I abandoned the dominating OS (yes, Windows), due to it being - in every sense of the word - crap, about eight years ago and started using Linux instead. With Linux it was almost love at first sight. Sure, it took some getting used to and some things were a bit tricky to get to work back then (soundcards anyone?) but in the end the experience was all in all a lot more rewarding than anything ever was while using any version of Windows. So I kicked Microsoft to the curb and haven’t looked back since.
Since November 2004 when I bought myself an iBook I’ve also been a casual Mac-user. This iBook is in many ways the computer that has served me best out of all computers I’ve owned. It’s taken a lot of abuse but after over four years it keeps on ticking as reliably as ever (it does get a bit hot on occasion though). Granted I had to get a new harddrive for it a year ago but that’s a pretty minor repair considering how much the iBook has been kicked around.
I’ve really grown to like OS X. It’s a robust and easy to use OS which does most things really well. And it’s Unix-like, which is a huge plus in my book. It is a really good fit for all of those menial every day computing tasks (e-mail, websurfing, organizing music and photos, word processing) that we all do. It makes ordinary tasks slick and easy to perform. This is what Apple excels at, dumbing down tasks and putting a shine on them so that they don’t feel as dull anymore. It is a prominent feature of basically all of their products.
So when my girlfriend decided to buy a new computer, a 20″ iMac (the shiny aluminum ones), this past July I got sucked in by the Reality Distortion Field and the Apple tractor beam and bought one too.
For months I was really happy with my acquisition and with “going Mac” full time on the desktop. I even sold my desktop-PC because in the months that followed I ended up hardly using at all. But then something happened.
Over the past couple of months I’ve found my productivity to be declining and a lot of the time I’ve had this nagging feeling that something just wasn’t right. It wasn’t until this past weekend that I figured out what it was. I’m not completely happy with my choice anymore. It’s crept up on me slowly and I haven’t wanted to admit it to myself, but that’s what it is. I’m sure of it.
Don’t get me wrong, the iMac is awesome and OS X Leopard is beyond great, but I think that maybe it wasn’t the perfect fit for someone like me to use for all of my computing needs. It’s sort of a cultural shock that I just can’t shake.
First of all, the Mac platform is way too locked down and obfuscated. Sure, it’s Unix-like and feels very familiar to a Linux-dude like me but it does things in odd and unorthodox ways that don’t make sense to me. Setting up Samba-sharing for example on Leopard is really weird in my opinion. And yes, there’s plenty of ways to customize your desktop-environment and experience but compaired to the endless possibilities when using a more open platform like BSD or Linux it’s not very impressive. You can only change what someone else has deemed appropriate to be changeable.
The biggest thing of all to me is the software culture of the Mac-world. Coming from a world where thousands of applications are free (as in beer and as in freedom) and pre-installed on your system out of the box it’s more than a little annoying to find applications that I take for granted missing from a basic OS X install. I mean, no nmap? Really? No wget? Come on! And what’s with all the shareware littering the software-landscape of the Mac? Every other piece of software is some handicapped version of an app that will cost me $20 to testdrive for real. That’s not what I’m used to and quite frankly it feels a bit like 1998. It also seems a bit like open source is still a bit of a mystery for the Mac-community, which seems very weird to me.
Also, even though many of my favorite applications are available for OS X they far from always behave like I’m used to. Thunderbird doesn’t filter things properly, GIMP looks horrible and isn’t really compatible with the user-paradigms of the rest of the system and the same goes for Bluefish, and the list goes on.
It’s not all bad though - far from it. I love iPhoto and I’m even starting to get along really well with iTunes. Adium is a great IM-client, better than most even. I like Transmit enough to fork over cash for a license. It’s probably the best FTP-client I’ve ever used. Overall Mac-apps have a very robust feel to them and crashes are few and far apart. Also, there seems to be a sense of pride amongst Mac-developers that isn’t always present on other platforms.
Another thing that I haven’t quite been able to get used to is the keyboard. It’s not the whole “use Option instead of Ctrl”-thing though, that’s not a problem. No, my headaches are from the fact that Insert, Delete, Home and End don’t work like I’m used to and these are keys that I use A LOT. So this really slows me down. I actually switched out the slick aluminum keyboard that came with my iMac for a Logitech-keyboard I used with my previous PC hoping that would change things. But that actually brought more hassle since the Mac couldn’t figure out what keys were supposed to go where. I had to use Ukulele to create a custom keymap in order to get the most critical missing keys back. Insert, Delete, Home and End still don’t work like I’d like them to.
Now this might come off as me coming down hard on the Mac, which is not really what I’m doing. I love the Mac and OS X is in my opinion the best commercial desktop-OS out there. I just think that in retrospect this wasn’t the best move for someone like me. The cultural clash between the Mac and Linux worlds was too great to make a full time switch possible. My computing needs require a larger amount of freedom and other things that don’t fit in the tight Apple-machinery. I’m too much of a tinkerer and a hacker, and as such I need more leeway and elbow-room than most. But I let the slick hardware, great OS and a bit of RDF fool me into believing that this was a world I could spend all of my computing time in. But I was wrong, and now I’m feeling really, really homesick.
Basically I need a Linux-PC again and I need it bad. So to remedy this I ordered a Dell XPS today, a notebook that I’ve been eyeing for some time now, and I got a great deal on it too - 3500 SEK off! The first thing I’ll do when it arrives is slap Fedora 10 on there and begin rebuilding the computing environment that I’m used to.
I’ll remain a part-time Mac-user though, so I’m not abandoning the Mac at all because as I said I still love the platform. I’ll still import the pictures from my camera to iPhoto and spin my music and podcasts in iTunes, I might even hack together a Cocoa-app of my own one day. Maybe I’ll downgrade to a Mac Mini though, if Apple decides to upgrade them soon that is. We’ll see.
This is me admitting that I did something that I may not have thought through properly, which is hard in itself, and this is me having learned a valuable lesson. You truly don’t know what you’ve got until it’s “gone”. Good thing though, “it” wasn’t really gone. I can go back, and I am already on my way.
So I’m coming home. Home to where I always belonged, and this I’m sure of now more than ever. Once again I’ll be comfortable in the open embrace of the penguin. (And that didn’t sound the least pretentious or dorky…)
So my girlfriends iMac broke down today and since she needs a desktop computer for, amongst other things, the night classes she’s taking and can’t wait until the iMac comes back from the service shop I had to throw something quick together.
