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by LowDog 4277 days ago
This is interesting given that OS X is anything but a hacker's paradise. The platform is very locked down, discourages tinkering and customization, and given how expensive Apple hardware is, this is the least accessible and most exclusive out of the three main players. Even worse is when developers make it the leading platform for their software, like in the case of Atom, where the Windows support is awful given that they started out focusing on OS X.

I'm guessing it takes a lot of work to create and maintain things like homebrew in order to make the OS X experience more palatable, but why not just use your Linux flavor of choice and cut to the chase? I used to use OS X and I loved homebrew, but it feels like it's cut off from the rest of the operation system, which has often caused me a lot of headaches in the past.
2 comments
tptacek 4277 days ago
I'm confused by the idea that a platform with a published kernel development kit could be considered "locked down, discouraging tinkering".
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habitue 4277 days ago
The kernel is open source, how about everything else? To act like is OSX is open because Darwin is open source is pretty disingenuous.
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72deluxe 4277 days ago
True, but why does it need to be open anyway? The windows development industry has done well without being OSS, no?

Perhaps people should stop expecting OSX to be Linux. In the same way that nobody expects Linux to be OSX.

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habitue 4276 days ago
I definitely don't expect Windows or OS X to turn into Linux. I think they each have advantages for the people who are using them. The grandparent was talking about hackability, and I was saying I don't think OS X counts as hackable just because the kernel is open source. There is a lot more that's closed source surrounding that kernel that makes it OS X.
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72deluxe 4273 days ago
Ah understood. Thanks!
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eropple 4276 days ago
> why not just use your Linux flavor of choice and cut to the chase

Because desktop Linux is simply not sufficient for me as a daily driver. It is unpleasant to me, it's highly frictional and there are a thousand shitty cuts everywhere that you have to endure for the legitimately good development environments you can get there. I am a software developer but I'm a person first and as a person Linux-on-the-desktop doesn't work for me. Quality matters to me, and OS X's user experience is qualitatively better for my use case.

If OS X didn't exist, I'd still be using Windows and SSHing everywhere. But OS X is a happy combination of the tools I want to use (including ones that don't exist on Linux--I use TextMate 2, for example, because I'm not a big fan of Sublime Text) and a desktop environment that doesn't make me endure it rather than enjoy it.

(And as for expense: if you've got a job as a software developer in the developed world, you can afford Mac gear. If you can't, that sucks, but frankly I'm gonna still use the best tools for my job.)

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