[Discuss] os x = poop?

[mark at buttery.org (Shirley Márquez Dúlcey)]

One problem I have with the Mac: in the enterprise, systems pretty
much have a shelf life limited to five years.

Here is where that number comes from. Apple usually drops OS X support
in new versions for a system about five years after it is made.
(Sometimes it's a little more, sometimes less.) If it's a personal
computer you can just keep using the last supported version of OS X
for at least a couple more years, because Apple will continue to fix
security bugs.

But in the enterprise things are different. Usually they want all
computers to run the same version of the OS. New systems HAVE to run
the latest version of OS X, because it's the only version that will
run on them. Older versions don't support the hardware in the shiny
new computer and Apple doesn't backport the hardware support to older
versions of OS X. It's nothing like Windows, where you get downgrade
rights for the new computers and older versions of the OS get updated
to support them; nor is it like Linux where old systems stay supported
for a long time. Linux often has trouble with lack of support for
really new hardware because the drivers don't come from the hardware
manufacturer and development can't start until the hardware is
publicly available, but that's another discussion.

As soon as you buy a new system for your enterprise that comes with a
version of OS X that won't run on the old system, the old one must be
retired. Otherwise you have to deal with the headaches of having
multiple OS versions, and probably multiple application versions as
well because application support is often tied to the version of OS X.
Most enterprises don't want to deal with those headaches, so out go
the old computers.

On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Dr. Anthony Gabrielson
<agabrielson1 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Eric,
>
> Honestly you sound a little defensive; I am not kicking your dog.  I am providing my experience, which has obviously been radically different from your experience.
>
> I do think Docker would make a good replacement/supplement for package management - it is a completely self contained instance that just shares a kernel. I can ask for a specific capability and not need to deal with the types of conflicts that can occur with apt these days.  For instance, in the past year the Debian repo version of KDE conflicted with libc6 - a dependency to build the LLVM compiler. The fact that Docker also has jail like capabilities is just an added bonus.
>
> Based on your last comment, the good news is Apple holds value remarkably well.  Sell the mini on craigslist for near what you paid and get something from System 76 if you will be happier.
>
> Anthony
>
>> On Feb 11, 2015, at 9:46 PM, Eric Chadbourne <eric.chadbourne at icloud.com> wrote:
>>
>> 1)  Gnu/Linux distros generally don?t ?flake out?.  Maybe some dev on Fedora might ignore proprietary drivers and cause issues but that can be overcome.  Nothing flakes out in the last few years on my boxes.  I have gotten OS X to crash a few times.  Today I put a 2GB file in the iCloud drive directory and my whole desktop stopped functioning until the file was uploaded.  Browser wouldn?t even to to google.com.  Activity monitor said Safari was doing something, the gods know what.  But I can understand if your milage varies.
>>
>> 2)  Sure Xcode is better than eclipse.  I never, ever, liked that.  Yuck!  Slow bloated ugly turd.  Hell netbeans was better back in the day.  Used it a few times and ran.  As a side note I read through much of the Swift documentation and it looks like an interesting language.  Too bad it runs only runs on apple.
>>
>> 3)  Yeah the Apple guys have been complaining about the latest version of OS X.  The last time I used an Apple product was in junior high school in the ?80s.  Apple 2c.  10 ? eric is cool. 20 goto 10.  Such fun.  Floppies the size of pancakes.  Yosemite feels like a toy to me compared to Ubuntu.  Not even close in functionality.  Marketing is strong!
>>
>> 4)  "fight with OS configurations to work?  I?m curious as to what?  My 8 and 10 year old nieces own a mac, win 7, and ubuntu pc?s and use them all easily for most tasks.  Of course if you?re using Win or Mac specific tools?
>>
>> 5)  " Lately I run a mix of Debian and Ubuntu and package management is a pain and only getting worse?  Really!?  The vomit of non-package management on the mac is better than apt-get?  Oh my lord you jest!  On gnu/linux I can type two lines at terminal and be up to date.  Can?t do that on mac / win.  I suspect you did something very wrong somewhere.  I have had no issues with package management on linux since apt-get / yum and using repos correctly.  Nevertheless I can?t comment on, "The documentation and awareness for packages needed to just build 32 bit on x86 is itself remarkably poor? as I haven?t had to do that.
>>
>> 6)  "I also think Docker is pretty cool, with additional integration it could replace current package management since everything could be within the container.?  Oh no!  Docker replacing apt-get makes me cringe.  Are you trolling me!?! ;)  Why won?t they try to be secure first.  And if we need that functionality BSD has had jails for ages.  Docker != apt-get != jails.  Maybe in the future docker will be more interesting.  I don?t care how important RedHat?s marketing arm thinks it is.
>>
>> I do love their hardware.  It is art.  Software is poop.  Evil, manipulative, poorly made poop.  Damn I should have purchased a system76 box instead of this!
>>
>> ?
>> Eric Chadbourne
>>
>>> On Feb 11, 2015, at 8:54 PM, Dr. Anthony Gabrielson <agabrielson1 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Eric,
>>>
>>> I like OS X because it works for me.  The OS is long term stable and doesn?t begin to flake out after a year+ of development. I do not need to focus on installing software and getting things that should work out of the box to just work. I also really like Xcode - it is much nicer than Eclipse which generally feels like a toy to me. This is not to say that Apple?s software has remained as stable it was in years past. OS X 10.10 crashes about as often as Linux for me these days - 10.6 was significantly more stable.
>>>
>>> I like Linux but for the most part I have greater issues with it and often need to fight for functionality - namely it doesn?t just work. This problem is magnified by staff members new to linux - they always need to fight with OS configurations to work. Personally, having to fight for functionality worked when I was younger, but I have higher expectations today. Lately I run a mix of Debian and Ubuntu and package management is a pain and only getting worse. For instance, after about a year one Debian box got progressively worse (after significant development) and needed to be completely rebuilt. At that time apt refused to install packages. Personally, I think ELF needs to evolve to address some of these issues - namely default support for multiple architectures would be really nice. The documentation and awareness for packages needed to just build 32 bit on x86 is itself remarkably poor.
>>>
>>> I can give Linux a few pluses. Cross compiler setup has gotten much easier in the last five years or so and a few good ones are even in the Ubuntu repos. I also think Docker is pretty cool, with additional integration it could replace current package management since everything could be within the container.
>>>
>>> With that said, to each their own. I?m sure Ubuntu will run great on the mini.
>>>
>>> Anthony
>>>
>>>> On Feb 11, 2015, at 8:50 PM, Anthony Gabrielson <agabrielson at icloud.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Eric,
>>>>
>>>> I like OS X because it works for me.  The OS is long term stable and doesn?t begin to flake out after a year+ of development. I do not need to focus on installing software and getting things that should work out of the box to just work. I also really like Xcode - it is much nicer than Eclipse which generally feels like a toy to me. This is not to say that Apple?s software has remained as stable it was in years past. OS X 10.10 crashes about as often as Linux for me these days - 10.6 was significantly more stable.
>>>>
>>>> I like Linux but for the most part I have greater issues with it and often need to fight for functionality - namely it doesn?t just work. This problem is magnified by staff members new to linux - they always need to fight with OS configurations to work. Personally, having to fight for functionality worked when I was younger, but I have higher expectations today. Lately I run a mix of Debian and Ubuntu and package management is a pain and only getting worse. For instance, after about a year one Debian box got progressively worse (after significant development) and needed to be completely rebuilt. At that time apt refused to install packages. Personally, I think ELF needs to evolve to address some of these issues - namely default support for multiple architectures would be really nice. The documentation and awareness for packages needed to just build 32 bit on x86 is itself remarkably poor.
>>>>
>>>> I can give Linux a few pluses. Cross compiler setup has gotten much easier in the last five years or so and a few good ones are even in the Ubuntu repos. I also think Docker is pretty cool, with additional integration it could replace current package management since everything could be within the container.
>>>>
>>>> With that said, to each their own. I?m sure Ubuntu will run great on the mini.
>>>>
>>>> Anthony
>>>>
>>>>> On Feb 11, 2015, at 8:22 PM, Eric Chadbourne <eric.chadbourne at icloud.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I?ve been using a mac mini for the last few months and I must say the hardware is nice but the software is pretty bad.  Push notifications in Safari (yuck), iCloud hiccuped when I moved from gmail to protonmail, iCloud can?t backup by directory by default, the default email client is very slow, their Xcode IDE is merely adequate, their server products blow, you really can?t change the look significantly, by default it can?t read many other file system formats, case insensitive terminal, iTunes can?t read free codecs, etc.  I am very unimpressed with the software.  With so much cash behind them one would think they could write good code but no.  It really sucks.  My Ubuntu boxes are so much more stable and have more features.
>>>>>
>>>>> Anybody here like OS X?  Why?  I?m not trolling.  I?m curious.  Why would somebody want to use this terrible piece of proprietary poop?
>>>>>
>>>>> Eric C - the one who is googling how to install Ubuntu on a new mac mini.
>>>>>
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