The editors of ResExcellence.com, a popular Macintosh website and longtime Mac enthusiasts, have switched to Linux. “I’ve been making my living as Mac-specific developer for several years now… I was a true Mac die-hard,” stated Bryan, who also runs a Mac software company, on his blog, “but the Macintosh community, with its bad attitudes and diva-esque nature, rained on my parade. Sure there were other reasons why I switched. But that was the tipping point.”
Welcome
I second that, welcome.
After reading the post and reading the responses from the community members of Resex I can understand where some of them are coming from. However crtitisism that is outright insulting rather than being constructive is plain worthless.
If many of those posters were long time contributer to a website such as Resex they honestly should have had a little more of a clue as to how critique somebodies work instead of just stating it sucks.
Unfortunately, as people have pointed out, communities of every OS have their share of people who who are just plain rude.
Right, welcome to the Linux community, where we call each other sir and madam, and we never sully the internet with rude or offensive comments.
But seriously, I don’t think we have the entitlement problem that the Mac community has. After all, many of us see ourselves as fighting the big bad machine, and every skirmish we win is due in part to the tireless efforts of the past volunteers who largely predate the “making money developing OSS” era.
For those who can program and/or hack, Linux means the power of infinite possibilities. For anyone, Linux represents an inconceivable value proposition. It’s only entitlement in the sense that we all own the code just as much as anyone else. It’s our’s to use, our’s to improve, and our’s to share. With this power also comes a sense of responsibility… at least within what I would consider “the community.”
I’m not familiar with your software products, but I would encourage you to find a viable way to commercialize your software while keeping it open source (BSD or similar is usually the commercial OSS license of choice, even on Linux). Only the way-out-there nutjobs reject commercial OSS software, but the reasons to snub proprietary software are more compelling. Providing support services, physical media and/or documentation, or even proprietary plugins/add-ons are all viable models for monetizing OSS without compromising the core principles.
That said, happy hacking!
As a frequent contributor to ResEx I felt this way. I would work very hard on content and it was never good enough or done right.
Its not like I was charging for it, I was donating the work and my time!
It was very frustrating.
I’m Chris, with Bryan, we talked for quite a bit about this in this weeks episode of, The Linux Action Show!
We felt we should give a good reason in both writing and audio. If you are intrested in this, take a listen, please do that before you judge us as just being whiny. I think we give some good reasons.
You don’t seem in the least whiny. Apple has a real image/community problem, and its caused by the collusion of Cupertino Marketing in encouraging the Mac community’s lunatic fringe, and its most dysfunctional attitudes, feelings and behaviour.
And it has real product problems. They are caused by Cupertino lifestyle marketing having infiltrated and corrupted the product development process in the computer product line.
You’ve hit both of them, and couldn’t take it any more. Few who come up against them can. Welcome to the ex-Mac users club.
Nobody has any right to judge your decision. It’s your decision, even if you switched to Windows.
My experience with Ubuntu showed me that it was a very usable desktop (or in my case, laptop) operating system, albeit largely for “office” use. I had too many problems with it to make it a multimedia powerhouse, much to my frustration.
I think that just comes from the “hacker” mentality — in that, if one product or API doesn’t work, you can just write a whole new one. This extends to, say, the issues with Flash 9 that have been mentioned.
I look at Mac OS X, and I think that it’s a fairly “mature” OS, and I really like how even open source apps are generally well-constructed, with a sense of dynamic “style” among them. I prefer Adium over Gaim, as an example. Yet, I also realize that with every update to OS X, it gets more and more full of fluff — just like Windows has been doing.
Give me an OS that -screams- on my laptop. BeOS ‘felt’ faster, for the short time I used it. Give me an OS that has software that is easy to install and uninstall, without leaving a bunch of cruft and registry information. Make it easy for me to customize the App Launcher, whatever it may be – a “Foot” menu, a “K” panel, whatever.
There’s more I could get into, but really… Ubuntu provides the majority of what I want. Except for the fundamental flaw currently in Linux — the lack of a stable API and overall “standard” of software. Now, I know both of those are being worked on. For instance, I know the Gnome project has “human guidelines”. (And I assume KDE does, I’m just more familiar with Gnome.)
But when my ‘old’ GTK+ applications suddenly turned UGLY, and I couldn’t find out how to make them ‘pretty’ again… when I would download packages that would half-install, and then tell me the package was broken, and couldn’t be un-installed; and would repeatedly notify me I had a broken package without the ability to update, reinstall, or uninstall BECAUSE it was broken… and no way to “ignore” the package… When I had to look up on Wikis to find out how to enable a parallel install of two different sound/multimedia APIs (ALSA and Xine, I think) so I could listen to MP3s and have Gaim successfully “ding” when I got a message… and even then, I would get “static” for some reason…
After two or three months of giving Ubuntu a hardcore “try”, I swapped back to Windows Media Center 2005, which came with my laptop. I’m not -happy- being on Windows, but for some reason, things just “work” for me. I might have to install, say, the ogg codec to listen to the Linux Action Show podcast, but I’m not installing a whole new multimedia daemon/service to do it.
…But I keep coming back to Linux, at least once a year, to test the waters. And Ubuntu has thusfar been the best I’ve used, by far.
Ubuntu provides the majority of what I want. Except for the fundamental flaw currently in Linux — the lack of a stable API and overall “standard” of software. Now, I know both of those are being worked on. For instance, I know the Gnome project has “human guidelines”. (And I assume KDE does, I’m just more familiar with Gnome.)
I’m not sure what you mean by this. First of all what API are you talking about? Both GNOME2 and the Linux kernel have stable APIs. The GNOME desktop environment is both more consistent and standard than anything Apple or Microsoft has to offer.
When I had to look up on Wikis to find out how to enable a parallel install of two different sound/multimedia APIs (ALSA and Xine, I think) so I could listen to MP3s and have Gaim successfully “ding” when I got a message… and even then, I would get “static” for some reason..
You do make a point about soundcard issues with Linux but you’re a little mixed up. ALSA and OSS are two different soundcard frameworks within the kernel. OSS is deprecated and you should use ALSA. Xine is a multimedia framework, like GStreamer. A lot of applications are built on either Xine or GStreamer. The problem with sound in Linux is actually getting mixing to work properly. That’s the problem you were having. Most cards don’t support hardware mixing. You need to mix in software and the way to do that is to use dmix. There is also esd and arts but they are both deprecated. Dmix is a part of ALSA.
I’m not -happy- being on Windows, but for some reason, things just “work” for me. I might have to install, say, the ogg codec to listen to the Linux Action Show podcast, but I’m not installing a whole new multimedia daemon/service to do it.
I guess you’re lucky because things never “just worked” for me with Windows. What really drove me to Linux was extremely unhelpful (or sometimes a complete lack of) error messages in Windows. Easy tasks on Windows are usually easy but difficult tasks are sometimes next to impossible. As for your problem with installing an ogg codec…well a proper package manager shouldn’t even require it. It should be a dependency of the application you are using to play those ogg files. In Windows you have to track down all the codecs.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. First of all what API are you talking about? Both GNOME2 and the Linux kernel have stable APIs. The GNOME desktop environment is both more consistent and standard than anything Apple or Microsoft has to offer.
No, the Linux kernel does not have a stable API — at least not for drivers. If it did, drivers wouldn’t break so often. Certain parts of the kernel API are stable, but the ones that matter the most to users are not.
You do make a point about soundcard issues with Linux but you’re a little mixed up. ALSA and OSS are two different soundcard frameworks within the kernel. OSS is deprecated and you should use ALSA.
No, people should use SDL. ALSA is specific to Linux and makes applications non-portable to other operating systems. It’s very frustrating to users of *BSD, Solaris, and other operating systems when people tell developers to use ALSA. SDL is the best way to ensure your application stays out of the platform API wars.
No, the Linux kernel does not have a stable API — at least not for drivers. If it did, drivers wouldn’t break so often. Certain parts of the kernel API are stable, but the ones that matter the most to users are not.
So “most users” are now driver developers?
You know very well that the issue is about the politics of open vs closed-source drivers. And that’s been gone over hundreds of times on this forum.
No, people should use SDL. ALSA is specific to Linux and makes applications non-portable to other operating systems. It’s very frustrating to users of *BSD, Solaris, and other operating systems when people tell developers to use ALSA. SDL is the best way to ensure your application stays out of the platform API wars.
Using SDL as a backend for something like GStreamer is silly, as it just goes through ALSA anyway.
He didn’t say they would be coding there own drivers, he said they would be benefiting from it.
As a stable API for drivers, and other frameworks brings not just software stability but peace of mind for developers.
I think Linux has reached a good maturity, i would like to see more standards get adopted though, such as a default single Soundcard interface, etc..
I use all three OS’s Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, sure they all pee me off now and again but they are good are what they do best. Same goes for the community, i block out the ramblings of those who just troll and annoy and listen to the comments which are well constructed regardless if they are positive or negative.
Good luck on the new project though.
So “most users” are now driver developers?
You know very well that the issue is about the politics of open vs closed-source drivers. And that’s been gone over hundreds of times on this forum.
I never said that. I was implying that users would benefit from a stable API because developers could spend more time on fixing and enhancing drivers instead of dealing with pointless API changes.
A stable driver API has nothing to do with closed or open source drivers and is something that is a direct benefit to developers and has an indirect benefit for users.
Using SDL as a backend for something like GStreamer is silly, as it just goes through ALSA anyway.
That’s not necessarily true. There are commercial sound drivers for Linux that use the OSS interface, not ALSA. This is especially true for high end commercial audio cards.
Pointless API changes?
I beg to differ. I believe currently Windows XP has 3 implementations of the USB API floating around in it’s kernel because some app *MIGHT* rely on an old version. That’s just about 3 times the amount of code to get the same basic functionality, 3 times the amount of code to keep working, 3 times the amount of compatibility to maintain with userspace, and 3 times the amount of work for driver developers.
Linux, on the other hand, has a single USB stack, and it’s the one of the fastest USB stacks out there, consistently bottlenecking at the hardware level, rather than software. Why? Because developers can change the API for the USB stack, and they can update all the drivers that use this USB stack as they do it. They don’t need to try to keep an outdated API working, so they can keep one clean, consistent, well-tested API without code duplication.
Linux, on the other hand, has a single USB stack, and it’s the one of the fastest USB stacks out there, consistently bottlenecking at the hardware level, rather than software. Why? Because developers can change the API for the USB stack, and they can update all the drivers that use this USB stack as they do it. They don’t need to try to keep an outdated API working, so they can keep one clean, consistent, well-tested API without code duplication.
As a developer I can sympathise with the desire to keep a clean API. As a user, I think that’s a pathetic excuse
A system is nothing without users. Without users, Linux wouldn’t be where it is today. Open Source projects that focus on developers instead of users (unless their target audience is developers!) are ultimately doomed to failure.
It’s foolish to not care. As user you are directly affected by the system’s design. A good design (clean API) means a more stable and faster system, and faster development (faster releases of new versions with improvements you want), while a bad design implies the opposite.
One can just as easily say that a system is nothing without its developers. Who would want to use a system that is unmaintained? If you think users > developers, then try killing off all the Linux developers and see what happens to Linux. Someone has to make the thing. To think that users are some kind of gods that must dominate over developers is just plain arrogance.
Using SDL as a backend for something like GStreamer is silly, as it just goes through ALSA anyway.
Maybe, it will probably have some overhead, but allows you to target different platforms using the same engine, and without any kind of fuss.
Even big game companies have used SDL in the past.
Over the API issue, there are some good points and some wrong ones IMHO. All OSs comes or provide different APIs, some are commercial like .Net on Windows, some are not. But there are APIs that allow your application to run on different platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD. If you want to target the most amount of platforms or users, you should stay with QT, GTK2 or Java swing for desktop apps, or SDL for games.
It has a stable external API, the part that the programs interact with. It does not have a stable internal API, since that causes huge amounts of maintainability issues, security problems, bloats code, and generally makes things difficult for developers.
If the driver developers play nice and release drivers, they will generally get integrated into the kernel tree and be updated by the kernel developers when they update the internal APIs. If the driver developers do more or less illegal things (binary kernel modules are illegal, barring workarounds that make the user break the law if they redistribute the kernel and driver together), then they will have troubles, since they refuse to work with the Linux developers.
No, the Linux kernel does not have a stable API — at least not for drivers. If it did, drivers wouldn’t break so often. Certain parts of the kernel API are stable, but the ones that matter the most to users are not.
Correction here:) kernel API is very stable and changes very rarely, they just don’t guarantie its stability. And as modules are packed inside (and even threated by kernel, which takes this possibility of change to the same measure as if it would happen every single release), you have to provide new modules for every kernel release. Not that stable API couldn’t survive. It is just that they favour improvement over stability and this is obvious by releases
ABI/API are something completely different, you don’t seem to distinguish between those.
No, people should use SDL. ALSA is specific to Linux and makes applications non-portable to other operating systems. It’s very frustrating to users of *BSD, Solaris, and other operating systems when people tell developers to use ALSA. SDL is the best way to ensure your application stays out of the platform API wars.
ALSA and OSS are using soundcard, SDL is working on ALSA or OSS, you can’t use SDL without any of those on linux, just as you can’t use SDL for sound on Windows without installed driver.
But if you meant, applications using ALSA directly or trough SDL, you are correct. Although I preffer gstreamer in that case (well, as soon as it becomes portable).
Edited 2006-07-26 19:31
No, the Linux kernel does not have a stable API — at least not for drivers. If it did, drivers wouldn’t break so often. Certain parts of the kernel API are stable, but the ones that matter the most to users are not.
Actually that’s not correct. Drivers don’t break all the time. Binary drivers break because Linux doesn’t have a stable ABI.
No, people should use SDL. ALSA is specific to Linux and makes applications non-portable to other operating systems. It’s very frustrating to users of *BSD, Solaris, and other operating systems when people tell developers to use ALSA. SDL is the best way to ensure your application stays out of the platform API wars.
We’re not talking about developing software. We’re talking about using software. Other than that I couldn’t care less about BSD. It’s not like ALSA is closed source. Coding an application against a Linux specific framework isn’t a sin. You’re free to implement ALSA on other architectures, if that’s what people want to use. Anyway what I was really getting at with my comment is that between OSS and ALSA you want to use ALSA because OSS is deprecated and there is an emulation layer for OSS.
This is a trouble people are going to have with PC’s in general, and it gets inflated by lack of vendor support: Badly supported hardware.
On hardware that’s well supported you’ll find most systems perform very well: Things just work. But introduce a bad driver and you’ll see all kinds of quirkiness and probably things that don’t work.
Windows users don’t see it much because it’s hard to see: Most of their hardware is always supported, and usually well. Although, occasionally they’ll buy that super-cheap device and find out what a Linux user feels like when devices don’t work even though they “should.”
Apple gets around it by having a select group of hardware they support. And, probably, by having “pissy” users who will boycott. I’m not defending the actions of those who actually complained over someone making fewer updates while they were getting married (it’s in the podcast), but people with that level of fanaticism do hold groups to a higher standard.
Where a Windows user might buy a different piece of hardware, a Mac user may stop buying products from that company and any associated company, for the next 5 years.
So, I can’t speak for Ubuntu, but I can speak for the software on it: If you have the right hardware, it works. And yes, sometimes it takes some tweaking to get things right, but that’s my favorite part (as long as I don’t have to do it again later).
I think most of Ubuntu’s issues with the sound had centered around using jack audio kit, IIRC.
You make some good points, but pointing to everything being hardware in itself is… limiting your view just a little bit. Now admittedly I may not have the most Linux-friendly system: A Dell Inspiron 6000. But I didn’t have any trouble in Ubuntu having the various parts of my system auto-detect and auto-configure for me, at least as best as I can tell. My only real perceived “problem” with hardware was an external USB-enclosed hard disk… because it was formatted in NTFS. I struggled with various NTFS hacks until I finally gave up, backed everything I could up on DVD-R, and just reformatted the drive as FAT-32. Oh, and the minor quibble that for some reason Linux couldn’t detect what the max speed for my dvd/cd burner was. But if I picked a speed like 4x for the dvd-r burn, it worked fine. Go figure.
But really, I’m trying to approach it more from the software side. I had two audio mixers, and never knew just quite which one was the ‘right’ one, because one worked and one didn’t, but I thought I was using two multimedia backends. Admittedly my knowledge of Linux is lacking, so I can’t really provide better detail.
Now it’s true that, from a Windows side, most drivers/hardware are going to see support because of the overwhelming use of Windows as an OS. And with Apple, they were able to close the hardware channel, and thus the OS seems more “stable” because it’s written for that specific hardware.
Let’s talk about drivers, though. I’m not trying to spread FUD, but I’m not exactly all-knowing, so if I make a mistake in this, please forgive me. (I have no doubt I’ll be corrected, though.)
Because of the changing nature of Linux’s API (which appears to be debatable), and varying features between kernels, it seems like the majority of drivers under Linux have to be distributed as source code. Or, alternatively, with an open-source ‘linker’, which calls upon a binary driver… sort of like using a universal power supply with all of your office equipment.
But having to have a source version of the linker also means that certain bits of the binary driver are exposed, and that can be frowned upon by vendors. (I’m not getting into the whole marketshare issue, either.) Having a stable plug-in system, where wholly binary drivers were more usable, might help a bit. When I install drivers on Windows, I’m not hunting around to see if I have “Windows 5.1.2600, build blah blah blah” — I’m just making sure I have “Windows 2000/XP”. But because the Linux kernel is still in major developmental flux, it’s not so easy as saying “I have Ubuntu Dapper Drake”.
I also have to make sure I have the right build of XOrg, or the right sound daemon installed, etc. Now combine that with the source linker module, and now I have to make sure I have the right compile package installed. The software was written for a specific build of GCC, so I have to make sure I have one that’s compatible, because there are differences between GCC 1 and 2. (Or whatever they are… I honestly forget.)
So while many people are confused between download options for “Windows 98/ME” and “Windows 2000/XP”… now all of a sudden you have to make sure all this other software is updated -first-. Now it’s true that the vast majority of software can be gotten through, say, Ubuntu-specific repositories, where most other people have taken care of the “OSS” side of things. But that wouldn’t appease the vendors, because they have to keep up with the changes in the Linux environment.
Combine that with things like, “Why did you use GTK? You should have used QT!” and as someone else mentioned, “Why use ALSA? Use GStreamer!”, etc… and you start to get into nightmare territory. Ideally, when it comes to certain system functionality… there should be -one- standard, guaranteed environment and base API, where things can all be coded for. And frankly that standard should have some level of emulation or compatibility, so I, as someone that doesn’t know how to program, won’t have to beg – or learn how to program – to continue using older software.
Just as an extended example… something not driver-related, is there’s this movie-editing package for Linux, only. I forget what it’s called, but it’s by “the heroines”, or something like that. I fussed for -days- to get a copy to build and install on my local Ubuntu… and then it wouldn’t import half the videos I had, despite saying they were supported. And when I did get an import working, sound didn’t work… and preview/playback was ungodly slow. …Evidently, because my specific working environment wasn’t “supported”.
Maybe in another couple of years, the Linux Standards Base (I think it’s called) will be able to cross their arms and smile smugly, knowing they pushed a Good Thing (TM) to the general users of Linux.
I say all this as an intermediate Windows user – not a Power User, though I have customized my install a bit… a Novice Linux user, though I’ve custom-installed Gnome themes and all that good stuff… and NOT a programmer. It’s been years since I programmed anything, and that was in Visual Basic, not in C or C++ or Java or anything else. I just can’t wrap my head around it, though I’ve tried.
If your hardware supports mixing no audio mixer is the right choice TMK. If it doesn’t, sorry, hahaha. Software audio mixers are notorious for sucking.
Hardware, drivers, etc:
The problem here is a clash of methodology. In Windows you download your drivers from a distributor, or some other method like CD. Key part: It’s not Microsoft’s problem.
That’s a fine way to do it, but that’s not the goal in Linux.
The goal in Linux is to distribute every driver with Linux, so that there’s no downloading, there’s _just working_. This of course fails when you have brand spanking new hardware with rapidly changing drivers (because they didn’t get the drivers right before they shipped, or they added features, or the community is still working on mimicking the drivers, or w/e the reason is). So you end up downloading, which can be easy:
Nvidia’s driver install is so easy, well, it’s just easy!
Intel’s wireless install is pretty easy, actually setting up the userland tools is actually more difficult sometimes.
And Intel’s graphics is pretty easy as well. You simply need to find your kernel source package (something for which there is absolutely no excuse to not have installed by default on a desktop distribution: Ubuntu is pathetic for not doing this, seriously it’s 15MB!). Usually source packages are “-dev” but not always.
But anyway, when the Linux model works, users are left saying nothing. And that’s how it’s supposed to be isn’t it? Quiet enjoyment.
ALSA is a platform for building hardware sound devices. It has no true competitor: The Open Sound System is essentially antiquated at this point. Gstreamer is a media abstraction: It’s something for applications to use to play media without knowing anything about the media.
It’s young, and there are gstream competitors, and you can have every last one of them installed and in use at once: If your computer can handle 5 videos playing at once.
Having one stable API is not going to happen, on any platform, and doesn’t exist: On any platform, including Microsoft Windows. Even Microsoft maintains API’s which work with their other API’s (System.Windows.Forms for example). You don’t want to have no competition among libraries, it’s a bad thing. Yes, having the ok/cancel reversed on Gnome/KDE is marginally annoying, and it’s a “usability problem” but it’s marginal and a result of competing HIG’s not competing toolkits.
Cinelerra: Yes, this package is a nightmare to install, I’ve never successfully done it. Try avidemux2 if you’re not doing anything complex, I use it for clipping things out of video.
PS- I believe there was a story on here recently about the NTFS driver having full read/write support, I don’t remember if it’s in the mainline kernel yet or not though.
So, effectively what you’re saying to me is…
“Linux is all about choice. As long as you run a specific bit of hardware.”
Why does this remind me of the complaints everyone gives Apple over their Mac platform?
As for mixing, I have no idea if my sound supports it. It’s a Sigmatel C-Major chip, but I don’t think that’s enough info.
Specific hardware is not required to play well with Linux and all of its various higher-level components. As long as hardware vendors provide specs or (even better) contribute driver code, there’s no problems.
The Linux userland APIs are dead stable. Internal kernel interfaces are close to stable, and ABIs are never stable. What this means is that source drivers will build cleanly and function properly across kernel releases almost always. When they don’t it’s almost always a trivial fix (and usually the breakage is planned and announced in advance on the LKML). Binary drivers, on the other hand, will very often break across kernel versions. The vendor can usually rebuild for the new kernel without code modifications, but they don’t always get the memo. There’s not much anyone can do about this, we’ve gone over the reasons before.
You don’t need any particular sound chipset to use software mixing. That’s the point of software mixing.
There is a fairly well-tested beta of Linux NTFS-3g with full read/write and create/unlink support. Some initial synthetic benchmarks show it wiping the floor with the commercial Paragon NTFS for Linux product, and even outperforming ext2/3! Get it while it’s hot:
http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfs-3g-20070714-BETA.tgz
It’s implemented in userspace using FUSE, so it doesn’t need the mainline blessing to get it included in the big distros.
I know three die-hard mac people that have switched, personally. I know a ton online that have. I really don’t understand why though, to me, nothing has changed that much, other than a few nice things like XGL or beagle. But maybe that’s because I use it on a regular basis and don’t notice the tiny little progressions.
A few still complain about hardware problems, but I’ve never had any since I’ve bought components known to work properly under Linux.
Maybe in a few years we’ll gets your childrenz.
I got the sense that the reasoning had little to do with any particularly impressive features on Linux, or Ubuntu in this case. Complaints about the horrible Mac community aside, they seem to have switched because of a perceived decrease in the quality and performance of Mac software.
I hate to do the whole “proprietary is dying” thing, but the OSS stack is faring much better than Apple or Microsoft in attacking the two central challenges of software engineering: 1) that defect rates scale much worse than linear with new features, and 2) that (application) software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.
With OSS, the new features get out the door sooner, run faster on modest hardware, and once they get past the initial spike in bug reports immediately following release, they tend to have fewer bugs over the course of their lifetime. Look at SLED10: it reached beta quality quicker, got better reviews, and was gold sooner than even Novell expected. Apple is beginning to lengthen their release cycles (although they seem good at sticking to them), and Microsoft hasn’t completed a release cycle in so long I wonder if they still know how to fire up the CD presses
I wonder though if the philosophy of things Apple is to pay a premium and always expect the best – kind of an elite socially “cool” club where everything is always supposed to be better by default.
With Linux the overall philosophy is different though. The book “Cathedral and Bazaar” gives good insights into this.. Making demands and being rude is a quick way to become isolated or ignored.
Also if you try to sell proprietary software (no source code) in Linux I suspect you will encounter similar hostilities as you did with the Mac community.
E.
I don’t think you’ll get hostility, not in any great amount. Most often you’ll get ignored.
If you have something truly unique and you have a good policy for the pricing you may sell some copies. But do remember, you’re selling to a small group of which probably half is in a poor country and speaks bad English.
But if there’s a FOSS alternative it’ll hurt your sales.
I don’t think you’ll get hostility, not in any great amount. Most often you’ll get ignored.
Tell that to BitKeeper.
I don’t get why the people in a community would have any major influence on whether or not you stop using a product. How do the people that use it affect your usage?
Now, not wanting to try something because of the community I can understand, but not this.
Yes, they said there were other reasons. But if this was “the tipping point”, then that’s kind of sad.
“I’ve been making my living as Mac-specific developer for several years now… I was a true Mac die-hard,”
Obviously the community is important to that sort of user, don’t ya think?
I don’t get why the people in a community would have any major influence on whether or not you stop using a product. How do the people that use it affect your usage?
Well, if the usage isn’u up to (his) standards, then the community would be the only thing preventing him from switching..and as he posts: quite the opposite.
I will switch from Linux to Mac these days.
I’m sure that my heart always will be for linux and open source software.
But I’m not sure, if I really could switch 100% to mac, I love Linux! I love open source! I love how it works! I love the things I can do with the terminal.
I love to fix a problem with the terminal when the GUI isn’t able to do this. And I can’t do with a mac, and that is why I’m worried about my switch.
From what I can see, anyone or any group who tries to do something online gets bashed. I fear the honeymoon with the warm and caring Linux and Windows communities will be short.
Anyone who is embittered toward his/her operating system because of what other people say needs to get an appt. with a counselor asap.
Anyone who is embittered toward his/her operating system because of what other people say needs to get an appt. with a counselor asap.
Erm, sounded more like he is embittered with the community.
Are you part of that community by any chance, trying to twist the argument, so that it makes you look in some way superior…?
No, I am not. In the article somebody was quoted as saying that he was embittered toward his operating system because of others (the community). Did you read it? Do you realize how insane that is?
“Do you realize how insane that is?” [to get embittered toward your OS because of others (the community].
Not really. Its to do with the interaction between Apple marketing and the community. Apple deliberately doesn’t sell an OS, but whole computer systems. It deliberately develops and markets these on the basis of lifestyle. You are invited not to buy a computer, but to participate in the Mac experience.
Now, what exactly is that experience? There are obviously masses of perfectly reasonable people using Macs. But there is also a large and vocal minority who echo the marketing line, but in an exaggerated and obsessive form. And who show strong signs of cult member behaviour, including misreprestation of facts like price, market share, performance. Personal abuse of anyone not participating in the cult. A reaction to any less than positive publications about Apple which is kneejerk and fanatical. (For a classic example of this last see the reactions to Herb Greenberg’s blog on cbsmarketwatch). Truly unpleasant social attitudes – one thinks particularly of the snobbery and class prejudice which accompanies the endless comparisons to high end consumer goods.
If as a company you induldge in this sort of marketing and encourage your lunatic fringe buyers in this sort of behaviour, you must expect people to make not so much an OS choice as a lifestyle choice, and to decide that the Mac lifestyle has too much weirdness in it for them. You have made the cultish behaviour an essential part of the product purchasing decision. It is also to be expected that the extreme behaviour will be directed at other participants. As in other areas of life, battles within a cult are far more vicious than those between the cult and other religions. This is what Res Excellence seems to have encountered.
What’s happened is, Apple has actually encouraged large sections of the population to be pushed into an active dislike for the whole Mac phenomenon by its most fanatical adherents. Alas, this is not an original observation. A couple of years ago there was a lively correspondence on the Mac boards about the dangers of Mac Evangelism turning people off the platform. Things have not improved since. More of us however have decided, most silently, that this is not for us any more.
There is truth in what you say. I think this story though is simply about having something on the internet and not being prepared for the usual bashing. As the above poster said, they need to get thicker skins. Here on OS News, Eugenia got bashed every day for years. Now Thom gets bashed. For several years I was the coordinator of a self help forum on the web and got bashed every day. There’s nothing you can do about it, it’s just part of the whole deal, unfortunately.
There are other strange things in this story – when did Safari become unusable???
That can’t be! Never seen anything like that before.
and Linux users are so friendly. There are plenty o Linux, Windows fanatics too. More Linux users are switching to mac than vice-versa but 3 people switching from mac to Linux is news. There are more people who switched from Windows to SkyOS.
I work with XP Pro, Tiger, Solaris and Ubuntu daily. XP is my employer’s choice of OS, Solaris is their UNIX/Apache server, Tiger is my home desktop and Ubuntu runs my Mythbox. I’ve been working professionally and semi-professionally with computers since the first Reagan administration.
I didn’t choose any of these platforms for their community. I chose the Mac in 1986 because it did better graphic design and had a consistent interface across apps (so much for that, now). I used Windows at work because my employers make those decisions, but had to fight with it over a handful of arbitrary OS engineering problems.
Ubuntu is a good distro. It’s deep and wide, but it’s got a couple of rough spots I don’t enjoy. Management of password keyrings is a case of “it just doesn’t work”: every reboot pesters me to input my master keyring password. Ubuntuforums, the leading community, has multiple conflicting answers on what the solution is for this problem.
The network applet doesn’t support WPA encryption, so you have to use wpa-supplicant instead which uses its own interface.
I’m talking about two relatively basic facets of daily functionality on an OS you could expect to run on a laptop here, not some ricer’s notion of what an OS ought to be able to do to prove its worth.
But let’s look at Bryan’s blog, shall we?
1. His most vocal users are whiners, and he’s convinced this is localized to a single platform. In other words, he’s the only software developer in the world who’s never read Slashdot.
2. He’s choosing to use a multi-track synthesizer as an all-purpose audio recorder/editor when Audacity’s been available for OS X for years, then tries to wow us with how he chose to use Audacity on Ubuntu instead.
3. “(I’m not going to name names as that would adversely affect many individuals ability to make a living.)” Someone evidently has a warm opinion of his own overall place in the universe.
4. Safari is buggy, bloated and unstable. Has he even run Firefox on OS X before? The one compiled for the G3?
5. A website devoted to modding/theming an OS (which is intrinsically not themable except by fragile hacks), abandoned by its founders and handed to developers, constitutes a peer on even ground with Ars, /., OSNews, etc.
This last one irritates me the most. Up till today I’d never heard of ResExcellence.
Quoth Snozzberry: I work with XP Pro, Tiger, Solaris and Ubuntu daily. XP is my employer’s choice of OS, Solaris is their UNIX/Apache server, Tiger is my home desktop and Ubuntu runs my Mythbox.
(Cue twilight zone music.)
XP Pro is my employer’s choice of OS. Solaris runs their UNIX/Apache server. OS X is my home desktop.
I don’t happen to have a mythbox, but I do run Ubuntu.
Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to respond (both here and on my blog and via email). My apologies if I can’t respond to you all (though I’ll do my best).
I do want to take a quick moment to respond with some clarifications for “snozzberry” (excellent handle, btw):
“1. His most vocal users are whiners, and he’s convinced this is localized to a single platform. In other words, he’s the only software developer in the world who’s never read Slashdot. ”
I’m not concerned about whiners. I have been at fault of being a whiner plenty of times in my own life. But there is a distinct difference between the user communities on each of the various platforms… and the Mac community I have found to be more hostile and demanding (hence, more diva-like).
Now I’m sure others have had differing experiences. And that’s okay by me. But I also know that I’ve received a pretty massive outpouring of others since writing that post who have agreed or shared a similar experience with Mac users.
“2. He’s choosing to use a multi-track synthesizer as an all-purpose audio recorder/editor when Audacity’s been available for OS X for years, then tries to wow us with how he chose to use Audacity on Ubuntu instead. ”
In reference to this, we were attempting to use Apple’s Garageband for exactly what Apple said it was capable of. In fact we were using the functionality that was touted as the major new feature of that release. That fact that it doesn’t work as advertised was the real problem.
And, sure we’d used Audacity. Though Audacity did not have a native Intel port at that point (which was problematic) and we were trying to use Apple products. I’m not really sure why you thought I was trying to wow you.
“3. “(I’m not going to name names as that would adversely affect many individuals ability to make a living.)” Someone evidently has a warm opinion of his own overall place in the universe. ”
Well… I’d like to think I have a generally warm opinion of everyone’s place in the universe (until they prove to me it should be less warm).
Those that make Mac software or write Mac articles for a living rely on their good standing to Mac users to make that money. To sully their reputation within that community would be rude of me. That’s not saying I’m so important… but I’m not going to be irresponsible either.
“4. Safari is buggy, bloated and unstable. Has he even run Firefox on OS X before? The one compiled for the G3? ”
Sure thing. Used FireFox as my primary browser under OS X once Safari became unusable. But it seems like you are advocating using non-Apple software here (Audaicty, FireFox)… doesn’t that kinda make my point for me?
You aren’t going to find elysian fields of adoring users on any platform. Your experience sounds suspiciously like that of someone who writes software for a very specific niche, and those programmers routinely get reamed by their users.
Garageband is a very clever toy. It is not a serious tool for a business workflow, and the fact that few projects are interested in copying it is the proof. Apologies that you got snookered in by Apple, but iLife apps are not pro grade and have never been advertised as such. I buy iLife for upgrades to iDVD and iMovie and that’s it.
Apple makes a platform. Unlike Microsoft they aren’t attempting to write every killer app for it imaginable, and in fact their acumen at writing software is hit-or-miss. Outside of FCE and iDVD, the best software I have on my Mac was written by third-party companies. I don’t gauge my platform’s usefulness by how many Apple brand applications I use daily. Widgets are worthless to me. I haven’t used Keynote yet.
But the OS is good, and the software that runs on it is good. Do character animation like Poser in Linux without using Wine. Do bitmap editing on an editor with CMYK support and a full PANTONE library on Linux without emulation. Show me a Linux web development system on par with Dreamweaver, don’t just name the HTML editors you’ve heard of.
In the end my argument’s the same as the gamers: the software that I *need* is a deal breaker for switching. And this is coming from someone with a SLAX thumbdrive.
I like the look of phpide which is a plugin for eclipse. I don’t use wysiwyg editors for html. This is great for php/html development.
Garageband is a very clever toy. It is not a serious tool for a business workflow, and the fact that few projects are interested in copying it is the proof.
Apple says differently.
http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/
And he used it for exact purpose which is marketed by Apple?
Apologies that you got snookered in by Apple, but iLife apps are not pro grade and have never been advertised as such. I buy iLife for upgrades to iDVD and iMovie and that’s it.
Never? Apple site seems to disagree with you. Easiest, best are used all over.
But the OS is good, and the software that runs on it is good. Do character animation like Poser in Linux without using Wine.
The movie industry disagrees with you. No one professional (or at least serious) is making character animation with Poser.
And when I tested it it was too low quality for using it in my drawings also (I had more retouche work on it than completely fresh draw).
Do bitmap editing on an editor with CMYK support and a full PANTONE library on Linux without emulation.
Now, this shows you have no clue what you talk about. For quite some time allmost all bitmap editing is being done in RGB. Companies like Heidelberg are stopping to make scanners and those were the main reason how one CMYK became so popular with DTP. Now, most of foto materials are being done with Digital Photography. And guess which color space is being used there.
And mentioning Pantone and Bitmap editor in the same sentence just shows you don’t know how to distinguish between your ass and horizon. Pantone in Bitmap Editors is just calculated space, but never really used, because there is no pantone color model (there is only Pantone palette). Pantone is just a color naming specification which comes handy in printing (it is a definition of mixing inks) and it comes with two components – name and cmyk value. You would get the same result by hand following the pantone booklet. Pantone is much more in use with software like InDesign or Quark (where it makes sense). But to lessen your doubts again. Any software that supports loading/saving palette (where colors can be named) is also Pantone capable.
Show me a Linux web development system on par with Dreamweaver, don’t just name the HTML editors you’ve heard of.
Dreamweaver is dying breed also. More and more web content on web is being produced by more active tools. .Net, Java, ruby on the rails are the first here taking over. One is creation of simple static layout (where one really wouldn’t care if nvu or dreamweaver are being used, although more html coders prefer non-WYSIWYG editors). The dynamic content is completely another problem. You can bet that eclipse is far better for work with php. you can bet that VS is far better for .Net, you can bet that eclipse and javabeans are far better for java development, now question which sites is dreamweaver great for?
In the end my argument’s the same as the gamers: the software that I *need* is a deal breaker for switching. And this is coming from someone with a SLAX thumbdrive.
And since there is no deal breaker, and Apple has no envisioned path I too have moved from Apple completely. That comes from someone with a G5Dual and mini.
The movie industry disagrees with you. No one professional (or at least serious) is making character animation with Poser.
I didn’t claim it was a professional tool for animation; I said I need it. And as far as not being used in the movie industry is concerned, you should already know it’s being used for animatics in action films where storyboards aren’t dynamic enough.
And when I tested it it was too low quality for using it in my drawings also (I had more retouche work on it than completely fresh draw).
Sucks to be you. DC and Marvel comic book artists use it for creating visual references, including those who established themselves without digital tools years ago.
Now, this shows you have no clue what you talk about. For quite some time allmost all bitmap editing is being done in RGB. Companies like Heidelberg are stopping to make scanners and those were the main reason how one CMYK became so popular with DTP. Now, most of foto materials are being done with Digital Photography. And guess which color space is being used there.
I did prepress graphic design for five years. Nearly everything you said above is either incorrect or misunderstood. I don’t know whether to explain it to you or just wash your mouth out with soap and send you to bed without supper.
CMYK is a necessary reflective color space for process color printing. Everyone agrees it has a smaller gamut than RGB. However, RGB is a transmissive color space only. It doesn’t have any real-world analog outside of video screens and optics and it cannot be employed in printing which requires a reflective color space. Find me red, green and blue inks which produce white when blended and you’ll win this one.
Designers ultimately need CMYK separations for print; the TIFFs they embed in prepress files are CMYK not RGB. Oftentimes they will have to tweak the individual CMYK channels for best results.
Dreamweaver is dying breed also. More and more web content on web is being produced by more active tools. .Net, Java, ruby on the rails are the first here taking over. One is creation of simple static layout (where one really wouldn’t care if nvu or dreamweaver are being used, although more html coders prefer non-WYSIWYG editors). The dynamic content is completely another problem. You can bet that eclipse is far better for work with php. you can bet that VS is far better for .Net, you can bet that eclipse and javabeans are far better for java development, now question which sites is dreamweaver great for?
Again with the “don’t know what you’re talking about” part. Dynamic content generation still requires coding management in an application outside that framework. If you think WYSIWYG or prebuilt JavaScript behaviors are why pros use DW, you aren’t qualified to argue with a seven-year web development veteran who’s rebuilt large websites, created portals from scratch, and transitioned large websites from DHTML to browser-agnostic, ADA-compliant XHTML/CSS sites, integrated multiple server technologies — all using DW where other development tools would wither and pee themselves.
//I did prepress graphic design for five years. Nearly everything you said above is either incorrect or misunderstood. I don’t know whether to explain it to you or just wash your mouth out with soap and send you to bed without supper. //
Having done prepress work myself on and off for the past decade … I laughed out loud reading your response. Sheesh. Everyone seems to think that Photoshop is just for web graphics. Wow.
Having done prepress work myself on and off for the past decade … I laughed out loud reading your response. Sheesh. Everyone seems to think that Photoshop is just for web graphics. Wow.
Really interested in your answer (I seem to fail the point of laugh). Can you point out where either me or parent said that?
I did prepress graphic design for five years. Nearly everything you said above is either incorrect or misunderstood. I don’t know whether to explain it to you or just wash your mouth out with soap and send you to bed without supper.
heh??? You don’t even realize you talk about different things? Now and then? And what I said?
CMYK is a necessary reflective color space for process color printing. Everyone agrees it has a smaller gamut than RGB. However, RGB is a transmissive color space only. It doesn’t have any real-world analog outside of video screens and optics and it cannot be employed in printing which requires a reflective color space. Find me red, green and blue inks which produce white when blended and you’ll win this one.
RGB is additive, CMYK is subtractive color space. Every child knows that. I seem to fail in finding where I said opposite.
What I said is:
– devices producing CMYK input to be used are dying breed, new and professional RGB devices are poping in like mushrooms after the rain
– Pantone is not Color Space, it is a Color Palette.
– And as Color Palette only, Pantone it is not base for bitmaps
So, can you connect the dots and inform me how is this what you said connected with me being wrong.
btw. Retouching in RGB is quite simple. Have a good conversion profile in RIP. Use Gamut Warning (p.s. you have to set profiles correctly when setting up photoshop). And yes, use calibrated screen (RGB won’t differ the slightest from CMYK).
I wouldn’t even need to answer this part, but I’ll endulge you.
Designers ultimately need CMYK separations for print; the TIFFs they embed in prepress files are CMYK not RGB. Oftentimes they will have to tweak the individual CMYK channels for best results.
Ultimately, yes. But nowadays this job is mostly done on RIP processing software. It is RIP who produces separations.
You will get the same quality from RGB as you would from CMYK.
Now lets look at typical work in prepress, most of the material is either done by digital photography or it is vector drawning (where pantone can be used as it will be rastered in the end) or it is publication done in software like InDesign.
(photoshop editing part in more detail) Last few years about 80-90% comes from digital camera. Digital Camera is basically 16-bit (S)RGB.
Here’s Hasselblad for example
http://www.hasselblad.se/products/level3.asp?secId=1329&itemId=3841
Now as soon as you change this photo into CMYK you’re bound to have very good RGB to CMYK color profiles (and if every designer would do like that, it would be quite bothersome). While usualy better (and much more professional and consistant than Photoshop could ever provide) conversion actualy occurs in some RIP (be that for example Heidelbergs Delta). Simple math. You HAVE to calibrate final phase, but middle phase (dtp) doesn’t need so accurate calibration because it still provides room for improvent and corrections.
Again with the “don’t know what you’re talking about” part. Dynamic content generation still requires coding management in an application outside that framework. If you think WYSIWYG or prebuilt JavaScript behaviors are why pros use DW, you aren’t qualified to argue with a seven-year web development veteran who’s rebuilt large websites, created portals from scratch, and transitioned large websites from DHTML to browser-agnostic, ADA-compliant XHTML/CSS sites, integrated multiple server technologies — all using DW where other development tools would wither and pee themselves.
Yeah, and this would knock off my comment about html dying for newer technologies… how?
Edited 2006-07-26 22:10
Ultimately, yes. But nowadays this job is mostly done on RIP processing software. It is RIP who produces separations.
You will get the same quality from RGB as you would from CMYK.
http://www.google.com/search?q=service+bureau+rgb
Funny, according to all these links, service bureaus still want me to provide them with CMYK-based images/image-embedded documents where process color is involved. The most recent generations of Acrobat’s PDF spec support CMYK seps to make them prepress-friendly.
Yeah, and this would knock off my comment about html dying for newer technologies… how?
What markup language is replacing HTML? XHTML is HTML. Ruby is a server language like Perl or PHP. They aren’t even remotely comparable.
Funny, according to all these links, service bureaus still want me to provide them with CMYK-based images/image-embedded documents where process color is involved. The most recent generations of Acrobat’s PDF spec support CMYK seps to make them prepress-friendly.
Ok, lets see.
=====================================================
– first page says “# RGB vs. CMYK
RGB images may look great on screen or printed on your inkjet printer but they usually don’t print well to PostScript output devices. Convert your images to CMYK. While RGB has its place (on the Web, for example) it isn’t suitable for most PostScript color printing.
Save your original RGB file for later use or modifications. In your graphics application convert a copy of the RGB graphic to CMYK then place it in your page layout program. Send the CMYK version of your graphic to the printer.”
– second says “Graphics
Send copies of all your images used in your document. If you’ve practiced good file size management then most of your graphics are linked, not embedded in your document. The SB will need to have access to those graphics, otherwise your application file may have only low-quality preview images in the file or no graphic at all.
* Use EPS and TIFF images. If you must use other formats, check with your SB.
* Convert RGB images to CMYK.
* Save graphics in uncompressed formats.
* Don’t change graphics file names unless you first re-link them in your application file.
* In some instances your SB may want you to also send original format graphics (Freehand, Illustrator, Photoshop files) in addition to the placed EPS/TIFF images in your page layout application — for troubleshooting purposes. Ask them.”
====================================================
If this is the best material you could come with, then this is the last answer from me. Again you provided something I never disputed and again you avoid.
This is just one way to assure that even the last JoeBlow on Earth notices the differences between picture in CMYK and RGB if he was working incorrectly. C’mon, get serious. You said you’re professional. JoeBlow reasons?
This is because, people often don’t know what CMYK and RGB diff is (and at least in these circumstances they will see difference, where sky blue can become magenta easily or losing contrast which can be much greater in RGB respect). Anyone knowing that diff will provide much better result if he will do conversion at the end (on RIP).
1. I could work in RGB and as the last step before send to Service Bureau save as CMYK.
Would you notice (assuming I worked correctly)? No.
Would they(assuming I worked correctly)? No.
Is that CMYK step really necessary? No. I can simply send (which was rare in last year) RGB into PRESS and it will come out just as it needs to be.
btw. I always send colorproof (yes,… calibrated and payed a lot of money for both calibrators, printer and monitor) with that to be even more sure they won’t screw up.
2. Why they want TIFF? It can be for a few reasons. One could be OPI, one could be RIP, one could be they use some software that doesn’t support other formats, whatever… This is not important.
Why EPS? EPS is just a simple postscript where difference is simple. EPS supports one page, PS more. (just go into any editor and change %EPS to %PS or the other way). And since TIFF is native to postscript. EPS basically contains TIFF in case when saving EPS from Photoshop (EPS supports more than just TIFF, complete postscript). It is a postcript container which embedds TIFF.
Why not for example DCS? You could send separated picture this way and control separation all the way (If you don’t trust press company this is one way to ensure). If you embed DSC then RIP uses this separation and embeds it in final PS.
Or PSD for any matter?
Many other formats support 16-bit or CMYK, and some are loseless just as TIFF. Can TIFF be any better than them? No, equal at best.
3. Again you didn’t answer how do you create Pantone bitmap in Photoshop.
What markup language is replacing HTML? XHTML is HTML. Ruby is a server language like Perl or PHP. They aren’t even remotely comparable.
for the love of god… Writing a site using (insert any)html is dying. Do I have to spell every single bit?
.Net, Java, Ruby, PHP…
Dreamweaver is not usable with single one of these languages. (you could say php, but its support for php is misarable at best)
Edited 2006-07-27 00:15
When I look at his reason it becomes clear the Bryan just wanted to switch. Everything else is just mustard on the bun. I AM advocating using non-Apple software. To go to Linux just because he tried to stay on Apple’s offerings and they didn’t suit him is not logical.
Bryan is switching from Mac because of a long list of Apple’s own apps that do not go deep enough for his purposes. What jumped out is Linux is not an company that distros its own applications so why compare it to Apple who offers their own free apps within the OSX install disk? All Apple apps are intended as market targeting used on Mr. Jones, not for deep or demanding users; they are just gravy. As a user of any platform, I find developers and companies who deliver what I need and I, in turn, support them. Adobe, Flying Meat, Rogue Amoeba, Opera, Omni or whatever, my Apple use is the platform just as Linux or MS is the platform. Why blame the platform for this trying to use Apples funky little apps that are, likely, designed to be crappy so they don’t tick-off developers?
Re. Audacity not having an Intel native port, now that we are deep into the Intel transition (8 months?) Apple really should fire Audacity for not getting on board. Oh, sorry…that doesn’t work.
As for the Mac user flames; I am amazed by the b@stards that flame developers for opinion differences. I, for one, am grateful for the asbestos suited people that have offered their sweat soaked work and have been paid in insults and grief.
I switched from Linux to OS X as my primary desktop in 2002. Launched my Mac shareware business in 2003 and my experience with the Mac community cannot be more different than his.
Sure I have gotten a few nasty emails, but I’ve also gotten lots of emails from paying customers thanking me for writing an app. The later far outnumber the former.
Call me crazy but perhaps the kinds of emails you draw depends on the quality of your product.
I’ve been playing around with the latest Ubuntu in Virtual PC on my HP laptop. It’s really impressive…for Linux.
In other words, as a Linux distro it’s amazing, but as a big-league desktop OS it isn’t there yet. GNOME and KDE still suffer from usability and UI design problems. The available applications just aren’t up to the quality I expect from Mac software. I could never switch away from Mac OS X as long as Apple keeps a step ahead of the competition like they have been doing for the last several years.
Lots of people write Mac software and run Mac sites. They don’t all have huge problems. Of course, there are plenty of ***holes to go around, but I’ve seen plenty in the Windows and Linux communities as well. It’s hardly a Mac thing. But you’ll find out, in good time.
In other words, as a Linux distro it’s amazing, but as a big-league desktop OS it isn’t there yet.
More FUD from the Mac fans.
What exactly will Ubuntu (or any other Linux distro) need for it to be in your eyes a “big-league desktop OS”?
Lets face it since around Windows 95, Windows caught up on the useability thing. Linux has always seemed a year or two behind, but lets face it XP is old enough that linux has had more than enough time to catch up. Or is an OS that is used by the majority of the world not considered a big-league OS by you.
Ubuntu (and most redcent distro’s) are all perfectly useable, and steets ahead of Windows 95 or whatever OS then Mac was on by then.
Switching platforms because your site is being trolled by immature visitors? For one thing, every OS has loonies that are very vocal and don’t think that switching to linux will change that if you decide to create a linuxExcellence.com sort of page. Just as there are helpful and energetic people who support the Mac and Linux, there are goons on the linux side who will invite you in and then spew how clueless you are because you haven’t read the manpage before consulting them on IRC.
I understand if you want to experiment with other technologies, but don’t take the opinions of a loud minority that rage against you online as a notion that the entire community is bad. I own over six Macs but my central server system at home runs Linux. My (old) game box runs Windows (and now my new one is a 17″ MacBook Pro). Every system has its strengths, its zealots, and its trolls.
I’d be an all Linux (er.. Solaris.. but whatever) shop too and not a mac user IF I could get some software equivilant to Logic Pro and PS. I don’t need ports, I just need something capable of the same with the same usability. I really don’t give a crap what platform I’m on, and I’d rather save the money and build my own machines with the components *I* want. What’s important to me is software.
I’d never consider switching just because of *other users of my platform of choice*. I think that’s just silly. There are plenty of valid reasons, no reason to pick one such as that. It doesn’t come off as whiny, it comes off as stupid. That’s like not driving a BMW M3 because some rich punk kids drive them too, act like idiots, and make lots of stupid posts in forums (they do all of the above.)
Ok, so I read the blog and the post on the website. I then took the time to look at the archive for the former site before the author took over. The issue here seems to be pretty OS agnostic to me. There was a useful web resource that ceased to be as effective after it was taken over by new management. If you look at all of the links at the top of the current page and notice that over half are not active, you can see why users are upset. I will say that I like the new design a whole lot better, but why release a site that is less that 50% complete? After the site being successfully run for a number of years, it is suddenly not working for 4 months? Can you imagine the flamewar on this site if suddenly half the links didn’t work… for 4 months?
I totally agree. ResEx used to be on my list of ‘must have’ places to visit for new desktop pictures, icons, etc… Suddenly, one day, it’s replaced by a totally broken site that seems to be going nowhere. I don’t understand why the site redesign couldn’t have happened in a test folder or some such until it got nearer to completion. There’s no reason that some of the comments had to be quite so rude but the frustration of the visitors is more than understandable.
This issue really has nothing to do with Mac users specifically, unless the new people who manage the site think Linux users will be more happy with unfinished/broken redesigns left sitting for months.
I agree completely. I enjoyed the site for many years. I looked in on the forums, and it appears that they ran un-moderated forums leaving themselves wide open to trolls and spammers. Some years ago there was an interesting Linux magazine and web site oriented toward newbies and hobbyists called ‘Maximum Linux’. They had unmoderated forums that degenerated into a horrible mess. Of course this was not the reason for the projects demise, but it was an indication of a lack of maturity coupled with pie in the sky optimism. Although at the time they didn’t have the business savvy to sustain the project, they did leave graciously, and I have no doubt the individuals grew and prospered from their experience. ‘ResExcellence’ current management is in a similar situation, but they lack the grace to accept their failings and place the blame on others. I wish them luck.
I´m not sure if I agree with you here. I never seen that website before and since I don´t own a Mac and don´t think that I will on the foreseeable future (sadly), I wouldn´t step on it.
However, if I recall correctly, the guy said that the old site was static (meaning static HTML pages) and that they were making an effort to bring it to the late nineties using some sort of content manager, which would make it easier for everybody. He clearly stated that it would take a while and that his readers would have to cope with it a little bit.
Anyone with half a brain would know that these things takes plenty of time and that static webpages is not the way to go to do anything but the most basic of the blogs! And considering that those guys were doing it for free on their spare time, paying all the expenses of keeping the damn thing running from their own pockets would make you think that they deserve nothing but praises, right? But no. For some reason, a bunch of whiners with deep pockets feel entitled to something and kept complaining for something that they got for free until a point where the guy couldn´t stand it anymore.
I do agree that 04 months is a lot of time but cut the guy some slack, willya? Before throwing stones, why don´t you go try to maintain your own website for a change?
Let me guess… You´re one of those Mac users that disagree with his reasons?
“Let me guess… You´re one of those Mac users that disagree with his reasons?”
No, actually I’m someone who has run several corporate websites and I can tell you that the first rule of any upgrade is to do it in a test environment first. Yes, a new content system takes time to implement, but that really isn’t the issue here. They made a bad choice, then blame a community for calling them on it. If I were doing the job, I would have set up the site in a test folder on the server. I would have made the content sections of the site without worrying about the content itself. When I was satisfied with the framework of the site, I would solicit community help to add the content to the system page by page if need be. Assign temporary credentials to the users during the duration. Only when the migration was over 85% or so would I migrate the site to the main domain. So to sum up, I could care less if they chose to switch to linux. I just think that’s a wonderful cover for their failure. And while it does make for a wonderful flamewar, the users of that site (of which I am not, for the record) are the ones who lose. Its fairly obvious that these guys just had a fairy tale image of what it is to run a website and now are disenchanted with the reality.
Edited 2006-07-26 18:16
I think you folks should listen to the podcast. It’s scary that the people I consider to be the backbone of the OS X community are switching. These aren’t your average Joe Blow who got overtaken by the ipod hype. These are people who have invested their lifes in serving the OS X community. If I were Apple, I’d be really scared.
http://www.linuxactionshow.com/?p=22
aahahahahahah…thats a good one. I’ve never heard of any of these people and I’ve been a Mac user and developer since 1984. They have made no contributions to the Mac community other than writing blogs and contemplating their navel. Given Apples recent sales I’m sure they are runnning scared of Ubuntu. hehhheee ROFL.
Since the Linux community has no divas or bad attitudes.
I would call RMS a “diva”. Think of him with his Disk Drive Hat and that Saint IGNUcius outfit. He will win any “diva” contest thrown in Vegas any day
Seriously:
In terms of the article. So what? Someone woke up and decided that they needed to take control back from their computer. They chose Linux as that means. I applaud the effort and I also applaud everyone else who is now waking up and realizing the same thing.
Good luck! I will be here to help you in your journey if I can
haha… I think I can see your nose growing from here.
Oh!!!! he switched to Linux from OS X? Poor guy!!!!!!!! He does not realize in which mess he is going………
i’ve encountered more bad vibes and hostility with the linux community when i was running windows or just getting started with linux than i ever have with the mac community.
not sure why this angle keeps getting played up. if you don’t like the small crowd you’re running with, find a new one. i don’t think changing platforms is going to produce any long lasting changes in the types of BS people will come up with.
And I use OS X for my Cocoa system. I have never read this site. There are plenty of Mac sites and this one doesn’t ring a bell.
Really. I mean who the f**k cares if they switched from Mac OS X to Linux. Seems like they’re cutting off their noses to spite their faces. C’mon, Linux is seriously NOT ready for the desktop. Where are the apps? GIMP? Yeah, right! OpenOffice? Whatever! Where is the linux answer to Final Cut Pro…or Logic…iLife…iTunes…etc, etc, etc.
GIMP’s great, Inkscape is beautiful, Cinelerra is one of the most powerful apps I’ve ever used (Diva and Pitivi also look very promising), openoffice does all that 95% of users need to do, Listen, Banshee or Amarok have surp[assed iTunes in my opinion, F-Spot and Picasa beat the crap out of iPhoto, Easyubuntu gets me every codec I’ve ever neeeded and XGL makes me feel all warm inside with its beautful eyecandy.
I think it’s time we clarified something
Linux is not ready for YOUR desktop
However, for a growing number of people, linux is ready for the desktop or has been for for ages now and for many of us, it’s the only desktop we want.
I can understand that you are frustated that some mac users have been agressive, mean, etc, but there is something important, don’t generalize. If you are new in the Linux world you wil also find agressive people as you would find them in the mac and windows community.
That’s true a lot of mac users are very demanding on what they want for their applications that they want to sue, a lot of them are also extremely aggressive to Apple when a new product does not satisfy them. Its not only YOU!!!!
I know some people working at Apple, ask them and you will hear the same thing, they are sometimes frustated that some mac users are very mean.
But that’s still isolated people, and you can not avoid to have them on your web site because those are the people who are the most present in forums, the ones who complain the most everythere they can…..
You also said that Apple like to copy some features found in other developers applications. I can not be agree about that. Are you complaining that Apple is trying to build some features in their OS instead of having them separately. Everyone would agree that that’s a good thing and the user is the WINNER at the end. Its is difficult to argue against this matter of fact, isn’t it?
Now of course some features may be already available somewhere else, and that’s a challenge for the developer to do better than Apple, but you can not blame Apple to try to bundle features that they consider useful in their OS even if the idea alteady exists in someone else app.
And even, how many applications developped on OS X are concerned by that, 0.something %, right? Well ok, Sherlock was close to Watson in the features but not the implementation, but how can you accuse Apple of copying Konfabulator when Konfabulator is itself an evolution of the desktop accessories which have existed for years in Mac OS. Does not make sense….. The majority of the developpers will not be affected by what you describe, and there is very small chance that you will run out of business because of Apple.
I mean look at some examples, Apple introduced Pages, but there are still plenty of word processing apps from small developpers out there, still competing and having success, Nisus Writer, Mellel, Marner, NeoOffice, OpenOffice, Z-write, you name it.
Apple introduced Safari, and look at the number of browsers running on OS X, higher than any other plateforms. And you find really good applications, Camino, OmniWeb, Shiira, just to name the ones wich are very innovating recently.
So you can not blame Apple because they decide to build their own app the way they want and that you make a similar application, that’s just childish….. And it did not even happen to you, so what……
I am also developer but so far for only open source scientific applications, however i may consider developping something for my own “business” one day, and to be honnest i really don’t feel that Apple is gonna clone my applications. If they do, well i will keep trying do better than them.
NB: You accuse Apple to do such practise but according to you Microsoft tends to do not. If i follow your example of Konfabulator, should i remind you that Microsoft will introduce widgets in Vista which are similar to Konfabulator and Dashboard?
Moreover you are going to Linux, the world of the free software and the open source code. You will find hundreds of application similar to each other on Linux, which takes features from each other and reimplement it in another way. Thats a common and natural practise in the Linux world. So i don’t see how your “business” will survive in such a world if you are so scared that someone clones your apps. I don’t understand your point. According to what you wrote, i would expect you to switch to windows not Linux for that matter. Or you are just bashing about Apple…….
Lastly, i would like to say clearly (even if you seem not to be happy to hear it) that i do not have problems using iLife, iMovie works great, Garageband works great, and everything else works great for me. Garegand does what it is expected to do. I use Safari and it works very well, sure i can not say that it never crashed or had some problems with some web sites but it is a solid web browser. I tried to use Firefox, but it is just damm slow on my mac, slow to launch, slow to render pages, slow to scroll through pages, everything is slow. Safari is much faster on my computer.
(However i am considering to try to use also other alternatives, like Shiira which seems to be a quite intersting product.)
I am about to make my own blog and website with iWeb and .mac, and my first tests were very positive, i did not have any issues so far. Everything went smoothly….
So please don’t try to make believe people that Apple software does not work properly as expected when you have specific issues on your system. That’s not true and now you just react as those hostile mac users that you have been blaming. I can understand that you are maybe not satisfy about Safari, or Garageband, that you did not have good experience with those applications, but that does not mean that “Apple’s software quality has gone into the toilet.” Again this is an agressive and pointless statement similar to the ones that you can read from those mac fans that you blame.
Apple’s software quality is certainly one of the best in the market today, and if you care about software quality, i don’t think that your choice to switch Linux is a clever one. I am also a Linux user, i like the Liunux world, the pholosophy, the community, but i have to admit that Linux is not still there when it comes to usuability, reliability and ease of use. I know Audacity, and i am sorry to report that it does crash in my system, it does crash on the system of a friend.
Many Linux apps that can be used like iLife are in beta level quality, so almost unsuable, Linux itself fails in many ares in terms of usuability, i mean KDE and Gnome are slow, damm slow on old computers, the user interface is not consistent, if you use KDE you get the KDE world style, if you use Gnome, you get the Gnome world style. Both have pretty different way of working, user interface, etc…
It is difficult not be agree that OS X is a state of the art OS. I mean its clean, consistent, easily usuable, and rich. Again if you care about applications quality, i dont think that you will be happy about what yu will find on Linux, i mean usually people using OS X do not, but if you do, God help you in that…..
I have been using a powermac for 4 years now, and every Apple OS or applications just runs perfectly on it. I can not say the same for Linux, KDE and Gnome are just too slow on this system. Firefow is also slow, and any free iLife-like applications that i tried to use with my computer run poorly, were unstable and slow. For that matter Apple OS and applications are much more optmized to run on their hardware old and new.
With the attitude thing, I’ve seen great Mac community attitude, I’ve seen some pathetic attitude and childish behavior.
I’ve also seen great Linux Attitude and some awefull rude people.
Same with Windows, some places are great help, others are just complete morons.
It really depends on where you go and who you talk to I suppose.
So personally, for me, I can’t see why you would switch if that played a large roll in it.
All OS’s offer something and it really depends on your needs, if you want to game, your probably really going to want windows, if you do multimedia work, go for OS X, if your doing development work or a free OS that runs well on any hardware is important, then go Linux.
On switching from Mac to Linux…
…with its bad attitudes and diva-esque nature, rained on my parade.
…reminds me of a Cold War era, Twilight Zone episode where a family secretly flees a planet to avoid a nuclear holocaust. Their destination? Earth.
*chuckles*
Edited 2006-07-25 21:36
It seems the pertinent question, which Linux distribution are they switching to? (Unless the Mac community restores their faith, per TFA)
We switched to Ubuntu.
I’ll assume that you’re using PowerPC Macs to run linux.
If that’s the case, then you’ve probably picked the most polished PPC linux distribution. I’m normally a Debian user, but Ubuntu’s PPC distribution seems far more stable and polished than the current Debian Testing for PPC.
So…Good choice, and good luck!
First of all…bye. Don’t let the door hit you. Second, anyone who switches for such a whiny reason and then trys to make a public spectacle out of it is a child. Grow up.
Every group has their a@@holes. I don’t take them seriously and just block their IP addresses so they can’t make anymore comments. I’m not saying I’m blocking negative comments. I just block people that are rude to be rude or idiots to be idiots. Contructive negative comments are worth more than pats on the back.
I’m pretty sure they are going to find out that Linux users are quite like Mac users.
I am sure your stay in the Linux world will be most enjoyable, because we know how to BEHAVE, as demonstrated by the exchange between Torvalds and Tannenbaum, or just about any discussion on the Debian forums.
You should know that Ubuntu isn’t “real” linux, because it is funded by a rich millionaire who is using the distribution to further his dastardly! plot! to! take! over! the! WORLD!, plus it STEALS from Debian!! On top of that, Ubuntu is Gnome based, and everyone KNOWS that KDE is better than that AWful Gnome any day (and Vi IS better than Emacs)!!!
So, welcome. We’re perfect!
Loving this! Just Loving it!
This is one of my favourites from the bloggs comments:
“Mac users are incredibly arrogant, condescending, and just overly rude in every form as a group..”
Email the links to as many Mac users you know (I have – all of them). The world needs to see the “Dark Side” of the Mac community. I say a warm “welcome” to our new convert but don’t care what OS he went to really. The first step to resolving the problem (being a Mac dependant) is admitting you have a problem. lol happy days…
…I would pop into ResExcellence from time to time. It was a super helpful site.
As far as some of the (for the most part) light bashing of Apple and fanatics/users… I have all macs right now. I like the styling of the hardware, I like Mac OS X itself.
Let me just say, however, that the people that are critics or have nothing nice to say post their feelings and their criticisms much moreso than do the people who are not bothered or like something. It’s just human nature. People like to complain more than be bothered saying a kind word or two.
Also, I think you will find that while you are honeymooning with your change over, things will be bright and cheery. But you will soon find that it is the same no matter where you go… whiners, complainers and hateful people will begin the assault. Hell, just read OS News comments for more than a week and you will see what I mean.
Giving up because some people complained is a pretty lame excuse. It *IS* your choice, but to place the weight of your decision soley on the negativity of others, well… you are screwed in life, buddy.
Also seems like most people feel that when they’re happy about something so must be the rest of the world, but if they’re upset they must be the only one.
But you definitely make a good point about human nature: It likes to complain more than praise.
“but the Macintosh community, with its bad attitudes and diva-esque nature, rained on my parade. Sure there were other reasons why I switched. But that was the tipping point.”
So this year he will discover the linux zealot community and switch to the last OS: Windows.
But, I am waiting to see him making money with software for linux. Mac users always pay for their software. Linux users don’t want to pay for it.
But, I am waiting to see him making money with software for linux. Mac users always pay for their software. Linux users don’t want to pay for it.
I’m quite sure linux users are prepared to pay for propietary media formats and good commercial applications.For example norton internet security 2006 for linux.There’s allways a market for a beter controllable antivurus/firewall/snort solution.
For example norton internet security 2006 for linux
And you said “good commercial application”: lol.
Well you can’t deny it is accessible for more users.Furthermore it has features pointNclick away you only see in see in hardly accessible OSS projects.I don’t see my mom setup php,acid,snort,iptables on any linux platform.Whereas norton internet security has traffic signatures recognition and more.I bet snort is miled ahead but there is nowhere an all in one iptables,snort,management solution.
This is my point:There’s so much avanced stuff available for linux but there is a shortage of cohesion between many projects.
Apple has a long track record of directly copying 3rd party application developers (most notably small shops) and including almost perfect clones of those
Just as *ALL* linux software. There is no difference.
“With OSS, the new features get out the door sooner, run faster on modest hardware, and once they get past the initial spike in bug reports immediately following release, they tend to have fewer bugs over the course of their lifetime. Look at SLED10: it reached beta quality quicker, got better reviews, and was gold sooner than even Novell expected. Apple is beginning to lengthen their release cycles (although they seem good at sticking to them), and Microsoft hasn’t completed a release cycle in so long I wonder if they still know how to fire up the CD presses
”
This is not true. More and more Linux itself is getting a pain in the ass to run on old hadware. I have a dual G4 867 mhz powermac and Linux with either Gnome or KDE is very slow on my machine. There is no comparison with Tiger which runs well faster than Linux.
And SLED10 did not have so much new features that actually work properly. A lot of its new features like the hardware accelerated desktop is more than buggy on a lot of hardwares. And come on! Apple puts a lot more new features and technologies in OS X than Suse put on SLED10, please compare what Tiger brings to what SLED10 brings. SLED 10 is still basically a catching up on the desktop OS market rather than an innovative OS compared to the competition.
This is not true. More and more Linux itself is getting a pain in the ass to run on old hadware. I have a dual G4 867 mhz powermac and Linux with either Gnome or KDE is very slow on my machine. There is no comparison with Tiger which runs well faster than Linux.
You have to be kidding me. I have a 700Mhz PIII with 256 MB of RAM and it runs GNOME fine.
And SLED10 did not have so much new features that actually work properly. A lot of its new features like the hardware accelerated desktop is more than buggy on a lot of hardwares.
XGL doesn’t work on every system but neither does Aero or OSX. On supported systems (even fairly old GFX cards) it runs very well and is easy to set up.
And come on! Apple puts a lot more new features and technologies in OS X than Suse put on SLED10, please compare what Tiger brings to what SLED10 brings. SLED 10 is still basically a catching up on the desktop OS market rather than an innovative OS compared to the competition.
Name those features. Linux has an equivalent to all or nearly all the features of OSX and the software selection is much larger for Linux. The hardware support is much larger too.
I’m a Linux ‘enthousiast’ as well, but when I read that I subconsciously looked for the words ‘humor’ in the title
When you’re conditioned to be sceptical about something that does things to you too…
Well known….ResExcellence?
They must be kidding right? I guess what they call the ‘attitude’ of mac users is just ignoring them.
I had never ever heard about these guys.
“Listen, Banshee or Amarok have surp[assed iTunes in my opinion, F-Spot and Picasa beat the crap out of iPhoto, Easyubuntu gets me every codec I’ve ever neeeded and XGL makes me feel all warm inside with its beautful eyecandy. ”
If you say that it seems that you never used neither iTunes nor iPhoto. I mean look at Banshee or Amarok, how it can be better than iTunes,their interface is ugly, confusing and althought they do provide a great deal of features they don’t provide the features of iTunes. I can not buy songs like in iTunes, i can not stream and share my music like in iTunes, i doubt that there is a nice support for podcasting like in iTunes, the search is better on iTunes, etc….. So how can it be better?
And how “F-Spot and Picasa beat the crap out of iPhoto” when they do not provide photocasting, full screen edition, i can not make photo books like in iPhoto, i can’t make calendars like in iPhoto, i can not make greeting cards like in iPhoto, etc… iPhoto is fast, solid, easy to use with a polished interface. So how it can be better, i don’t get it!!!
Moreover Banshee/Amarok do not work with F-Spot/Picasa and vice versa, iTunes and iPhoto do and they do with 4 other appplications.
So how those apps can be better thab Apple’s application, i can not see, features to features comparison iTunes and iPhoto are better. And some apps like Listen, Banshee or F-Spot are 0.xxx release applications so not even stable programs, how can they be better than proven applications like iTunes and iPhoto. Thats just bullshit……sorry!!!!!
And concerning Cinelerra, it does not have the range of features that FinalCutPro HD offers and it does not have the industry support that FinalCut enjoys. Come back to the real world please!!!!
Same thing for Gimp, i personally rather like this application but lets face it, that’s still far behind Photoshop again in features, stability reliability and industry support. Thats a matter of fact….
Yes yes, always trying to justify the expense. I think our interpretation of “better” differs from yours. The article has already described the Mac software stability problems. If you ever see an app crash on a Mac just Force Quit it and erase it from your memory – it didn’t happen did it? Hows these apples (hehe): Amarok/Banshee/F-Spot/Picasa/Cinerella on Linux wins over all your other crApps purely because they are created by good people for FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Even if they have half the features of the commercial alternatives they still win. He look at me! I have a cheap computer with free software that does what I want/need and I have all this money left in my wallet! I’ll donate some of it to my fav apps and keep the rest for the weekend! Don’t beat up on free software man or karma will beat up on you.
Last time I tested linux, the instability of applications forced me to kill the X server and restart it by hand.
If you say that it seems that you never used neither iTunes nor iPhoto. I mean look at Banshee or Amarok, how it can be better than iTunes,their interface is ugly, confusing and althought they do provide a great deal of features they don’t provide the features of iTunes. I can not buy songs like in iTunes, i can not stream and share my music like in iTunes, i doubt that there is a nice support for podcasting like in iTunes, the search is better on iTunes, etc….. So how can it be better?
A feature is not a feature to me unless I use it. Wikipedia integration is a feature to me, in program id3 tag editing is a feature to me, Built-in LastFM support is a feature to me, streaming music…not so much. Secondly, I would much rather go to abn actual music store and buy a physical medium, which happens to be higher quality than buy a DRM-infested digital copy from iTunes.
And how “F-Spot and Picasa beat the crap out of iPhoto” when they do not provide photocasting, full screen edition, i can not make photo books like in iPhoto, i can’t make calendars like in iPhoto, i can not make greeting cards like in iPhoto, etc… iPhoto is fast, solid, easy to use with a polished interface. So how it can be better, i don’t get it!!!
Again, a feature is not a feature unless I use it. While they are very nice features to a lot of people I have no doubt, but not to me. and secondly iPhoto is most certainly NOT fast, in a huge database of photos Picasa blows iPhoto out of the water, F-Spot’s tagging feature is one of my favourite features on any program and neither F-Spot or Picasa force me to use that horrible database that iPhoto forces you into.
Moreover Banshee/Amarok do not work with F-Spot/Picasa and vice versa, iTunes and iPhoto do and they do with 4 other appplications.
I would rather have the freedom to swap in any program that best fits my work flow than use one program because it integrates well with another. Most of the integration between those apps can be achieved with a well organized file system and other times that integration can get really annoying. If I’m using iMovie and add a new song into the iTunes library I had to reload iMovie to see it. (This may have changed but the last time i used it it hadn’t) That isn’t integration that is a pain.
So how those apps can be better thab Apple’s application, i can not see, features to features comparison iTunes and iPhoto are better. And some apps like Listen, Banshee or F-Spot are 0.xxx release applications so not even stable programs, how can they be better than proven applications like iTunes and iPhoto. Thats just bullshit……sorry!!!!!
There’s no need to apologize, but I can’t see how you can have so much trouble with the fact someone else prefers something different. In regards to the version numbers, in reality they are in no way an indicator of stability in the case of open source or commercial applications, there are stable apps and there are unstable apps, but with Linux, I likely didn’t waste my money on a bug-ridden piece of crap.
Lastly, for GIMP and Cinelerra, it’s true that they may be may not be completely up to snuff with Photoshop or FCP, but for what I need, they work amazing well and I am neither paying hundreds of dollars for them or pirating the applications.
If you say that it seems that you never used neither iTunes nor iPhoto. I mean look at Banshee or Amarok, how it can be better than iTunes,their interface is ugly, confusing and althought they do provide a great deal of features they don’t provide the features of iTunes. I can not buy songs like in iTunes, i can not stream and share my music like in iTunes, i doubt that there is a nice support for podcasting like in iTunes, the search is better on iTunes, etc….. So how can it be better?
Do you mean their themes are ugly, or their interfaces? I can’t speak for AmaroK, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a cleaner interface than Banshee. Banshee can host streams and play streams to and from iTunes.
And how “F-Spot and Picasa beat the crap out of iPhoto” when they do not provide photocasting, full screen edition
Do you mean viewing or editting full-screen? F-Spot already handles full-screen viewing, and for the editting options (red-eye, contrast, colors, etc.) it has, you wouldn’t need to edit full-screen. The red-eye tool is clever enough to just need an approximate bounding box, and it avoids discoloring skin on its own. Beyond that, F-Spot lets you trivially resize and upload selected photos to Flickr and other web galleries. Does iPhoto have Flickr integration?
And some apps like Listen, Banshee or F-Spot are 0.xxx release applications so not even stable programs,
0.x releases of open source apps usually don’t mean the same thing they do for closed-source apps. Gaim was 0.x well past its original core feature and general stability. Both F-Spot and Banshee seem very stable, so I wouldn’t read too much into their version numbers. F-Spot is supposed to handle way more photos than iPhoto itself (which apparently crashes when you load tens of thousands of photos).
Please give these apps a shot. It doesn’t sound like you’ve tried them.
All this talk of bad attitude amongst the <INSERT ANY OS HERE> community really does crack me up. 🙂
I mean, surely every OS community and probably every community the world over has some form of bad attitude some where lurking in it?!
I am a Ubuntu/Debian/Windows/Mac OS X user and right now I have to use all of the above because no OS is perfect (how many times have you heard that?). It’s all about the best tool for the job.
YES – You can play games natively on Linux but the choice is vastly limited when compared to Windows.
YES – You can compose audio/video/DVDs/DTP on a Windows but isn’t Mac OS the industry de facto in such areas?
YES – Mac OS is great to look at and (IMHO) very stable but nothing beats the speed of development of Linux (not to mention the fun that goes with it :-)).
I want to have fun with computers and enjoy using them. Being a user of multiple OSes and therefore a member of multiple OS communities does give me a certainly amount of joy. I’m sure we can all get on can’t we? I know I can!
After reading through the comments to the news post it seems that the – admittedly unjustly harsh – comments were out of frustration.
ResEx used to be a useful resource and very active, and the new owners apparently let it stagnate for 4 months.
Now, I’m not one of the users who come there regularly, but I do remember bumping into it from time to time, and I remember there was a whole lot of stuff on there that seems to be completely gone now.
That combined with a lack of any updates could probably cause most people to ignite, if they were casual users. I know I would have been disappointed (I would also have formulated myself properly).
It seems they didn’t really have an idea of what the site was about and that almost killed it.
I just hope all the content is still available somewhere and that they will have the decency to restore it before “passing the poop”.
These guys obviously have not hung around some of the Linux support forums. I have seen comments 10x worse than the examples that they post. There are always going to be some bad apples in a group (no pun intended) and they should not take it personally. If you like the hardware and software then stick with what you are doing. These “rude” users do not have to use your website and you should just ignore them. I have used the ResExcellence site off and on for the past few years and always found it helpful if a bit confusing to navigate sometimes, but it is useful bottom line. So stick with it guys there are a lot of folks in the Mac community that do appreciate it.
Ok, I know we have a lot of Linux people here are that’s great. I <3 anything that’s free, especially when it scares Microsoft. But how exactly did this story get published? How is this important OS news?
People, even important people, switch operating systems every day. We really don’t need to know about it unless maybe it’s Bill Gates, Steve Jobbs, or Linus Torvalds.
I honestly don’t even understand what the perceived problem with OS X is. High standards? Heaven forbid an OS community not be satisfied with crappy software. That’s the very attitude, not accepting crap, that creates competition and prevents things like Windows from happening. I know things can be a little different in open source, but that’s open source. If you release binaries for OS X don’t expect them to be accepted just because they’re free or open source.
Take a look at this screen shot: http://www.deviantart.com/view/36935484/
I think it tells quite a story about why ResExcellence has received nasty comments. It has nothing to with the Mac OS X community and everything to do with buggy web site code.
Wait long enough. If they have the same site quality on a Linux focused site, they’ll get the same thing. Someone will likely tell them to RTFM on Php and MySQL judging from this screenshot
Seriously – The Mac users he refers to are the same type of people who shop at Ikea… Having worked as a apple technician (and still dabbling in keeping older iBooks and Powerbooks viable for people) Apple’s hardware draws many simularities to Ikea – pretty veneers over particle board put together with an allen wrench, the same stuff you can buy at Walmart for a fifth the price, but thanks to the cultish promotion they can charge an arm and a leg for.
For those of you not familiar with it (thanks to BrettW over on the parallels forums for this one) “IKEA is a fully immersive, 3D environmental adventure that allows you to role-play the character of someone who gives a shit about home furnishings. In traversing IKEA, you will experience a meticulously detailed alternate reality filled with garish colors, clear-lacquered birch veneer, and a host of NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS (NPCs) with the glazed looks of the recently anesthetized.”
Hell, you want proof of the cultish ‘never good enough’ mentality – go check the Parallels forums, the program was still in beta and Mac users were bitching that the program was near unusable… WHY?
Because it didn’t work? No.
Because it crashed? No.
Because it wasn’t a cocoa app with the fancy metallic skin like itunes has? DING DING DING DING DING, we have a wiener. Land sakes you are running WINDOWS in a window, and you care that the styling of the parent window is ‘plain’ and not ‘skinned?’…
I still say this is the leading cause of the LACK of REAL third party applications on the Mac – Mac users alienate developers almost as badly as Linux developers alienate users.
RTFM =)
I’ve been going to ResExcellence.com since the beginning,
It’s a useful site (sight), I realized there would be changes and I noticed a lot of things disappearing in the last few years from the System 7 through OS 9 era, which is important stuff to me.
This site, to me, was a place I’d go for tips and work-arounds (using ResEdit) to continue to use my Mac in the best possible fashion.
This site seems to be a bit bigger and important to us for you all to hold it hostage.
Do what ever your going to do, but don’t punish those of us that had no part in it’s demise.
Sell it, turn it over to another team (that has a passion for all Macs new and old) or throw it all away on a tantrum (you guys are asking for this).
Just don’t threaten us with what was a formerly great site that you’ve neglected.
Go make a Linux playground and the best on your new endeavors.
hylas
http://www.osx86project.org/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom (July 26th, 2006) – Conrad Quilty-Harper, a writer for the popular Macintosh blog, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, has announced a bold plan to continue using Mac OS X for the foreseeable future. According to Conrad, this move is partly in reaction to the recent trend for relatively high profile figures across the web to announce their plan to switch away from the Mac OS operating system to Linux-based operating systems, in particular Ubuntu.
On the subject of Ubuntu switchers Cory Doctorow, Mark Pilgrim and now Bryan O’Bryan, the owner of Mac modding and hacking site ResExcellence, Conrad said, “I just don’t care.” He also poses the question, “Since when did a person’s computing platform of choice become a matter that must be announced to the public?”
As an example of his extraordinary resilience, Conrad says that he will continue to use the Mac until either his needs exceed the Mac operating system’s capabilities, or he gets a life and decides that he didn’t need a computer anyway. Conrad also states that he agrees with John Gruber’s point of view regarding the Ubuntu switching trend. “I defend the right of others to switch to other operating systems, and even to point out the shortcomings of the OS they are switching away from, but please, can we stop the whole ‘NEWSFLASH: random dude switches away from the Mac!’ nonsense?
You know alot of people at work who make as much as me drive Mercedes and I have a Toyota Camry. They are always making fun of it which makes me feel bad. I guess I better buy that Mercedes so I feel cool like them. Then I’ll take an add out in the newspaper to announce it.
“F-Spot and Picasa beat the crap out of iPhoto, ”
Thats probably the dumbest comment I have seen out of the many on this thread. Have you ever used iPhoto? Have you ever even seen it? Picasa is OK for free but it doesn’t even begin to comapre in features or usability.
Thats probably the dumbest comment I have seen out of the many on this thread. Have you ever used iPhoto?
<old man voice>Hmm, let me just take a look at the Mac mini and the eMac in my basment, gotta see if I have this iPhoto program people who keep disagreeing with me ask me if I’ve ever used.</old man voice>
Yes I have used iPhoto and I prefer F-Spot or Picasa over it. Why is this so hard to beleive? For what some people use photomanagement apps for iPhoto is not the greatest app out there.
…maybe this is the hostility thing the ResEx guys were talking about?
Edited 2006-07-27 05:37
X Mac program is better than the one with Linux, Y Windows program is also better than the Linux one. just buls#$%
So that means all of you who has a Mac or Windows spend $499 every two years in a Microsoft Office upgrade, plus $600 in my Photoshop CS, and another $399 for Macromedia Flash, among others. Com’on get real, only those Web Designers who has a good income buy them, others, just copy them from their office desks to their personal computers.
I’m not a web designer, more a programmer and system administrator. All my PC’s, even the one at work, runs on Linux. No problems with hardware ATM, stable, do my needs and I have no need for pirated software. Commercial software may offer more features, but for the price/features nothing beats F/OSS.
This is weird; I’ve met a few BMW drivers I don’t like, but that wouldn’t stop me driving a BMW.
A small minority of mouthy Mac users upset them, so answer is to move to a larger community, where there are more people to do the same?
Their whole argument sounds like that they couldn’t meet the standards, so rather than improve, they decided to move to a community, who they hope, have lower expectations.