Religous OS wars are so tired. Yet, there are still OS warriors crusading against the heathens out there. But they generally don't know what they are talking about; they just repeat the party line.
Recently, my wife's (Windows XP) laptop finally gave up; it simply couldn't keep up with her digital photos or movies anymore. It barely wanted to get off the couch to download her email. It was out of gas.
We started looking into replacements. I couldn't convince her to try Linux, but she fell in love with Panther. We went out and got an iBook G4 with the cute, snow-and-ice case and its cute blinking light on the panel and its user-friendly interface and its rock-solid BSD chassis and all that goodness. I'll admit that I am hooked by Apple's sense of style and even started to believe the hype about the software and hardware just being better.
Fast forward...no, wait, no need. I get the thing home from the Apple store and install the Airport card. When I carefully replace the keyboard, SNAP. F12, F11, esc and ~ are now irrevocably cockeyed and the whole keyboard casing is tilted. We trudge back to Apple. Now, this I have to admit, was nice: no questions asked, they just went in the back and got me another one.
Now, fast forward. Its about two weeks later. Lisa loves her Mac. It is so easy to work with photos and movies and burn cd's and maintain her multiple email accounts and everything else. She's in heaven. She logs in and gets an innocuous message: Software Update available. OSX 10.3.3. Just click here! Press the jolly, candy-like button!
This manages to bring the Mac to its knees. Long story short, the following results occur:
1) Printing is broken. CUPS is fouled up because of a bad inode corresponding to the CUPS folder.
2) CD Burning is hosed. Regardless of whether I allow the verification step to proceed, discs come out unusable and the OS spins its wheels post-eject.
3) Permissions to some system folders are irretrievably damaged.
I learn, over the course of three days, that the built-in disk repair utility is essentially useless. I learn to log into single-user mode, where I can work in a more familiar environment (ahh, a Mac that can boot to the command line. Near-heaven.) I learn that even fsck is helpless in the face of my disk problem.
I go buy DiskWarrior. I do not understand why this is not bundled with every Mac. I run it. It fixes about half of our problems. But not all. And I am out $109.
I take the iBook to the "Genius" bar. When our "genius" comes out, I begin to tell him our problem. He scratches his chin and looks thoughtful. Meanwhile, I'm booting into single-user mode to show him the output from fsck. When I flip the notebook around so he can see the screen, his face kind of scrunches uncomfortably, and he says "what is that? I have no idea what you are showing me." He'd never seen a command line.
In the end, I borrowed an external firewire drive, copied off what I could, and reinstalled the original version of Panther. All is well now, and my wife has agreed not to allow her computer to update itself from the software update dialog.
What's the point of all this, you may ask? Is this some kind of random rant against Apple? No, and far from it. I love Panther, and as I said earlier, I think Apple is as close to perfect in styling as possible. No, this is a rant against Mac zealots (and Linux zealots, and Windows zealots) who keep finding me in the hallway and telling me that I need to switch to the Mac because it is "so much more stable" or "just all around more solid". Don't bring that weak stuff. Give me something concrete, or quit talking about it. Give me technical reasons, not propaganda.
Every OS has its place, its uses, and most importantly, its quirks. The same for the companies/communities that make them.
Justin Gehtland
is a programmer, author, mentor and instructor, focusing on
real-world software applications.
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A few of the posts here bear proof of the zealotry mentioned in the article. I am a zealot myself, I guess. (My family often reminds me of this ;) But I see nothing improper about the author's story. Sad but true; flies can always find a way into the ointment. And by golly, I'm not foolish enough to split hairs with the author over the abiguity in the title. The better the Mac gets, the less I feel like defending my choice! Things are quite cool these days.
I don't know if you've ever written software, but it's REAL hard. It must be PERFECT, or it won't work. I guess I have some underlying sympathies for people who actually have to write this stuff. It's terrible. Mac, Linux, UNIX, Windows... my God, it's a miracle any of it gets done. I've done it. It sucks. This O/S diatribe is ridiculous. Go to www.OpenBSD.org... these guys are great. They tell you to stuff it & die. More into the O/S, less into in-fighting. Nothings perfect... live with it & go on...
Don't lose sight of what's important
2004-05-27 10:18:31
gforce
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Are Macs perfect? Of course not.
EVERY platform will have issues, regardless of brand, technology or even philosophy. But let's not forget what's probably one of the most important statements in this article:
"It's about two weeks later. Lisa loves her Mac"
In my own personal, and somewhat limited, observations Macs have generally provided a better overall user experience than either Windows or Linux alternatives. And as far as I'm concerned my Mac provides me with all the functionality that I need with as little hassle as can be reasonably expected. Does that make my Mac perfect? Well, perfect enough for me.
oops, rewind and restart
2004-05-27 08:13:03
Prince Charles
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From my experience the Mac is most vulnerable at the point of system updates. This is, I think, partially Apple's fault and partially the user's fault.
The user's fault: There are a number of third party applications that should be inactivated prior to performing a system update. This include, but are not limited to, the popular haxies from Unsanity. I've made it a habit to restart my system with all third party preference panes and haxies inactive before updating.
Apple's fault: In everyday usage, for whatever reason, file persmissions tend to become incorrect. This seems (note the squirrel word 'seems') to have an impact on updates. After having two disasterous updates similar to yours, I began performing a permissions repair before running an update.
Since I am responsible for computer labs I do a fair number of updates each year. Since taking the two above mentioned steps, I've not had a single update disaster.
As to your allegation that Apple's disk repair utility is worthless: Nonsense. Whatever your problem was, it might have been beyond the ability of the application to repair it. But in regular every day usage I find it to be the tool that I use 90% of the time.
Basically you have made the mistake of thinking that your problem is a problem of general experience. I don't think that is the case
Now, lets talk about my PC lab that is once again half dead thanks to a Microsoft update package. Or not. I'm too depressed to think about it.
Open Standards Zealot
2004-05-27 07:21:22
jmincey
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Your article is a classic case of bait and switch. Given your headline, I had expected to read an essay on the merits of multiple platforms and how each has its pros and cons and is well suited to some tasks and not to others. I had expected that you would come down in favor of diversity of platforms for purposes of security and of tailoring computers to the end which they are intended to serve. Finally, I had expected to read something in favor of open standards and platform-independent networking.
Of course, there is none of this in your article. Instead, it is a diatribe about your negative experiences with a Macintosh. Now all file systems are vulnerable to corruption, and it sounds as though your boot blocks may have been trashed somehow. (Did you get an error message about "Invalid key length" by chance?) Be that as it may, I simply don't believe that an employee designated to be an Apple "genius" at a retail store didn't know what a command line was and didn't know that the Mac offered it. No one will be acquainted with all error messages or all software utilities -- of course not. But your article goes over the top and strains credulity.
With each Mac Apple ships a restore disk which includes a separate partition of diagnostic and repair utilities. It will perform a full panoply of hardware tests for you (among other things). Apple's disk utilities are indeed modest -- and Apple acknowledges as much. I look forward to more robust tools from Apple in the future, (though Windows itself does not include robust disk repair tools -- otherwise there would not be such a healthy third-party market in this area).
I have installed a number of Airport cards -- including several in iBooks, and I have had no trouble with keyboards. You just have to take some care -- that's all. Laptop keyboards are notorious for being fragile, and if you don't think so, inquire with IBM as to its Thinkpad keyboard failure rates.
Let me suggest that in an effort to appear even-handed and objective you are -- with your bogus headline -- guilty of false advertising. Your article has NOTHING to do with the merits of multiple platforms; and a more accurate and honest headline would have been this:
I think several of the people that read your article missed your point...or at least what I believe to be your point:
Regardless of you chosen platform, there are always going to be "evil gnomes" to fight. One simply must choose the fight most worthy to them at the time, whatever the reasoning (even blind zealotry, as mine is running Linux religiously on my TiPB). No complex program or combination of programs can ever achieve absolute perfection...not using OS X, not using Windows, and not even using Linux.
Relatively easy steps for your wife to avoid such future problems. Get two pieces of software. Carbon Copy Cloner and Cocktail. Next time there is a software update, run Carbon Copy Cloner to fully clone the hard drive to an external drive for backup. Run the update. After the update runs, IMMEDIATELY (after reboot) run Cocktail to fix all disk permissions,etc. IF something bad still goes wrong, just boot from the drive that you backed up everything to and run CCC in the reverse. I practice this method and have 'trained' my non-techie fiance to do the same...
A) I am not a platform zealot
B) I tried to convince my wife to buy Linux
C) <insert approx. 700 words about how my experience with a Mac sucked>
D) Oh, but really, I love Panther.
First of all, I am sorry to hear that you have had these issues !
Just to let you know, Disk Utility should be able to take care of all permissions issues on your volume that might have been created by an installer. Indeed, it checks a file left by the installer itself to do its work and, unless this file has been manually removed, will find the necessary information. Permissions that you or a faulty application have altered for an uncommon specific file or folder are another issue but, up until now, it always repaired them on my various test Macs.
The node issue seems to indicate that the problems you were having are more related to a low level hard drive glitch than a software problem. Just to let you know, Disk Utility should also have been able to take care of most catalog problems -- although you are right about the fact that some problems can require the use of specialized software. I have never run in to this myself, though.
Your description made me wonder wether you used a special disk utility or "un erase" application ? Incompatible ones are likely to create hard drive catalog issues similar to what you experienced.
Without having a look at the iBook, this is of course speculation on my part. However, even though issues can always happen with any operating system, as you point out in your very interesting blog, a software update is unlikely to cause such a "disaster" in itself... Something else seems to have been at work.
F.J.
Mac Zealotry
2004-05-26 17:48:45
brianimator2
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I tend toward zealotry out of fear. If it wasn't for Apple's diminutive market share, I'm sure I'd be less vocal. I could relax, and enjoy the Mac goodness, quirks and all.
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