
Return of the Mac - manish
http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html
======
kelnos
And then there are the people like me, who buy a MacBook Pro and install Linux
on it.

Interesting to note pg pointing out Apple's openness. I don't really consider
them all that open these days, but I suppose they're better than many
companies. I guess my perception of their lack of openness is more due to
their treatment of the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch than that of their laptops.

Apple is open when they think that can make them money, closed when they think
that can make them _more_ money.

~~~
BudVVeezer
Or there's people like me who get a MacPro tower from work and promptly
install Windows on it because it compiles huge projects significantly faster
than XCode...

Seriously, it's about getting a job done -- use what works. Who cares what the
name of the OS is? I don't care whether I'm using a Dewalt drill or a Black &
Decker. I care whether the drill works. Why is a computer any different?

~~~
cookiecaper
Because the interfaces and their intricacies are pretty different as one
switches OS. When you switch drill brands, it works exactly the same way; you
pull the trigger and the drill drills. On Windows or OS X or whatever, you
have to log in a certain way, open a program a certain way, install things a
certain way, and so on.

Not so much a problem for people who use this site, but a problem for the
layman.

~~~
nex3
It can get to be a pretty big problem for hackers, as well. When I'm on Linux,
I use the Awesome tiling window manager and Emacs, both of which are tweaked
far beyond their usual configurations. Using Windows or OSX (or even Linux
without my configuration) is very jarring for me, and will only become more so
the more I customize my UI.

------
patio11
_Y Combinator is (we hope) visited mostly by hackers. The proportions of OSes
are [in 2005]: Windows 66.4%, Macintosh 18.8%, Linux 11.4%, and FreeBSD 1.5%._

Just curious: has the Mac percentage continued to increase? My perception is
that All The Cool Kids are using them these days but that might just be my
gratuitous stereotyping.

~~~
c1sc0
Last weeked I had a day where 3/4 of my traffic (3K uniques) came from HN. The
breakdown;

OS: 1\. Macintosh (49.60%) 2\. Windows (26.23%) 3\. Linux (11.81%)

Browsers: 1\. Chrome (33.5%) 2\. Firefox (29.55%) 3\. Firefox (27.70%) 4\.
Mozilla (4.92%) 5\. IE (1.43%)

Notice that this may be biased towards Mac since the Fakepad.com blog is about
iPads.

~~~
jacobolus
Is one of those Firefox percentages supposed to be labeled "Safari"?

------
wyclif
I'm curious why pg, even then, referred to Macs as open. I don't seem to
remember that. What definition of "open" is he using?

~~~
pistoriusp
It's more open than you would think; They incorporate 200+ open source
projects in to the OS and that's code that they return to the community.
(Webkit is a good example.)

<http://www.apple.com/opensource/>

Darwin, Grand Central Dispatch are some other examples that I can think of.

------
scythe
[2005]

(relevant, since it's a current events article)

------
wenbert
I wish they would sell Mac OS X that run on non-apple hardware. I would save
so much money and love apple again.

~~~
ubernostrum
And they would make so little money and go out of business.

Apple's not a software vendor. OS X is nice, yes, but it's a value-add to
entice you to buy physical devices from them.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Apple thinks they are a hardware vendor, but their users just want the UI
software. When clone vendors were allowed to sell MacOS with near-commodity
hardware, users promptly abandoned Apple's outrageous boutique hardware and
flocked to the clones. Now Apple sells near-commodity hardware with just
enough custom junk to screw tinkerers (e.g., you still can't buy a motherboard
up the street).

~~~
andrewtj
I'd agree if it were still the mid 90s but it's 2010 — Apple Computer Inc are
now Apple Inc, a major OS X release has been stunted by a phone and an update
of their laptops has been pushed aside for the release of a tablet. Apple are
a hardware vendor but I don't think their users focus on computers anymore,
hence nor do they.

