Miguel de Icaza Leaves Linux For Apple OS X

[deanjo]

DRM. Netflix and co claim it's absolutely mandatory, but Hulu does just fine without it.

It's not only them. Most cable companies that offer online streaming to a PC now do so with silverlight. Pissed me off to no end that the cable/telco companies here started offering on demand to a PC only to make Silverlight a requirement.

[JS987]

For example?

OS X doesn't have packager manager with official and unofficial repositories.
I can't make full list of missing features because installation isn't possible.

[arokh]

Irrelevant.

What? It's irrelevant if he used mouse & keyboard on a touch interface? It's like trying to skateboard in high heels.

Touch is useless fluff for >12" screens. Ergonomical nightmare. Any interface that depends on touch input to be usable (anywhere besides than smartphones or tablets) is a worthless piece of shit.

Windows 8 is designed for both touch screens and classic setup. They unified their platform, devs will be able to develop once and run "everywhere". Don't blame your ignorance on MS.

Windows 8 is a disaster and a failure, this is agreed by everyone except the most diehard windows fanbois. Sales figures are so horrible microsoft tries to pull a fast one and do a "second release" whatever that even means - if it's released it's released.

I'm not a Windows user myself, just had a quick look at Windows 8 but it does look promising. I don't know where you get from that it's a disaster/failure, do a google search for windows 8 reviews, most of them are overly positive.

Some of the first hits:

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-...1093002/review
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/w...verdictTab#top

Even Unity is better than windows ache, and that's not saying much.

You got it backwards, Unity is a disaster agreed upon by everyone. Canonical wants to do the same thing as MS though, unify their desktop/tablet/phone experience etc. Problem is that the rest of the Linux distributions aren't going to follow, so more fragmentation is incoming.

[deanjo]

OS X doesn't have packager manager with official and unofficial repositories.

One could argue that the App store fills that need and is their "package manager". There are also items like fink and homebrew.

[JS987]

One could argue that the App store fills that need and is their "package manager". There are also items like fink and homebrew.

App store can't provide all applications. You can't install GPL software from official repository. fink, homebrew and MacPorts are unofficial and not integrated with App store.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_App_Store

Disallowed types of applications revealed by Apple include
Software that changes the native user interface elements or behaviors of Mac OS X.
Software that does not comply with the Apple Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.
Software that is similar in look or function to current Apple products (e.g. Mac App Store, Finder, iTunes, iChat, etc.).
Software similar to other software that is already released in the Mac App Store. Examples given: Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw, Photoshop Lightroom & Apple Aperture, Cinema 4D and 3D Max, etc.
Software that contains or displays pornographic material.
Software that is or installs shared components (kernel extensions, browser plugins, QuickTime components, etc.).
Software that provides content or services that expire.
Software that does not run on the currently shipping version of Mac OS.
Beta, demo, trial, or test versions of software.
Software that references trademarks unless the developer has explicit permission to use them
Open source software licensed only under the GPL (because the App Store Terms of Service imposes additional restrictions incompatible with the GPL)
Apps that use software libraries that are either optionally installed or deemed deprecated by Apple for Mac OS X users. Examples given:
Apple's implementation of Java SE 6 (although the OpenJDK implementation of Java SE 7 is permitted if bundled into the app)
PowerPC code requiring Rosetta

[deanjo]

App store can't provide all applications. You can't install GPL software from official repository. fink, homebrew and MacPorts are unofficial and not integrated with App store.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_App_Store

And you cannot put closed applications on the mainline linux repositories. It isn't that different. Also you can offer GPL software as long as it is dual licensed.

[t.s.]

Shows what?
Every person I've talked to about windows 8(actual normal people, not power-users or linux users) have called it a design disaster. When I bought my laptop, every negative review simply pointed to windows 8 being crap and unusable.

I guess it shows that microsoft vastly overpays their UI team.

Um.. What I know is a man named Sinofsky made that happen. Metro, I mean. Despite Protest everywhere. And well, That Sir Balmer take the bait.

[Detructor]

LOLWUT? From every modern benchmark I've ever seen Java gives C# butthurt in the speed department. I guess you don't like the massive amount of Java IDEs either. They are different, not inferior. To give you some credit though, I don't code in Java (C++ and lua all the way for me) but still, I think that criticism unnecessary and incorrect.

Java? Faster than C#? Nice joke man. You'd need some very special cases where Java beats C#. I did my benchmarks and tests. Also Java GUIs just look ugly. And yes there are multiple Java IDEs and the best I found was NetBeans, which is kinda good but slow when loading bigger projects (they may have fixed that in the meantime). Also Java is owned by Oracle...and we're all seeing what's happening to MySQL. Java won't be around for long.

it's quite cross platform(but not build-once run everywhere... neither is C#, Mono though

well in that case, you didn't do a good job. I developed 4 in-house applications in C# that worked on Mono without even having Mono in mind for it. I'm also currently developing a rather big/complex program that'll be available for Linux (because I need it for myself, too), there may be driver related problems in the future but as of now I didn't encounter any problems.

About C++: Well last time I checked you needed to fumble around with header files (I still don't understand what those are for), pointers and there was not one IDE that has C++ + GUI builder the way C# has it. Instead you needed to do manual binding and stuff you really shouldn't even think about. Also I read a few times that compilers tend to 'optimize' your code which results in unexpected behaviour. Aaand last one: There seems to be no debugger that is as easy as VisualStudio's debugger (build-in in an IDE and easy to use)

[JS987]

And you cannot put closed applications on the mainline linux repositories. It isn't that different. Also you can offer GPL software as long as it is dual licensed.

Arch and possibly others have closed applications in official repositories
https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=nvidia
https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=flashplugin
I can't change license of software created by others. GPL applications shouldn't be dual licensed as GPL is best license for users.
There are 10 other limitations except disallowing of GPL only license.

[GreatEmerald]

If the 2-3 major distributors would sit down and agree on a standard application bundle format there would a lot less fragmentation in Linux. Packages and centralized repositories are alright for maintaining the system. However, applications should be easily distributed from anywhere and from anyone, just like MacOS or Windows. Ideally the user should be able to get applications from the application creators themselves, e.g. Firefox from Mozilla, Chrome from Google, MySQL from Oracle, etc. If I was a developer of a successful open source application, I'd like the user to get a cross distro binary directly from my site. It would be a win for both me and the user.

Meanwhile, we have the Open Build Service.

People hate on .NET, but its pretty much Java done right.

No, that's D or Vala.

If you can't learn from the best, and instead insist on your own broken ways then you will certainly not go anywhere.

That's what I have been saying, too. They do learn a bit, apparently, as there is now a way to search the Start menu, but there still are no tabs in Windows Explorer and such.