Why I love Terminal.app

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Tom

Warning, this is quite a geeky post.

I moved to the Mac platform a few years back after slumming it in Windows since I was about 8 years old. Before committing to OS X I fiddled with Linux for a few months, Ubuntu was my distro of choice. It was Ubuntu that opened my eyes to the *nix world and the OS below the GUI.

As a Windows user you don’t really think too much about the backend of Applications or the underlying OS because everything’s tightly bolted to the GUI. Its hard to imagine administering or using Windows from a CLI apart from dabbling around in Command Prompt or running Recovery mode to run CHKDSK on a corrupt volume that won’t boot.

With Windows the power balance is definitely weighted towards the GUI with 90% of the OS’s power being accessed graphically. When I switched to Ubuntu (7.10) it was no where near as mature as it is today. Lots of hacks were required to get it up and running properly, X failed to start upon a clean install due to my fruity graphics card and I spent a lot of time in front of a black and white screen with text scrolling away, typing cryptic commands from the internet that I didn’t understand one jot. It was hell, however I persisted until I got my brown themed Ubuntu Gnome desktop loaded.

With my nice new Microsoft free OS loaded I thought it was time to find some cool things from the net to install. A good 90% of the software I came across involved the terminal to install, it was all fairly painless just copying and pasting the text and watching the text whizz by and most of the time getting the result I wanted. However it was at this point that I realised that this was something very different to what I was used to, the power balance had changed, the CLI was king here.

I started to learn some of the common commands and programs used in the Terminal; CD, APT-GET, Touch and Cat. This clarified a lot of what was going on ‘Under the Hood’ for me, it was no longer just random text. This often lead to me achieving a lot of daily tasks quicker typing than I could in the GUI.

Then I made the switch to a Mac. This changed everything, again! I fell back in love the the GUI. Mac OS X had an elegance about it that Windows or Gnome (The Ubuntu GUI) could only dream of. At first sight it was GUI all the way, even the boot process is fully graphical thanks to the EFI. I knew OS X was Unix based but I didn’t feel the need touch the CLI for months being content with my intuitive UI. I had gotten into photography quite a bit at the time as well so graphical apps were a necessity for editing photos.

After a few months I was required to set up a headless Linux server at work for a project I was working on. Coming back to the CLI the second time round was a piece of cake, I didn’t feel like I was in a foreign world. This made me want to give it a go on OS X. I got home, launched Terminal.app and started typing. Since the terminal defaults to the BASH working environment I felt right at home. I had the best of both worlds, an awesome GUI and my reliable CLI.

There isn’t a wrong way or a right way to do things, I just decide CLI or GUI depending on the task and which feels like the most natural fit. Now I’m used to both I couldn’t drop one for the other, I feel a loyalty to both.

An update is required!

Posted on June 15, 2011 by Tom

Unfortunatley I have let this blog run a bit stale. I have decided to set up a tumblr.com blog for silly things that I find funny and want to use this blog for longer posts. I am activley learning Objective-C now on Lynda.com and intend to document bits on my journey on here. Next on this list is Cocoa but I have already started getting sidetracked by a Photoshop to CSS lesson. Anyway must crack on!

My first bits of Python code!

Posted on December 3, 2010 by Tom

x = 1

print "Hello World!";

Not alot but something to get me started. More to come…

Need to learn some programming!

Posted on October 26, 2010 by Tom

I keep attempting to learn programming languages but end up failing. Ive attempted PHP, C, Objective C, VB.NET and Ruby. I always give up when I get into the basics. I either get bored, cant remember syntax or just cant grasp some of the basic concepts.

The language I am most interested in at the moment is Ruby, from what I have read about it, it seems to be easiest to learn.

Im going to have one more try at programming and will post updates on here.

Update: Maybe I should learn BASH script first… or would that just confuse matters?!

M$ chattin shit again

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Tom

Microsoft have just launched a new section of their website dedicated to spreading inaccurate information about macs. The micro-site is dressed up as an honest mac and PC comparison however the bitterness seeps through after browsing for a few minutes.

“Macs might spoil your fun”

They say that using a mac that you might not be able to watch or rewind live TV. This is incorrect, I have the fantastic EyeTV by Elgato which allows me to do exactly that; watch and rewind live TV.

“The worlds most popular games aren’t available for Macs”

Whats stupid about this argument is the fact that you can install Windows on a mac and game till your hearts content and with the release of Steam for the Mac alot more native games are heading its way. Microsoft are kinda shooting themselves in the foot here, with the right advertising and attitude they could have alot of Mac users buying a Windows licence for bootcamp, after all this is how Microsoft make there money.

There are many more points I would like to make but I could be here all day so check out the site for yourself if your interested.

I do feel like this is a conformation of Microsoft fearing Apple which is humerous considering Apple have 10% market share and Microsoft have around 85%.

Google CL

Posted on June 20, 2010 by Tom

Google have just announced a new tool called googlecl which is basically a linux command line tool for google services. Whilst this is pretty much useless for app developers because they use APIs its a great tool for geeks and enthusiasts.

It may also help people who are just starting to delve into the command line because the commands are fairly simple.

Using the service requires you to have a google account with permitted access to googlecl which for some people may feel a bit of a security risk so I wouldn’t recommend playing with this on your main google account.

The tool is designed for Linux and has a .deb file available for Debian and derivatives e.g. Ubuntu. Source code is availble for those that like to compile themselves and hacked versions for OS X and Windows are apparently available.

Find the official project page here.

Why macs aren’t susceptible to viruses

Posted on May 2, 2010 by Tom

Anyone who knows a Mac owner normally knows all about how they don’t really get viruses on them. As a Mac owner myself I can’t help but mention it everytime I come across a Windows user suffering a virus which I’m sure just pisses them off and doesn’t help the situation at all.

As a Mac evangelist something I do often get from PC fans is the argument about the reasons why Macs have their immunity

Their argument is that Macs have such a small market share so no one would make any money writing viruses for them. This is argument is invalid.

In the days before OS X (10) there was OS 9 and that was absolutely riddled with viruses. Mac OS 9 also had very small market share, around 1%. OS X has around 10% market share. This completely debunks the whole market share myth. I also believe that if Macs were susceptible to viruses and I was a hacker/scriptkiddy type I would love to have the glory of being the creator of the “Mac virus” that screwed all the Mac users over and there wouldn’t need to be a financial motive behind me, just the glory.

So why are Macs running OS X less susceptible?

During the birth of the internet and the dot com boom came a lot of security issues. Microsoft and Apples solution came in the form of 3rd party peices of software to try and cover the many holes and flaws in their operating systems. This sparked the beginning of the massive antivirus/security market that PCs have today.

During this time at Apple, Steve Jobs (Co founder of Apple) got forced out for being to controlling of people in the company. When he left he took 6 Apple employees with him and founded a new company called “Next“. Because they were starting out at a time when PCs were constantly connected to the internet they wrote their new OS (NextStep) with security in mind, unlike Microsofts Windows and Apples OS 9 which were having security issues left right and center. NextStep was loosely based on the Unix specification which helped make it highly secure.

After Jobs announcing NextStep Apple tried suing the company claiming they would have inside information from Jobs time at Apple. Steve has been quoted to have said “It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn’t compete with six people in blue jeans”. The case was thrown out of court.

Fast forward a couple of years and Apple are in trouble having an outdated OS that would take far too long to be re-written securely. They were desperate and needed to find a company they could buy with a more modern OS that they could work from. Apple eventually decided to buy Next and use their NextStep OS as the foundation of the next Mac OS.

To this day OS X has been mainly virus free apart from one or two that popped up in the early days and a couple of “proof of concept” viruses that never really caused a threat.

There are a few rumours of Microsoft writing a new secure OS from scratch but it sounds a very long time away and I honestly believe that with the PC security market place being so big that Microsoft would have a lot of security firms to awnser to if they did start over with a secure OS.

I cant guarantee that all the information in this article is 100% spot on but I have tried my best to keep the information pretty factual. If there are any inaccuracies in the article please feel free to let me know.

PC World recommendations (continued)

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Tom

I made another trip to PC World today to get my broken camera replaced as it was under warranty. It had developed a habit of turning off and on again every time I wanted to use it, which of course didn’t happen when I tried to recreate the the problem for ‘The Tech Guys’.

We met our helpful friend from my previous post who was more than helpful. After apologising for not having the model I wanted in stock he knocked 10% off a camera that had been on display. Considering that I only had the broken camera on my person with no cables or reciept I can honestly say I was very impressed by the service. I may not like 90% of the stock sold in the store but I am happy with the way I was looked after.

I swapped a Kodak M1022 for a Sony Cybershot DSC-W210. This means that the resolution has gone from 10 megapixel to 12 and my video recording quality has been bumped up from 720p to 1080i. Well worth a visit to PC World in my eyes.

Edit: Upon further inspection turns out the camera doesn’t do HD video at all. The big HD 1080i sticker refers to it outputting pictures to a HD TV. Pretty gutted, definitely wouldn’t have got this camera if id have known. Cant really take it back now

PC World recomendations

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Tom

Since converting to the Mac platform I have felt no need to purchase anything from PC World so its very rare im in the store. My friend Ste had just bought a camera from Currys so we decided to pop in to PC World for ‘old time sake’ and to see if the PC landscape had changed much since our departure.

After about 5 minutes in the store one of the shopping assistants came over and asked us if we needed any assistance, we politely declined explaining we were Mac users and we just browsing out of interest. The conversation that followed with the employee was one i’d never have expected. He suddenly lit up and became very enthusiastic at the mention of Macs, he explained that he wished he was a mac user but couldn’t afford one at the moment. He went on to tell us how he wouldn’t recommend one product from the store that he was an employee of.

“I would not recomend one product from here, I really wouldn’t, they’re cheap rubbish”

“Macs are definitely the way forwards, they’ll soon take over, PCs are on the decline”

This was reassuring to hear because I am a bit of a Mac snob and often get carried away evangelising the Apple life style. To have a PC World employee do it for me was a good feeling, I didn’t feel like a snob anymore, I felt like I was speaking gospel!

Although PCs aren’t going to go away anytime soon this did feel like one more nail in the coffin for the PC market.

It was interesting to see how the PC market had changed, everything had a cheapness to it. There didn’t seem to be any quality computers in the store anymore, just low end budget everything. The laptop section is now dominated by low-cost net-books sporting low grade plastic shells that feel like something made entirely from recycled kinder egg toys. The PCs are mostly £499 and below. What happened to the £1000 machines that were there 3 years ago?

It seems like the store has a different demographic than before. I didn’t spot one good gaming machine in the whole store, that was unheard of 3 years ago.

Looks like the dedicated PC gamers that want quality machines are a niche market now that will have to resort to the DIY game if they want a decent gaming rig.

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