This, and the app-store debacle, is the kind of stuff that makes me think that Apple isn't in it for the long haul.
Why doesn't MacOSX ship with native GTK? And Qt? Why hasn't OpenOffice worked seamlessly from day 1? Or at least day 5? Why don't Apple embrace the huge community that worships their products, instead of becoming the next Microsoft? What have they got to loose?
If getting my favourite Linux apps to run on my MacBook had bees as easy as apt-get, heck, even as easy as under Windows, I'd still use Mac OS X.. now it's running Kubuntu, and I'm regretting not getting a ThinkPad.
Because Mac OS X has Cocoa/Aqua for its UI instead of GTK/Gnome or QT/KDE. If you want GTK/Gnome or QT/KDE, use Linux. If you want Cocoa/Aqua, use Mac OS X.
If you looked at something like MacPorts or Fink, you would see that installing $randomPackage is as simple as "sudo (fink/port) install packagename"
Oh, and last i checked, NeoOffice worked fine (And OpenOffice is finally getting around to finishing a native Mac port). So, um, it has been supported since day one. If you bothered searching and finding it. But it's not Apple's fault OO.o doesn't advertise their product in a way to get on your radar.
> If you looked at something like MacPorts or Fink, you would see that installing $randomPackage is as simple as "sudo (fink/port) install packagename"
We both know the amount of packages available in Fink pales in comparison to the average Linux distribution. To state otherwise is disingenuous.
I wouldn't say it pales. OK, this is kind of like comparing apples and oranges, but still:
Leopard:
port list | wc -l
5038
Tiger:
fink list | wc -l
8111
Ubuntu 8.04:
apt-cache pkgnames | wc -l
33720
So the number of packages is 5-6x smaller, but most common/useful packages are present. Also you should take into account that many packages present in ubuntu don't mean anything in OS X. And for example there are for example tons of python packages in Ubuntu, all/most of which can be easily installed through easy_install :-)
Let's compare how up to date the packages are:
port info cmake
cmake 2.6.1, devel/cmake (Variants: universal)
...
apt-cache show cmake
...
Version: 2.4.7-1build1
...
So based on sample of 1 package we can see that MacPorts is more up to date than Ubuntu. Joking aside, cmake really matters to me...
These package managers are a far cry from a decent Linux, dependencies are handled poorly, installing an innocent looking library sometimes takes hours. If you do a search you will find a lot of painful stories or long pages with tons of magic to install a simple piece of code. Duh.
If you like, you can use Portage from Gentoo on OS X. It's not up to date for Leopard (which is why I didn't mention it before), but the option is there: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/prefix/bootstrap-ma... - Though it requires slightly more then basic knowledge of a Bash (or $insertYourPreferredShell) to set up. There's also way's to use rpm5's on OS X - And there's patches to get dpkg working on OS X if you fancy apt.
But, again: Mac OS X is not Linux. Setting Portage up is a huge hack to hold things together though. So if you have the time to set a .deb or .rpm-based system up, you should really just get a Linux box to use instead and then take the time you saved and do something productive. At least thats what my experience tells me.
The reason Apple is very successful is because there are few choices. A lot of hardcore hackers don't get this, but people don't like a lot of choices, and they especially like uniformity and consistency. I like that for my Ubuntu setup, all the apps have the same look and feel whether it be GTK or KDE, I keep them separate. I like that for Mac OS X they all have a common look and feel. I don't like that on Windows everything looks different.
So by bringing in all this extra crap, they loose that consistent look and feel, and that is basically what separates their platform to most people. They have a lot to loose.
Most software developers want that - or, more specifically, all the benefits of Linux with mainstream hardware and application support. What's wrong with that?
Not only does it have poor support for common hardware, it has artificially restricted support. What it does support, it supports reasonably well, but that hardly qualifies OSX as a system that supports mainstream hardware.
If you want to write a cross-platform app, I argue that GTK is still not a very good solution. I wonder how Adobe is progressing with their cross-platform Cocoa-based CS5.
OS X does provide most of the benefits of Linux, except for large portions of the OS being closed source.
You get a terminal with bash or whatever shell you wish, which works great (none of the Cygwin crap). You can compile most non-GUI Linux apps for OS X (and many GUI ones). Etc.
I rarely run into things that I can do on Linux that I can't do on OS X.
Volunteer time/interest.. not enough people want to scratch the itch.
The need for multiple binaries - (OS X 10.4/10.5) x (PowerPC/Intel) x (32/64 bit, maybe) - is also a pain. You can cross build, and you can munge multiple builds into a "universal binary", but it's not obvious enough to avoid the same discussions happening on every open source project's mailing list.
Native GTK is not the Apple problem. GTK developers could use Mac application paradigms instead of Windows's and embrace GNUStep/Objective C for GIMP and GNOME instead of implementing their own toolkit. They made the choice of going Windows-like way, not Apple. That's the reason of why "on Windows for years, but still tricky on MacOSX".
macports gives OSX a decent enough package management system; port install ocaml, port install erlang, what more could you ask for? I guess using system libraries would be a bonus, but it's really quite usable as-is.
I don't even have a Mac, but if all I wanted to do was run Linux shit (and you clearly did), I'd pick up a cheap Dell laptop instead of overpriced Mac hardware.
I want native gimp, and I see a screenshot on the developer page, but I don't see how I would get it (short of downloading and compiling myself). Anybody know more than I?
Last I tried you could download native gimp, but it was fatally flawed in its keyboard handling. Nice progress, but still more work to go. It's been a while since there was an update, so no breath holding.
Up till now, the "native" Gimp still used X11 (which is being worked on (see Xquartz), but still buggy) for OS X. And X11 isn't exactly native on OS X by any means.
Why doesn't MacOSX ship with native GTK? And Qt? Why hasn't OpenOffice worked seamlessly from day 1? Or at least day 5? Why don't Apple embrace the huge community that worships their products, instead of becoming the next Microsoft? What have they got to loose?
If getting my favourite Linux apps to run on my MacBook had bees as easy as apt-get, heck, even as easy as under Windows, I'd still use Mac OS X.. now it's running Kubuntu, and I'm regretting not getting a ThinkPad.
I'm disappointed, I REALLY wanted to like MacOSX.