When you join Google as an SRE they ask you what kind of laptop you want. When I joined the choice was between a MacBook Pro and a Windows based ThinkPad. I believe Linux laptops are either going to be supported “real soon now” or were just added, but given the choice I went for the MacBook. This was a smart move – SRE work revolves around UNIX and the Mac is the lesser of the two evils in this respect.
Eventually the plan is to get a desktop and move entirely back to Linux. For various reasons that can’t happen until 2007 though.
Until then, I am stuck with a Mac. Here are some things I like about it:
- I can search for and download pretty much any random app and it’ll work.
- It suspends and boots very fast. The boot/shutdown is very polished.
- VPN integration is seamless
- It has an integrated webcam that works really well
- The magnetic power connector is neat
- I can scroll by putting two fingers together on the touch pad and dragging
- Having the menu bar at the top allows for some nice unified app/toolbar aesthetics
Unfortunately the list of things I don’t like is much longer. For most of these issues Linux or non-Apple hardware is better.
- Heat
- You can’t adjust the font size on a global basis (!!)
- Awkward keyboard. One key is labelled with an unpronouncable symbol. The ctrl button doesn’t extend all the way to the end, so I’m constantly hitting “fn” instead of control, or the command key instead of alt. No right mouse button. Eject is just above delete, so I eject CDs into my stomach.
- Crap window management, eg, there are no virtual desktops, you cannot maximize anything, and the only way to select a window you can’t see is to use they keyboard or expose, which is worthless for windows that all look the same when shrunk (eg, emacs buffers or terminals).
- Talking of emacs, the native version seems to be “Aquamacs”, which has some extremely questionable modifications. By default every buffer opens in its own window. This is apparently The Mac Way, but it’s also The Wrong Way. In a big emacs session I can easily have 10-20 buffers open at once, and having each one in a separate window would be insane. Another annoying Mac-ism: Command-Q is bound to quit, which is right next to Alt-Q (fill paragraph).
- The terminal emulator is crap. It uses some non-standard font that doesn’t resize or anti-alias correctly, there are no tabs, hitting Ctrl-C doesn’t do what you’d expect and it has to be closed manually after the shell ends. It doesn’t have desktop transparency either …. it can only do real transparency which is too distracting.
- Even if the terminal emulator ruled, the FreeBSD userland would let it down. I’m sure it’s great if you’re used to it, but I grew up with GNU and trivial stuff like the lack of colour ls now bugs me all the time. Half the command line options I try to use either don’t exist or have different names.
- Basic developer tools like subversion are not installed even with the developer tools pack. Installing them using the system installer doesn’t tell you where the files went ….. in this case into /usr/local/bin which isn’t in the path!
- Riddled with pointless inconsistency. Some apps unload when you can’t see them anymore, others don’t. Some apps use one theme, some use another, and “plastic” apps using the newest theme switch back to the original pinstripe when not focussed. This is way more distracting that it sounds!
- Many apps, including the Finder, like to block for long periods on network IO. You can’t bring them to the front when this happens.
Looks are a wash. A lot of people say MacOS is prettier than Linux, and that was certainly true 3 years ago but these days the differences are irrelevant. Apple have toned down the eyecandy progressively over time and the Linux guys have increased it, so they now meet somewhere in the middle. The latest iTunes uses the same shade of grey that Windows 95 did, and uses custom scrollbars that are no longer patterned. It still looks professional, but it’s no longer got any “wow” factor left. Meanwhile the latest Ubuntu looks great. When Christian was using his tricked out compiz/gnome desktop in Happy Donuts a few weeks ago, a stranger came over and started asking about it. He’d seen the cube and wanted it on his machine. Explaining what an OS was proved interesting …
November 6, 2006 at 2:14 pm |
some tips & tricks that may smooth your OS X experience?
the unpronouncable symbol is “command” or “the apple key” depending on who you talk to. ( I call it “loopy”, but I’m just strange).
The terminal emulator can be ackward, but there are things you can do to make it more comfortable. From the Terminal Window, choose “Window Settings” and configure to your hearts content. One highlight is to select “close window” on the “When the shell exits:” radio button. Keep in mind, you have to hit the big ugly “Use Settings As Default” button at the bottom if you want these to hold for anything but your current window. Changing that setting, and changing the color scheme to be white on black has cleared up 90% of my unhappiness with terminal.
Mind you, that doesn’t mean it’s configuration isn’t ackward, and un-Mac OS X-ish, but it IS there, at least.
if you’re looking for more linux-y commands & tools, you might try wandering past the fink project.(http://fink.sourceforge.net/)
As for UI inconsistancy, well, if you look around a bit, you’ll find that many people rail on Apple’s UI inconsistancies. :/ It’s up to developers to be “good” about their UI, and sometimes the mothership doesn’t set the best example.
I hope that at least some of this was a bit helpful!
November 6, 2006 at 4:15 pm |
Awesome, thanks. I’ll fiddle with the terminal emulator settings a bit. To be fair I usually reconfigure gnome-terminal to my tastes as well.
November 11, 2006 at 6:08 am |
One can’t really compare MacOS and Linux, excepted about the look & feel. Beside that, OSX is the kind of *NIX which has been stripped down to stay in line with its GUI used customer. Linux has grown in the opposite direction without hidding anything.
Nonetheless, compared to Linux, one can really laugh about some Apple’s annoucement, simply because the new feature was already there in the *NIX systeme, like workplace for example which will be part of the next release. Mainly, one can do more thing in OSX with the command-line than the front-end allows indeed.
November 21, 2006 at 7:48 am |
Check out this page for cloring your terminal: http://www.mactips.org/archives/2005/08/02/color-your-os-x-command-prompt/
December 11, 2006 at 5:20 am |
export CLICOLOR=yes
may color your terminal.
Aquamacs can be configured easily, via the Options menu. You don’t have to have it open new buffers in new frames. You can also reassign the Command key to meta via the `mac-command-modifier’ variable (setq mac-command-modifier ‘meta) in your .emacs.
For a terminal, I recommend iTerm – it’s being actively developed at the moment. ^C works fine for me in Terminal.app and in iTerm.