I have had nothing but frustration in my migration from Linux to Mac. And the reason? Aesthetics.
Of course that's counter-intuitive. It's Apple who wins awards for design, Apple the darling of the mediascenti. My Macbook Pro comes with camera and microphone and wonderful software for making them work. It is clearly and vastly superior to the Compaq I gave up, at least in terms of hardware-qua-hardware. Even on a software basis, the default OS X package beats the default *nix package, hands down.
So what's my beef? Am I a frustrated Luddite? Am I simply incapable of appreciating a good thing?
The damned thing FEELS wrong. Sure, the keyboard itself feels good, as good as any I've ever worked on. Except for the faintly metallic feel. But worse still, working in the OS X operating system means working in a Window-Icon-Mouse-Pointer-centric mode, and I am much happier in keyboard mode.
It's a non-trivial investment we make, getting our typing speed up to 70+ wpm. To get there means falling in love with the home keys, with the sweet spots, with making each finger move with minimal effort for maximum speed and accuracy. There's rhythm and flow. It's a feel. And it's a feel pretty much divorced from the WIMP model. Even before I got into Linux the one thing I preferred about m$ over mac was the increased presence of keyboard shortcuts. But there's almost nothing in a Linux environment that can't be done by keystrokes. Whereas the mac was originally designed without a keyboard at all.
I have, partly in jest, described my feelings about the mouse as having to push a large, rusty switch in my brain to convert from safe, happy, keyboard mode to crazy, slow, hunting for the pointer and coordinating with the mouse mode. I fucking _resent_ every time I have to take my fingers away from the home keys.
In the end I guess that's really what it comes down to. Most of what I come to the computer for is words, not pictures or videos or mp3s. I come here for words, to read them and write them. And I like the way it feels to merge, mesh, blend with the keyboard. Mousing around the net is like having an automatic transmission in a Maserati.
Next installment: The visual aesthetic of command-line tools and syntax highlighting.
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