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Comment by breckinloggins | Hacker News Reader

Just promise us that when you do, you won't become a rabid fanboy yourself.

By all rights I should be the biggest fanboy ever. All my computers are Macs. I have an Apple TV. I stood in line to buy the first iPhone on launch day and have owned nothing but iPhones since. I have an iPad. I insist on using Apple services like iTunes so everything "just works" with all my Apple devices. I even converted my whole family from PCs to Macs and, yes, my "family tech support" calls have dropped.

But I'm not what you would call a "fanboy".

If someone asks why I like Apple products, I try to give rational reasons but I admit from the start that I'm biased and just "like them", plus I "think they're cool". I never sneer at PC users or people with Android phones. I don't make lame jokes about "Winblows" and such.

I guess my point is it's possible to become a total convert and still not annoy the heck out of everyone around you. I'm not saying you don't know that, just that you should monitor yourself. Once you become loyal to a brand (Apple, BMW, B&W loudspeakers, whatever) it's sometimes difficult to tell the difference between being a proud evangelist and an annoying cultist.

Luckily, I had some friends who helped me whenever I veered too far in the latter direction. :)

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IMHO Apple fanboyism is not a problem in the hacker community.

It's a well-built solid metal portable development workstation. With BSD UNIX. And a pretty layer on top.

Among programmers, I never need to explain why we would buy these things.

It's outside the programming groups that the conversation gets hostile. I find most programmers avoid this completely, knowing that they're simply using the best tool available for the job, and ignoring the hype, criticism, and fanboyism. Props, hackers, keep it up.

I study computer science and the amount of banter I get from fellow students for using a macbook air is unbelievable. Other people usually seem quite ok with it, although self proclaimed power users usually seem to have an opinion about it.

This is just rich to me. Yes, enjoy your Visual Studio and broken command line, I'll be using lightweight tools and an actual POSIX command line.

*edit: Wow, -10? Sorry, I was just sharing my experience of being mocked by people who proudly brag about their Windows 7 machine and are barely proficient at .NET programming who give me a hard time because "Macs are lame and Windows is for geeks".

Didn't know there were so many fucking yuppie Windows people to be so defensive. Jesus. Literally, 10 people downvoted this. Stay classy. (And the GP backed up what I said anyway, jerks)

Just because they don't use OS X doesn't mean they use Windows. As a Computer Science student I'm willing to bet that most of those that "banter" on the parent use Linux.

No, they actually all use windows!

Microsoft has a very strong technology evangelizing program targeted at upper education. They almost pay colleges to offer Windows-centric courses and Windows-only labs.

<tongue-in-cheek>

The Linux users generally consider OSX a nice Linux-like OS that lacks a decent package manager ;-)

Much like Microsoft, the hardware is great.

</tongue-in-cheek>

Disclaimer: I am mostly a Linux user who also uses Macs for certain tasks.

Hey we have homebrew nowadays :P

And microsoft is actually really generous towards students, I can get basically any software except for office for free.

> Hey we have homebrew nowadays :P

When I'm on a Mac, I'm a ports guy. MacPorts is probably the first thing I install on every Mac I lay my hands upon. That, iTerm2 and Cathode (who can resist that?)

> And microsoft is actually really generous towards students, I can get basically any software except for office for free.

The first one is always free. They will only bill you when you actually need what they offer. Chances are, when you do, you won't be able to easily move away.

I actually argued against the Windowsification of all of the classes in my college and pushed back at every opportunity. I don't think it makes sense for a college that is teaching computer science to dedicate all of their resources and tools on Windows only software. C++ is used outside of Microsoft Visual Studio, and the code that works in VS will most likely not even compile due to not being standards compliant (Although VS2010 has gotten MUCH better at it than older versions).

Many of my teachers eventually would relent and realise that yes I was right. TCP/IP is one of the classes I took in which Windows was required. TCP/IP is a network protocol, it is available in all major OS's. I turned in entire assignments with a simple note "Windows required, don't have Windows." Luckily I didn't end up getting docked points because they realised I already knew all of the information in the course.

One thing that was really nice, and I am surprised none of the teachers used it against me was the fact that with MSDNAA I as a student had access to thousands of dollars worth of Microsoft software. You name it I could download a free legal copy of it for use during my tenure at college as a student. Microsoft seems to have that on lock. What better way to get students to play with your platform than to have them use all your tools and software free of charge. Windows 7, Visual Studio, SQL, SharePoint, Exchange and others.

I agree that Visual Studio is an excellent IDE if you are targeting Windows and that SQL Server is a very good RDBMS, but why would anyone, except for some disgustingly wicked form of auto-flagellation, actually want Exchange and SharePoint?

Because familiarising yourself with software that costs thousands of dollars for free is kind of fun?

The fact that I have at least part of the knowledge makes me more valuable for an employer.

The real question is why would you want to be valuable to someone who uses Exchange and Sharepoint ;-)

Uuhm... Not to be overly flippant but me, my wife and my two daughters as well as my bootstrapped startup are supported by my work for a multinational financial organization. The technologies you mention essentially run this organization from an information delivery aspect.

I understand and I'm sorry if I came across as insensitive - I was half-joking. My own experience with these technologies is not favorable. Every year or so the company I work for experiences a day long mail outage. My wife has lost about a month of work because Sharepoint died and no backup could bring it back to life. And yes, both installs are maintained by people with plenty MC* certifications and, in both cases, the reasons for using the software were not tech-driven.

I hope you have better experiences.

It does not follow that since no workable backup strategy was in place that Sharepoint is rubbish.

Look: I'm not singing the praises of these softwares, it's big clunky enterprise stuff and it is boooring... None the less: it's running some pretty important processes that combined run a large portion of the worlds I.T.

Also Microcontroller nerds (at least at my school) swore by Windows. VS integration with Atmel's dev kit is reliable and eliminates some of the elbow grease needed to work with those things (and I have had some nightmares working with them).

Really? That's actually quite surprising to me. I'd say at this point in my undergrad the majority of people in my class use Linux, followed by OS X, followed by Windows (as their development machine, I'm confident that a good number of those Linux users also have Windows installed).

I was talking about specific cases that happened to me, in support of precisely what the GP was describing. I use all major OSes and spend most of my day in Windows. I don't know why or how my comment was perceived the way it was. Clearly I'm wasting my time trying to explain myself.

Powershell is hardly broken.

Right, and it's still PowerShell.

What does that even mean?

Remember how you were surprised I was accusing you of being a troll a while back? And you were adamant that you aren't, and that I had you all wrong? (Amusing, given your bio.)

Now step back and read this comment, as well as your PowerShell response below, then rethink why I'd say that.

Don't you have anything better to do? Did the votes last time not teach you anything? I was offering an anecdote, I'm in a Windows environment more hours a day than OS X or Linux combined.

You're like a badly broken record no matter what it is you're spouting. Seriously where do you get off following me around talking about the same things over and over just to be an obnoxious ass? Just leave me alone, you're creepy and obviously have some misplaced superiority complex, well maybe inferiority given how much you seem to stalk and put me down.

I don't believe in down-voting without an explanation. Here's mine:

These Mac vx. PC arguments now beyond ridiculous. To those of us for whom computers are tools and not just a way to get on Facebook the metric should not be emotion or fan-boy-ism but rather applicability, efficiency, utility, cost and other factors.

I have a roughly equal number of PC's and Macs. I use both. I enjoy both. I get angry at both. There are good things with both OS's and there are thorn-in-my-ass problems with both. Welcome to having choices. As tools they are both fantastic. I love having unix behind the scenes with MacOS. Brilliant decision on their part. On the PC side, I have come to appreciate the non-nonsense cost-effectiveness of the platform. I have very powerful workstations setup for FEA fluid and heat simulation that cost a fraction of what our nicely-equipped Mac Pro's cost. And they rock.

I could say more but have to get back to work. There you go, a downvote with an explanation.

I use Windows on a very, very, very regular basis. My comment has been taken completely out of context. Were we not talking about people who had Macs being mocked for not being geeky enough? I merely offered an anecdote about my peers that ironically tout that line because it's funny.

Ironic that I'm now at -15 for pointing out that in my situation, the opposite was true.

Seriously, which part of my comment has every Windows fan out there thinking I hate Windows? I don't know how that was the takeaway when I was merely remarking on the times where I, like the grandparent, was trolled by Windows users.

It wasn't the content of your comment, it was the tone. If you sound like a prick, people will downvote you regardless of whether you have a clear point. (Which, incidentally, you didn't.)

If you look at Silicon Valley startups, it's basically almost all Macs, with the possible exception of Windows + Excel for CFOs at the larger companies, and Windows + CAD for people doing hardware design at a serious level. i.e. conference tables have MagSafe power adapters zip tied to them semi-permanently, since that's what almost everyone uses.

> i.e. conference tables have MagSafe power adapters zip tied to them semi-permanently, since that's what almost everyone uses.

It's too bad that Apple is moving to MagSafe II with the new retina MacBook Pro. I guess we'll all have to carry around adapters now: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD504

Dear god why? I am actually quite unimpressed by the entire WWDC lineup, but they made so many stupid mistakes like this. There is almost no advantage to using a slightly slimmer MagSafe, and moderate cost; there would be greater advantage to a smaller iPod Dock connector, but much higher cost, so I guess they'll do that too.

"Almost no advantage" = thinner laptops. Apple will go for thinner every time (see ethernet for an example).

It's not thinner than the MBA 2011. The MBA 2011 has regular MagSafe. Maybe they needed to go thinner for engineering reasons to put other stuff inside, but that seems lame.

With the MBA 2011 the connector sits very low such that simply putting the laptop down on a couch will disconnect the connector in my experience. It's the #1 issue I've had while trying to use an MBA.

If using a thinner connector let Apple fix that problem, that would be quite nice. Of course it's possible that it didn't. I haven't had a chance to try the new thing.

I noticed that, too -- adding a snap-on case to the Air solves that, at the expense of making it slightly thicker. However, I strongly prefer the texture/grippiness of the case, and it protects the laptop from a lot of damage (I still use a sleevecase, but I've had the laptop fall ~3m, cracking the plastic case, and otherwise fine). The cases have little feet on them, too, which raises it up to protect the connectors.

(http://www.speckproducts.com/satin-macbook-air-case-13-black...)

That was exactly my response, as well, as I have something like 7 85W magsafe adapters scattered throughout my house and bags.

Then I saw the backward-compatibility adapter[1]. It's not so bad. You can probably just leave it on the computer (or cable) 24/7 and never notice it. It's _tiny_, and only $10. Whenever I end up with a device that uses it, I will probably just buy 10 of them and leave 2 or 3 in every bag I own.

Still debating if I want to drop $4k just for retina, as my current machine is the quad-3.4 iMac with 32GB. I will probably wait for a retina Air or retina TB Display.

Now, if they'd made it a clunky dongle, or charged more than $15, I would be sharpening my pitchfork. Connector conspiracy or no, I get the impression that this was a situation where this was the only possible way to get the new case just right.

It's not like they'd do this just to fuck with us - the thing has asymmetric _fan blades_, for fuck's sake.

[1] http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD504

"Power users" are probably the single worst demographic of all of them. Overly demanding, opinionated, and sometimes ill-informed.

And their early adopter mindset! Ugh, I don't see why anyone would want to target them at all.

Well, I did overlook that.

I suppose I've read one too many "why does my computer use all its RAM?!?!" threads...

CS students are among some of the most hostile, sophomoric people you will ever encounter in software development. They all have something to prove, even though they've barely started themselves, so putdowns are common.

Grain of salt. Experiment. Do what works.

I wish people would refrain from using the word "fanboy" on HN.

I wish people would refrain from using the word "rockstar" too, but whatdyagonnado?

"refrain from using the word "fanboy" on HN"

It's a jealousy tick.

I remember the same behavior in high school (which was a long time ago). People would make fun of you for anything you were really obsessive over.

If things keep going the way they're going, Apple fanboyism will become less and less of a problem among hackers. Apple appears to be in a gradual transition process from MacOS computers to iOS "Don't worry, just watch the pretty pictures, and we'll tell you which PAY button to press" devices. Windows, not wanting to be left behind selling computers instead of devices (Yuck! Computers! That's SO 20th century), is making the same transition to Metro.

It appears that both of the major computer platform makers have come to the same conclusion: they don't want to make computers that their customers can program for their own purposes; they want to make ever-more-tightly-sealed point-of-sale devices for buying digital products and services from the device maker and its partners.

In other words, if you think the sealed iPhone, tethered to giant companies with strict rules about what you may and may not do with it or put on it and its design esthetic of "enjoy the beauty, stop resisting, do exactly as we say, and why not buy something with it, you'll feel better" is your idea of a great "pocket computer" for hackers, then you should be happy about where our computers are going. Otherwise....

I think we hackers are going to be driven to Linux on the desktop over time, which I would have no objection to if only there were an "Apple for Linux" company making the hardware and matching drivers of Apple-level quality. I can live without MacOS, but the hardware is a big deal.

very well put.

From the sales charts, it seems this is what the customers want, too. For some reason folks like to believe that Apple is somehow "fooling" customers into buying that experience. What if it's simply what non-developers want? Isn't that a simpler explanation?

The objection is that this isn't mutually exclusive. You can provide all the niceties, and make it so that there are still ways in to the simplified UI so that a nine-year-old can set out on their own and learn things about how the machine works. The companies are using this paradigm shift as an excuse to lock us in a box, they are not locking us in a box because the tech or the experience is only available if they do so.

They're eating the seed corn, but they don't really care since they won't feel the effect for 15 years or more. I personally don't care much either, unless they manage to fully legislate their locked boxes as the only option... which they are trying to do whenever we aren't looking, by the way, the most recent being with Microsoft locking out other OSes on their ARM boxes.

Yes, you can do both, but if consumers aren't demanding you do so, why do it? Ultimately it costs more to deliver that experience, so from a business perspective it doesn't make sense to do it if you're not losing a material number of product sales without it.

The companies are using this paradigm shift as an excuse to lock us in a box, they are not locking us in a box because the tech or the experience is only available if they do so.

Yes. It's clear that Apple considers the relative openness of Macs a defect which they're only keeping around for backwards compatibility.

unless they manage to fully legislate their locked boxes as the only option... which they are trying to do whenever we aren't looking

Or even when we are. Apple has been quite open about their desire to destroy Android with IP lawsuits, which would leave no significant mobile platform where you can legally run software of your choice. And I won't be at all surprised if the next version of OS X removes root access and the ability to run unsigned apps. (Neither of which you actually need in order to develop software for the app store; your test apps can be signed with a machine-specific key).

That said, I'm still getting the retina MBP as an upgrade from my 2006 model. AFAIK it still supports booting Linux if OS X becomes too user-hostile. It would be nice if every other PC manufacturer hadn't spent the last 5 years making their laptop displays worse, but oh well.

>It's clear that Apple considers the relative openness of Macs a defect which they're only keeping around for backwards compatibility.

This is not remotely clear. Do you really think Apple wants the App store to dry up because they are the only people left who can develop for it? The Apps make the app store and they know this.

False dilemma; that is not the other alternative. The other alternative is that only a certain set of people bother to purchase the license to create apps, mostly for professional reasons, and plenty of apps are still created. But not by curious teenagers who want to learn about how things work.

How will anyone create apps if the openness of macs is removed and they turn into big iOS machines?

Linux + webapps will be the only way to combat the locked-down, run-only-what-we-allow-and-give-us-30% mentality eventually. iOS has proven that regular customers can have their computing freedom trampled on as long as you give them pretty buttons to press while it's happening. Insert other assorted not-far-off-doomsday-conspiracies-here.

Could you be more specific about what restrictions are in Snow Lion that aren't in past versions of OSX?

"Mountain Goat" is what I'm calling it.

The move toward integrated, worry-free, easy to use products for consumers is a good thing.

In order to keep such things being developed, Apple will need to provide an adequate development environment.

Thus, Apple has an incentive to keep both worlds alive.

The only thing to worry about is that, because they only have the incentive to keep their development ecosystem merely adequate, we won't see much improvement in developer tools – just slow, linear change. Fortunately Xcode has competition from Visual Studio to keep it going, but whether they will continue offering a competitive BSD development environment is a legitimate question. Most Linux distributions already provide a better experience in this respect, having package managers and user communities and such.

Ultimately, I find the attitude you present here to be a bit overreactive. Lion and Mountain Lion introduce a number of iOS-like features and integration, but as far as I know, the developer tools were not crippled in any way, only improved, a bit.

Apple decoupled the compiler/command line tools from Xcode specifically so that projects like MacPorts and HomeBrew can continue to exist on the Apple platform. There was a post on this a while back on HN!

I absolutely love HomeBrew, it is modeled a lot after MacPorts/FreeBSD ports tree and provides a way to compile packages from source (some are even hosted as bottles... no compiling required). It is an excellent tool to download and install libraries and do development with. Will Apple keep all those tools around? Only time will tell, but so far it is looking good and I don't think it is in their best interest to move away from it.

I like Homebrew to, but compare it to Arch Linux's package manager and user community and you'll see that it's far from competitive.

I am glad I don't have to deal with yaourt or pacman anymore :P

How come? Instability? Couldn't find packgaes you wanted? Hard to use? Something else?

If you did anything with media you'd have a different view.

I'm actually a designer and musician. Apple's recent media production tools are excellent. Logic, FCP, iMovie, Keynote, Quartz Composer, etc. are best in class. The move toward iOS influenced software is a net win IMO. Fewer details to worry about, more fluid interfaces, and command line utilities from the Linux community aren't going anywhere.

I used Aperture and Keynote a lot, and I liked them. But Aperture has gone down the drain - there were lots of regressions of Raw support for various camera's (search the discussions forum for plenty of examples). Also, it has become slow, the interface regularly freezes, and feature-wise the gap with Lightroom widened (e.g. denoising in Lightroom is far and far better). Since Apple didn't seem to care, I switched to Lightroom.

Keynote was and is a great presentation application. But PowerPoint 2008 surpassed it, PowerPoint 2011 even more. The only major feature missing from Powerpoint is magic move. Other than that, PowerPoint has better table and chart tools, better graphics, and at the very least adjusts font sizes automatically when necessary.

I actually think that besides performance issues on older macbooks, Xcode has developed quite nicely in the recent updates. At least for obj-C it's a pretty productive and powerful environment. I definitely prefer it over VS2008 and lower, haven't yet had the chance to work with the newer VS versions though. I like eclipse too, however the panel management in XCode is so much easier - I don't see anymore why you would need a fully controllable widget-docking space that you have to micromanage until everything works the way you want it.

I think you're underestimating how much of an obstacle a traditional filesystem is to most people. The cloud integration and appification that seems so restricting to you is sweet, sweet relief for a great deal of people.

By catering to them, Apple doesn't take anything away from you; though they do eventually entrap you as well with all that shiny and convenience, which I can understand being resentful about. It's a bit disempowering when a company thinks it knows what's good for you better than you do, and ends up being kinda right about it.

  Disclosure: I own AAPL shares

No, they're not right about it.

I completely agree with you that making the computing experience simpler, more like poking buttons on a high-end blender, is what most consumers need. Satisfying what most consumers need is most likely what the companies need. The companies have as much right to want what's best for themselves as I do. They're not doing anything wrong, IMO.

That does not automatically make their design decisions a reflection of their superior knowledge of what's good for me, even "kinda".

Linux-like customization on top of Apple-quality hardware/driver foundations in form factors like the iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, and MacPro, would be what would be good for me, but I'm not saying anybody owes it to me.

I am thinking, though, that as the two major personal computer platforms become more closed, it gradually opens a market for some savvy company to go in the opposite direction: targeting those who want more customization, not less, without sacrificing hardware quality.

If that ever does happen, that will be what's good for me.

I think you might be missing the point...

Even customization is becoming easier. Consider the ease of jail breaking iOS vs rooting an Android device along wth the push button tweakability that is Cydia and you quickly realize that even the tinkerer/customiser world is headed for liberation from complexity.

The world of code and hackers and the purity of possibility will always be there but bringing greater Technological ability to all people is an important goal, a worthy challenge and one that the major players all seem to be taking on.

This is a very, very good thing because the dream and power of technology is far too great to be bound to the world of 'power users' and the like. The are wonderfully intelligent and creative people in the world who happen to fall outside of that category and we all stand to gain from their contributions.

It's not abut what's good for you. It's about what good for us.

The ease of jail breaking iOS? I bought an iPad 2 with iOS 5, and There was a period of about 6 months when it could not be jail broken.

How many clicks did it require to jailbreak that device once Absinthe came out?

I see your point but that is what I was referring to.

Certainly there are periods of time when it is possible to jailbreak a device over the internet(!!), times when it is possible locally, and times when it it, for months, not possible at all.

My point (poorly made perhaps) is that I have heard people say, "Oh, don't worry about Apple's walled garden, anyone with technical knowledge can be out of it as soon as they want, with jailbreaking". However, there are clearly long periods of time when that isn't true.

Quite true.

Incidentally: I found myself in exactly the same position with iPad 2. It seemed as if it was all hinging on release date of the next iteration of the OS and I did wonder at tine if Apple had perfected their game of cat and mouse.

Good point dude(ette).

>I am thinking, though, that as the two major personal computer platforms become more closed, it gradually opens a market for some savvy company to go in the opposite direction: targeting those who want more customization, not less, without sacrificing hardware quality.

All 10 of them? Maybe VA Linux has a market after all.

Yes, traditional filesystems have lousy usability. That's orthogonal to whether it should be a federal crime to run unapproved software on "your" hardware, which Apple believes should be the case with iOS.

What problems do you have with hardware for Linux?

Most of my audio gear doesn't work at all and graphics drivers, while much improved as of late, are still woeful.

I Hackintoshed my desktop (because we're never getting another Mac Pro) specifically because of driver support. It's actually better in Hackintosh-land than on Linux.

So you identified a problem, but did you do anything about it?

Did you submit any bug reports?

I did do something about it. I installed OS X.

Also, programmers get annoyed at their machines, even nice well-made ones, for all kinds of specific reasons that most computer users won't.

Sure, I like getting a new shiny thing just like anybody else. But it does seem a little less shiny once I've tried to put my employer's dev environment on it and found that Apple's customized version of a common C library broke the build. Or an Oracle dependency we (very unfortunately) have hasn't been upgraded by Oracle in a couple years and crashes on the new OS.

The lot of the programmer seems to be that you never get to have your tools "just work".

Exactly. I'm like this. I have all Apple paraphernalia, but I only buy them because they work well and look good. If Roku produces a player that works with all routers, and not crap out on updates, have customer support that can help me, I would use theirs. But it isn't the case and I can't waste my money.

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