Comment by megamark16 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by megamark16 | Hacker News Reader

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If you're going to judge it based on your existing preconceptions, of course it's going to come up short.

Guilty as charged. I used a Mac for about 9 months, and I never got used to it, I never stopped being frustrated by the things that were difficult, annoying, or just plain Fisher Price dumbed down by default. I'm a developer, I could (and for a lot things I did) figure stuff out, tinker with stuff, but I just wasn't that in love with the whole package, so I didn't put forth that much effort to make it my home. If I had been moving from Windows, maybe I wouldn't have had as much of a a problem making the transition, but I found that I had been so spoiled by Linux, and fallen in love with the whole idea behind it, that I just couldn't cope. Is that the fault of OSX? Surely not, it was a personal thing, but I really love Linux, and I think I'm going to stick with it.

With that being said, the hardware is stellar. If I hadn't run into so many problems trying to dual boot I might have held onto the hardware.

I share your sentiments. Me too couldn't get used to OSX even after months of trying. While, with its underlying unix philosophy, it is close to Linux, it's never quite there, and what bothers the most is the obviously intentional decision to disable all kinds of UI customizations. Put a proprietary codebase on top of that and we, as regular Linux users, feel stuck and helpless most of the time.

What I do right now, as I didn't want to refuse the company's MacBook Pro, is dual boot Debian on it. Except for the fact that I couldn't get integrated GPU to work instead of the discrete one, I haven't had any problems with them working together. Excellent OS on excellent hardware (I wouldn't call it stellar though, I have few complaints there as well).

I went from being a total Windows junkie to loving OSX since I switched over in May. No regrets. My windows desktop is left sitting, while I use my MacBook Pro all the time. I don't know exactly what you consider dumbed down, while some parts are now hidden, they can easily be found with minimum effort.

It's certainly not dumbed down compared to Windows. Shoot, you've got a full bash shell included out of the box! It only felt dumbed down (or maybe I should say "locked down, and candy coated") when compared to my Linux desktop, which gives me a huge amount of customization freedom and built in power tools. I went from Windows to Linux, then to OSX, and I missed a lot of things about Linux while not feeling like I gained anything extra. I'd take OSX over Windows any day, but at the end of the day I want to be working in Linux.

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