another Apple idiocy

[sje]

iPod lunacy can be controlled -- to some extent.

iTunes can be set to NOT synchronize with any particular iPod/iPad. So while a full, first time synchronization will wipe out music stored on an iPod, this can be avoided. What is not so easily done is to preserve music stored on the iPod while adding new music via synchronization. Yet there are tools to do this and other unapproved iGadget activities, if one knows where to look.

Perhaps the best way to fiddle with iGadgets is to use various non-Apple programs available on Linux. Use the Synaptic package manager on any Debian-based distribution to find these, and presto! lost functionality is returned.

Apple's 30% commission on software distribution is a real rip-off. That figure is three times the typical sales commission and five times the usual real estate commission in the US. It costs Apple no more to distribute a one dollar program vs a one hundred dollar program, so any claim that the high commission is there only to recover distribution costs is a lie. My advice: don't buy any software or music via Apple.

As for music acquisition, I suggest buying directly from the artists where possible. The cost will be minimal and little, if any of the money will go to do-nothing middlemen.

Some have gotten so disgusted with overpriced music and video that they operate at the edge (or maybe off the edge) of the law by making weekly visits to their city library and borrowing as many CDs and DVDs as allowed, then rip them at home. This will probably work, at least until the government requires all computers to be registered with a backdoor on every one of them.

[bob]

Apple taught me three things:
- never upgrade xcode
- never upgrade os
- never upgrade anything

Apple taught me one thing: never buy Apple products.

Agreed.

In fact, not only I would never buy anything from Apple, but I wouldn't accept it as a gift either. If someone bought me an I-Gadget as a present, I woud say: "thanks, but I can't.accept this. Please return it to the Apple store. These people do not deserve your money."

I made that mistake once, buying an IPod. It was the first and last thing I ever bought from these people:
* first, you couldn't use an IPod without using ITunes.
* there's no ITunes for Linux, so you basically can't use it at all. Good luck with Wine+ITunes. Even if you suceed making it work, they will force you to update ITunes, to a version that you can't make work on Wine…
* Even if you get past that, ITunes it the dumbest piece of sh** ever: you plug your IPod and it synchronises it with the computer w/o asking you. It deletes all your music and replaces it with what's in ITunes.
* All other MP3 players could be used as USB keys: simply copy your music files on it, and control what you do. Not with Ipod: Apple only is in control.
* Already you can see where this is going: only music bought on Itunes can be used, other files can't be copied (even if you circumvent that they'd prevent the Ipod from playing them). Apple has a monopoly and screws the artist, taking exorbitant comissions. All that under the excuse to fight against "piracy", in order to let the music industry to proaper… Who's dumb enough to swallow that? Not me.
* And the list goes on. I'm sure I forget many things.


I'm very surprised that someone as computer saavy as BobHyatt, would fall into the Apple marketing trap.

I didn't "fall into the trap." It was a decision by our previous chair that we were going to use apple products. Hardware is good. I have a macbook running Linux now. Machine is fast, works flawlessly, and behaves as one would expect (other than having no "bios" settings.)

Our situation is even worse, because we have also settled on microsoft office (.docx, .xlsx, etc) as the standard "interchange" format. So not only do we have apple OS X nonsense to deal with, we have microsoft on top of apple nonsense. Once I become sure that the linux flavor of office will work on all the things I need it to work on, my office iMac is going to become a linux box as well. BSD/Linux were supposed to be a classic open-source, open functionality, open interoperability facility. Apple has broken that with their attempts to make it impossible to alter OS X stuff. I'm not going to deal with it if I can maintain compatibility. ALL of my cluster stuff is linux (Centos) and always has been. I have a linux desktop in my office also that lets me study this compatibility issue with office files. I am not far away from tossing os x right in the crapper.

However, that said, apple hardware is quite good. My macbook is the best laptop I have used, and that covers a LOT of different laptops, dell, Sony, IBM, gateway, and a few no-names. But their software sucks and it gets worse every day. I am just getting ready to test all the thunderbolt stuff under linux. If that works, OS X is history here...

A further apple pain here is that if my laptop dies, I can have a replacement tomorrow unless I want to drive down to the local apple store, where I can have a purchase order issued today to buy one. Not so for other brands. Specs. Bids. Etc. No idea why this decision was made, but it was a bad one. But one I can live with since at least the hardware is pretty good.

[MikeB]

I've upgraded my iMac and macbook to El Capitan. First thing I discover is El Capitan has a "rootless" concept that protects much of the system from modification. Apple releases a broken "indent" program in /usr/bin, I installed a legit GNU indent, but my path intentionally has /usr/bin before other directories. So It still ran the apple indent. I thought "aha, I will just do a quick "mv indent indent.osx" in the /usr/bin directory and that will fix it. Wrong. Can't change /usr/bin even as root. Finally figured out that apple had introduced this "rootless" crap in El Capitan, under the guise of "system integrity protection". Have to go to the recovery boot (cmd-R), open a terminal, and enter a command to disable this nonsense, followed by a reboot. I am now running that way.

Just as annoying as SELinux security stuff. If they would just ship a machine with NO operating system or code of any kind, it would be the ultimate "secure system" where nobody could screw it up. It is already screwed up.

The good news is that you no longer have to repair permissions

I agree it's been a royal pain in the ass. My guess is that they are trying to reduce desktop support (and expense) for those knuckleheads who have no clue to what they are doing and click everything in sight.

[bob]

I've upgraded my iMac and macbook to El Capitan. First thing I discover is El Capitan has a "rootless" concept that protects much of the system from modification. Apple releases a broken "indent" program in /usr/bin, I installed a legit GNU indent, but my path intentionally has /usr/bin before other directories. So It still ran the apple indent. I thought "aha, I will just do a quick "mv indent indent.osx" in the /usr/bin directory and that will fix it. Wrong. Can't change /usr/bin even as root. Finally figured out that apple had introduced this "rootless" crap in El Capitan, under the guise of "system integrity protection". Have to go to the recovery boot (cmd-R), open a terminal, and enter a command to disable this nonsense, followed by a reboot. I am now running that way.

Just as annoying as SELinux security stuff. If they would just ship a machine with NO operating system or code of any kind, it would be the ultimate "secure system" where nobody could screw it up. It is already screwed up.

The good news is that you no longer have to repair permissions

I agree it's been a royal pain in the ass. My guess is that they are trying to reduce desktop support (and expense) for those knuckleheads who have no clue to what they are doing and click everything in sight.

I'm not so sure. I think they are trying for an ever-increasing captive audience. You have to adjust browser/security to download/install anything from a non-Apple site. Now it is harder to install ANYTHING with this "rootless" nonsense. I think they are heading toward IOS. I had to reinstall OS X last week after the Xcode fiasco, and it for whatever reason returns to the original version shipped (mountain lion). Can't believe how much better the graphics look, icons look, how much more responsive it is in terms of speed, etc. Then back to El Capitan and the flat-looking graphics, no root, etc...

Not much longer if everything checks out with centos...

[MikeB]

I've upgraded my iMac and macbook to El Capitan. First thing I discover is El Capitan has a "rootless" concept that protects much of the system from modification. Apple releases a broken "indent" program in /usr/bin, I installed a legit GNU indent, but my path intentionally has /usr/bin before other directories. So It still ran the apple indent. I thought "aha, I will just do a quick "mv indent indent.osx" in the /usr/bin directory and that will fix it. Wrong. Can't change /usr/bin even as root. Finally figured out that apple had introduced this "rootless" crap in El Capitan, under the guise of "system integrity protection". Have to go to the recovery boot (cmd-R), open a terminal, and enter a command to disable this nonsense, followed by a reboot. I am now running that way.

Just as annoying as SELinux security stuff. If they would just ship a machine with NO operating system or code of any kind, it would be the ultimate "secure system" where nobody could screw it up. It is already screwed up.

The good news is that you no longer have to repair permissions

I agree it's been a royal pain in the ass. My guess is that they are trying to reduce desktop support (and expense) for those knuckleheads who have no clue to what they are doing and click everything in sight.

I'm not so sure. I think they are trying for an ever-increasing captive audience. You have to adjust browser/security to download/install anything from a non-Apple site. Now it is harder to install ANYTHING with this "rootless" nonsense. I think they are heading toward IOS. I had to reinstall OS X last week after the Xcode fiasco, and it for whatever reason returns to the original version shipped (mountain lion). Can't believe how much better the graphics look, icons look, how much more responsive it is in terms of speed, etc. Then back to El Capitan and the flat-looking graphics, no root, etc...

Not much longer if everything checks out with centos...

From the apple site:

Code: Select all

If you want to reinstall the version of OS X that came with your Mac, hold Command-Option-R at startup instead. This starts your Mac from Internet Recovery. 

Apple was bragging about how much "speedier" El Capitan is. Not true - GeekBench is about 300 points slower (2%) under El Capitan. My best Geekbench was run about week before the upgrade.

[JoshPettus]

The first iteration of the OS is usually the slowest. It's usually a bad idea to update before it had a few patches under it's belt. I should know better, but even I was sucked in to the promise of better performance for older osx hardware. Personally i think it is running a little better then 10.10 but then 10.10 ran like one legged tortoise moving uphill on on a molasses spill.

[bob]

The first iteration of the OS is usually the slowest. It's usually a bad idea to update before it had a few patches under it's belt. I should know better, but even I was sucked in to the promise of better performance for older osx hardware. Personally i think it is running a little better then 10.10 but then 10.10 ran like one legged tortoise moving uphill on on a molasses spill.

You forgot about the 100 pound backpack it was carrying...

And for whatever reason, the "fat lady" that usually sings when something is over was sitting on its back...

[JoshPettus]

In a blizzard...

[bob]

In a blizzard...

As of right now, if I start MS excel or MS power point, I can't make 'em exit. If I reboot, they come back even if I tell OS X to NOT restore open windows. Update won't update because it keeps telling me to exit the apps. If only I could. Guess the next attempt will be single-user and see if I can hide the executables before bringing everything back up. This is nuts.

[stegemma]

I've spent days to set up on environment to compile my softwares on Windows (VS) and Mac (Eclipse Mars) and after the update to El Capitan and last xCode nothing works

This was maybe a problem with Eclipse, because xCode works. Eclipse is searching for the 10.10 SDK while xCode has the 10.11 in it. I can't find how to tell Eclipse that the SDK folder has changed, maybe that option is very well hidden.

Despite from that, I would like to always keep the last release of my OS and tools... maybe am I fool?