The Ringtail

… which means that I’m now officially giving up writing about OS stuff. A timely tweet reminder from an old colleague made me realise that its not about the OS, its about the apps. There’s things I love about Linux, but there’s also a couple of mac apps that just seem to work the way I think – Devonthink and tinderbox – and other apps which just do things a lot (for me) better than their libre counterparts – Photoshop, Lightroom, Logic. Sometimes I feel I get work done on Linux despite the OS, not because of it; most keenly felt when doing anything design/art/music related.

Sure there are other issues, like software freedom and liberty, but while I use proprietary apps on Linux I can’t see that as a draw to using it really, and the mac really does beat it for creative work. Getting audio set up and working took a while on Ubuntu Studio last week and I didn’t really get it working close to anything like I needed it to. I just plugged in and started recording on Logic, with great guitar tones, no latency, and support for my MIDI keyboard ‘just working’. A lot of it is familiarity, but its not just that, the interface and ease of use mean that the path to familiarity is smoother too.

So I’m back in the Mac saddle again, and concentrating on the apps, not the OS that runs them. Well, at least until the end of the day anyways….

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