Well, I'll be damned. Thanks for the correction.

Yup. Lucida was chosen as OS X's previous system font for a reason, because design mattered. Helvetica was chosen for iOS's system font for a reason, because design mattered. Helvetica was forced into OS X because platform consistency which sounds nice, but its absence (in terms of typography) was never really lacking before, because both system fonts were chosen in a design process to suit the needs of their respective platforms.

You're older than you've ever been. ...

And now you're even older.

Do you program in the default system font? How do you even set up an editor or IDE to inherit the default system font?

I'm not aware of any claims that ClearType is fuzzy, which, while a fuzzy term, is clear in its intention. If anything, complaints about ClearType tend to be the opposite: its forced conformance to pixel boundaries (in order to avoid fuzziness) distorts the shape of letters (particularly at a small size), thus impairing legibility.

How do you cite "general knowledge"? Here, I'll give it a go:

> It's general knowledge in typography that Helvetica is the most legible typeface. [1]

[1] Some shit I might have made up, or heard from someone.

How?

Not sure whether you mean 10.6 or Mountain Lion (which is 10.8; the marketing names are stupid and confusing, so the mistake is understandable). Presumably you mean 10.6 (which is Snow Leopard) because you mention PPC—then again, you mention "buggy", a descriptor which I've seen used less for 10.6 than for any other version, and it has a rather large user base for its age because it has been so stable—but I'll address both.

If you mean Mountain Lion, nearly all of the supported systems are also supported by Yosemite (10.10). If you mean 10.6 (Snow Leopard), this is a system that was released over five years ago. In either case, Yosemite supports machines released over seven years ago. Apple announced the PowerPC-Intel transition over nine years ago, and completed it over eight years ago.

In the past, Apple has been overly aggressive in deprecating aging hardware; at times it did genuinely feel like a "fuck you". If anything, they've become more conservative in this regard than any time I can remember (and I remember well back into the PowerPC days before Steve Jobs returned). It hardly feels like a "fuck you" that with a 2007 iMac or MacBook Pro, I could have run 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9 and 10.10 (that is, literally every major release of OS X on Intel), or that the price to upgrade rapidly decreased to zero.

That "most recent" comment is telling. When exactly was it?

Since the suggested alternative was to use the first letter from each word in the phrase, it's only more likely if the people maintaining the dictionary are idiots. Anyone actually targeting pass phrases with a dictionary would maintain a dictionary of the abbreviated versions as well, because they're likely to be aware of dumb debates like this.

Well, it's shorter anyway. And only technically: it is shorter according to a unit of measurement that has almost no meaning to most people.

If I adopted your approach, until I develop muscle memory for entering the password—and promptly forget its origin and any mnemonic value it might have had—I would be trying to remember which permutation I used. Was it

There are better routes than "Correct Horse Battery Staple"
There is a better route than "Correct Horse Battery Staple"
There are better ways than "Correct Horse Battery Staple"
There is a better way than "Correct Horse Battery Staple"
This is a better approach than "Correct Horse Battery Staple"
This is a better approach than "Correct Horse Battery Staple"
What the fuck was my "Correct Horse Battery Staple" password anyway?
Fuck, now I'm locked out and I'll never remember the fucking password.
Fuck it, reset password back to password12.

The reason Correct Horse Battery Staple works is because, in terms of memory and recall, it's much much shorter. It's only four things.

If you think a client-side script is going to protect you from an unreasonably large HTTP request body, I really hope you aren't developing websites that I use.

Only after a radical redistribution of wealth. The vast majority of people do not actually have the means to enjoy what free time they do have without first exchanging the rest of their time for wages. Simply automating people out of their jobs doesn't resolve that, it exacerbates it.

That's fine. You should use the tool you prefer! My preference is different. But this is one area that choice is good. The biggest challenge is interoperability, but even that has a pretty good story these days.

For certain values of fixed. It's heaps better than it used to be— each display is its own universe, fully configurable as a single-display was before —but it comes with one caveat: you can't span a window across two displays.

If you mean keyboard shortcuts for Fullscreen and Zoom, the former has always had a shortcut and the latter can be trivially assigned system-wide. If you mean something more involved (like Windows Snap, various window management techniques of that sort), there are tools available but they come from third parties with various levels of cost and quality.

There's not really a lot to like, it's pretty much a minimalist task list. That said, there are tools for enhancing it as well. I've chosen one (HyperDock) that gives it similar behavior to e.g. the Windows 7 Taskbar, with window thumbnails and simple management.

--

To be clear, I discussed a couple places where I've spent money to fill gaps that OS X can't fill on its own. I realize this is part of everyone's cost-benefit analysis when choosing a platform. I am not advocating choosing a deficient OS and throwing money at fixing it. I'm actually not advocating anything, other than choosing the platform that most fits what you want to do, particularly in a professional setting.

There's a number of reasons, despite some small lack of features, that OS X works better for me. I'd be happy to share, but I don't want this to turn into a pissing contest like every inter-platform discussion tends to be. If you're genuinely curious, I'll oblige.

Or you use it for work and the cost for a tool you feel comfortable with (not an extra grand, but yes a premium) outweighs the cost of fighting with your tools.

Portable to what?