
I mortgaged my future with a Mac - pauljonas
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/02/22/mac/
======
epistasis
I'm not sure I understand the specific complaints in the post. The metadata in
iTunes is stored in a standard way, attached to the audio files themselves.
All the playlists, repeated track infromation, etc, is stored in an XML file
with simple structure. This should be as easy to convert as if the music
database had been stored anywhere else.

Similarly, for iPhoto, much of the metadata is attached to the photos
themselves. The album information is in very simple XML. I'm not sure how the
cropping, rotation, etc, are stored, but the final JPEG can be exported from
the UI, and nearly all these applications are highly scriptable.

Storing data in any application results in some restrictions in how that data
can be transformed and/or used in the future. The iApps use fairly transparent
data formats that are accessible to pretty much any programmer. I'm not sure
if there's any open source alternatives to these apps that make it much easier
to pull out data. Putting data in these apps is not mortgaging your future as
much as putting your documents in MS Office format, for example.

~~~
spindritf
> Storing data in any application results in some restrictions in how that
> data can be transformed and/or used in the future.

And not all applications are equal in that regard. I store plenty of data in
Dropbox, never run into any problems. Same with git, mutt, Shotwell,
Rhythmbox... Usually, exporting doesn't involve any action. All the data is
just stored in files that can be used by any application.

There is a strong correlation between free software and convenient data
formats. Why pretend that all software has those same problems to a similar
degree?

~~~
nirvana
Except that in the case of all the data she's complaining about the Apple
products DO use conveneint data formats. The MP3 structure supports tags in
the files as a standard going back to the 1990s and Apple supports it.

I don't think Linux storing MP3s in a directory is superior to iTunes storing
them in a directory structure (organized by artist name).

------
rayiner
Sitting here, still using a Mac as a dev/everything machine. I know Lion is
supposed to suck and all, but my 2010 MBA still gets insane battery life under
OS X, the tool chain is top-notch (Clang, LLVM, etc), there have been a ton of
improvements under the hood (TLS support being a big one), and I actually
appreciate full-screen XCode or Emacs given the 13" screen. Even Xcode seems
to, in 4.6, be getting back to the stability levels of 3.x.

I'm not seeing it. This "Apple doesn't care about the Mac" "OS X is going
downhill" griping is lost on me. Was 10.4 -> 10.5 really a much bigger change?
Or 10.5 -> 10.6? OS X has always had very incremental, gradual changes, and
now that it's pushing more than a decade old it's pretty mature and doesn't
need to be revamped every other day. At the same time, for all the teeth
gnashing about walled gardens, Apple still ships the thing with a terminal,
there is XCode in the App Store, etc.

~~~
niggler
"Apple doesn't care about the Mac"

There are two different arguments here:

1) Apple axed xserve and basically made it a risk to depend on osx servers
(they may decide to axe the mac pro without warning). This is a legitimate
argument.

2) The OS feels more consumer based and buggy. I think osx coasted on the lack
of popularity for years (if you are writing malware, are you going to target a
small mac population or the wide windows population?) and the market
penetration is improving. So what we are seeing now is the world adjusting to
the idea that osx is a more popular OS.

~~~
nirvana
If OS X hasn't advanced as much as people would like, I suspect that has a lot
to do with iOS sucking up a large portion of Apple's developer resources.

However they are over that hump and over the past 2 years with Mountain Lion
they're moving faster on OS X than they have in the past.

IF they keep to what they said they intended to do, we'll have the follow on
to Mountain Lion announced pretty soon.

------
miles
_But, I'm stuck. All of my music is in iTunes, having been re-imported from
the original CDs over a period of time. I can just re-rip all of it on my
Linux box, but that's going to suck. Or, I can try to grovel around in their
grungy database and try to make sense of it and "export" things, but I'm sure
that will be even worse._

You'll find all of your music neatly organized here: /Users/ _username_
/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Music

 _Another problem is going to be iPhoto. I've cropped, rotated, geotagged,
sharpened, level-adjusted, and done countless other things to my thousands of
pictures. They all also live in some database which is effectively opaque.
While there's probably some way to get it out, it will be far from trivial._

It's pretty trivial:

[http://macs.about.com/od/appleconsumersoftware/ss/Iphoto-
Lib...](http://macs.about.com/od/appleconsumersoftware/ss/Iphoto-Libraries-
Create-And-Populate-Additional-Iphoto-Libraries_3.htm)

You can export the original or current versions, as well as converting to
JPEG, TIFF, or PNG, retaining location info, metadata, etc (depending on the
chosen format). Exported photos can be assigned filenames by title, original
filename, sequence, or album name with number.

~~~
philiac
The author seems to desire a needlessly complicated way to make these things
happen.

~~~
mgkimsal
Perhaps converting some of those processes in to shell scripts that invoke
libraries which only compile with custom-patched versions of GCC would help.
Having the entire set of scripts be solely located in a ZIP file on a tumblr
page from 3 years ago would be icing on the cake.

------
dechols
It does not matter the platform you use. The data you use is far, far more
important.

I use Windows 8, Linux, and Mac OSX boxes on a daily basis. I play music from
all of them. I watch movies, view photos, and browse the web from all of them.
I code on all of them.

The reason I'm able to do this is because I've relentlessly managed my data
and set up systems to allow that data to be shared effectively between
environments.

All of these people who say, "this OS is way better!" are missing the point.
Each one does a good job at something. Here's a surface analysis:

Linux: Best for automation. LAMPP. Industrial strength box for administration,
security, and development. Great performance. Has problems with applications
that require advanced graphics or specific sets of drivers (read: games). Can
accomplish almost all basic computing tasks without an issue. All of these
things make it a great server OS and great for high performance applications
too.

Mac: Best for consumption. Beautiful UI, intuitive software, merging of
hardware and software. Has problems with any sort of software that requires
performant hardware because hardware is far more expensive. Can accomplish
almost all basic computing tasks without an issue. All of these things make it
a great laptop OS.

Windows: Best for games. Good performance. Not as good performance as linux,
but incredible driver support means that most users will see better
performance on Windows. Can accomplish almost all basic computing tasks
without an issue. Makes Windows by far the best gaming box, but also very
comparable to other OS in other applications (except server role.)

The lesson here is: Use the right tool for the right job, and make your data
tool agnostic.

~~~
scholia
You left out: "Windows: Best for business and enterprise software"

~~~
olefoo
Enterprise software is a game; corporations are just really boring LARPs.

pro-tip: 5th level marketing droids can be defeated if you ask them to sell
something to themselves...

------
mgkimsal
I mortgaged my future with KDE several years ago, and the KDE project "went
off the rails" with v4. My usual ways of working weren't improved with new
benefits - the entire rug was pulled out from under me. All my effort in
learning KDE stuff, and putting my data in KDE apps was wasted, as I had to
spend time to migrate all that data to other apps.

I'm being somewhat sarcastic, but also honest - I used KDE as a primary
desktop for several years, but v4 was too radically different, and migrating
away to another system was not fun.

~~~
w1ntermute
You should've just waited a year or two and not upgraded to KDE 4. KDE 4.10
(the latest version) works just fine.

That said, I'm an Xfce user, and I love it because things never change.

~~~
mgkimsal
I didn't like the direction it was going at all. I tried it again last year in
a VM - it's OK, but doesn't have whatever it was that attracted me to KDE3
(and 2 before that) in the first place.

------
niggler
"So, I just sat there and lived the passive life of a consumer at home. I
clicked around the web and read stuff. I talked to people online. I listened
to my music and watched the latest cat videos. I watched a lot of TV. But I
didn't write any code. Oh no."

 _nothing_ stops you from writing code on OSX. Plenty of people do it _for
their business_. IOKit is strange coming from a Linux world, sure, but it
works as well as you would expect. It's a pain but it's possible to write
kexts and other low level osx stuff.

"All of my music is in iTunes, having been re-imported from the original CDs
over a period of time. I can just re-rip all of it on my Linux box, but that's
going to suck. Or, I can try to grovel around in their grungy database and try
to make sense of it and "export" things, but I'm sure that will be even
worse."

I don't understand the itunes complaint here. If you are leaving the mac
ecosystem, the most you lose is the playlists -- the metadata is still stored
in the individual files and VLC is perfectly competent in playing those files.
It's not like itunes magically combined all the files in one big mess.

"Then there's my phone. How do you use one of these things without a computer
upon which to sync your data and backups?"

Windows VM?

~~~
mtts
>> "Then there's my phone. How do you use one of these things without a
computer upon which to sync your data and backups?" >> Windows VM?

That only works when you disable USB on the host (which makes USB keyboards
and mice temporarily unusable) while the Windows VM is running. And even then
it sometimes just stops working after a while.

It's one of the reasons I ditched my iPhone and got an Android device.

~~~
derefr
What VM program were you using? In VMWare, at least, whenever a device with a
"new" USB hardware ID is plugged in, it prompts you whether it should attach
it to the host or guest (and you can change this for each device at any time.)

~~~
mtts
I used VMWare. And no, just attaching the "new" USB hardware to the guest was
not enough. iTunes only saw the iPhone if the Linux host did not have the USB
modules loaded (and in fact had them blacklisted so they wouldn't be loaded
automatically either).

It is (or was, don't know, this was about two years ago) a known problem:
[http://www.ivankuznetsov.com/2009/10/upgrading-iphone-
firmwa...](http://www.ivankuznetsov.com/2009/10/upgrading-iphone-firmware-
using-vmware-and-ubuntu-9-04.html)

------
comex
It's hard to tell what the author's actual complaints about OS X are (the
reasons why she's moving away from it) - there's a Lion bug that's extremely
unrealistically blamed on Steve Jobs, and some vague complaints about "going
off the rails".

It's possible to export from both iTunes and iPhoto, and probably not
particularly harder than it would be to export from a similar application for
Linux.

edit: gender.

~~~
iheartmemcache
I think the whole point of OS X is for it to be user-friendly enough for
people to not have to deal the nitty-gritty underpinnings of Linux. I don't
mind getting close to the metal since I'm a software engineer née systems guy
(wasted high-school youth? pff). In fact my primary dev box is
Arch/emacs/awesome so needless to say I spend a fair amount of time in my
dotfiles and editing scripts.

I'm not entirely informed as to the details of the export procedure. But I
think it's a fair expectation for an OS X user to not to deal with all of the
nitty-gritty details of Linux. Saying "its as easy to do in OS X as it is in
Linux" isn't really a fair defense.

~~~
Anechoic
_Saying "its as easy to do in OS X as it is in Linux" isn't really a fair
defense._

If it's "easy" that she wants: drag and drop her music/pictures from
iTunes/iPhoto window to a network drive/USB drive/Firewire drive.

------
S_A_P
I think that the mention of "post Steve" jitters is largely false. OSX has
never been perfect and has always had quirks. iTunes has never been a flawless
interface and missteps happened while Steve was there (mobile me, etc). People
seem to be misremembering apple as being perfect while Steve was there. For
the most part, the people that make macs/iPhones, etc are the same as when
Steve was there. Sure Steve was a great inspirer of polish and set the bar
high, but he didn't create these things. Apple hasn't gone to shit since be
died. I'm not even sure you could really say their trajectory has changed
since he left. She seems like she gets bored with tech after a while, and she
just wants to change so she is constructing a reason to switch.

------
conroe64
It had me until she wrote (when comparing to iOS) " Android is obviously out
of the question since it's just a different flavor of the same garbage". How
can an opensource OS be just another flavor of the entirely closed and walled
off iPhone?

~~~
rachelbythebay
iOS: sell your soul to Apple.

Android: sell your soul to Google.

The thing is, I already did the second one to a far greater degree than most
people ever do. I'm not about to repeat it.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Android: sell your soul to Google.

Nobody is forcing you to use Google apps on an Android device. If the market
decides that the Google experience is subpar, they will be replaced. This has
already sort of happened with the Kindle Fire. It forced Google to respond
with a better device (the Nexus 7).

~~~
eropple
_> If the market decides that the Google experience is subpar, they will be
replaced._

"The market" has done no such thing (the atrocious Kindle Fires excepted) so
if you have a beef with the "Google experience" (I personally don't) you're
pretty much screwed.

There are no good, Google-free options for Android. I don't find that to be a
problem but I can understand why others would.

~~~
w1ntermute
> "The market" has done no such thing (the atrocious Kindle Fires excepted) so
> if you have a beef with the "Google experience" (I personally don't) you're
> pretty much screwed.

Because the market has decided that it likes the Google experience.

~~~
eropple
"The market" being willing to purchase something is not a referendum on
quality _or_ on individual desirability. It is a measure of _acceptance_ , not
_like_ ; by that sort of assumption, "the market" also "likes" having their
bowel movements tracked by Facebook. Maybe people don't know of alternatives
to the Google experience. Maybe the alternatives are _too different_ , as with
the Fires. Maybe the alternatives are badly executed. None of this means that
the holy market _likes_ the Google experience, only that they are _willing to
buy it_.

And let's get one thing really very straight: the rhetorical appeal to "the
market" is a bald-faced attempt to discredit differing opinions. It's
_argumentum ad populum_ fanboy crap. Stop it.

------
webwielder
I would be able to stomach this vague, disjointed rant if it had a different
title, something like "I am experiencing minor inconveniences as a result of
wanting to switch computing platforms".

~~~
ishansharma
But why would she want to switch? Some of the best code editors are there for
the Mac. Why fix it if it is not broken?

------
stevejb
The concluding sentence, "I'm not looking forward to the next couple of years
in tech.", strikes me as incredibly odd. The technologies and software that we
have available, whether you use Linux, OSX, or Windows, or anything else, has
more potential than ever before. It seems like something to be excited about.

~~~
johnminter
Perhaps because she realizes how much work it will be for her. If one uses
many non-standard applications, changing platforms or even a clean install of
an OS - Win, Mac, or Linux takes a lot of effort before one can get back to
the productive work one bought the system to do. That is complicated by
interoperability with auxiliary devices. Choice can be great but often comes
with consequences that can be costly. Hmmm - isn't that really the message of
Rachel's rant...

------
ricardobeat
So she never actually used the MacBook for development yet says it "wasn't
cutting it"? What specifically was missing that you can only get on Linux?

She also paints the consumption-only device picture, yet it has nothing to do
with the machine, only herself; that and the post-steve thing makes it look
like she's just regurgitating the stereotypical anti-Apple ideas.

------
trotsky
Sometimes when you're down everything looks like a huge mountain to climb. I'm
all for relinuxing! The itunes is just a tree of mp3's now, so it'll be super
easy to import into whatever. Best way to take control of your phone (no mater
the brand) is to jailbreak it. Poof, your mortgage is paid off.

------
joshlane4
I agree with the author.

I resisted Apple products for a long time for the same reason. As someone who
was brought up with a command line OS and a basic knowledge of file structure
I hate how Apple "tries" to take this away from their users.

I say try. I bought a MBP in 2009 because I loved the physical machine
(aluminum unibody). With time I was able to use the OS without it controlling
me. All of my music is ripped on EAC in MP3 VBR format. I add the folders to
iTunes and do not allow it to "organize" the folders for me. I do not use
iPhoto because of the way it treats the files. I maintain my own file
structure. I can see how this would frustrate a lot of people. I put up with
it because I think it's the best combination of hardware and software
available at this time.

~~~
derefr
> All of my music is ripped on EAC in MP3 VBR format.

Why exactly? MP4 (M4A) is a _less_ patent-encumbered format, _and_ also has
higher sound quality for the same filesize, _and_ still plays on everything
(except, I guess, decade-old MP3 players.) I can understand not wanting to use
DRMed/fingerprinted songs downloaded from iTMS, but the file format itself is
_just better_. Or are you one of those people who sticks to using RARs now
that 7zip/libxz exists?

~~~
joshlane4
> Why exactly?

I haven't spent the time to stay up on codec development. I by all of my music
in a physical format (usually a CD). I like the redundancy and the DRM free-
ness of it. The last time I seriously investigated (and ripped the bulk of my
library) was in 2005 when I was also active on Oink. The prevailing opinion
then was that EAC with LAME and VBR was the best trade off of a secure rip,
high audio quality and small file size. To let iTunes rip with it's default
AAC codec produced to many errors. Also, at the time I was on a Windows
machine and iTunes was so bloated and slow I refused to use it. I had an early
iPod with Rockbox which freed me from the need to ever use iTunes.

When I got my MBP, I initially used RubyRipper. Then I found XLD and have been
happy with it since (using LAME+VBR settings).

------
javajosh
Hi Rachel. What timing. Just yesterday I realized what I call the "primordial
criticism":

    
    
        Good products get used.
        Usage creates dependency.
        Dependency is bad.
        Therefore, good products are bad.
    

Since bad products are bad, and good products are bad, all products are bad!
You have just plugged in OSX into the syllogism.

But the syllogism results in a contradiction. So one of our assertions is
wrong. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which it is.

P.S. use Picasa on OSX, not iPhoto. And iTunes does indeed suck and I don't
understand why someone hasn't written a replacement for it that fits the
Sparrow:Mail==X:iPhoto equation. Perhaps I'll take a crack at it.

~~~
rachelbythebay
They were fine. They changed.

You can't _not_ upgrade, either, since then you're subject to security holes
and other anomalies as the upstream provider decides to leave you behind. My
original iPad had this happen to it last year. My Mac will follow soon, I'm
sure.

~~~
javajosh
I hear ya. I needed to compile PhoneGap (now Apache Cordova) last week and
found that my 'old' version of XCode wouldn't work. I was running Snow
Leopard/XCode 3. The new version of XCode requires Mountain Lion. So I had to
upgrade the OS, even though I didn't want to. (And it refused to install to a
hard drive without a reformat, which was, of course, deeply unpleasant.)

Personally, I really like the idea of Chrome OS but with most of "the cloud"
hosted locally, backed by (mostly) straight up files. This cloud only listens
on localhost, and so security is less of an issue. Moving to a new machine
should be an rsync command.

One can dream.

------
matwood
_But, I'm stuck. All of my music is in iTunes, having been re-imported from
the original CDs over a period of time. I can just re-rip all of it on my
Linux box, but that's going to suck. Or, I can try to grovel around in their
grungy database and try to make sense of it and "export" things, but I'm sure
that will be even worse._

I'm confused about this line. I ripped all of my CDs to AAC using iTunes over
the years and recently upped all of it to Google Music without any issue.

Oddly enough, the only format that has ever given me any problem with
interoperability has been OGG.

------
ybaumes
This post would constitute a good/constructive reply to the latter article :
25 Years to Mac - How Ubuntu Pushed Me Away from the PC[1]

[1][[http://randomdrake.com/2013/02/23/25-years-to-mac-how-
ubuntu...](http://randomdrake.com/2013/02/23/25-years-to-mac-how-ubuntu-
pushed-me-away-from-the-pc/)]

~~~
rachelbythebay
Based on that article, I think Ubuntu probably would push me away from the PC,
too. I used a variant called "Goobuntu" (guess where...) during my tenure at
one particular company, and it was a mixed bag. I'm not sure how much was due
to Ubuntu itself and how much was from the local meddling, but it was wonky in
ways my Linux boxes normally aren't.

Put it this way - my machine at work was some beastly multi-proc Pentium 4
something or other, and my machine at home was some random gunk I put together
using old parts from Micro Center. It was so old, I had to special order the
CPU online because nobody in town still had them in stock. I live in the
valley, and could drive to AMD in under 15 minutes. That's just nuts.

Still, my machine at home was far more responsive than my workstation ever
was. There were tons of weird glitchy times where it would just sit there and
lag for no apparent reason. I didn't even get the worst of it, since I ran a
minimal window manager. People who went for the full-on "desktop environment"
(KDE? GNOME? whatever it was on that distribution, I don't know) had even more
anomalies.

When I hit my hotkey to pop open an X terminal and don't get my shell prompt
in a blink of an eye, something is very wrong.

Edit: forgot something. My home machine was faster over my cable modem + ssh
tunnel to work than my work machine was sitting on the corp gigabit Ethernet.
Think about that.

~~~
derefr
> Still, my machine at home was far more responsive than my workstation ever
> was. There were tons of weird glitchy times where it would just sit there
> and lag for no apparent reason.

I never worked for Big G, but I've felt that exact pain before--that sounds
like the classic "enterprise diskless workstation problem." Lots of big
companies like to obviate reimaging their Linux boxes by just mounting /usr
over NFS. Then, they don't fan-in correctly, so they have too few servers
serving too many clients with too little disk locality between requests, so
your request to read, say, a font from /usr/share/fonts has to sit in a queue.

Please, if you are a sysadmin who does this: just run a daemon which, in
effect, rsyncs the system to the disk server instead. Your workstations _have_
big disks, sitting around doing nothing. You can be as clever as you want,
serving squashfs underlay images over bittorrent in the background and then
switching out the rootfs link on download completion--just, please, do
_something_ other than NFS. NFS is meant for shared filesystems that _change_
; it has absolutely no advantages for a shared _read-only_ rootfs.

------
itistoday2
HN... why are you upvoting this to #1...? I say HN "is going downhill".
There's so very little substance here.

------
Create
_Android is obviously out of the question since it's just a different flavor
of the same garbage_

Not quite:

<http://f-droid.org/>

<http://replicant.us/>

<http://www.cyanogenmod.org/>

------
step3
So if there's not any good software for exporting iTunes and iPhoto data,
sounds like a great opportunity to write something you can sell for $10 a pop.

I'm pretty sure there are already some decent options, though, especially for
a programmer.

Regarding the commentary on the phone, it doesn't sound like the complaint is
specific to Apple. The author categorically lists every major type of phone
and dismisses them all.

There comes a point where it's useless to talk about what you don't like, and
figure out what you do like. I take all of these "I'm going to start carrying
around a regular phone, a regular camera, a Fodor's guide to the city I live
in, a compass, a map, a notebook, a pen, and a gameboy" posts with a grain of
salt.

------
coldtea
As much as I don't like using the word "FUD", this piece pretty much begs for
it. Or, rather, the usual semi-informed opinions presented as fact.

For example:

> _They're going down a road where I don't want to follow._

What road exactly is that? Anything concrete, or simply you don't like the Mac
UI anymore? Because the "lock-up" things are just BS. There's nothing you
cannot do in a modern OS X that you could in OS 10.1. The App Store just makes
it more convenient, and sandboxing is optional.

> _I don't intend to use whatever comes after Mountain Lion -- not that they
> even talk about OS X any more._

They don't? Last time I checked they had two Keynote presentations about
Mountain Lion, which was released half a year ago. And they announced IIRC
that they OS X will be released in an annual basis. Plus, they released
several new laptops with some state-of-the-art features (hi-dpi displays) in
the last 10 months and the redesigned iMacs. And yes, those are meant to run
OS X.

> _But, I'm stuck. All of my music is in iTunes, having been re-imported from
> the original CDs over a period of time. I can just re-rip all of it on my
> Linux box, but that's going to suck. Or, I can try to grovel around in their
> grungy database and try to make sense of it and "export" things, but I'm
> sure that will be even worse._

What exactly will be worse? Just copy the files over. You can even arrange
iTunes to put it in nice folders based on album/artist for you. The mp3
metadata will still be there, because it's in the file. You might lost some
data like "scores" and "recently played" but the same would be true with any
player, open source or not. There's not a standard format to interchange such
things.

> _Another problem is going to be iPhoto. I've cropped, rotated, geotagged,
> sharpened, level-adjusted, and done countless other things to my thousands
> of pictures. They all also live in some database which is effectively
> opaque. While there's probably some way to get it out, it will be far from
> trivial._

Really? Because I find it quite trivial. Just drag the bloody images out of
iPhoto and to the desktop. Or "export". Or use one of ten utilities to help
you with the process and offer more control. Or write a ten minute
Applescript.

------
ctdonath
So...she admits settling on the best option available, and complains that
downgrading would be uncomfortable?

------
MatthewPhillips
I'm constantly amazed by how many informed people have allowed themselves to
be locked into the iTunes ecosystem. Apple has made it pretty clear in recent
years that iTunes for Windows was the exception, and that they are never going
to build software for other platforms ever again.

I know that there is some convenience to buy iTunes if you are using Apple
devices. Of course, most of that convenience is due to restrictions in the
platform that make in impossible for others to be profitable and convenient at
the same time.

But nevertheless, it amazes me that some people are so content with the Apple
world that they can never foresee themselves leaving it. I've never been that
content with _anything_ I purchase, so maybe it's just me.

Remember that Apple makes its money selling hardware. So they'll never have a
reason to make it easy for you to use iTunes-bought content anywhere else.
That's why I buy from Amazon. It's content selection is just as good, but it
is available on nearly every platform imaginable. It does this because content
is its business. So I can feel confident when I buy a new tablet or set-top
box that I can probably watch all of the Amazon content I've purchased over
the years.

~~~
blub
I don't see what you mean. All my music in iTunes is neatly organized inside
the Music folder - DRM free and easily copied to any device. The iPhone is a
different matter, you have to accept that you will lose (a lot of) freedom for
the syncing convenience. There are some apps that allow you to exchange data
over wifi through FTP/WebDav when one does not want to use iTunes at all.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I guess I'm thinking of TV shows and movies, which are DRMed.

~~~
WiseWeasel
And Amazon's downloadable videos aren't? All online video "purchasing"
services are DRM-laden crap. Blame the publishers.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Amazon's videos are available on a wide-variety of hardware platforms, so I'm
much more confident purchasing from them.

~~~
WiseWeasel
Meh, I don't see much difference, and I won't kid myself into thinking that
I'm actually "purchasing" anything from either of those services, rather than
a semi-long-term rental at a higher price. I'll stream DRM video for a cheap
monthly fee but I won't "buy" it since it's never mine, given that the
purchases can be rendered worthless at the flip of the service provider's
switch. If I want permanent access to a movie, I get the shiny disc and rip it
to a standard format.

------
manaskarekar
I am at a point where a computer is an appliance to me. The requirements while
I develop a workflow try to keep it that way. There is of course some limit to
this, but given the options I try my best.

The often discussed but rarely given the credit it deserves in such
discussions value in linux/open source software is the, well, openness.

As I just mentioned in one other post, I loved Ubuntu until 10.10. With Unity,
they pulled the rug from under me. It became buggy even after choosing Gnome-
Classic etc to be used with latter versions.

But I had tens of options to choose from without affecting my workflow too
much. Colleagues have since moved to Linux Mint without as much as a 'I miss
this from Ubuntu..' and I have moved to Lubuntu.

There's Arch and Slackware if you know what you're doing.

None of these make you wonder what tomorrow will bring and if it does bring
something you don't like, you're not cornered. You can choose what to do.

I mean this is the simplest most obvious advantage of choosing Linux. Some
people choose to give in to the walled garden for the seamless experience, but
you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

And that's really okay, just choose what works for you best.

------
celerity
I moved my music from iTunes to Linux and back many times. It's really just a
matter of finding the files (trivial) and copy-pasting (trivial).

I also don't understand the author's preferences. Macs weren't good enough for
programming, so (s?)he switched to Linux. This was the whole cause of the
iTunes trouble. Why does it, then, matter whether Macs are going downhill or
not?

------
gertjanzwartjes
In my opinion this is just a matter of taste, especially whether Linux or Mac
is better for development. I personally use Linux on a daily basis at work and
when I'm done with my day job I use my MacBook Air for my hobby projects. Both
environments have pros and cons. But to my personal taste, I really love
working on my Mac, it feels more stable, hardware and software is much better
integrated, it just works all the time.

The same arguments you can use to move away from Mac OS X for development, you
can also use to move away from certain Linux distros. Ubuntu's Unity is not
something you could call stable for the first few releases. Looking at all the
changes between GNOME 2 and GNOME 3, that also scared away many users, or at
least left many at GNOME 2, who still don't look forward to upgrading...

------
kintamanimatt
> Android is obviously out of the question since it's just a different flavor
> of the same garbage

I'm not sure this makes sense. Prior to this she seems to be saying she'll be
having issues using her iPhone without OS X. Is she saying she'll also be
having issues syncing an Android phone with Linux?

------
fatalerrorx3
It seems like backing up your media files to a Dropbox-like service instead of
iCloud would solve the problem of being able to get your files from any device
you want.

I'm not attached to any one device in particular because all of my content is
stored on a third party that can be accessed from anywhere.

I could drop my Macbook Pro or iPhone 4 at any time and not feel like I'm
missing something.

Good thing about Apple products is that they last awhile, my Macbook Pro is
now 3 years old, and my iPhone 4 is 2 years old, and I haven't had any issues
and don't plan on upgrading them until they break.

~~~
scholia
I think that's the shortest definition of "lasts a while" that I've ever seen.

Posted from my almost-8-year-old desktop running Windows XP.

------
ishansharma
Now that makes me think twice before getting a Mac. Though I own an iPhone and
an iPad and am happy with both devices. iTunes 11 is good and actually much
better than iTunes 10.

And I have no idea why someone would stay on iOS 5. iOS 6 has quite a lot of
new features. Only reason to stay on an older version would be to make sure
that your phone stays speedy(I have noticed that iPhones tend to get a bit
slower with each major upgrade).

I played with a Mac in a showroom today and it seemed much better than the
mess that Windows 8 is right now(tried it for 3 months, now back to 7!)

~~~
__david__
I agree with you about iTunes 11. I was scared since I knew they were changing
the look up dramatically, but I have to say after giving it a fair shake, I
like it much better than the old one. The "up next" list is _absolutely 100%_
better than the old way.

Now when I'm coding I put it on random, go through the list pruning away all
the crap I'm not in the mood for (which takes about 1 or 2 minutes) and then
I've got an hour or 2 of solid music that's random but vetted. It's great for
setting up a nice zone.

I used to get yanked out of my zone every time something came on that I didn't
want to hear (it's a small yank, but a yank nonetheless).

------
Alex3917
Given the choice between having all my files stolen and my credit destroyed by
russian hackers and having to eventually figure out how to get my photos out
from iPhoto, I'll choose the latter any day.

------
stevewilhelm
While you all are debating developing software using a Linux or Mac OS
desktop, I am writing some killer software using Heroku, S3, Redshift,
MongoHQ, RedisToGo, New Relic, Github, SendGrid, DocRaptor, Trello, Google
Docs, ...

~~~
__david__
Ouch, the smug, it hurts! Are you writing embedded code in your cloud utopia?
There is more to life than just web apps, _even today_. Some of us still need
computers with physical ports.

------
kybernetyk
Hmm ... so if I switch to Linux I suddenly become a more productive
programmer?

Sorry, but that sounds like what I often read in photography forums: "If I had
a better/more expensive camera I'd be making better pictures."

------
rdouble
Music and photos and associated metadata on OSX are stored in standard file
formats. It's trivial to write a program to extract them, using a programming
language already installed on the machine.

------
zoidb
the way I read this is that it is less about not having control over your data
(pictures and music?) less about freedom and software and more about just
wanting a piece of portable hardware that works for simple tasks. I can
sympathize with you if that's the case; It seems like every laptop I've bought
for the purpose of running Linux has been a hassle and I don't enjoy the
tinkering as much as I used to. I haven't given in yet though.

------
nirvana
The idea that Apple has her data all locked up is completely asinine. Frankly,
saying so is dishonest. Apple has been careful to not do what she describes.
It's hypocrtical to say that Linux which stores stuff in a directory structure
is good while, Macs, which do the exact same thing with the data she's
complaining about are "opaque"

Mountain Lion was the first of a once-a-year update cycle, and contrary to
"not even talking about it anymore" they are updating it more frequently than
ever. (we're due for the announcement of the next version in a few weeks.)

iTunes - Stores music you ripped in standards based format, AAC or MP3. It's
easy to get at as it all lives in folders on your machine that aren't exactly
opaque (it even organizes your music by artist, etc.) The database file is
just an index of the music that keeps track of play counts, etc. You don't
need that.

iPhoto - Again, stores all your images in standard formats. You can export the
photos with all your changes if you want. They, again, live on your hard drive
in a reasonable standard directory structure, and if you want you can export
within iPhoto. Not only is there no opaque database it is QUITE trivial to get
your data out.

iPhone Syncing- you don't need a machine to do that anymore you can do it
online, including backing up to the cloud if you wish. Maybe because she
deliberately hasn't updated its software it doesn't have that feature, but
that's her choice, not a problem with the product.

iCloud- the idea that you'd have to be "crazy" to do that is BS.

Her saying the mac isn't good for development makes me question her tech
skills. Either that or she just cant' be bothered to discover homebrew or to
notice that all the open source projects support the mac for development these
days.

Sigh, just another mindless, dishonest, ant-Apple rant.

The thing is, if Apple was so bad, you could bring up legitimate criticisms,
rather than use "I can't be bothered to spend 2 minutes goggling therefore it
cant' be done" type claims.

~~~
rachelbythebay
My tech skills are sub-par. 10 year old children code circles around me. I sob
when I see a command line. Circular data structures make me dizzy.

I am a fraud.

~~~
nirvana
Well, you did call a directory structure that is easy to navigate "opaque",
and all of your criticisms are like those from someone who hasn't bothered to
even try and figure out how to accomplish what you claim to want to do.

It would be better if your tech skills really were sub-par, because that would
mean your integrity isn't called into question by the dishonesty in your post.

~~~
rachelbythebay
Ah, I'm disreputable and dishonest, too. Got it.

~~~
Gorbzel
Apparently you just don't do well when people challenge your preconceived
notions. Given that you seem completely unable to defend some of your
assertions, it's understandable that most people write you off as plain wrong.
It sucks too, because you seem to be a pretty good writer. Unfortunately, you
don't take the time or effort to supplement your article with any meaningful
technical detail.

> I needed a development box again. My Mac wasn't cutting it, and so my Linux
> box was returned to active duty.

Why? Absolutely no discussion of why OS X wasn't cutting it as a dev
environment for you. Given that tons of devs use OS X machines as their
primary coding machines, this just seems completely off the wall.

Then some more stereotypical ranting about how Apple's going off the rails
with SJ gone, again without really any meaningful analysis of why this is
true. Lion and 2010 era Apple products are supposedly terrible, yet you refuse
to upgrade to versions that fix the problems. I'm sure that Linux never needs
upgrades.

And then you just go off the rails. AAC files with XML based meta data is so
proprietary and will SOOOO difficult to use in *nix, same with JPEGs. EVIL
EVIL CUPERTINO! DUMB PHONES FOR EVERYONE! TAKE THAT GOOGLE! Life is so much
freer now that you're using desktop linux again! No configuration ever!
Everything's trivial!

Except everyone on HN knows that's a joke. You may be wonky, but you're not
any meaningfully more "free" (who knows what that means) and now your sarcasm
comes just comes across as hand-waving over the lack of any technical detail
in your writing.

~~~
rachelbythebay
<http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/09/13/opt/>

and

<http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/09/14/mac/>

Lack of technical detail, that's me, all right.

~~~
Gorbzel
Love the continued one-liners that really never answer the questions people
are posing.

Namely, the HN posts that you link completely call it: Why do you insist on
tackling any problem that you encounter with exactly the same toolchain and/or
mindset that you would on Linux? And then, when inevitably different
approaches are required, you complain that Apple/OS X (but usually any other
BSD alternative) is terrible. Well, yes, when you go into any situation
expecting failure, don't be surprised when it turns out that way.

I'm looking into your radar issue, but even you note that's been fixed. Won't
be able to take advantage of those type of fixes if you never upgrade OS X,
there will you? Can't go down that path that even you admit "you don't want to
follow".

Thanks for the background read though. I guess you're pretty popular around
these parts, must have missed it. I'll now know to avoid trollbait articles
that rehash tired cliches about Apple's downfall, why Linux's way is always
the best way (compromise be damned), and the lazy end users.

------
tteam
Use our tonido software to stream your itunes playlist from anywhere! :)

