[ale] OSX

[Tom Cross]

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?

  



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