So long Apple, it's been a pleasure

Published on Sunday, September 4th, 2016


...but it's time for me to move on. After ten years of munching apples
exclusively, I've decided to return to the sort of awkward but sincere
embrace of a Linux PC. I'm sure many are horrified at the prospect,
but personally, I've just had it with Apple.

Let's talk about the computers. I still adore the machines, I really do.
It's just that I've had a harder time lately justifying paying premium
for a MacBook that got half the oomph as a PC laptop for 30-50% less.
They don't get the overhauls as they used to, leaving me feeling like a
second-class citizen in the Apple world where the innovation effort is
focused on moronic displays of dazzle (the announcement of the removal
of the 3.5 mm audio jack and wireless earbuds for the iPhone 7 just
kinda proves my point here) for yet another revision of the iPhone.
When was the last time anything really interesting came out for the
OS X machines? When did we get something other than polish and
iOS-integration?

Speaking of second-class citizen, I'm dead tired of having to manage my
separate software stack due to the fact that the transplanted BSD
userland is a bad joke. Having Homebrew spontaneously rot (hello
corrupted git repository, hello sadness) is another matter that made me
weary of the whole circus.

So, in the light of all that, I started thinking about what I wanted in
a development machine, and immediately realized that OS X offered me
nothing that I couldn't get in BSD or Linux. I had left Linux because
I got sick of being a poor sysadmin when all I wanted was to hack.
Apple offered me a solid OS with pretty interface on top of a Unix.

How could I say no?

Well, I could around a decade later when a Debian install went through
without a hitch on a Lenovo Ideapad Y700 (I wanted to play me some
recent PC games too) and I suddenly had the development environment
that I never realized I had dreamed of. I mean, even the goddamn font
rendering has gotten great, especially with Infinality!

So here I am, a born-again Linux-person that could do with a banana.

*UPDATE 2nd October, 2016*: Linux and Windows _still_ can't coexist
peacefully? _Really_?

*UPDATE 7th November, 2016*: Got myself a 2nd gen Lenovo X1 Carbon
with a Pro Dock for development purposes. The combined cost is still
lower than what I'd get if I had rolled with Apple.

<3 jzp