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Comment by FD3SA | Hacker News Reader

I heartily believe there's a market for both. Compare a Macbook Pro with a custom built Linux desktop. The MBP is very user friendly, plug n play, and has very little customization capacity. The custom Linux desktop is an absolute tinkerer's paradise, with everything from hardware to software being open for customization.

The car equivalent of these used to exist for daily drivers, but are now relegated mainly to closed course competition vehicles (much to my delight). The Radical SR is probably my favorite one, consisting of a modular vehicle that can be built from a kit shipped in boxes of parts [1].

There is extreme pleasure to be had from driving both a Tesla, and a Radical SR. But both have very different uses, and very different performance and maintenance criteria.

For those interested:

http://www.radicalsportscars.com/uk/

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> Compare a Macbook Pro with a custom built Linux desktop. The MBP is very user friendly, plug n play, and has very little customization capacity. The custom Linux desktop is an absolute tinkerer's paradise, with everything from hardware to software being open for customization.

It's not fair to say Macs are less customizable or less of a tinkerer's paradise just because they are more user friendly.

I think it's fair to say that. In my opinion, Linux wins on kernel configuration options alone. Would you like a tickless kernel? Soft real-time? Hard real-time? A different scheduler, may be?

It's pretty easy to boot Linux on a Mac.

My guess is he was talking about the retina MBPs that are impossible to change RAM on and damn near impossible to do anything else with.

You can do a lot with them. What you're talking about is doing things to them.

Meh, you knew exactly what I meant, as did most people that read that discussion I'm sure.

Who said that it's because of user friendliness? But they are intentionally made uncustomizable and not for tinkerers hardware-wise, that 1/10 repairability score (http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Di...) isn't an accident.

But even for Linux, Ubuntu is trying really hard for you to not have to go into the command line. They would love for it to be a tinkerer's paradise but also usable. They want it to be a muscle car and a Tesla. Computers have the advantage of being both of those.

Computers have the advantage of being both of those.

They're still muscle cars. Tablets and phones have been making inroads, but the inmates still run the asylum.

An apt analogy. I moved from Linux-based machines to Macbook Pros. I love the ability to tinker in Linux. I hate the requirement to tinker in Linux, just to get normal desktop stuff working.

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