Re: [tlug] What's with this anti-Apple tirade? [was: 2014-05-10 Linux Quiz]

[Travis Cardwell <travis.cardwell@example.com>]

On 2014年05月12日 12:22, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> I don't know anybody who has switched to Apple who is unhappy with it
> (except you).  Certainly most of my graduate students are happy with
> their MacBooks, although some still have Windows notebooks.

I agree that the majority of people do not run into issues, especially
those who do not make heavy (professional) use of the hardware and are
content to buy a new computer ever N years.

I know of many unhappy Apple customers as well, though, after spending a
considerable amount of time on Apple forums [1].

> I think this has a lot to do with why many
> Japanese like Apple -- it fits the monozukuri culture (kaizen, kaizen,
> migaki, migaki) of "give me an object that is mostly self-explanatory
> and looks nice".

My wife thinks that Apple products are mostly popular (in Japan) as a
status symbol.

> AFAICT Google (GMail) is now doing a very good job of filtering spam
> -- including spam from your "friends" with Yahoo! accounts (that seem
> to be rather incompletely defended from spammer hacking).

Very insightful: that kind of "spam" was what she disliked the most!
Filtering did not solve the problem, however, because lack of
participation is anti-social.

> I bet it would be possible to configure launchd to prevent autolaunch
> though.  (I haven't found it annoying enough to investigate yet, sorry.)

Thank you for the suggestion!  I have tried a number of things, including
`chmod 600 $EXECUTABLE`, to no avail.  After sinking too much time into a
small annoyance, I decided to just live with it, much how I live with
.DS_STORE files on shared folders and the hidden files and folders created
on any external media that I allow OS X to touch.

> All that said, I don't advocate using Apple products, I advocate
> keeping an open mind to using them.  They're not just "computers for
> the rest of us" -- depending on your use cases, they have advantages
> for the technically adept, too.

I am typing on my MacBook Pro keyboard right now.  I highly recommend
avoiding Mac Pro systems, however, technically adept or not! ;)

Cheers,

Travis

----

[1] An overview of my issues with a Mac Pro:

I invested ~350,000 yen in a Mac Pro (plus almost as much again for
software licenses, two displays, and Mac-compatible ECC-RAM) to create a
video workstation, thinking that it would have high quality hardware and
work for a decade.

*Just* after the warranty ran out, the system died.  It was very difficult
to troubleshoot (as there were other issues that I only later found out
about), but I finally determined that it was a problem with the graphics
card.  Others with the same model started having problems at the same
time, and it was determined that the ATI graphics cards that came with the
system were error-prone (to put it politely).  Apple would not replace the
card; they asked me to send it in so that they could install an NVidia
replacement for the cost of the hardware plus a heafty surcharge.  I was
able to find an NVidia replacement and fix it myself, avoiding the
surcharge, but the Mac-compatible graphics card was more than twice the
price of the Windows card of the same version (~40,000 yen).

On the forums, I learned that Mac Pro systems are extremely sensitive to
electrical issues, which was a cause of other problems that I was having.
 The general advice is for anybody with a Mac Pro to strictly use a UPS
(uninterruptible power supply) or risk further issues.  Powering on the
machine dims the lights in my apartment, by the way.

Over the years, the machine has been *very* unreliable.  In addition to
being sensitive to power, it is also extremely sensitive to temperature.
When it is cold, the system will not boot at all.  If I need to use the
system on such days, I can usually get it to boot by opening the case and
placing a heater pointing inside it for an hour before booting.  In the
forums, there are many stories of people taking out the motherboard and
baking it in the over in order to melt the solder points!

In hindsight, I consider my purchase of a Mac Pro a significant mistake.