Reasons For Ditching Mac In Favor Of Ubuntu Linux

Bryan O’Bryan is well known longtime Mac enthusiast and editor of ResExcellence.com, a popular Macintosh website. He runs a Mac-specific software company and also podcasts at castablasta.com. Recently he switched over from Mac to Linux, specifically Ubuntu. This is not a story of a dilettante. He was soaked in Mac and “fell in love”. In his words - “I was crazy excited. I was at the apex of Mac geeky-ness. I ran a known Mac software company, hosted a big Mac website. I was all Mac.” He provides insight into his choice which highlights some of the issues with Apple community and Apple software in general. Let’s take a look at his reasons…

He prefers to call himself “Technologically Agnostic” and so am I. Which is why I always look for alternative and better options all the time. That changed (for him) when Apple released the original iMac and he “fell in love”.

One of his key reasons was the Mac community -

the Mac “community” (ie, the most vocal and active of the Macintosh enthusiast and power users) tend to be incredibly negative and expect much more than they deserve.
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In my own Mac experience I ran a free Mac website and was greeted with an absolutely immense amount of hostility. I have also release free (and, in some cases, incredibly inexpensive) Mac software and was greeted with hostility there as well.

In contrast he found overly positive response with Linux & windows community:

I’ve also released Windows and Linux applications and the response overwhelmingly positive. And, oftentimes, this was for applications that were direct ports (of, often, lower quality) of the Mac versions I’d already gotten hell about.
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Heck, even the criticism we received was good natured and constructive (unlike what we received when attempting to run a Mac free website).

I personally do not have much experience with the Mac community, but maybe you have. I would love to hear your experiences on this.

He, as someone who makes a living selling software, is highly concerned with Apple’s practice of copying popular software for the platform. I too develop software for a living and I share his concerns. It is hard to be innovative if you are constantly afraid of poaching.

Apple has a long track record of directly copying 3rd party application developers (most notably small shops) and including almost perfect clones of those, usually shareware, apps in their next version of OS X. Watson & Konfabulator are the two most high profile recent examples.

And I am in the software business. If Apple clones one of my apps… I’m out of business.

To be fair Microsoft does that too (remember MS Word cloning WordPerfect or MS SQL Server cloning / copying Sybase?). It however sometimes tries to buy the company first. What about defragmentation and anti-virus companies for Microsoft Windows? That are feeling a lot of pain today.

He found Apple’s software quality seriously lacking in iWeb, Garageband and .Mac service.

“So we moved to using Audacity under Linux. Did it crash? No. Is it harder to use? Yes. But, you know what? At least we can get the job done.”

Frankly that is my experience with Linux too. It is hard but you can get your job done.

He summarizes: “I was just focused on whether or not I could use what Apple was providing me in a, relatively, simple way and in a community that was pleasant to be around. And, in those regards, the Mac has failed me.
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To be quite honest the community problems was the real killer. ”

His experience highlights the importance of a community in sustaining developer and company interests in a software / OS / platform. And secondly if you are getting a free service please be considerate to the provider. Apple’s loss is Linux community’s gain.

You can read his detailed explanations here.