[tomodachi]

Originally Posted by Northerner

For the average bearded UNIX guy, UNIX is a better tool for many thing. Hell, it really is the preferred tool for many, many activities if you know it inside and out. OSX however is not preferable because it is magically 'closer' to *NIX and if you want to boot your favorite Linux flavor then you do so. It isn't a bad O/S particularly but it is not the special snowflake either.

I don't really care to get into which flavor of UNIX or UNIX-like OS is 'best' for the average bearded UNIX guy, because it's as foolish as arguing about which OS is the 'better' (in absolute terms) between OSX and whatever flavor of Windows is being considered. It's like arguing that a hammer is the better tool before knowing what work needs to be done.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at by the 'magically' closer remark though. My earlier statement was (in summary) that OSX is better at performing many common UNIX tasks than Windows (any flavor) is. Do you disagree with that statement? Are you arguing that OSX is no more UNIX-based than Windows?

Essentially, anything technical that you can do in OSX you can do through Windows. Sometimes the process may be arcane to someone that doesn't know it and sometimes you'll use third-party apps or custom work to get what you want done but this isn't new. Perl scripts and grepping? Come on, that's not exactly new territory for a PC.

I didn't say a Windows-based PC couldn't do any of that. I was merely rattling off a few of the sorts of things I do day in and day out which are far, far more easily and quickly accomplished in OSX than they would be under any Windows OS. I could just as easily rattle off things that are far, far more easily and quickly accomplished under Windows than OSX. The point, once again, is that the 'better' OS depends entirely on the context of the problem at hand.

Bearded UNIX guys like OSX because they are hippies at heart and have to keep up the hate for the man. That's fine and I get it but let's not pretend that there's really any technical reasoning.

I used the bearded UNIX guy phrase purely in counter to a previous poster's assertion that any 'above average computer user' would never choose a Mac over a Windows-based PC. I think few will argue that a true bearded UNIX guy is at least an 'above average computer user'.