Why I use a Mac…
January 5th, 2007 by Marcos
Well, the last few days at Kitt Peak have served as a sometimes painful reminder of why I use Macs. They just work better than - well, anything else. Specifically, lately I’ve been around a handful of laptops running Linux and the experience has not been pretty.
On one the trackpad jumps around and there’s no way to configure it that I can find. (It’s SuSE).
On another, a USB mouse isn’t recognized at all when plugged in
On yet another - there’s no sound. Ah, Linux.
Back on the one with a jumpy trackpad, I tried to install the ecl on SuSE laptop - no uudecode. I had to compile and install GNU sharutils from source.
On I think maybe all of them, when using command-line sftp (no Fugu, but there must be a graphical sftp client for linux, I just don’t know what it is) - the backspace key doesn’t work, I have to hunt for the tiny delete key.
None have been able to print to an nearby lpr printer (this includes one Window laptop as well) except my iBook, so I’ve been printing things for others.
I just take all these things for granted. Things should just work. And, by and large, on my Macs things usually do just work. And when they don’t, I get understandably upset and make sure I find the fix. My impression from linux-laptop users is so many things don’t work right they just learn to accept it.
I don’t mean to completely disparage linux, it does have its place. Maybe my bullet list is as much an advertisement for … Ubuntu over SuSE than for a Mac. Never-the-less, I think those of us who use Macs for astronomy are definitely having a much smoother and more productive desktop (or in this case laptop) computing experience.
MacOS X has all the tools of Linux… and none of the weird shortcomings (peripherals, multimedia). When I see Linux/Windows dual boot laptops… I just scratch my head and am thankful I use a Mac.
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Marcos Says
Yes, if you want a free OS or one that lets you recompile the kernel (and you can recompile the xnu kernel that lies underneath OS X as Darwin is open source, I’m fairly sure.) Never-the-less, I prefer an OS where things like the mouse and sound and audio CDs just work, and the same OS can do cool UNIX-stuff as well. Dual-booting seems inelegant to me. I suppose now with Parallels you can experience both Linux and OS X at the same time. If you like that, go for it.
As far as a “new lease on old hardware?” MacOS X 10.4 runs quite well on my 400 MHz PowerMac G4. And in fact every release of OS X has been faster on the same hardware, not slower. (Granted, there wasn’t much place to go but up from 10.0’s performance.)
So, I still just don’t see any significant advantages of Linux over OS X on a laptop for the vast majority of users.
Jan 6th, 2007 at 9:02 pm