I just got done reading a great article called HOWTO: Be more productive on Aaron Swartz: The Weblog. One part I found interesting:
Time when you’re hungry or tired or twitchy is low-quality time. Improving it is simple: eat, sleep, and exercise.
If you’re not exercising, I’d like to encourage you to start again. Please feel free to encourage me next time I forget that exercising actually makes me more likely to get other things done.
A couple of months ago I bought an iBook. The idea was to get a laptop with good battery life and to try out Mac OS X. I’ve used it for a while, and decided that I prefer Linux.
The current version of iTunes is the best example I can think of to show what bugs me about Mac OS X, as a platform. iTunes does a ton of things now – music, video, shopping, downloading, burning, and podcasts. I don’t think it is possible for a single application to do all of those things the “best” way. For one thing, what’s best depends on the person. Another thing is that some applications just don’t go so well together – like music listening and podcasts. When I’m browsing and listening to my music I don’t want to see my podcasts in my library with the music. Another thing is music and video.
I prefer to have a bunch of small applications that I can pick and choose from. And this extends to other parts of the OS. Especially desktop managers.
I’ve read several well-written negative reviews of Mac OS X. I found one today called How MacOS X sucks.
Finally, I’ll mention how I’m doing the switch. I like the ability to run all major OS’s, for testing, so I’m not getting rid of OS X entirely. But I want it off the laptop I use every day. So I’m going to get an external drive, install Mac OS X on it, and boot from the external drive when I want to use Mac OS X. But I’ll stick to Linux for programming.
Update: I changed my mind about installing Linux on my iBook. It’s a hassle, and I thought of a number of good things about Mac OS X that I previously had not considered. Also, I re-read that link, and realized that a number of the problems have been fixed, or aren’t real problems. Finally, I’m removing the text suggesting reading it for insights into software design – it really has nothing to do with the subject. It’s a rant.
