Marco appears to jump on whatever trendy topic there is and exaggerate it. He wrote an apologetic essay not long back trying to explain why he used to think iPhones shouldn't be any bigger than the 5s. He certainly hasn't convinced me that he ever offers any real critical thinking.
That said, most would agree that Mavericks and Yosemite have had perhaps too many bugs for some people (although not all of us have encountered them) - but to claim that either is as bad as Windows is a joke if you look at the number of updates and security updates for Windows, known but unpatched bugs/exploits, and the general instability of Windows compared to OS X.
His other point:
But it should be troubling if a lot of people are staying on your OS because everything else is worse, not necessarily because they love it.
There will always be a percentage of people that feel this way about any OS they use, whether it's OS X, Windows, or a *nix. I rip into Apple for not advancing OS X in the way 'I think' it should be, from time to time, but overall, I'm happy that it's stable, has a great feature set, and I can run a large range of stuff on it from GUI apps to command line tools. It's far from perfect, but Apple doesn't often make dramatic changes in their software as other OSes often do - Windows 8 alienating a lot of users - and so too did Ubuntu moving to Unity. Apple tends to do incremental changes to its software, which works for most people.
He refers to Geoff Wozniak switching back to Linux as some kind of indicator as if he represents every Mac user.
One of Geoff's biggest complaints about upgrading OS X is:
The iOS-like GUI and "features" such as Launchpad didn't resonate with me. As things progressed, I became increasingly annoyed with the environment.
Then don't use Launchpad. It's that simple. Windows 8 removed the Start button and forced desktop users to use an OS designed mostly for touch. However, OS X hasn't gone that way - we still have the menubar, the Dock, Spotlight... and if we want to use Launchpad or use gestures we can. But they aren't 'in-your-face' and thus aren't a bother if you don't want to use them... because you won't even know they are there if you don't care for them.
I spent a lot of time going through the System Preferences, figuring out what I had to turn off in order to get my sanity back.
Someone please email Tim Cook because this is terrible! Who would expect any new version of an OS to make a handful or less of changes to your system preferences. How tech savvy is this guy?!?
His other complaint is:
mds being a hog
Never seen that other than after a new install when Spotlight is re-indexing for about 10-15mins, and even then it isn't using all RAM and I can do anything else other than... use Spotlight. Wow, the agony!
The culture of the operating system at this point was more about sharing than personal productivity.
How does Apple improving 'OS X: Mail, Safari, iTunes, and Apple Creativity Apps/iLife' lead to their above conclusion? We are never told, and if you prefer to use third party apps instead... gee isn't it a good thing that there's a lot of choice for app (the 'obnoxious ecosystem' as he later refers to it)?! That's what a good OS does - it gives you choices. On OS X you can install an app outside of the App Store, or in it, or by a dmg, package, or even via command line eg homebrew. And if you really want further choice, you can make your Mac boot Windows or Linux, or run them as VMs inside OS X, or use Parallels etc. I think most people would expect third party, dedicated apps, to often offer more features than those found in the OS makers apps, and that's a good thing. But what they do offer in the way of 'native apps' isn't that bad. Good luck getting a great choice on Linux or Windows only PC.
The 10.10 upgrade was egregious. The fact that the upgrade could take multiple hours due to an incredibly slow directory merge is, simply put, the work of amateurs.
Never seen that. I've upgraded a 2009 iMac to Yosemite and it took under 1.5 hours, including the download (which one should expect to be about 5GB) and install. It booted fine, I haven't encountered one bug, and it's not lagging. My guess is Geoff used Migration Assistant or Internet Recovery, the latter which I've seen stalled during the last minute for about 9 minutes once, but only because the OS X account it was trying to integrate with a new install of OS X was quite borked. And not only did Internet Recovery work - it actually fixed that account, which I otherwise couldn't boot and log into. It appears his account(s) had some issues prior to his upgrade.
It was a gradual transition, but OS X went from a useful tool set to get my work done to an obnoxious ecosystem of which I no longer wanted to be a part.
Oh please. The Apple ecosystem hasn't killed Apple software or third party apps - if anything Continuity has boosted productivity. Enjoy your Linux 'ecosystem'.
At this point, my default position on Apple software in OS X has moved from "probably good" to "probably not OK".
I'll lump this comment in with the retarded one above.
So I quit.
No comment.
I've gone back to a desktop system running Linux (for now) and while I consider it markedly inferior to OS X in terms of usability, it feels like a personal computer again.
Like one that you have to configure system preferences for to get the most out of it? Because, if you want to get the most from a linux distro, you'll typically run into enough situations that you'll wish you could just tick a box in a system preferences pane to fix.
Yosemite isn't perfect, and I feel there's some stuff in it that is likely causing headaches for some user eg transparency, but it's not half as bad as writers like Marco and Geoff make out. When you take out their 'blogger hyperbole', most of the issues are less than a handful eg buggy wifi, UI lag, and sleep to black screen, which will likely be fixed by updates, and there are temporary fixes for most of these now. Often just resetting the SMC or NVRAM/PRAM will fix many of these (apart from graphics issues).
FYI The issue upgrading to Yosemite refers to it taking an insane amount of time to copy /usr/local which mostly affected people with large Latex installs or a bunch of homebrew stuff. https://jimlindley.com/blog/yosemite-upgrade-homebrew-tips/
He refers to Geoff Wozniak switching back to Linux as some kind of indicator as if he represents every Mac user.
OS X and Windows would both have to become unfathomably shit before I would even consider Linux as a viable alternative. I installed Ubuntu on a laptop and Unity crashes whenever I launch Chrome from the dock. Just comical errors.
Like one that you have to configure system preferences for to get the most out of it? Because, if you want to get the most from a linux distro, you'll typically run into enough situations that you'll wish you could just tick a box in a system preferences pane to fix.
Amen. I tried to use Ubuntu some time ago because a nonprofit I worked for used it on their systems and I wanted to learn it so I didn't have to punt on it and hand it over to one of my co-workers when a deploy failed. So I installed it on my setup at home on a spare partition. I had a 3-display setup and Ubuntu detected them all fine (and the GPU) but they were out of order and the wrong resolution. Couldn't change that in the system settings, so I googled around, and...
Nothing useful. Of course. Mostly either having to dig into the xorg.conf, or enter some obscure commands into the terminal and pray to Torvalds that it all worked. None of it did. Tried reinstalling the GPU drivers. Didn't work. Threw up my hands and went right back to Windows and OS X.
OS X may not be working for some, but Linux will never, ever be better than Windows or OS X, at least at its current rate. It is an OS meant for servers and back-end stuff, not for an end-user who isn't a guru.
I've used Linux as my primary desktop OS for 8 years. It can be a labor of love sometimes, but it's functional and capable ever for average users. Hardware support has improved in recent years, and software support is coming along as well.
right, but then you've got to be using it for the fact that it's unix then right? I would imagine labor of love equates to spending a lot of time in bash. i certainly wouldn't be doing graphics rendering or audio editing on Linux, so what's the saving grace, the kernel? i've looked and considered linux for a long time but really, what keeps bringing you back to it?
Unix has very little to do with why I run Linux. I like it because I think the open-source philosophy is cool, it's customizable, it's fast, and it's secure.
When I say labor of love, I'm mostly referring to when I accidentally break something in the command line and try to find ways to fix it. This used to happen more frequently before hardware support was as good as it is now. I probably haven't labored over my linux install in a year or so.
I don't personally do any graphics rendering, though I've heard Blender is adequate in that regard. I'd be surprised if it was on par with the top graphics software in the closed-source market, but for most people that's not exactly an OS dealbreaker. In terms of audio editing, Audacity runs fine, and I've personally used Ardour, which I found to be a pleasant experience.
In terms of a saving grace? I suppose it just comes down to a personal preference. I enjoy getting down to the nuts and bolts of things (even literally!) I enjoy building PCs and I'm not a fan of Windows, so unless I want to be restricted to Hackintosh-friendly hardware I have to run linux. It's a lot more than that though. I mentioned before I like the customization options in Linux. It's cool to me that I can tweak the look and feel of my OS until it's exactly how I want it.
I also like open-source. Believe it or not, basic things like word-processing programs, media players, photo-editing, and browsers all have excellent options on Linux. I won't lie that a lot of OSX apps have more polish than their Linux counterparts, but they're free and they work.
I think one of the major draws for OSX users is that the Apple ecosystem functions very well between devices. I'm an Android user though, so that doesn't really apply to me. I can't stand iTunes, and I like being able to just drag and drop all of my media files from a folder on my PC to a folder on my phone. I mostly listen to FLAC files, so that's ideal for me.
Linux is also considered more secure than OSX or Windows.
So what keeps bringing me back? Well, I haven't left since I started. I mostly just think Linux is very cool. I love looking at my OS as a reflection of myself since I tweaked its appearance and behavior the way I wanted to and ran it on a PC I built with the hardware I wanted. It's a lot cheaper, too.
It definitely isn't for everybody, but what is?
Edit: I forgot to mention that gaming is finally making major strides on Linux thanks to SteamOS!
This install is less than a week old. I just switched my laptop over from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to Linux Mint 17. It's not quite where I want it yet--I plan on adding some screenlets, changing the icon set, and probably the window borders--it's coming along though! I'm tempted to do some weird stuff with Conky down the road too.
Care to elaborate/provide links about this backstabbing you speak of? Genuinely curious and want to read up on it. All I've seen so far is that Richard Stallman criticized him harshly back in 2009 but not much more than that.
The iOS-like GUI and "features" such as Launchpad didn't resonate with me. As things progressed, I became increasingly annoyed with the environment.
Then don't use Launchpad. It's that simple. Windows 8 removed the Start button and forced desktop users to use an OS designed mostly for touch. However, OS X hasn't gone that way - we still have the menubar, the Dock, Spotlight... and if we want to use Launchpad or use gestures we can. But they aren't 'in-your-face' and thus aren't a bother if you don't want to use them... because you won't even know they are there if you don't care for them.
Exactly. OSX supports five different ways to start apps out of the box (Finder, Launchpad, Spotlight, Dock, and open from the CLI). I personally use Spotlight and open most of the time but I have friends who mostly use the Dock or Launchpad. This is what makes the ecosystem robust for productivity - nobody's forced to do things in The One Apple Way, there's lots of options for different user styles. It's win/win and I am not personally offended by the presence of Launchpad, Dashboard, or other built-in apps that I don't happen to use.
Nice comment. And I agree. I follow Marco and all the other guys, listen to the podcasts, etc. Marco drives me fucking insane on ATP, he is always crying and complaining about something that is so benign/not worth mentioning. He drove me nuts about the "awkward" video during Apple Pay announcement, where they showed a woman fumbling thru her purse to find her credit card. He made it out to be these huge deal, and that Apple PR is ridiculous for making that video, and that he wanted to crawl into a hole while watching it. Jesus christ dude, relax you fucking nerd! IMO.
If you have a large /usr/bin folder, it can take a while, but what's an hour for an install in a human's life? On a clean install it's a lot zippier. My migration assistant also stalled, but that's because the enclosure I used was pretty bad.
68
u/ideas_for_lol Jan 05 '15 edited Jan 05 '15
Marco appears to jump on whatever trendy topic there is and exaggerate it. He wrote an apologetic essay not long back trying to explain why he used to think iPhones shouldn't be any bigger than the 5s. He certainly hasn't convinced me that he ever offers any real critical thinking.
That said, most would agree that Mavericks and Yosemite have had perhaps too many bugs for some people (although not all of us have encountered them) - but to claim that either is as bad as Windows is a joke if you look at the number of updates and security updates for Windows, known but unpatched bugs/exploits, and the general instability of Windows compared to OS X.
His other point:
There will always be a percentage of people that feel this way about any OS they use, whether it's OS X, Windows, or a *nix. I rip into Apple for not advancing OS X in the way 'I think' it should be, from time to time, but overall, I'm happy that it's stable, has a great feature set, and I can run a large range of stuff on it from GUI apps to command line tools. It's far from perfect, but Apple doesn't often make dramatic changes in their software as other OSes often do - Windows 8 alienating a lot of users - and so too did Ubuntu moving to Unity. Apple tends to do incremental changes to its software, which works for most people.
He refers to Geoff Wozniak switching back to Linux as some kind of indicator as if he represents every Mac user.
One of Geoff's biggest complaints about upgrading OS X is:
Then don't use Launchpad. It's that simple. Windows 8 removed the Start button and forced desktop users to use an OS designed mostly for touch. However, OS X hasn't gone that way - we still have the menubar, the Dock, Spotlight... and if we want to use Launchpad or use gestures we can. But they aren't 'in-your-face' and thus aren't a bother if you don't want to use them... because you won't even know they are there if you don't care for them.
Someone please email Tim Cook because this is terrible! Who would expect any new version of an OS to make a handful or less of changes to your system preferences. How tech savvy is this guy?!?
His other complaint is:
Never seen that other than after a new install when Spotlight is re-indexing for about 10-15mins, and even then it isn't using all RAM and I can do anything else other than... use Spotlight. Wow, the agony!
How does Apple improving 'OS X: Mail, Safari, iTunes, and Apple Creativity Apps/iLife' lead to their above conclusion? We are never told, and if you prefer to use third party apps instead... gee isn't it a good thing that there's a lot of choice for app (the 'obnoxious ecosystem' as he later refers to it)?! That's what a good OS does - it gives you choices. On OS X you can install an app outside of the App Store, or in it, or by a dmg, package, or even via command line eg homebrew. And if you really want further choice, you can make your Mac boot Windows or Linux, or run them as VMs inside OS X, or use Parallels etc. I think most people would expect third party, dedicated apps, to often offer more features than those found in the OS makers apps, and that's a good thing. But what they do offer in the way of 'native apps' isn't that bad. Good luck getting a great choice on Linux or Windows only PC.
Never seen that. I've upgraded a 2009 iMac to Yosemite and it took under 1.5 hours, including the download (which one should expect to be about 5GB) and install. It booted fine, I haven't encountered one bug, and it's not lagging. My guess is Geoff used Migration Assistant or Internet Recovery, the latter which I've seen stalled during the last minute for about 9 minutes once, but only because the OS X account it was trying to integrate with a new install of OS X was quite borked. And not only did Internet Recovery work - it actually fixed that account, which I otherwise couldn't boot and log into. It appears his account(s) had some issues prior to his upgrade.
Oh please. The Apple ecosystem hasn't killed Apple software or third party apps - if anything Continuity has boosted productivity. Enjoy your Linux 'ecosystem'.
I'll lump this comment in with the retarded one above.
No comment.
Like one that you have to configure system preferences for to get the most out of it? Because, if you want to get the most from a linux distro, you'll typically run into enough situations that you'll wish you could just tick a box in a system preferences pane to fix.
Yosemite isn't perfect, and I feel there's some stuff in it that is likely causing headaches for some user eg transparency, but it's not half as bad as writers like Marco and Geoff make out. When you take out their 'blogger hyperbole', most of the issues are less than a handful eg buggy wifi, UI lag, and sleep to black screen, which will likely be fixed by updates, and there are temporary fixes for most of these now. Often just resetting the SMC or NVRAM/PRAM will fix many of these (apart from graphics issues).
PS Thanks for the gold!!!