I’ve been using Mac OS X alongside Debian since 2007 now, and I think I have a fairly good picture of how things work in both operating systems. In the end, the only feeling I got of Mac OS X is as if I were playing with Linux’ retarded little brother. Here are a few reasons why.
Mac fans, don’t hate me yet, I’ll be doing a reverse post in the next few days so stay tuned and then comment - I’d especially like to hear where I got it wrong!
Software Installation
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the most common installation methods on the Mac - there are two ways. Either you get an archive and you drag and drop the file onto your hard disk. The other way is an .exe-like installation package. I’m sorry Mac guys, but having to do this instead of just clicking the desired software in Synaptic or a simple apt-get is not easier. It’s just illogical. Oh, and try finding the settings, if you want to clean them off the computer after you “easily” uninstalled the app (you drag it into the Trash bin). I swear, this stuff is a bigger mess than the Windows 98 registry.
File Management
Yeah, I had to find an external program to see hidden files. With the Mac, if you erase a file on your thumb drive, it creates a hidden Trash file on it, with the erased files in it… as if grandmother will be able to remember that each partition has its own Trash. Finder is the worst file manager ever. And Cover Flow is useless. Mac OS X is probably the only platform where you have to pay to get decent software for advanced file management. I admit Nautilus isn’t the most descriptive name for a file manager in the history of computing, but who names a file manager ‘Finder’? That’s like naming a web browser “Writer”. It’s confusing!
Themeing and Window Management
I know you could switch the theme in Tiger, but in Leopard you cannot. So maybe it looks great, but don’t you get tired of not having choice? By the way, I hate not being able to maximize my window - some of us don’t need it “maximized just enough to show all content” because we have a shiny, distracting wallpaper. And we all know you can theme the pants off any Linux distro running X. But the funniest thing is probably the fact that Leopard is the first version that has virtual desktops. Welcome to advanced window management! Maybe maximizing is planned for Snow Leopard?
It’s has no themeing capabilities whatsoever compared to Gnome.
Plus, I still haven’t figured out how to open two instances of a program from the Dock. If you have to search Google to find that out…
The terminal/console/text thingy
Whatever you call it, you must admit that by incorporating it into your everyday work and not hiding/crippling it like on Apple’s OS, the terminal increases your productivity. Sometimes it’s just faster to type a simple command than to abuse your left-click finger. The terminal is a powerful productivity tool and if Windows doesn’t hide the command line, Mac OS X shouldn’t hide theirs. If they like to copy Linux so much, why not copy the terminal?
Security
I heard on a podcast that there isa Remote Desktop Application that simply uses root access without your knowledge. What’s up with that? I suppose there is a multitude of other apps that do that too. I mean it’s not necessary to actually make the user aware that there is a root user, but at least make him enter his password. That’s why you ask him for it in the install, right? It also prevents viruses to take over a Unix-like machine.
And why use the computer user’s full name in iChat? Not safe.
In conclusion, it’s true that Mac OS X tries hard to make everything easier for the users, but some quirks are plain illogical - there are a lot of cases where security or system stability is sacrificed in order to hide some technical part of the system. Currently it works, but if they continue going in that direction, It’ll be Apple’s Vista. At grandma’s, it can’t beat a good Linux setup.
August 12th, 2008 at 16:51
[...] Apple news by Greg [...]
August 12th, 2008 at 17:31
The way file managers handle FTP and other connections. Nautilus makes it seem that the remote website is almost real - you can move around, download, upload, rename files just like you’d do them if they were on your own comp.
http://www.ubuntuproductivity.com/journal/ubuntu-vs-mac-os-scorecard/
August 12th, 2008 at 18:35
That’s a big harsh, comparing it to Win98…As for “maximizing”, that’s the way Mac does things, increasing the size to something that fits the contents of the window. The theming point is moot, as you’re actually paying Apple for their “visionary UI” (whether you believe in that or not, is another point)”With the Mac, if you erase a file on your thumb drive, it creates a hidden Trash file on it, with the erased files in it..” a lot of thumb drives do this, even if under Mac, Windows or Linux. The (often hidden) Trash folder serves a temporary storage….of sorts. The terminal point is up for personal choice. Some people just don’t feel comfortable using terminal, same way some people like pistachio ice cream and some like vanilla ice cream
August 12th, 2008 at 22:50
Those are all good points, except for the first one.
Its true that having a software repository is great, but trying to install software that isn’t as trivial. For example, installing VMWare is a tedious task, no where near the simplicity of installing it on a Mac or Windows.
August 12th, 2008 at 23:53
Your example of theming is some different GNOME colours? Try KDE for theming perhaps. In fact, try KDE for productivity, it lets you do stuff rather than telling you what you’ll do (isn’t that so Windows-ish? and Apple and Gnome users like that??)
August 12th, 2008 at 23:56
If what you saying is true (why wouldn’t it be?) then I don’t know why people like it that much.
I prefer a package manager linked to some good repo’s to install stuff, but I could life with the drag to applications thing.
Having to use third party (non free) to see hidden files.
For crying out loud. For that reason alone I wouldn’t use osx.
Sure the theme looks nice, but I tried a replica on Ubuntu once (looked exactly like it) and got tired of the look in a week. Especially the dock would get on my nerves.
But the biggest shock for me is that applications can have root access without you having to enter your password.
This is mind boggling. That means OSX is a really, really, really unsecure OS. They now have a bigger market share than ever (in the US), so the spyware/virus horror stories on OSX will be common place in a few years.
August 13th, 2008 at 00:00
lefty.crupps:
Not the old gnome vs kde stuff again.
I agree the different metacity colours is a bad example use here, but you know you can theme gnome much more.
Sure kde has more options, but at the expense of user friendlyness.
The “try kde for productivy” is not valid. You work the fastest with the DE or WM you know best.
I use fluxbox and because of various reasons, this helps me get stuff done the fastest.
August 13th, 2008 at 00:17
@Bill - A replica of the theme is nothing without the bar. Often imitated…but it’s not the same. Hate it or love it…the closest thing that comes to it is a theme hack which moves the toolbar up there, but not the same :-/
August 13th, 2008 at 07:54
On the installation of apps: I think that both the package management systems and the drag-and-drop-app system have their advantages and best purposes. The PMSes are best for updates of the operating system, vital apps and those packages which are already in the repository, while the drag-and-drop method is best for when one wants to find an app that is not available in the repo because, say, it is a beta app that the devs need someone to try out and reply with suggestions and bugs.
Such apps like the latter exist, especially on Launchpad and Sourceforge. And I think that, with the rise in popularity of desktop distributions which share the same PMS and package format, there will be a growing dissonance between the PMS/repository model and the list of developers who, say, will not just develop exclusively for GNU/Linux, but will also develop exclusively for a particular desktop-centric distro like Ubuntu. I think that, at that point, they’ll want to go for a software distribution method that will go straight to the user rather than go through the repository middleman.
I’m not saying that the repository and PMS isn’t necessary (it’s best for the retaining of software that is already vetted for stability and security by the repo maintainers), just that it will have a separate purpose from the software that hasn’t been vetted for stability or security or is being vetted for such (aka the bleeding edge stuff), and thus can’t be accepted into the repository and, thus, the PMS.
On the other points, I think that OS X sacrifices alot of Unix norms (theming, terminal, etc.) in order to give the people who use it a sense of “empowerment”, as if they have found all that the computer is useful for. I can’t say that this is a bad thing for them, but it is a bad thing for those who are used to mucking within the internals of the software in order to gain more out of it.
So I guess one’s mileage may vary with either system, depending on how far and in which direction one wants to go with them. I personally come from a Windows+Firefox background, and when I first tried using a Mac mini at my tech school, I thought it felt crippled compared to the Windows UI; however, I can still respect the OS X interface a bit better than the GNOME/KDE way, at least since it places much more emphasis on the GUI than do KDE or GNOME. Or at least it cuts out the non-GUI stuff as much as possible (unless, in the case of the OS X terminal, it is crucial in some way to the functionality of the OS).
August 13th, 2008 at 14:36
This seems to be a really common theme this week. I was putting a list together, and there’s another one on Digg.
WRT DnD installation — A lot of Linux programs distributed as binaries can do it, too. You just double-click on the .tar.gz, drag the application folder to your (I use ~/bin) and double-click on the binary. These are not, however, system-wide installations. For that, you’d want to become root and move them to /opt. Same idea, though.
August 13th, 2008 at 15:27
The hidden files part of your complaint has confused me a bit. You do not need to use an external program to see hidden files. With one quick google you will find a command that will show hidden files in finder.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
To hide them again change TRUE to false. As for your complaints about command line input as I have just said Mac does have a unix terminal. Just type terminal into spotlight and it should be the top hit. I’m no terminal expert but as far as I know it incorporates the same functionality as any unix terminal.
August 13th, 2008 at 15:54
Keiran, you just proved his point. Why should you have to “Google” for something that is BASIC functionality. I can understand searching for something that is out of the ordinary, but out-of-the-box, LINUX’s file management allows much more flexibility.
August 13th, 2008 at 19:02
Kieran’s point would still stand that you don’t need an external program. You don’t buy a mac to fiddle around with it’s internal workings. You buy it for an easy to use out-of-the-box experience.
August 13th, 2008 at 21:57
Remote Desktop Application? Which one? To do what? A little documentation would be nice. You heard on a podcast? Doesn’t cut the mustard.
As for the terminal, I use it every day on Leopard, it does everything I expect it to do? How is it crippled? Just because you have to go find it ONCE and then drag a link into Quickbar? Or because the root user is disabled by default and it uses sudo to give you permisions?
Give me a break.
August 13th, 2008 at 22:40
Ken, I understand your point but any user without computing experience would need help (from another user or Google) to find out how to do something like show/hide files. A problem that I have with the command on Linux (at least the distros I’ve used (Gnome based) is that in the file manager show/hide files is simple menu command. Most novice linux users would be able therefore to view my hidden files. On windows it is a little hard to do making my files more secure and on mac os x it is quite difficult to do making my hidden files pretty secure from co-workers/family members snooping around my system. What I mean is that in Linux the show/hide files functionality is too visible rendering it almost useless.
August 13th, 2008 at 23:02
> Kieran Says:
> Ken, I understand your point but any user without
> computing experience would need help (from another
> user or Google) to find out how to do something like
> show/hide files.
It sounds like you’re relying on ’security through obscurity’ which is not any security at all, Kieran.
August 14th, 2008 at 01:01
To lefty.crupps
It sounds like you have no reading comprehension. What does any of that have to do with security?
August 14th, 2008 at 01:21
Could not disagree more about the terminal. I use the OS X terminal every day, it works swimmingly for me. I love the tabs. I started with xterm in 1987, if it matters. I’ve been running debian since 1998 or 99.
You don’t have to hunt for the terminal. Click on the spotlight icon and type the ‘t’ character. I find spotlight tremendously useful. It’s painful to watch colleagues hunting for files in the windows explorer. If I need to search the entire disk, find(1) and locate(1) come installed with OS X.
August 14th, 2008 at 02:45
[...] 5 Things Linux does better than Mac OS X I’ve been using Mac OS X alongside Debian since 2007 now, and I think I have a fairly good picture of how things work in both operating systems. In the end, the only feeling I got of Mac OS X is as if I were playing with Linux’ retarded little brother. Here are a few reasons why. [...]
August 14th, 2008 at 15:05
Did you know that OS X.0 shipped with a local root exploit that some users accidentally got into? Also, the first version of Safari by default would run any shell scripts inside archives that you downloaded.
In this context, the Debian SSL problem is pretty tame
I’ve recently taken advantage of Gnome’s theming abilities to actually give me a productivity advantage; rather than have big thick title bars and lots of whitespace in between the widgets, I’m currently using a Metacity theme that removes the titlebar, and a GTK theme that removes a lot of extraneous whitespace. It leaves much more room for text and other window contents. And it looks 1337 too
I haven’t done a Google search, but I believe it’s impossible to remove title bars on OS X.
August 14th, 2008 at 20:34
@Daeng Bo
He’s depending on his little ‘hidden files’ to prevent people from seeing stuff he doesn’t want them to see. When really, he should be encrypting those files or setting up a different user account for the people using his computer. That’s what it has to do with security.
I think your the one that needs to work on his reading comprehension.
August 14th, 2008 at 20:39
Thanks for explaining my point bjb_nyj101. And yes I do encrypt my files but I was just talking about minimum security. I would never hide anything important and asume it was safe.
August 15th, 2008 at 22:56
I have to agree with you. I’ve been running Kubuntu for about eighteen months, and have also been using Ubuntu on another computer for a while, and I recently bought a MacBook, and I found many of the same issues. The bash shell seems to be crippled compared to its Linux counterpart - you can’t seem to launch applications from the command line the way you can in Linux (for instance, enter firefox http://www.google.com to open Google in Firefox), which is incredibly handy if you’re using a minimal window manager as these often allow you to use text files to define your own keyboard shortcuts. And I find the installer is very fiddly - apt-get is FAR superior.
As for file managers, I can think of two awesome ones - Konqueror rules, and Krusader is pretty good too, but I have yet to find one I link in OS X.
I’d also add that I can’t find a terminal emulator I like in OS X. I don’t like iTerm. Yakuake is great in KDE, and I like Konsole too, or ROXTerm for minimal window managers.
All in all, to me OS X does feel like a crippled Linux distro, but slower. I recently tried running Gentoo in VirtualBox on my MacBook and on my Philips running Ubuntu (both computers have similar processors and amounts of RAM), and the Philips was a LOT faster. And I find I can get a lot more done in Linux as Katapult and Gnome Do seem to be a lot more flexible and powerful than Spotlight, and Quicksilver seems very fiddly in comparison.
August 16th, 2008 at 20:13
Amen brother. I’m dual booting Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron and OS X 10.5.4
I have to agree with you. OS X is definitely a crippled linux distro; and it’s true - to get the full potentialout of my MacBook Pro, one has to run a different OS. That’s a joke on Jobs for sure.
Ha!
The thing that really gets me is that people are porting FOSS for Mac, but then charging money for it. Take for example Macgimp - GIMP is great under linux, a pain in the ass to install on OS X, but the bastards who ported it charge for Macgimp! I’m not exactly sure how that isn’t violating the GNU licence, actually…
Two gripes you didn’t mention: Ever notice that copying a folder onto another folder with the same name doesn’t merge, but replaces? What other (common) OS does that?
Ever try to ‘move’ files instead of copying and then deleting them?
Regarding security (maybe other people don’t get this): When a program is asking for access to my key chain, often if I hit ‘deny’, it keeps popping up requests over and over again! So in order to escape the infinite pop ups, you are forced to press ‘accept!’ If that’s not a security flaw, I don’t know what is. Why give you the option if you don’t have a choice?
Regarding the terminal: Crippled in this way- all .bash_profiles .bashrc .profiles need to be written from scratch, and it doesn’t natively include any common program locations besides /bin/
*no gcc compiler seems to be installed out of the box, so compiling packages such as ‘wget’ for instance fails
*no man or program for looking at manuals
*it isn’t a color terminal so programs like ls can’t easily and clearly tell you file types, etc.
I’m sure there are others I’m not thinking of right now, but the main point is that without a package manager such as aptitude or synaptic, these files are spread all over the internet, and the basic suite from any linux distro takes up only a few MB, so why not include them for those of us who DO actually need to do things on their computers instead of play with the pretty mac graphics?
One last note: Whatever they were trying to achieve with ’spaces’ or the new visual effects have been already perfected by Linux. Look at compiz, for instance- if that isn’t a testiment to FOSS I don’t know what is.
Cheers!
August 16th, 2008 at 22:26
It’s not against the GNU license to charge, but you have to make the source code available
August 18th, 2008 at 02:12
Mac OS X sometimes is *tidier* than Linux.
Unless you’re using GoboLinux, Linux file hierarchy quite cluttered like traditional UNIX.
there are usr,bin,usr/bin,usr/share,etc,opt,usr/local/bin, etc.
Newbies easily got lost.
Mac OS X meanwhile hide those file hierarchy (yes, they’re still exist) and use the one based on NeXTStep, which the file hierarchy is different (and also tidy).
If you don’t use ’sudo apt-get purge’, you still left those messy configuration files.
In Linux and Mac OS X, you can delete your hidden confs
in your Home folder (files and folders beginning with ‘.’)
August 25th, 2008 at 23:05
Why don’t they have more 3d effects?
August 27th, 2008 at 17:28
“But the biggest shock for me is that applications can have root access without you having to enter your password”
Umm, it will prompt you for a password whenever it does something as root (or tries to). Once you’ve entered it it’ll not ask you again for 10 minutes (unless you set it up to request it always, which can be annoying). Apps don’t have root access unless you let them, that’s simply untrue. Tell me of a situation that is repeatable that proves your point, because I know of none.
November 13th, 2008 at 02:20
@Nicholas
Never a truer word spake.