy
He mentioned the hardware headaches, but for most systems I don't see Linux
giving any hardware problems tbh

~~~
anoctopus
I have the 15 in. current gen MBP and had a fair few issues with the hardware.
A few kernel patches fixed most of them, but that's more effort than should be
needed, and there's still some lingering audio driver issues I haven't
resolved.

I'm under the impression that the 13 in. model works without issue.

