/devel

I found this article by Tomaž interesting. And since I keep being asked what I think of Macs as well, I’ll unwisely share a few of my thoughts on the subject. But before I proceed, I’d like to state as a regular Linux/Windows/Mac/Symbian user:

“All operating systems suck. A lot. They just suck in their own special ways.” ^[1]

Keywords being ALL, SUCK and A LOT. You just have to find the one that sucks least for what you want to do. The flip side to this is that all of them have useful features, some of which I wish other operating systems had too. You can get work done, albeit with some degree of pain, with any of them. So it’s not all bad either.

In this home, we have way too many computers and my dear wife, if you’re reading this, I deeply apologize for this. I’m working on slimming them down, but this is harder to do for a geek than keeping weight during Christmas. Anyway, if my counting is not off, then there are between 7 and 10 computers in this house, depending on how big and powerful the thing has to be to qualify. Two of them are now a bit dated macs running Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4.

A short, unordered and incomplete list of things that I dislike about Mac or just disagree with Tomaž:

• Mac software certainly has install wizards, but it’s true they are not as common as on Windows. Still, nice when they are absent.
• My powerbook is the most moody piece of hardware I ever had. If I want to reduce the risk of a crash at wake up, I have to reproduce the state at which it was put to sleep as close as possible. Still, this gets me from a wake-up crash almost every time to a crash or two per month.
• I’m sure the problem lies with my particular specimen, but if Apple’s diagnostic software can’t find the problem, then it doesn’t exist as far as Apple is concerned.
• Living in Slovenia means that if it does find the problem or the computer breaks down, then you’ll be likely without a computer for about 4 weeks while it’s getting shipped around Europe and repaired; I wouldn’t buy a computer that I can miss for such a long period of time. I wish I knew this when I bought mine.
• Closing application window doesn’t close application itself. Except when it does.
• Hiding application (cloverleaf-H) is a neat way to hide an application, when it works. At least once a week I jettison my Safari windows and tabs because it doesn’t always work.
• For some reason it keeps offering me czech keyboard layout and funnily, it did this just now. I might have understood turkish, on account of my surname, but czech?
• Slovenian keyboard layout is simply wrong. Originality is all fine and dandy, but this is not a place to differentiate yourself.
• A complete uninstall of an application which includes user settings is a tedious and error prone affair. Wouldn’t be a problem if the Library directory didn’t tend to balloon to absurd proportion through the years.
• Machine seems getting progressively slower with same software as time marches on. It’s not the only system that suffers this fate, but it’s also true that not all of them do. These days using Safari on my Powerbook is an exercise in patience.
• Finder, Mac’s file manager, is an abomination. It was probably great when it was conceived, but we don’t punch cards anymore.
• Once a week I decline installation of iTunes 7. I’ve been doing this for months, since there’s no option to stop bugging me with this forever. I guess I’ll be doing this for months or years, until this machine dies or I start declining iTunes 8.
• Proprietary formats are pure evil when there are reasonable alternatives and Mac is littered with them. iPhoto is an untrustworthy piece of crap that ate my (meta)data and blurs images when rotating. Mark was (is) still right.

In short, Mac just works, except when it doesn’t or when it stops. Having said that it might be the perfect computer for you, even though it’s clearly not for me.

Since this post can be potentially explosive, let me state some rules about comments upfront. I’ll delete every comment that tries to rationalize stupidity of one OS with stupidities of another. Same goes for any sort of provocations not committed by the author with this post. Verbal abuse of me is fine, but abuse of other commentators will get you in a trash bin. Factual corrections, personal experiences and such are welcome as long as they don’t break preceding rules.

[1]: I’ve used, at least occasionally, pretty much every operating system under the sun. So I’m fairly confident that this is true for them as well.