::scr tell me why you're using OSX, you big geek

[David Cantrell]

On Wed, Dec 05, 2001 at 02:56:13AM -0800, celia romaniuk wrote:
> Chatting to Evil Dave last night, he said that he has always thought that
> Apple make good hardware and sucky software, but that now they've made an
> OS which is bearable. (That's paraphrased, so I hope it represents his
> views accurately).

Yeah, pretty accurate.  I think I also said that the quality of their
hardware has gone down recently*.  What pushed me over the edge was my
dislike of the x86 architecture, as well as the availability of OS X.
If OS X hadn't come along, I'd quite probably be running a nice new
Sun desktop at home now.

OS X.0 was prety horrible.  In fact after a couple of frustrating weeks
with it I dumped it and just ran OS 9 for a bit.  Which sucked, but I
was only using it as an appliance (so I could run IE and sync my Palm),
not as a computer.  Without X.1 coming out, I certainly wouldn't have
bought the iBook.

And Comrade Batistoni's comment that he "get the impression he thinks
more of OS X than that it's merely 'bearable'" is sort of true, sort of
not.  All software sucks to varying degrees.  OS X sucks a lot less
than anything else Apple have written, and a lot less than most stuff
that MS have written.  Judged purely against the competition in its
market it's a shining diamond.  But it's not great.

> One of the traditional reasons people dissed Macs was because they didn't
> like being able to get 'under the hood'. Is being able to do this in OSX a
> compelling reason to start using it?

I don't really dig around much in OS X.  But I want to be able to if^W
when it breaks.  Couldn't do that with previous Mac OSes, can do with
OS X.  Don't *want* to though.  When it comes to Macs, I'm far more of
a user** (compared to developer or sysadmin) than I am on my other
machines.

> And above all: where does this leave the 'number of mouse buttons'
> debate'?

Having only one button is sick and wrong, and always will be.  At least
for *this* user.  MS got it right when they popularised right-clicking.
I can live with two buttons.  Three would be good, and five better.  My
desktop Mac has a three button mouse.  Clearly, this isn't an option on
the iBook - at least not whilst it's new and shiny and under guarantee -
but I'll put up with it.

* - IDE disks?!?! USB?!?! Plastic cases!?!?  Firewire!?!?  Bah.  Real
Machines don't have any of that rubbish *and* they have built-in sharp
edges so that they can extract the necessary blood sacrifices when
you're trouble-shooting.

** - I quite like being a user in a way.  At work, I don't have root on
my workstation, and whilst that can be frustrating, it also removes lots
of distractions.

-- 
David Cantrell | david@cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

  I often reflect that if "privileges" had been called "responsibilities"
  or "duties", I would have saved thousands of hours explaining to people
  why they were only gonna get them over my dead body. 
                 -- Lee K. Gleason in comp.org.decus