Nerds Switching from Apple to Ubuntu? 957
Mindpicnic writes "The recent switch of two lifelong Mac nerds to Ubuntu hasn't escaped Tim O'Reilly's radar. He cites Jason Kottke: 'If I were Apple, I'd be worried about this. Two lifelong Mac fans are switching away from Macs to PCs running Ubuntu Linux: first it was Mark Pilgrim and now Cory Doctorow. Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.'"
Apple won't miss 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of geeks discovered the joys of Apple hardware with OSX because, well, it was based off Darwin-- but make no mistake, Apple won't even miss these guys-- they have their own rabid contingent who won't switch no matter what. They want the computing analogue of the guys who buy BMWs.
Also, Mark Pilgrim is running Ubuntu on an Apple machine, so Apple is still getting his money. Cory Doctorcow OTOH has switched to a Lenovo (IIRC).
unlikely (Score:2, Insightful)
Try telling the average computer user that .mp3's, aac's, or any other proprietary media format won't play out of the box and see how they react. Citing two ubernerds as a omen for a forthcoming shift by mac users to linux involves a certain disconnect from reality.
Re:Oh no. (Score:3, Insightful)
Switching from Ubuntu to OS X (Score:3, Insightful)
Defend the flank? not from a pinprick (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Give me a break... (Score:3, Insightful)
1992, eh? These people have been active users and developers on Macs since respectively 1983 [diveintomark.org] and 1984 [boingboing.net].
They have indeed come to the Mac. And now they've gone from it, and you might just want to listen up and find out why.
Since when? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple has it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally prefer the window-layer approach, so I'd agree that this is not the desired behavior, but I don't know what the public in general would expect. In any case, don't expect to get a bunch of replies agreeing with you - as I write this you've already got one person disagreeing. What you have here isn't a Correct Semantics question. It's a Preferred Semantics question.
Most users aren't ideological (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro! (Score:1, Insightful)
Why put up with any of that when you can get the best of all worlds for free?
The best world for my desktop is the one that runs any application I want, and you can argue that the best for that is Windows or a Mac, but it's certainly not any flavor of Linux.
Once again it must be said (and why is this so hard for Linux advocates to understand?): People use applications, not operating systems, and Linux absolutely sucks compared to Windows or even Macs when it comes to normal user applications by nearly any metric you name (choices, ease of use, ease of installation, consistency of operation, etc, etc, etc).
Call me when the major application houses (Adobe, as an example) port their product lines to Linux. Then we have something to talk about.
Re:Apple has it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is also shipping all their Intel-based Macs crippled [blogspot.com] with Trusted Computing hardware DRM... essentially, a Big Brother chip. [cam.ac.uk]. As with all the companies sneakily trying to get this nastiness into their product lines, they desperately don't want to talk about it. Apple fans, naturally, don't want to either.
Make them.
Re:unlikely (Score:5, Insightful)
If installing Automatix [ubuntuforums.org] or Easyubuntu [freecontrib.org] is too hard for this hypothetical "average computer user", they're probably not going to be the one installing the OS.
Re:Apple has it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
MacOS is becoming less refined with every release. The UI changes every time, behavior that was sensible and elegant from the Classic days is being forgotten
You're right, so switching to a GNOME-based distro, that's fine, if that's your cup of team. What about when you want to run a Qt based application? You've got two different looking widget sets competing and distorting the entire view of things. What about openGL (if you can get it running properly)?
Simple things, like making the list view (or icon view or column view) standard in all Finder windows is all but impossible
Again, you're right, because you can't change the Finder preferences (it's only Apple+, like in any other Mac app) or change the View options (Apple+J in finder) to apply to all windows.
Mac OS X isn't perfect, i've got about 10 open bugs at bugreport.apple.com, but you've absolutely lost your mind to think that things aren't amazingly better than they used to. I remember a time when simple Finder operations would lock up my System 7 machine. Stop spreading FUD, file bug reports; as much as I love bitching on Slashdot. Apple doesn't read slashdot, and they're the ones with the power to change things.
Re:I switched as well (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't say Ubuntu is really what changed this. If your last linux laptop experience was anything like mine, this part:
Is really where the change is.
Re:I switched as well (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to be snarky, but it sounds like WinXP would be ideal for you based on your priorities.
Doesn't make sense to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Linux desktop (Ubuntu in this case) is free. It is flexible and is appealling technically and politically, but is quite rough and not ready for the average consumer. It is particularly strong in corporate, third world, and limited use, environments.
OS X is the opposite. It is high margin, high sytle, and slick. It is perfect for the brand-concious, reasonably wealthy, consumer who wants everything to work together easily.
Re:unlikely (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Give me a break... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares? Well, some [daringfireball.net] very [oreilly.com] smart [tbray.org] people [kottke.org] do. (Of those, Tim Bray himself switching as well.)
Whether you personally know or respect Mark, Tim and Cory, they're being looked to by a huge amount of others for guidance. This isn't a lightly made switch - "oh you know, I have a spare box lying around and I'm going to see how this shiny new OS works out, and then next week I'll go and play with Gentoo, and I've always been meaning to give Solaris a try as well". This is people with a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge, having spent their whole life on Macs, deciding that enough is enough, that the bough has broken, and that they care more about their data than about anything else. They all have a huge following, and their thoughts will reverberate.
Most people who will actually read their thoughts (rather than going for the knee-jerk "no, it's Monday so apple is good!" slashdot reaction that I've seen far too many posters here resort to) will probably be set thinking because of it. And everyone will make up their own minds, and most people will probably decide not to switch, for reasons that for them will be very valid. But you can sure as hell bet that the importance of open data formats and lack of DRM will become more of a talking point in the months to come, and that if Apple doesn't heed this warning, more and more people will come to the same conclusions as Mark, Time and Cory have.
(If you want to get the whole story, I'd read the following articles in this order:
Re:Their reason for switching (Score:2, Insightful)
They make it sound like itunes won't play plain old MP3 files....or that when you rip your DVD itunes adds DRM.
This just some bloggers trying to get attention, and putting themselves out as "geeks" but they are not geeks, they are certainly not alpha geeks. Its pure FUD.
The really truely technically skilled have been using macintoshes for a long time, and will continue to do so.
I mean, seriously, Cory Doctow? He's not even technically literate, is he? He's just a media whore.
Re:Give me a break... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just the other day I did an emerge world which replaced some LVM library which was incompatible apparently with what I'd previously used. It was extremely frustrating because I couldn't access my array... it basically highlighted to me the fact that the reliability of a lot of applications on linux simply sucks.
Oh noes, twiddling settings, installing apps! (Score:3, Insightful)
I loved iTunes until my iTunes database got corrupted, too.
These two things have never happened to me, and I've been using X since before it went live (exclusively fulltime since 10.1). I'm not sure that he's not the problem and not the mac itself.
[as I] drooled over the beautiful, beautiful hardware, all I could think was how much work it would take to twiddle with the default settings, install third-party software, and hide all the commercial tie-ins so I could pretend I was in control of my own computer.
a) you will NEVER have complete control over your computer. Get used to it. Having the source != knowing, comprehending, and understanding all of it.
b) you are ALWAYS going to twiddle settings, install non-included apps, etc. If you're not doing that, what are you doing with a computer anyway?
c) who are you, again?
Oh yeah they're fleeing Mac now! (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh... wake up dreamers.
Apple is a solid computer with a long list of great applications. Dont expect Ubuntu to take out Apple when it cant even take out windows.
Its all about the apps...
Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro! (Score:2, Insightful)
Ubuntu's Good, But Not Good Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
I use both a Mac and Ubuntu. I have an iBook G4 (soon to be a MacBook) and an iMac Core Duo. My home server is an Athlon system running Ubuntu, and it also serves as a development workstation. I've a decently useful application under Linux [sourceforge.net], and I work with Linux daily. I've got feet in both worlds.
Ubuntu is hands down the best Linux distro I've ever used. It's definitely moving in the right direction. It has a great packaging system, it's got much more polish than other distros, and it can even be loaded with some decent eye candy. Of all the Linux distros I've used, it's the best by quite a distance.
That being said, Linux just isn't ready for the desktop. It's closer than before, but there are a lot of things necessary to make it work. Apple has a reputation for having things Just Work. Linux has a reptutation for having things work once you've futzed around with the config files, recompiled your kernel, read a few HOWTOs and smashed your head against the wall. Is it getting better? Absolutely. Is it there yet, no?
APT is a wonderful piece of technology. It's great for updating your system, but installing third-party software doesn't always go so smoothly. OS X's app bundles are much easier for the average Joe or Jane to understand. Again, NeXTSTEP had this years ago, but Linux doesn't have this.
XGL is nice. It's still not as nice as Apple's GUI. A lot of what differentiates Apple from the rest is the sense of polish. Technologies like XGL and Cairo rendering provide the right infrastructure - but there isn't a distro that puts them all together in an attractive and polished way.
Open file formats? There's nothing preventing you from backing up your music to plain old MP3, and your photos are still JPEGS. There's also nothing preventing someone from using non-Apple software. The only DRM you have to use with Apple is the DRM that protects the OS, and that's nowhere near as harmful as Microsoft's WGA malware.
Apple is skyrocketing now because they have the right mix of hardware and software to create a well-polished and functional user experience. The Ubuntu team is doing a great job of moving Ubuntu in the right direction, and each new release makes progress.
What's important to note is that competition makes everyone stronger. Ubuntu is trying to play catch-up with OS X. Apple is using some great open-source technologies. Apple probably isn't worried about a handful of geeks, but if it inspires Apple to be more open and Ubuntu to be more polished we all win.
(As a side note I currently develop for Ubuntu by running it under Parallels on OS X - it it's really quite responsive. The reason why I'm investing so much in Apple hardware is because I can run Windows, Ubuntu, Solaris, or damn near any x86 OS on the same hardware with relative ease. Virtualization is a killer app for Apple right now, and Parallels was worth every cent.)
Re:I switched as well (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't the ability to switch great? (Score:1, Insightful)
This quality of choice of options didn't exist a few years ago.
Re:Switching from Ubuntu to OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I tried to switch, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mac nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't 1995 anymore. Mac OS X has changed Apple's demographics quite substantially. Most computer geeks wouldn't touch the classic Mac OS with a 10 foot pole. Now half of the CS professors and students that I know own a Mac, solely because of OS X.
(Spoken by a soon-to-be MacBook user currently using FreeBSD)
Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro! (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh and photoshop runs under wine. So if you have to run that piece of software you stole you can.
Re:I tried to switch, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Editing your x config file was inexcusably stupid and lazy back in 1997. The fact that you still have to do this with any Linux distribution today appears to be evidence that Linux isn't every going to make it to the mainstream.
So why waste your time?
The yuppies are coming (Score:5, Insightful)
What's really happening is that Mac "nerds" are becoming versed enough in Unixisms because of OS X that they can take a walk on the wild side with Linux and not get completely freaked out. They have just enough street smarts to take a walk through the OS inner city with the tough nerds, and not get shot or beat up. And they've discovered that, hey, wow there's a lot of cool shit happening on the mean streets of Linuxville.
But what they don't know is that downtown Linuxville hasn't been a rough a place for a few years now. It still clings to its tough reputation, but it's all college kids and coffee bars now. The place is gentrifying, and has a bit of that yuppie stench to it these days. It's not yet all Wonderbread and Wal-mart, like Windowsland, up the highway, but the Windowsland folks are moving in, and it's starting to get that feel.
The old-timers who gave Linux the frightening reputation that it carries, have long since settled down, had kids, and moved out to the leafy lanes and plush lawns of Mactown, to get away from the plastic Windowsland people. As a result, the Mactown folks have realized those Linux guys aren't so scary after all, beards and sandles notwithstanding. Maybe, some of the Mactown folks think, we could get a condo in Linuxville, and try some of that inner city living. Just on weekends for a start.
So they get a luxury condo in Linuxville, right on Ubuntu Street, which was built by a big-name property developer who saw that all the starving artists were living in the area, building cool lofts and studios from the abandoned tenements and factories of old Unixville. So he bottled up that artsy mojo and built a condo development with new appliances, and hardwood floors, and put in a Starbucks on the ground floor, and marketed it heavily to Mactown and Windowsland people looking for a change. Come to Linuxville! Not as scary as you think! But every bit as edgy! Now with taskbars! Sometimes you get contemptuous looks from the mean looking men who still hang out on Slackware Road, but it's best not to go down there if you can help it. If you can avoid them (and ignore the snotty punks on Gentoo Avenue), then it's all terrifically edgy and artsy, and just so-o-o-o nerdy cool in that certain je-ne-sais-quoi kind of way. It feels like they're right on the cutting edge, where the culture is created, where everything happens, just like they read in Wired Magazine in 1996.
Re:I switched as well (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on, give me better reasons to choose Linux over OS X.
Re:Apple has it coming (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Give me a break... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:give ME a break too (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I switched as well (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should there be one tool that does everything ?
Do you actually need your box to do something else while you play a game ? Does it matter that you have to wait 90 seconds for the machine to shutdown and reboot ?
I've used Linux or some sort of Unix as my main system for more than 10 years and I've always kept a small Windows partition exclusively for games. To me it's exactly as if I'd bought a console. Yet I don't see people asking all the time "I can't stand having to start my Xbox/Playstation/whatever to play a game, how can I do it in Ubuntu/Mandrake/Debian..."
Do you really need to make your life more complicated ?
Re:What's so great about Ubuntu? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think there is anything magical about Ubuntu or that it is vastly better than all the others. I think it is more a case of being the right distro at the right time. Linux distros had been evolving in this direction for a long time.
I helped a neighbor of mine install Ubuntu on an older laptop last week. The biggest problem we had was that I burned the wrong cd. I first tried their "desktop" cd which they said was the one most people will want. But it boots into X and has a graphical installer and it ground to a halt on the laptop due to memory issues. I then gave him a copy of the "alternate" cd which has the old fashioned text mode installer and my neighbor was able to install it himself.
Even the wireless card was properly detected and configured.
Re:Since when? (Score:3, Insightful)
Photography. The automobile. Telephones. Radio. Hi-fidelity stereo. Television. Microcomputers. Networked computing. The Internet. This stuff doesn't just spring out of the ground to become normal parts of mainstream culture. There's always early adopters - usually nerds to some degree or another. And very often these guys are toying with budding technology well before anyone has found a useful purpose for it.
Yes, not every example of early-adopter focus ends up the "winning" technology in any given market. But that's the nature of the technology business. That doesn't mean the dominent tech wasn't in some nerd's basement, garage, work shed, or closet first. It usually was... and well before any main-stream bystander would make heads or tails over why the nerd in question would bother.
Along those lines... yes, nerds have been playing with Linux for a while now. Linux is becoming more and more commonplace whether you want to admit it or not. But don't expect it to just suddenly pop up out of the ground and be mainstream. Technology markets just don't work that way. It just appears that way to the mainstream consumer who doesn't get wind of new technology until well after it has been packaged for mass consumption and sprung on its audience in a marketing blitz.
Re:Oh yeah they're fleeing Mac now! (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally use Ubuntu (Dapper right now). I haven't had any problems with any of the four laptops and four or five PCs that I have set this OS up under, with the exception of a well known bug in the Xorg synaptics touchpad driver. It seems as though any time any discussion regarding Linux (in this case Ubuntu in particular) and its ability to perform on the desktop, people either say "it didn't work in an isolated incident, so it must be junk" or the old "Linux is fine in the server room, but leave the desktop to the real OSes" meme. I haven't had to use OS X or Windows anything in a number of years, and don't miss a thing. For every example of bad UI design, bad configuration and bad application concept that comes up for Linux apps, several are also present in Windows and Mac applications, but for some reason Linux apps are lambasted for every problem, no matter how small ...
Apple is the "Madonna" of computing. It keeps reinventing itself every time that people think its dead. Of course, they aren't really making the majority of their money from software anymore, people think they are making more money from those cute little iDoohickeys now. I never much cared for the Macintosh line of computers ; they seem more toys than anything, but that's just one person's opinion.
(This is, by the way, not to detract from putting idiots who keep telling everyone how much Linux or Ubuntu or whatever is going to pwn every other OS in their place. That is the kind of thing that gives OSS advocates a bad name.)
Re:Mac nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
The tagging system (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Windows + Ubuntu + VMWare (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Since when? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro! (Score:3, Insightful)
Good point. But to be fair lets look at the situation with ubuntu 6 years ago, when windows 2000 was new, and see how well it fared with drivers back then... oh... wait... nevermind.
No matter which distro that did exist you choose, installing Linux 6 years ago wasn't a cakewalk. And Windows 2000 was actually pretty good for its time.
But if you are going to compare a new ubuntu install to Windows, its only fair to at least compare the install to Windows XP SP2. Anything less is dishonest.
Why it matters (Score:1, Insightful)
Most good painters don't use just any old brand of paints and brushes. Most good musicians don't play on second-rate hand-me-down instruments. Why should digital folks use third-rate software?
Until... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's why Ubuntu and any other Linux distribution is inferior to my OSX install:
Now Cory can moan all he wants about DRM and his precious EFF but iTunes works well for me. I don't mind paying $10 for an album I would otherwise pay $15 at a store to purchase. I don't mind being restricted to sharing it among 5 friends or only playing it on an iPod. I didn't by universal rights to the music. I bought it for reasonable personal use. I understood that when I bought it. I didn't buy it and expect my computer to work differently than anyone else's computer.
Contrary to popular belief, the personal decisions these pundits make really may not matter one ounce to most of us.
Re:Until... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Ubuntu's GNOME desktop is extremely cohesive in both look and behavior. OS X probably still has an edge in integration, but because of Apple's constant theme-changing, GNOME probably has an edge in visual consistency. Of course, both suffer when running non-native apps, but I can't say Matlab on OS X looks any less hideous than Matlab in GNOME.
2) You're not supposed to install packages. You're supposed to use the repository. Just like OS X's installation method is different from Windows's, Ubuntu's is different from both.
3) Ubuntu comes with binary packages of pretty much everything. I haven't had to compile anything in Ubuntu that I haven't also had to compile in OS X (namely, research projects like LLVM or my own code).
I'm typing this from a Macbook, btw. I use both OS X and Ubuntu all the time, and while I still prefer OS X for some reasons (better Lisp compilers, better composited desktop), the two are definitely in the same league.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The tagging system (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time (Score:3, Insightful)
The most valuable thing a commercial project can have is users. The most valuable thing an opensource project can have is a good leader. And by that I mean someone who knows what the software should do, and who knows how to listen to users telling her how it should do it, and then say no to developers who fail to do what the users want (that is also in scope/line with the project).
Most developers suck at coding.
Most developers that don't suck at coding suck at UI (I claim to fall into this camp).
The developer that is good at both is a rare find. But you really just need someone at the top who can direct decent coders to do the right thing - and that person does NOT need to be a coder.
Re:Apple won't miss 'em (Score:3, Insightful)
The Apple price premium was not such a big deal when I expected to get five years of use out of a machine. But spreading that extra cash out over just a year and a half makes the whole equation look way less appealing to me. It's too bad I find windows so damn annoying, or else I'd be able to leave Apple behind and not look back. Right now I can't figure out what I want to do.
Re:Apple won't miss 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
- Beige G3 tower, 300MHz, came with 64 MB of RAM (now has 448 MB), 4GB SCSI HDD (now has that and a 20GB IDE) and extra video card (removed and replaced with a Voodoo3). I received the system via UPS on August 14, 1998. It never gave me a problem outside of the occasional Unreal Tournament crash during reads to the SCSI card and the HD that was on that bus. It runs 10.2.8 and is still in perfect working condition, though a bit underpowered for any real use.
- Colorsync 17 CRT, a Sony product (has a Trinitron tube complete with bracing wires). Received via UPS on August 14, 1998. Died (not completely, but to blinky to the point of uselessness) sometime in 2001. Still powers on, but goes wonky within minutes. Usable as a head for a normally headless server, as long as it can connect to a fricking old-school Apple Display Connection (not the same as the all-in-one ADC power/USB/video plug. It's older and is really just VGA with a non-HD plug.). I keep it around because it's cheaper to store it than to pay for CRT disposal.
- Powerbook G3 (Bronze Keyboard), a.k.a. "1999" or "Lombard". Has been upgraded to 320MB RAM and 10GB HDD by myself. It was refurbished when I bought it, so it had passed QA twice. I received it in the early spring of 2000. Upgrades were done in 2001. There was a power adapter recall, but no further problems. The battery died in late 2005. It still works, though it relies on the replacement power adapters (the same yo-yo ones as the first iBooks). Got kinda hot if you sat it on a non-heat-conductive surface (worse than a MacBook Pro). Seemed to have a huge metal plate in the bottom of it as a heat-spreader.
- iPod, 4th generation (click wheel), 40GB. Purchased in July 2004. Has had a few HD corruption issues (mostly in FAT32 mode, and nothing a reformat couldn't fix), has a few scratches from being dropped (carpet, concrete, and tile). Still works beautifully and still holds a 10-hour charge.
- Mac Mini, 1.42GHz G4 "loaded" configuration. First generation. Purchased in April 2005. Serves as a HD-PVR (in concert with an EyeTV 500). Runs 24/7 in an air-conditioned environment. No problems.
- Mac Mini, 1.33GHz G4 (speed-bumped "1.25GHz") "cheap" configuration. First generation. Purchased October 7, 2005. Serves as a light-duty desktop and will soon be a PostgreSQL and Apache server for my home-use web-apps. Runs 24/7 in an air-conditioned environment. No problems.
- MacBook Pro, 15", 2.16GHz, 1GB RAM, 100GB HDD. Purchased June 2006 (about 4 weeks ago). Gets kinda hot, but not too hot to put on your lap, even running iTunes and Eclipse and 10 other smaller apps simultaneously. No physical defects apparent yet (other than the standard penchant every keyboard has for attracting a ring of solidified skin oils on the "e", "i", "o", "return", and "delete" keys - ugh). No overheating problems, especially after the firmware flash that was ready shortly after first boot. I've seen some WiFi connection weirdness, but only when at the far reaches of a hotspot. Apparently, the swelling battery problem requires a few months of fermentation. I'm hoping mine is a "rev B" or something and avoids this problem.
Now, I don't doubt you've had some issues with your Apple hardware, but I don't believe for a second that it's overly widespread (at least any more than any other manufacturer), or that there is a higher-than-normal percentage of bad Apples (har har). To point out the obvious, you've purchased several "first-generation" and "low-end" Apple products, which do have higher failure rates than the "revision" and "high-end" products. The iBook is low-end, the iPod is perpetually "first-generation" because they keep overhauling it (retarded product strategy, btw), and the Mighty Mouse is seriously first-gen (and won't be 2nd-gen for a long time). When they start including the Mighty Mouse with the pro-line "high-end" desktops, then it will have graduated to 2nd-generation.
Re:Mac nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
But you know, whatever.
Re:Why it matters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mac nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
1.) Tell him that he needs to learn to use Google.
2.) Accuse him of being a troll.
3.) Construe his comment to "You can't play games on Linux".
4.) Assert that nobody cares about his game tastes (without a mention of a single game from him).
5.) And finally tell him to stop bleating.
Does it hurt that much to be corrected?
Caught a break (Score:2, Insightful)
The hardware is pretty, the software polished and smooth but your selling your soul to get it and all is not trouble free. For these two people it became more than they were willing to bear so they made a trade to an operating system while lacking some of the polish allows them to regain control over their machines and their data. The hardware happens to be commonly available and devoid of any Apple Tax.
This is about having choice and voting with your dollars. They don't like the direction Apple has taken. An even greater number doesn't like the path that Microsoft has taken either. Those who are bothered enough to do something about it, and have the means and ability may well choose what is for them, the better alternative.
That these two guys were dyed in the wool Mac types is the most troubling aspect to the fan boys and the evangalists. For them to attempt to downplay, discredit or ridicule these two is really just living in denial. This same scene plays out on the Microsoft side as well as both of these companies are all about lock in. Some people don't want to be locked in. Simple as that.
I'm old school and I sure as hell don't want to be locked in either. Truth be told, getting locked in is for the rubes as long a choice exists. Microsoft versus Apple is not much of a choice it turns out.
As I sit here and type this I realize that half the applications I actually use are OSS. Firefox, Thunderbird, Putty etc. I can easily use Koffice or Open Office instead of MS product for what I do. Most of the programs I take for granted have their equivalents in any modern OS. Not an issue. It is possible I will miss a particular application or how a specific feature of the desktop works and so on, but interestingly enough when I go software shopping I prefer OSS. I don't instantly feel OSS is out to screw me like either Apple or MS products do. Switching to a Linux based OS fulltime would not be difficult. Peace of mind is worth something, and to me not feeding either of these bitches is worth even more.
And to a few of these posters
Re:I switched as well (Score:3, Insightful)
Reason for switching doesn't make sense (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been thinking about Pilgrim's reason for switching, and for the love of God I can't figure it out. Basically, his argument is that he wants to get away from proprietary formats. I understand that. I want that too. And I have it for most formats. I'm using OpenOffice, my mail is stored in mbox files, my images are PNGs, my music is AAC (not exactly open, but a standard).
And I'm using a Mac.
There's a problem, though: if I make a movie, it's locked in iMovie's format. If I burn a DVD, it's locked in iDVD's format. If I make music, it's in Garage Band's proprietary format. If I buy music, it's DRM'd. What to do? Switch to Ubuntu?
Guess what, I do have an Ubuntu box in my living room. Problem is: There's no iMovie for Ubuntu. There's no iDVD for Ubuntu. There's no Garage Band for Ubuntu. You can't buy music from major labels on Ubuntu unless you use questionable russian sites. Sure, I could switch to Ubuntu. That would get rid of the remaining proprietary formats. It would do that because it would get rid of my ability to make movies, DVDs and sound.
Yes, there are appliations which run on Ubuntu which allow you to do that stuff. No, you can't compare them to Apple's stuff. I know it because I've tried. Pilgrim himself says the same.
Re:Mac nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm supposed to be impressed by 2001? Dude, I'm typing this on a 1999-vintage PC running Windows 98. Still working just fine for general office work. I somehow think you've got a while to go before your machines have been going "five times as long" as this one, and it's far from the oldest PC I know that's still in regular use.
My own daily-use PC is arguably even older, in fact. It depends on how you measure the age of a computer. Some components of my own PC, like the keyboard, date back to the early 90s; others, like the motherboard and CPU, are about 2002 vintage; the monitor is only a couple of years old, and the memory was just replaced yesterday. See, it's this concept called "upgradability", which I understand never really caught on in the Apple world...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
No where near the same class (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apple has it coming (Score:3, Insightful)
If I cmd-tab to an app, I may not know what/which of it's windows I want. So it shows them all to me.
If I select a window, instead, I don't want all 30 to pop up in front of me. I've told it that I want a window, and which one I want. So give it to me.
Atleast, that's my understanding of the OSX 10.1-4 Finder window behavior.
Re:Mac nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
This cracks me up. I've used, oh, pretty darn near every UNIX since V7 and you know what? Stuff moves around, names change, even amongst the classic UNIXen. OSX is way less weird than AIX, for instance. And any loss in terms of filesystem reorganization is more than made up for by excellent GUI tools.
I think the reason you see a lot of geeks not using Macs is that they can get more or less the same thing using a dirt-cheap laptop and Linux and there is a lot of do-it-yourself ethos amongst geeks. If you're doing development work or just using it for Internet access there's little difference between that and a Mac, and you have a lot greater choice of hardware -- especially at lower price points. The differences in usability and ease of administration are not that material to a geek.
On the other hand there are benefits to using OSX over Linux, amongst them the fact that you just unpack it and it works (some geeks have less free time than others), and of course there is a lot of commercial software for OSX. I know a lot of people poo-poo about this benefit, and I realize the free stuff is often good and sometimes excellent, but let me tell you there is a reason I was willing to fork over $600ish for Photoshop rather than using The Gimp and even if the Mac is a backwater to Windows in the gaming world it's still head and shoulders better than Linux. I could go on, but I think you get the point.
Now, there are still lots of times when I would prefer Linux over OSX (or, if I'm on the desktop, Linux over Windows) but luckily VM technology lets me run both at the same time. And if I'm using Windows perhaps the coolest thing is that builds, cvs checkouts, and source tree greps are much faster in Linux in a VM than they are under native Windows. Nice.
YMMV, of course, but amongst the geeks I know it's pretty common to see them run a mix of hardware and OSs and OSX certainly improved the standing of Macs in that community. They were rarer than hen's teeth back on OS9, today they have good representation, far better than what you'd expect from the couple-percent market share Apple holds overall.
Re:Mac nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
I will grant that the organization /Library is like nothing else I've seen, but AIX's library system at least asunique. OSX has its quirks, but so does every UNIX I've ever used and for the most part you don't even have to think about the stuff that differs from BSD because it's hidden behind an excellent GUI system (kind of like IBM hiding all their weirdness behind SMIT, except that SMIT sucks).
YMMV, and apparently does, but I don't see people skipping OSX on account of it not being UNIXy enough. No, the UNIXy nature attracted a lot of people, including myself. Rather, I see them skipping it primarily because they think the hardware is too expensive.
Re:Mac nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
The point remains: OSX is not wildly different from the UNIX norm these days; other than the Mac stuff laying on top it's actually fairly close to the way BSD was maybe a decade ago. Same shells, similar directory layout, many of the same configuration files. I dropped right into tcsh (ahh tcsh!) and had no trouble finding my way around and I have a hard time believing many UNIX diehards would either, except maybe people who are unfamiliar with BSD. As such it seems unlikely to me that very many people would skip it purely because of these things.
But the cost of the systems, well, that is a very commonly cited reason for not buying Macs. A number of people on this thread said exactly that. We could of course debate that, too; it's a lot less true than many people believe. But it makes no difference, the perception is enough to keep people away.
As for myself, I buy what works best for the task at hand. I'm fond of Mac hardware when it makes sense (like wonderfully designed laptops and high-end systems for graphic work) and I buy cheap PC stuff when it doesn't (especially servers). FreeBSD, Linux, OSX ... it's all good, and you have no idea how satisfying it is to see UNIX make its way into consumer products.
Re:unlikely (Score:3, Insightful)
PLUS I have to go download drivers or pop in a couple of driver CDs.
Ubuntu is EASIER to use as far as getting common media formats and all the drivers working. You can complain that some hardware doesn't HAVE drivers (wireless cards, mostly), but hardware that DOES work (almost everything) works easier.
Downloading a single GUI program and running it, checking the boxes (out of less than ten choices) for the things that you want to install (one for DVD playback, one for proprietary media formats, one for the official ATI or Nvidia drivers [one check box, you don't even have to know which one you have!], etc.) is easier than popping CDs in and out and visiting several websites to reach the same level in Windows.