Leopard delay is really bad news for me

I’ve had a long love-hate history with the Mac: love the elegance and innovation, hate the lock-in. It’d be very nice to be “pure” and run Linux, and with the newer Ubuntus that has become really easy. I may have finally even found a replacement for iTunes, my biggest stumbling block to moving! Plus its always nice to follow in the footsteps of Mark Pilgrim, if not Cory Doctorow.

I’m getting sick of being locked into Apple apps — I use Apple Mail because I want Spotlight (Linux alternative) and Keychain support (no alternative), Safari (+Saft) is more Mac-like but Firefox is more flexible, iPhoto is meh. I’m ambivalent about my feed reader and my terminal app (buggy) and my torrent client (crashy), and my desktop manager (unstable), I love Adium but Pidgin is fine, TextMate is really nice but esoteric, Vim can still serve all my needs. I love Quicksilver and Growl, and don’t really want to live without them…

I know its bad, but I’ve been relying on the imminent release of Leopard, the shiny new version of OS X, to keep my thoughts away from once again considering my Mac/Linux duality. But there is very little apparently new in the next version, and now its been delayed until October, meanwhile my box is increasingly slow and unstable, and I’m not sure another clean reinstall is really the solution. Meanwhile Ubuntu Feisty is right here, right now, and really darn tempting.

Drat.

3 replies on “Leopard delay is really bad news for me”

  1. You can do it!

    Music player: In addition to Banshee, Amarok is truly amazing (I just got it syncing nicely with my iPod too)

    File searching: Like you said, instead of Spotlight there is Beagle

    E-Mail: Thunderbird or Evolution

    Key Management: The Gnome project now has Seahorse

    Photo Management: digiKam (KDE) and F-Spot (Gnome) (and there are many others)

    I probably don’t need to say anything about feed readers, terminals or virtual desktop managers for Linux

    Quicksilver replacement: Deskbar (Gnome) and Katapult (KDE)

    Growl: I never found any appeal in it so I can’t suggest a replacement (my Amarok displays a nice translucent box when it switches songs/pauses/etc…, gaim/pidgin flashes in the tray and thunderbird shows a tray icon if new mail comes in)

    At this point, I think the only thing that the Mac has going for it is integration between the OS and the hardware. Plug in a projector, it will pick the right resolution and Just Work 100% of the time. Shut the top, it goes to sleep, open it back up and it is right where you left it, instantly. Plus the magnetic power plug is pretty cool. I haven’t seen any other hardware/OS that can do the same thing.

    And for everyone else (99% of the population that should be legally prohibited from operating Windows-based computers) it’s a relativtely safe and easy-to-use environment.

  2. I agree with Batkin.

    I use Rhythmbox instead of Banshee as Banshee used to have some performance issues which may be fixed by now. F-Spot is really nice and allows you to export to flickr etc., Gaim/Pidgin 2.0 is much improved over the old Gaim. With dbus/libnotify/libsexy improving notification has gotten much better. Also NetworkManager now makes wireless painless on linux.

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