It’s just data
Looks like Why I quit OS X struck a nerve — it is currently down (see web archive). Also good: Apple has lost the functional high ground.
I particularly like the comment that “It just works” was never completely true. My experience is that when working with open source codebases, doing so on an Linux operating system comes much closer to “It just works” than doing so on any other.
My experience is that when working with open source codebases, doing so on an Linux operating system comes much closer to “It just works” than doing so on any other.
Stands to reason, given that most FOS developers seem to have the philosophy, “Compiles and runs on Linux? Let’s ship!”
Posted by Jacques Distler atJacques: you say that like that’s a bad thing. :-)
Posted by Sam Ruby atJacques: you say that like that’s a bad thing. :-)
Jokes aside, ntp4.2.8 shipped without it compiling on MacOSX, FreeBSD or allied systems. Granted that it was something of an emergency, but still ...
Posted by Jacques Distler at“The problem seems to be quite simple”
"it’s simply an issue of ..."
If it were a simple problem it would not be a problem. The problem is likely more something like “market pressures and stockholders are driving companies to launch more new shit instead of improving existing experiences”, which is not a simple problem to solve... And I see this problem with pretty much all consumer software that I use.
Posted by Jeff Schiller atJeff, your comment reminds me of something I recently read How can independent/unknown developers make better, decent, and far more superior applications than Microsoft?
Posted by Sam Ruby atEvery major release of MacOS (at least back through MacOS 9) has been accompanied by howls of complaints at its vastly inferior usability as compared to the previous version.
In the same vein, professors have consistently complained (at least back through the mid 19th Century) that this generation of college students is vastly dumber/more poorly-prepared than the previous generation.
I leave it to you to draw the obvious conclusions about the (implications of the) validity of these complaints.
Posted by Jacques Distler at“It just works” has never been remotely true for any general purpose computer operating system, ever. The closest we ever get is stripped down, purpose built embedded systems (arguably, game consoles hit the sweet spot for this in the mid 90s to early 2000s)
Frictionless operation for an 80/20 percent of common use cases is something we should strive for as an industry, though.
Posted by d.w. atSam, I read that Reddit post yesterday too - maybe I was influenced by it :)
Posted by Jeff Schiller atFor many years we have actually evaluated a great deal of coffee Ryan A. Guess Coffee is a complicated bean, consisting of greater than 1,000.
Posted by David at