leoboiko’s computing log

(Or: why I didn’t apply to work for Apple instead).

I care about good design and æsthetics more than most people. I’ve toyed with an OS 8 system before and, though I wasn’t part of its intended audience, I couldn’t help falling in love with the attention the guys put on it — especially after years of exposure to crappy interfaces in the free software world. Thus, when my company asked me to choose between a Thinkpad and a Macbook, I thought it would be a good time to taste OS X myself.

By the way, no, design and æsthetics aren’t the same thing. Design is about working well, and æsthetics is about being pleasurable to the senses. Good design is mostly (but not always) universal, and good æsthetics is generally (but not entirely) subjective. Still, they’re closely related characteristics.

You have to understand that, given its reputation, I had high expectations for OS X. Most of my free software friends talk about it like it’s a temptation too strong to resist. As it turns out, they weren’t saying this for love of design; they were just running away from the trouble of having to fiddle with configuration files. It’s true that it’s a big bother, and that OS X is much better in that aspect, but this advantage has little to do with product quality; it’s a natural consequence of Apple’s controlled hardware model. I like being free to work in real work, but I don’t like it so much that I’m willing to abandon a free market approach to hardware, so this argument isn’t enough for me to switch. Let’s talk about what matters instead.

Hardware– and sofware-wise, the design is simply perfect. Most important in design is being simple and paying attention to detail, and Apple excels in both. I love the way the sleep led is subdued, so it doesn’t reflect from the wall into your face if you turn your notebook away when you’re in bed; the way the power cable has a (pretty) light indicator in the connector itself, lighting green if the battery’s full and orange if it’s charging; the way the size of the keyboard and trackpad and space for your hands are all carefully thought out and well-laid so that you don’t feel like typing in a sardine can, etc. As for the GUI, if Windows is KDE done wrong, OS X is Gnome done right (so it’s two orders of magnitude better than Windows). I’ve nothing to complain.

My first problem with OS X is æsthetic.

It might help to insist that I care about æsthetics. I asked for a Macbook instead of a Macbook Pro because I don’t like silvery things; this is how much I care. I hate most modern technology, and my reasons are mainly æsthetic (though the rampant bad design also helps). I’m burning money improving the appearance of my apartment before buying stuff I need like a TV, a car, or furniture. If I don’t like the æsthetic vision of a system I won’t use it, period. And I hate hate hate OS X’s appearance. It’s representative of everything I hate in modern visual trends: it’s glossy, shiny, round, plastic, 3d, horribly “lickable”. I like simple plain 2d colors with square corners. My monitor is a bidimensional surface AND I LIKE IT THAT WAY.

This wouldn’t be so bad, really, if not for a second issue I’ve underestimated: OS X is WAY too proprietary. I was quite amazed to learn that there’s no way to change OS X’s appearance, except using a third-party add-on. Which costs money. Worse yet, it’s proprietary, so you can’t fix e.g. the fact that it doesn’t work in Leopard. I searched for some Japanese dictionaries, and — guess what? — all I could find were proprietary and paid, despite using free edict data underneath. I’ve been using GNU/Linux since 2001, and being back to the proprietary world was not a pleasing experience; suddenly I’d be in the hands of companies again, unable to work on my system myself.

I don’t mind paying money for good software, really. But when a company’s core system is sold in a proprietary model, their users can’t improve it. And, because of that, users fall into a “consumer” role instead of being creators, and depend passively on other companies to do everything, and thus the whole software landscape has incentive to be proprietary. I’ll just run Debian in my Macbook, thank you very much.