undefined | Better HN

0 pointsflatline313y ago0 comments

> Because, obviously, if I didn't like OS X, I just didn't understand it!

No, you just plain don't understand how to use it, so there wasn't really any room left to discuss its relative merits. Whether or not you liked it is irrelevant given that your judgements were based on an acquired understanding of Linux, and a terse at best understanding of Mac OS X.

Let's just take your git example:

> More recently, I tried to install Git on OS X (without administrator access). It was a horrible pain, so now I only ever log on to the Linux servers at school

How exactly was it more difficult on Mac OS X? Did you try to ./configure && make && make install by hand, just like on Linux-sans-admin-access? Or did you try to use MacPorts' or homebrew's support for running without admin access, and simply tried '(port|brew) install git'?

Or, let's talk about Java:

> I did use OS X for Java development for a whole year.

During that whole year, you never stumbled onto Apple Menu -> Software Update? It runs automatically, you don't even have to invoke it manually.

You never googled "Mac" and "Java" and determined that Apple provided the Mac port of Java? Assuming this was in the time period of the 1.5 release, you never found Soylatte using Google, and used that?

Or, your friend with the LaTeX problem:

  port install texlive

Works fine.

0 comments

2 comments · 1 top-level

tikhonj13y ago· 1 in thread

For Git, I just followed some examples I found online. I don't remember the exact procedure, but it didn't work. After around an hour of trying I just gave up. In fact, I found it just as difficult as trying to install Git on the OpenSolaris servers, which is saying quite a bit.

As for Java, I couldn't update despite using the Software Update menu. It worked on Windows, but OS X just hadn't gotten around to adding it. And, as is usually the case with Apple, there was no good way around it: since Apple hadn't update Java, I couldn't just install it myself. (Or, at least, there was no obvious way of doing this.)

I don't know exactly what my friend tried to install AucTeX and the rest of the LaTeX ecosystem, but he certainly did not find it easy. And this is somebody studying CS at a fairly good university: certainly not unintelligent or unfamiliar with tech.

Over all, your descriptions make OS X seem worse than Linux in the very areas it supposedly excels in!

flatline3OP13y ago

> For Git, I just followed some examples I found online. I don't remember the exact procedure, but it didn't work. After around an hour of trying I just gave up. In fact, I found it just as difficult as trying to install Git on the OpenSolaris servers, which is saying quite a bit.

I installed git on a coworker's computer in a couple minutes today, so I don't know what to say.

> As for Java, I couldn't update despite using the Software Update menu. It worked on Windows, but OS X just hadn't gotten around to adding it. And, as is usually the case with Apple, there was no good way around it: since Apple hadn't update Java, I couldn't just install it myself. (Or, at least, there was no obvious way of doing this.)

It wasn't that Apple hadn't "added" it, there simply wasn't a port of that version of Java to Mac OS X, because they needed to port it. If someone external to Apple had produced a port (like, say, Sun), you could have installed it, exactly in the same way that we install Oracle Java today.

Someone did eventually produce a partial non-GUI port, and it later became the base of Oracle's officially supported Mac OS X Java: http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/static/soylatte/

This has little to do with Mac OS X being somehow broken, and a lot to do with the fact that Sun only provided Java binaries for Solaris, Linux and Windows.

For Java 7 on, Oracle will be supporting Java for Mac OS X directly.

> I don't know exactly what my friend tried to install AucTeX and the rest of the LaTeX ecosystem, but he certainly did not find it easy. And this is somebody studying CS at a fairly good university: certainly not unintelligent or unfamiliar with tech.

I'm not sure what intelligence has to do with it. It sounds like he just didn't know what he was doing, and ignorance has little to do with intelligence.

If he'd approached Linux and had never read up on "yum" or "apt", I imagine he'd be equally stymied.

> Over all, your descriptions make OS X seem worse than Linux in the very areas it supposedly excels in!

I don't see how, but I imagine we're talking at cross-purposes at this point.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse