Posted Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 4:54 pm under companies, tech.

Final straws for Mac OS X

I’ve had it with Mac OS X.

I’m going to install Linux on my MacBook Pro laptop in March once I’m back from ETech.

I’ve been thinking about this for months. There are just so many things I don’t like about Mac OS X.


Yes, it’s beautiful, and there are certainly things I do like (e.g., iCal). But I don’t like:

  • Waiting forever when I do a rm on a big tree
  • Sitting wondering what’s going on when I go back to a Terminal window and it’s unresponsive for 15 seconds
  • Weird stuff like this
  • Case insensitive file names (see above problem)
  • Having applications often freeze and crash. E.g. emacs, which basically never crashes under Linux

I could go on. I will go on.

I don’t like it when the machine freezes, and that happens too often with Mac OS X. I used Linux for years and almost never had a machine lock up on me. With Mac OS X I find myself doing a hard reset about once a month. That’s way too flaky for my liking.

Plus, I do not agree to trade a snappy OS experience for eye candy. I’ll take both if I can have them, but if it’s a choice then I’ll go back to X windows and Linux desktops and fonts and printer problems and so on – all of which are probably even better than they already were a few years back.

This machine froze on me 2 days ago and I thought “Right. That’s it.” When I rebooted, it was in a weird magnifying glass mode, in which the desktop was slightly magnified and moved around disconcertingly whenever I moved the mouse. Rebooting didn’t help. Estéve correctly suggested that I somehow had magnification on. But, how? WTF is going on?

And, I am not a fan of Apple.

In just the last two days, we have news that 1. Apple crippled its DTrace port so you can’t trace iTunes, and 2. Apple QuickTime DRM Disables Video Editing Apps so that Adobe’s After Effects video editing software no longer works after a QuickTime update.

It’s one thing to use UNIX, which I have loved for over 25 years, but it’s another thing completely to be in the hands of a vendor who (regularly) does things like this while “upgrading” other components of your system.

Who wants to put up with that shit?

And don’t even get me started on the iPhone, which is a lovely and groundbreaking device, but one that I would never ever buy due to Apple’s actions.

I’m out of here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 4:54 pm and is filed under companies, tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  • http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/ AJ Cann

    Before you bail, buy more RAM, dude.

  • http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/ AJ Cann

    Before you bail, buy more RAM, dude.

  • http://www.tekNico.net/ teknico

    I applaud you.

    I’ve been using Linux on my desktop since 2000, all the time. It’s not been easy, and it’s still not as easy as it should be. But some discomfort is a fair price to pay for not being under the heel of some fancy schmuck.

    Welcome back.

  • http://www.tekNico.net/ teknico

    I applaud you.

    I’ve been using Linux on my desktop since 2000, all the time. It’s not been easy, and it’s still not as easy as it should be. But some discomfort is a fair price to pay for not being under the heel of some fancy schmuck.

    Welcome back.

  • http://jon.es/ terry

    AJ – it’s already fully loaded!

    teknico – thanks (and hi!)

  • http://jon.es terry

    AJ – it’s already fully loaded!

    teknico – thanks (and hi!)

  • Bar

    Too bad. No Aperture for you.
    On the other hand, I can’t help but think well upon your refusal to accept eye-candy over reliability.

  • Bar

    Too bad. No Aperture for you.
    On the other hand, I can’t help but think well upon your refusal to accept eye-candy over reliability.

  • pr0gg3d

    Perhaps you have choosed to format filesystem as HFS+ case insensitive.

    On my machine this works:

    myMachine:~ test$ touch fileTest
    myMachine:~ test$ cat filetest
    cat: filetest: No such file or directory
    myMachine:~ test$ cat FILETEST
    cat: FILETEST: No such file or directory
    myMachine:~ test$ cat fileTest
    myMachine:~ test$

  • pr0gg3d

    Perhaps you have choosed to format filesystem as HFS+ case insensitive.

    On my machine this works:

    myMachine:~ test$ touch fileTest
    myMachine:~ test$ cat filetest
    cat: filetest: No such file or directory
    myMachine:~ test$ cat FILETEST
    cat: FILETEST: No such file or directory
    myMachine:~ test$ cat fileTest
    myMachine:~ test$

  • http://jon.es/ terry

    I get

    $ touch fileTest
    $ cat filetest
    $ cat FILETEST
    $ cat fileTest

    I’m just using the machine as it came. I didn’t create the filesystems. But I did do a smart install from a PowerBook laptop. Maybe that decided what sort of filesystem to build me. In any case, it’s case insensitive.

  • http://jon.es terry

    I get

    $ touch fileTest
$ cat filetest
$ cat FILETEST
$ cat fileTest

    I’m just using the machine as it came. I didn’t create the filesystems. But I did do a smart install from a PowerBook laptop. Maybe that decided what sort of filesystem to build me. In any case, it’s case insensitive.

  • Esteve

    Congratulations man, you’re now free again :-) And, if you really need eye candy, there’s Compiz: http://youtube.com/results?search_query=compiz&search=Search

    PS: it’s Esteve, not Estéve

  • Esteve

    Congratulations man, you’re now free again :-) And, if you really need eye candy, there’s Compiz: http://youtube.com/results?search_query=compiz&search=Search

    PS: it’s Esteve, not Estéve