Six years ago, I switched from a PC with Slackware Linux to a Mac. It
was in the time of release of OS X 10.4 and right after the Intel
switch announcement. I already had for a couple of years a G3 PowerMac
on my desk and before it a PowerMac 7100 and a Mac LCII even earlier,
but I simply didn't use them as primary machines, because they were
not UNIX. My PC was and I was happy in the world of Midnight
Commander, WindowMaker, GIMP and others. I used my G3 as a X Window
terminal connected to the PC, running a few BASH instances, internet
messenger and web browser remotely, while playing Worms or Doom
locally under OS 9. Then, Steve J. came to the stage and said that
PowerPC era is over and Macs will from now on be Intel-based
computers. For years I thought it will end up the other way, even
today I still can't describe my feelings after I read the news back in
2005. A week after that I bought my first brand new Apple computer -
iBook G4. It did cost me half-year salary of part-time employed
student but I never regretted that decision.
But two years after that iPhone was announced and Mac scene radically
changed since then. Mac is no more the professional workstation it
used to be and Mac OS X is now being shaped to be in the image of iOS.
Even people around Mac are not the same anymore. They do stuff because
somebody told them so - they use fullscreen on 27" displays after
years of windowed applications on screens with half of that size, now
they even scroll the window content in the opposite way as they did in
the last 10 years. They accept every new feature without questioning.
The reason is quite simple - most of nowadays Mac users came from
Windows PC after Intel switch and many after using the iPhone. These
people are satisfied, because now their computer has the same cool
logo as their phone and it works the same way. But I hate it. I saw
the progress from Mac OS 7.1 (called just System back then) to Mac OS
X 10.4 and I do not like the "progress" after 10.5. Just to assure you
- yes, I tried it, I bought Intel Mac in 2008, used it for a half year
and then sold it to buy old PowerMac G5, because I simply couldn't
stand to sit near it.
So it is time for me to go back to UNIX. To system, which I will use
with joy and which will do what I want the way I want, not someone
else wants, somewhere in Cupertino. I'm downloading netBSD for my
PowerMac G5 and I just hope I didn't become in recent years too dumb
to use it.
