I do not find Macs to be very "usable", and previous-gen ThinkPads outranked them in everything but the shiny-showing-off-at-starbucks metric. However, in the last generations, Lenovo has nerfed the ThinkPads (new ones don't even have a middle mouse area - no more buttons, either).
They've also even put the logo upside down so that you can show it off at cafes.
Is there a Thinkpad model you would recommend for day-to-day use (mainly Java programming and LaTeX writing), that is light enough to be carried around daily?
Ihe UX of OSX is not that of a high end unix workstation. High end unix workstations do not need homebrew. High end unix workstations do not provide the miserable, second class Xwindows experience that is found on OSX.
So I used "high end unix workstations" for years and years and years and OSX isn't perfect, but jesus christ I'd take its UI over just about any of the UIs from its competitors.
(and remember trying to compile anything on sunos and only having suncc? fuck that, imo, I'll deal with xcode)
The X Windows experience on my MacBook Pro is great! I get a OS that does pretty much everything my ThinkPad with Linux did, plus:
* wifi works out of the box and reconnects practically instantly out of sleep [1]
* sleep works without me spending two weeks recompiling Gentoo with different kernel options and finally discovering some boot flag that worked until Ubuntu broke it in one of their updates
* I don't need to edit my XF86Config file (maybe not necessary any more)
* no hassle of getting a compositing window manager working (hopefully compiz/emerald works better now than in 2008), figuring out how to disable gdm/kdm because the window manager options with the distribution are always terrible so I just start from .xinitrc because figuring out how to get gdm/kdm/xdm to run what I want seems to change every time I have to look.
* no more poor battery life
* filtering through low quality apps (KDE: crash-happy and UgLy), GNOME: pretty but light on the features); still scarred over X-CD-Roast...
* AirDrop!
* no arcane errors about sound because Ubuntu suddenly decided that I needed Jack (or maybe it was the other one), when ALSA was working just fine
* oh, yeah, whenever I need to run an XWindows program it integrates seamlessly into my other programs. So much so that I tend to forget to use Ctrl for the keyboard shortcuts instead of that Apple command key with the weird symbol on it. It even seems to cut and paste from the rest of the system reasonably well.
Yeah, I'm totally loving the XWindows experience on MacOS X!
[1] I switched to Ubuntu because wifi and sleep just worked, and then they just didn't work after some updates
* wifi works out of the box and reconnects practically instantly out of sleep [1]
You had a thinkpad with less than stellar wireless support? I have never experienced any hardware problems with my many thinkpads (close to a decade now).
* sleep works without me spending two weeks recompiling Gentoo with different
kernel options and finally discovering some boot flag that worked until Ubuntu
broke it in one of their updates
Installs gentoo, complains about recompiling...WTF? Personally I do not like sleeping laptops and encrypted hard drives. However I have many friends/coworkers that are less paranoid and they seem to put their thinkpads to sleep just fine.
* I don't need to edit my XF86Config file (maybe not necessary any more)
Ok, so it has been ages since you used linux on a thinkpad. I need to keep this in mind. I never have had any dificulty with x11 on my thinkpads.
* no hassle of getting a compositing window manager working (hopefully
compiz/emerald works better now than in 2008), figuring out how to disable gdm/kdm
because the window manager options with the distribution are always terrible so I
just start from .xinitrc because figuring out how to get gdm/kdm/xdm to run what I
want seems to change every time I have to look.
So you purposefully rejected the distros configuration system and are complaining about having to configure things manually? Xsession management is a breeze for Gnome on Debian (and I am assuming ubuntu). What did you have trouble starting?
* no more poor battery life
The thinkpad battery is not the best but it is pretty good. Given that it has been atleast 6 or 7 years since you used linux I think you would be surprised.
* filtering through low quality apps (KDE: crash-happy and UgLy), GNOME: pretty but
light on the features); still scarred over X-CD-Roast...
X-CD-Roast! Nice you are comparing 2014 OSX to 2001 linux user experience. This is getting silly.
* AirDrop!
How do you configure Airdrop to work with all of your other unix-like machines? I don't know how to do that with my Debian and OBSD boxes. Maybe it is an FreeBSD or NetBSD thing? Does it share with windows as easily as Samba?
* no arcane errors about sound because Ubuntu suddenly decided that I needed Jack
(or maybe it was the other one), when ALSA was working just fine
I have never been forced to install jack. But I do not do professional audio work. This is another problem you created for yourself. No operating system can save a determined user from shooting their foot off. But then again you seem to have trouble with a lot of the unix workflow so I guess I should not be surprised.
* oh, yeah, whenever I need to run an XWindows program it integrates seamlessly
into my other programs. So much so that I tend to forget to use Ctrl for the
keyboard shortcuts instead of that Apple command key with the weird symbol on
it. It even seems to cut and paste from the rest of the system reasonably well.
What Xwindows apps do you use?
> Yeah, I'm totally loving the XWindows experience on MacOS X!
I am glad I have found a happy xwindows on OSX user. Can you help me out with some things:
* Apple's website says "X11 is no longer included with OS X."[1] Do I have to be a Apple Developer to get Xwindows?
* I have had a lot of trouble getting awesome/xmonad/i3 to work in OSX. I swear it is almost as if iTunes is allergic to being a nice tile on my media workspace.
* For the life of me I can not get selected text to paste by middle clicking. How does that work?
* I use vcsh+mr+git to manage all of my config files. This way setting up a new machine is super easy. Can you tell me which directory to point vcsh for my iTunes/Pages/Safari configuration?
* The second step on a new machine is moving all my music over. I have some troubles with iTunes. Is there a special apple+option hotkey to get iTunes to play my flac/ogg files?
* Whenever I ssh into a OSX machine I always have trouble getting iTunes/Pages/Safari to honor my $DISPLAY variable. What am I missing?
