Re: mac is not unix [Re: What was that about hubris?]

[Paul Vixie <paul () vix com>]

pmm () igtc com (Paul M Moriarty) writes:

> It seems that most of the followup postings have been nitpicking about
> the blah, blah, blah.  For what I do with it, the mac is UNIX-like enough
> for me.

as a power user who often writes my own software to shape my environment and
with strong lock-in concerns, the mac never was UNIX-like enough for me.  i
recently had the opportunity to ask a mac laptop user to my right, "why are
you running X11 there?" and he said, "xterm", and i knew i wasn't alone.  my
son recently blogged about installing PCBSD (a freebsd variant) on his mac
laptop...

    http://www.dramashack.com/2009/10/01/installing-pc-bsd-on-a-macbook-pro/

...and near the bottom he wrote:

    The things that won't work are right click...

    ...Right click is just one of those things.

which goes to show that if you're willing to embrace (and be embraced by) the
apple way of doing things (as in pmm's case) or if you grew up without knowing
the pleasures of meta-mouse controls so as to make things happen without first
having to find the window's edge controls -- in other words if you're willing
to go slow for no reason i can understand -- then the mac UI sure is *pretty*.

i *guess* i'm glad to see the high tech industry switching to the mac away
from windows, because it's the better technology and i love to see folks pick
the better technology once in a while (vs. picking based on marketing or on
market share).  however, i don't like the smarm, not one bit.  folks who have
made the switch from UNIX to mac (don't quibble with me -- they aren't equal)
always say, "and now i don't have to think about all that stuff."  ok by me
if you want to turn part of your brain off or dedicate it to tasks you find
more interesting or beneficial.  but windows or mac didn't invent the web, or
the internet, or tabbed browsing -- the reason being that the users of UNIX
are far more likely to reprogram their environment and the reason for that is
that they think about their environment all the time and know how it works.

in the "lead, follow, or get out of the way" sweepstakes, i know where i want
to be.  (that's "use unix, use a mac, or use windows" the way i read it.)
-- 
Paul Vixie
KI6YSY
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