On May 17, 2006, at 2:21 PM, Jon D wrote:
The only reason I would buy a Mac is for the laptop hardware. I don't
need cute eye candy, or a nifty music playing program.
Do you need to get work done? Because that is the most important
question to ask before choosing an operating system, programming
language, or anything else. "Will it get the job done?" I can't
really think of an operating system that only has "cute eye candy" and
a "nifty music playing program". If you were insinuating that Mac OS X
is such, perhaps you need to actually sit down and use it for a while,
rather than repeat stereotypes you read on slashdot. :) I use it
everyday for my work, and it performs better for my needs than any
other operating system I have used. When you get past all the
definitions of freedom, and made up words from Brother Larry, what it
comes down to is everyone needs an operating system that "just works".
What that means is different for different people. For me, OS X
strikes a nice balance. I can play with just about anything that I can
on Linux (sans the kernel), but I'm not forced to in order to get basic
things working (like wireless or 3d acceleration). Your mileage with
Linux or BSD WILL vary based on the chipsets in your hardware, and with
OS X that has been reduced to dealing with the invariable manufacturing
defects in products (unless you choose to run a pirated version of OS X
on generic PC hardware, and then all bets are off).
I need
manipulexity and whipuptitude in an operating system, to borrow terms
from Brother Larry [1]. OS's like Linux or the BSD's give me the
freedom to tinker. I only wish laptops in general were as
commoditizable as whiteboxen are, so I could cheaply and easily build
a laptop like I can build a whitebox (PC).
This is one of the weaknesses of the PC market as well. Yes, it's nice
that there are so many options, but it's also a nightmare for OS
developers for any operating system except Windows, where they make all
the hardware companies do the work for them. It's also the same reason
I have a Linux box that has never been completely stable (it used an
early ATA-66 chipset that has never been fully stable under ANY version
of the kernel, and still to this day has spotty support). That being
said, building your own machine is fun, and I have done it many times.
Grant
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