[ale] OSX

[Kilroy, Chris]

I"m not a mac person by any stretch of the imagination.  I personally wonder about how good OSX is myself.


My biggest reservation with it is there is no readily apparent way to really get into the file system, to a command line, that sort of thing.   This all from just playing with one in the new Apple Store at Lenox.

The displays on these machines are a thing of beauty though.  


->-----Original Message-----
->From: Tom Cross [mailto:decius at whack.org]
->Sent: None
->To: ale at ale.org
->Subject: [ale] OSX
->
->
->Is there anyone on this list who has taken on OSX? 
->
->I'm interested in getting a real critical view of the 
->platform from a UNIX 
->person. Most of what I've seen is marketing hype, happy reviews from 
->"mac people," or people who may be trying to convince themselves that 
->their expensive investment was really worth while. Few 
->authors are willing 
->to gripe about it. It CAN'T be THAT perfect. 
->
->I must say on the surface the idea of having a system that is 
->a reasonable 
->desktop environment AND a reasonable server environment is really 
->attractive. (Please don't bother trolling about Gnome.)
->
->However, when I look at MacOS carefully there are all kinds 
->of red flags. 
->There is no package management system, no service shutdown 
->facility, no 
->second (third?) mouse button... All of these things have work 
->arounds, 
->but if they are missing all of these things, then I have to 
->wonder what 
->ELSE are they missing? 
->
->I guess the biggest red light is the keyboard on the laptops. 
->(I don't 
->use desktops. I'm not a gamer, so who needs a UI that you 
->can't carry into 
->the kitchen?) The escape key is half sized. Obviously these 
->people don't 
->use vi. Yes, you CAN remap it, but what is this telling me? 
->Their keyboard 
->design is fundamentally BAD for UNIX. What else am I likely 
->to find when 
->I dig deeper?  
->
->Can I get real UNIX work done on this machine, or am I going 
->to spend more 
->time fiddling with it and "working around" then actually working?
->
->Â  
->
->
->
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