The Mighty Stick - LD36 Mac OS

• The Mighty Stick - Ld36 Mac Os Catalina
• The Mighty Stick - Ld36 Mac Os 8
• The Mighty Stick - Ld36 Mac Os 7

For the last week I have almost exclusively been using a PowerPC Mac -claimed byApple to be agreat platform just a few years a ago. Personally, I think that Mac OSX is an interesting platform. The mac hasn’tgrabbed me.

Truck tuning is something that is close to the heart of all truckers. If you have ever been to a truck show, you would see that the amount of love and effort that some drivers are willing to devote to their vehicles is unbelievable. Mac OS 9.2.2 was the last release, on October 5, 2001. Apple discontinued development of Mac OS 9, transitioning all future development to Mac OS X. The final updates to Mac OS 9 addressed compatibility issues with Mac OS X while running in the Classic Environment and compatibility with Carbon applications.

On the up side, OS X (andDarwin) is based on BSD, so it hassome good security foundations, it also uses many tools common to Linux,such as bash andCUPS. The 3D desktop effects are kinda cool forthe first day, but then just become part of the day to day experience. Iam yet to see a real advantage to the OS X 3D desktop.

The Mighty Mouse is pretty slick.The scroll wheel feels very nice and is well positioned. The sidebuttons for expose are addictive on the first day. A let down is thatyou have to change your preferences to enable the right button.

The Mighty Stick - Ld36 Mac Os Catalina

I don’t claim to understand the whole Mac software management system,but from what I do know, you drop a disk image (a dmx file) into theapplications folder in finder and it is installed. Want to remove it?delete the folder. This is pretty neat, once you understand how itworks. It reminds me of the klik package managementsystem.

The file open dialog is a crazy hierarchical beast, that works. Jumpingbetween levels in a tree really works. Pity more than 3 levels down itcan involve some vertical scrolling and you need to select a file to getits full name if it is too long.

Now for the downsides of using a Mac running OS X.

The keyboard feels awful, this is one of the times I would recommend aMicrosoft product, but as MS keyboard feels far better than an AppleKeyboard. The standard mac keyboard feels plasticy and the key traveldoesn’t feel right. I have used a range of keyboards over the years andthe Mac keyboard feels awful. Maybe apple should rebrandLogitech’s kit, like Microsoft does.

My next complaint is key bindings. For ever since I remember, [home]takes you to the start of current line and [end] takes you to the endof the current line. Many apps even ignore the [home]/[end] keys.Windows, GNOME and KDE all bind [alt] [F4] to close window - but notthe mac. There are many other standard combinations ignored by Apple.Another annoyance is the apple key - for most things it functions like a[ctrl] on a PC, but not in a shell, then it functions like an applekey and [ctrl] functions like a [ctrl] key under *nix - I have losttrack of how many windows i have closed when trying to delete a word inthe console (bash fiends know what i mean).

Inconsistent use of key combinations. In the console and some otherapps, [apple] [arrow] loops through the windows of the application,but not Apple Mail, it has decided that the combo expands/collapsesmessage threads, very annoying when trying to compose a message whiletrying to copy and paste from another.

The maximise button doesn’t actually maximise. I am not sure if it is upto the application or the window manager, but clicking maximise (thegreen circle) may increase or decrease the width or height of thewindow. When I click maximise, I expect the window to be maximised - orat the very least increased in dimensions.

The real deal breakers for me are the [home]/[end] keys, theinconsistent shortcuts and other crazy behaviour of OSX mean that Iwon’t be switching to a Mac anytime soon.

Over the next week I plan to load more FLOSS on the mac, such asMozilla Thunderbird for email, whichwill join Mozilla Firefox web browser andgvim - my referred text editor. I doubt this willbe enough for me to stick with OS X.

The Mighty Stick - Ld36 Mac Os 8

The indigo iMac G3 I landed last week is likely to be running Copland(a PPC port of xubuntu) real soonnow. I am still trying to work out what I do with Julie’s ApplePowerbookG3,which currently runs Xubuntu 6.06.1 LTS, asubuntu has dropped support forPowerPC infeisty. Maybe I can find other PowerPC machines to install Copland orDebian onto 🙂

I am yet to see how OS X is more user friendly and easier cross gradepath for windows users than a Linux desktop.

Update 2020: I’ve been a relatively happy mac user for the last 7+ years.It is a lot easier than trying to use a Linux Desktop in corporateenvironments. Some of the things noted in this post still annoy me, especiallythe inconsistent key bindings.

The Mighty Stick - Ld36 Mac Os 7

Klik is no longer around, but the concept lives on withflatpak and Unbuntu’s snaps.

The Mighty Stick - LD36 Mac OS