This mythical user must also be the bottom of the barrel. I don't think the Apple designers ever consulted me when they designed OS X. Who were they designing for? Everyone? How can they possibly conceive of what every user wants but me?
This "design," argument is a floppy, magical, hand-waving fish. I know what design is. I design software all the damn time. I am sensitive to interface and expectation. I want as little friction between my tool and the thing I am creating.
In that regard, as a software developer, OS X is a piss-poor experience. Using emacs on the thing is ripping years out of the cartilage in my fingers due to the masochistic meta-key layout that I've had to accustom myself to. It's terrible.
The eco-system of package management systems on OS X is infuriatingly shoddy. Between macports, homebrew, and fink -- none of them can seem to get it quite right. They have to compete with the user-land eco-system that Apple ships. Half the packages are broken. And I can never bloody well find any configuration files anywhere once it has installed something. It's ludicrous how much time I've wasted trying to figure out how in the seven hells you're supposed to get MySQL or Postgres to run on the damn thing (there are half a dozen ways at least by my reckoning and google's).
Their /design/ isn't the best design there is. They are designing for someone, but it surely isn't me. If you happen to fall into their mold then I'm sure you're as happy as a clam but don't think the entire world of people are just like you.
This "design," argument is a floppy, magical, hand-waving fish. I know what design is. I design software all the damn time. I am sensitive to interface and expectation. I want as little friction between my tool and the thing I am creating.
In that regard, as a software developer, OS X is a piss-poor experience. Using emacs on the thing is ripping years out of the cartilage in my fingers due to the masochistic meta-key layout that I've had to accustom myself to. It's terrible.
The eco-system of package management systems on OS X is infuriatingly shoddy. Between macports, homebrew, and fink -- none of them can seem to get it quite right. They have to compete with the user-land eco-system that Apple ships. Half the packages are broken. And I can never bloody well find any configuration files anywhere once it has installed something. It's ludicrous how much time I've wasted trying to figure out how in the seven hells you're supposed to get MySQL or Postgres to run on the damn thing (there are half a dozen ways at least by my reckoning and google's).
Their /design/ isn't the best design there is. They are designing for someone, but it surely isn't me. If you happen to fall into their mold then I'm sure you're as happy as a clam but don't think the entire world of people are just like you.