[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
Guess what? I'm commenting. Inline. I'm not actually putting any money it, but I *think* I may have at least one trick up my sleeve that would help even the mighty bad apple.
On 11 May, 2013, at 4:59 am, bad apple wrote:
like this. For example, did you know that as of OS X 10.8, there is an option - checked by default - in the security section of the system preferences that disallows the installation of ANY application notdigitally signed by an approved Apple Developers key? (that's $99 to yousonny.) In practice, this means that any app not served up via Apple's delivery mechanism (Mac App Store) will refuse to install, unless youventure into the system preferences and disable it, ignoring the massivedire warnings of imminent death by hackers - I'm only slightly exaggerating here - this heinous act of free-thinking will throw up. This feature is called Gatekeeper and is admittedly currently probably responsible for keeping a lot of unskilled users out of at least some forms of trouble: but for all you freedom loving hippies and power users, this probably should serve as a warning for the sort ofexperience you can expect in Mac OS world. Tightly curated, relentlesslymonetized, aggressively controlled. It's not called the walled garden for nothing: comparatively, Windows is a free-wheeling anarchistic paradise, as insane as that might sound.
This is exactly why my next main machine will not be a Mac, for the first time since 1988. I stopped upgrading the OS after 10.5 (Leopard) when this stuff started coming in.
Other major unpleasantness, in no particular order:
6: Quicktime. Apple still bundle the limited shitware - the proper version costs. Lame.
Up to at least Leopard, you could access all the crippled features via trivial AppleScript.
7: Support period. Apple abandon software with great vigour. If youdon't have the current or previous version, you're effectively unsupported.
Oh, HyperCard. Oh, Emailer. Shall we ever see your like again?
9: So called "umbrella effect" - you won't end up buying more Apple kitbecause you want to, but because it's the only stuff that will f*cking interoperate properly (by design).
Heinous enough, but at least they keep their end of the deal: their stuff *lasts* forever.
11: Safari. Making Internet Explorer look good since... well, forever basically.
LOL. Of course as a (wannabe) alpha geek, I use only Conkeror (Firefox as if redesigned by a Lispnik) on all platforms.
12: Xcode (developer framework, think Visual Studio/Eclipse, but for Mac/iOS). I have, through a customer, a very expensive ADC (AppleDeveloper) license so I get the latest versions. You don't, so you willhave to make do with the crumbs they throw you. Added fun: GCC is a clusterf*ck on Mac 50/50. Good luck compiling anything non-trivial without major headaches.
I notice MacPorts has moved more and more away from gcc to clang recently.
13: Complexity. Setting many Apple-specific options in a terminal is bewildering, and I know what I'm doing. Makes even Windows PowerShell seem terse by comparison, and the auto-complete isn't nearly as good.
Just about the only thing that didn't ring bells. Is `defaults' that much weirder than gconf? I'd say the Mac has a slight advantage in the universality of plist files for config; not that it's a particularly good choice, but it is used by everything.
Adobe has it's own independent updater so you fire that off with no problem
Only it's downloading Flash. It's crashy-buggy. Just like the last update. Not Apple's fault, but God it's annoying.
The terminal looks ugly as hell,
Part of my standard Mac setup is to install iTerm2 ASAP. Still not perfect but better.
Too late, you realise that ssh -X and ssh -Y work strangely in Mac land,
Not that strangely, since Macs don't have X to forward (by default) but it is a big gotcha for anyone coming from anywhere else in unix- land. Apple really don't like X11 so they discourage users from installing it as much as they can.
and that X wasn't included as an optional extra during the install phase
Again, stopping around 10.6
Get X working, realise that despite promises that auto-launching when needed is 'fixed' in current Mac OS X, it doesn't actually work very well.
I just never stopped pre-launching X. It's always running. One way around the problem.
Fortunately, at this point, the £2000 MacBook has been runningflat out for about 10 hours and it's heat signature is now visible from space - eschewing noisy fans and efficient cooling mechanisms (hey, thehipster tossers who actually buy these things can't stand actualengineering, it just has to look good and efficiency be damned) for thesleek look the poor thing has just about melted through your desk atthis point and inevitably, it's massive kernel panic time. It looks likethis, for the uninitiated: http://www.ourhangout.net/archives/Kernel_Panic-1p0f.png
While writing this on my shiny 17" MacBook Pro, the machine stopped. Not hung, not crashed, just stopped, as if it had never heard of the mains and fully-charged battery. Blank screen, no backlight for screen or keyboard, no throbbing LED in the lid latch, nothing.
Kudos to Mail.app, though: on reboot, the half-written mail was there in Drafts.
* End on a good note: there was an Italian cafe around the corner that I basically lived in (wifi + ssh ftw). The (actually Italian) waitress wasso beautiful it hurt. I live with her now :]
You lucky, lucky bastard. -- Phil Hudson http://hudson-it.no-ip.biz @UWascalWabbit PGP/GnuPG ID: 0x887DCA63 -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq