I'm not sure I understand the specific complaints in the post. The metadata in iTunes is stored in a standard way, attached to the audio files themselves. All the playlists, repeated track infromation, etc, is stored in an XML file with simple structure. This should be as easy to convert as if the music database had been stored anywhere else.<p>Similarly, for iPhoto, much of the metadata is attached to the photos themselves. The album information is in very simple XML. I'm not sure how the cropping, rotation, etc, are stored, but the final JPEG can be exported from the UI, and nearly all these applications are highly scriptable.<p>Storing data in any application results in some restrictions in how that data can be transformed and/or used in the future. The iApps use fairly transparent data formats that are accessible to pretty much any programmer. I'm not sure if there's any open source alternatives to these apps that make it much easier to pull out data. Putting data in these apps is not mortgaging your future as much as putting your documents in MS Office format, for example.
Sitting here, still using a Mac as a dev/everything machine. I know Lion is supposed to suck and all, but my 2010 MBA still gets insane battery life under OS X, the tool chain is top-notch (Clang, LLVM, etc), there have been a ton of improvements under the hood (TLS support being a big one), and I actually appreciate full-screen XCode or Emacs given the 13" screen. Even Xcode seems to, in 4.6, be getting back to the stability levels of 3.x.<p>I'm not seeing it. This "Apple doesn't care about the Mac" "OS X is going downhill" griping is lost on me. Was 10.4 -> 10.5 really a much bigger change? Or 10.5 -> 10.6? OS X has always had very incremental, gradual changes, and now that it's pushing more than a decade old it's pretty mature and doesn't need to be revamped every other day. At the same time, for all the teeth gnashing about walled gardens, Apple still ships the thing with a terminal, there is XCode in the App Store, etc.
<i>But, I'm stuck. All of my music is in iTunes, having been re-imported from the original CDs over a period of time. I can just re-rip all of it on my Linux box, but that's going to suck. Or, I can try to grovel around in their grungy database and try to make sense of it and "export" things, but I'm sure that will be even worse.</i><p>You'll find all of your music neatly organized here: /Users/<i>username</i>/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Music<p><i>Another problem is going to be iPhoto. I've cropped, rotated, geotagged, sharpened, level-adjusted, and done countless other things to my thousands of pictures. They all also live in some database which is effectively opaque. While there's probably some way to get it out, it will be far from trivial.</i><p>It's pretty trivial:<p><a href="http://macs.about.com/od/appleconsumersoftware/ss/Iphoto-Libraries-Create-And-Populate-Additional-Iphoto-Libraries_3.htm" rel="nofollow">http://macs.about.com/od/appleconsumersoftware/ss/Iphoto-Lib...</a><p>You can export the original or current versions, as well as converting to JPEG, TIFF, or PNG, retaining location info, metadata, etc (depending on the chosen format). Exported photos can be assigned filenames by title, original filename, sequence, or album name with number.
It does not matter the platform you use. The data you use is far, far more important.<p>I use Windows 8, Linux, and Mac OSX boxes on a daily basis. I play music from all of them. I watch movies, view photos, and browse the web from all of them. I code on all of them.<p>The reason I'm able to do this is because I've relentlessly managed my data and set up systems to allow that data to be shared effectively between environments.<p>All of these people who say, "this OS is way better!" are missing the point. Each one does a good job at something. Here's a surface analysis:<p>Linux: Best for automation. LAMPP. Industrial strength box for administration, security, and development. Great performance. Has problems with applications that require advanced graphics or specific sets of drivers (read: games). Can accomplish almost all basic computing tasks without an issue. All of these things make it a great server OS and great for high performance applications too.<p>Mac: Best for consumption. Beautiful UI, intuitive software, merging of hardware and software. Has problems with any sort of software that requires performant hardware because hardware is far more expensive. Can accomplish almost all basic computing tasks without an issue. All of these things make it a great laptop OS.<p>Windows: Best for games. Good performance. Not as good performance as linux, but incredible driver support means that most users will see better performance on Windows. Can accomplish almost all basic computing tasks without an issue. Makes Windows by far the best gaming box, but also very comparable to other OS in other applications (except server role.)<p>The lesson here is: Use the right tool for the right job, and make your data tool agnostic.
I mortgaged my future with KDE several years ago, and the KDE project "went off the rails" with v4. My usual ways of working weren't improved with new benefits - the entire rug was pulled out from under me. All my effort in learning KDE stuff, and putting my data in KDE apps was wasted, as I had to spend time to migrate all that data to other apps.<p>I'm being somewhat sarcastic, but also honest - I used KDE as a primary desktop for several years, but v4 was too radically different, and migrating away to another system was not fun.
"So, I just sat there and lived the passive life of a consumer at home. I clicked around the web and read stuff. I talked to people online. I listened to my music and watched the latest cat videos. I watched a lot of TV. But I didn't write any code. Oh no."<p><i>nothing</i> stops you from writing code on OSX. Plenty of people do it <i>for their business</i>. IOKit is strange coming from a Linux world, sure, but it works as well as you would expect. It's a pain but it's possible to write kexts and other low level osx stuff.<p>"All of my music is in iTunes, having been re-imported from the original CDs over a period of time. I can just re-rip all of it on my Linux box, but that's going to suck. Or, I can try to grovel around in their grungy database and try to make sense of it and "export" things, but I'm sure that will be even worse."<p>I don't understand the itunes complaint here. If you are leaving the mac ecosystem, the most you lose is the playlists -- the metadata is still stored in the individual files and VLC is perfectly competent in playing those files. It's not like itunes magically combined all the files in one big mess.<p>"Then there's my phone. How do you use one of these things without a computer upon which to sync your data and backups?"<p>Windows VM?
It's hard to tell what the author's actual complaints about OS X are (the reasons why she's moving away from it) - there's a Lion bug that's extremely unrealistically blamed on Steve Jobs, and some vague complaints about "going off the rails".<p>It's possible to export from both iTunes and iPhoto, and probably not particularly harder than it would be to export from a similar application for Linux.<p>edit: gender.
I think that the mention of "post Steve" jitters is largely false. OSX has never been perfect and has always had quirks. iTunes has never been a flawless interface and missteps happened while Steve was there (mobile me, etc). People seem to be misremembering apple as being perfect while Steve was there. For the most part, the people that make macs/iPhones, etc are the same as when Steve was there. Sure Steve was a great inspirer of polish and set the bar high, but he didn't create these things. Apple hasn't gone to shit since be died. I'm not even sure you could really say their trajectory has changed since he left. She seems like she gets bored with tech after a while, and she just wants to change so she is constructing a reason to switch.
It had me until she wrote (when comparing to iOS) " Android is obviously out of the question since it's just a different flavor of the same garbage". How can an opensource OS be just another flavor of the entirely closed and walled off iPhone?
I would be able to stomach this vague, disjointed rant if it had a different title, something like "I am experiencing minor inconveniences as a result of wanting to switch computing platforms".
The concluding sentence, "I'm not looking forward to the next couple of years in tech.", strikes me as incredibly odd. The technologies and software that we have available, whether you use Linux, OSX, or Windows, or anything else, has more potential than ever before. It seems like something to be excited about.
So she never actually used the MacBook for development yet says it "wasn't cutting it"? What specifically was missing that you can only get on Linux?<p>She also paints the consumption-only device picture, yet it has nothing to do with the machine, only herself; that and the post-steve thing makes it look like she's just regurgitating the stereotypical anti-Apple ideas.
Sometimes when you're down everything looks like a huge mountain to climb. I'm all for relinuxing! The itunes is just a tree of mp3's now, so it'll be super easy to import into whatever. Best way to take control of your phone (no mater the brand) is to jailbreak it. Poof, your mortgage is paid off.
I agree with the author.<p>I resisted Apple products for a long time for the same reason. As someone who was brought up with a command line OS and a basic knowledge of file structure I hate how Apple "tries" to take this away from their users.<p>I say try. I bought a MBP in 2009 because I loved the physical machine (aluminum unibody). With time I was able to use the OS without it controlling me. All of my music is ripped on EAC in MP3 VBR format. I add the folders to iTunes and do not allow it to "organize" the folders for me. I do not use iPhoto because of the way it treats the files. I maintain my own file structure. I can see how this would frustrate a lot of people. I put up with it because I think it's the best combination of hardware and software available at this time.
Hi Rachel. What timing. Just yesterday I realized what I call the "primordial criticism":<p><pre><code> Good products get used.
Usage creates dependency.
Dependency is bad.
Therefore, good products are bad.
</code></pre>
Since bad products are bad, and good products are bad, all products are bad! You have just plugged in OSX into the syllogism.<p>But the syllogism results in a contradiction. So one of our assertions is wrong. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which it is.<p>P.S. use Picasa on OSX, not iPhoto. And iTunes does indeed suck and I don't understand why someone hasn't written a replacement for it that fits the Sparrow:Mail==X:iPhoto equation. Perhaps I'll take a crack at it.
<i>But, I'm stuck. All of my music is in iTunes, having been re-imported from the original CDs over a period of time. I can just re-rip all of it on my Linux box, but that's going to suck. Or, I can try to grovel around in their grungy database and try to make sense of it and "export" things, but I'm sure that will be even worse.</i><p>I'm confused about this line. I ripped all of my CDs to AAC using iTunes over the years and recently upped all of it to Google Music without any issue.<p>Oddly enough, the only format that has ever given me any problem with interoperability has been OGG.
This post would constitute a good/constructive reply to the latter article : 25 Years to Mac - How Ubuntu Pushed Me Away from the PC[1]<p>[1][<a href="http://randomdrake.com/2013/02/23/25-years-to-mac-how-ubuntu-pushed-me-away-from-the-pc/" rel="nofollow">http://randomdrake.com/2013/02/23/25-years-to-mac-how-ubuntu...</a>]
<i>Android is obviously out of the question since it's just a different flavor of the same garbage</i><p>Not quite:<p><a href="http://f-droid.org/" rel="nofollow">http://f-droid.org/</a><p><a href="http://replicant.us/" rel="nofollow">http://replicant.us/</a><p><a href="http://www.cyanogenmod.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cyanogenmod.org/</a>
So if there's not any good software for exporting iTunes and iPhoto data, sounds like a great opportunity to write something you can sell for $10 a pop.<p>I'm pretty sure there are already some decent options, though, especially for a programmer.<p>Regarding the commentary on the phone, it doesn't sound like the complaint is specific to Apple. The author categorically lists every major type of phone and dismisses them all.<p>There comes a point where it's useless to talk about what you don't like, and figure out what you do like. I take all of these "I'm going to start carrying around a regular phone, a regular camera, a Fodor's guide to the city I live in, a compass, a map, a notebook, a pen, and a gameboy" posts with a grain of salt.
As much as I don't like using the word "FUD", this piece pretty much begs for it. Or, rather, the usual semi-informed opinions presented as fact.<p>For example:<p>><i>They're going down a road where I don't want to follow.</i><p>What road exactly is that? Anything concrete, or simply you don't like the Mac UI anymore? Because the "lock-up" things are just BS. There's nothing you cannot do in a modern OS X that you could in OS 10.1. The App Store just makes it more convenient, and sandboxing is optional.<p>><i>I don't intend to use whatever comes after Mountain Lion -- not that they even talk about OS X any more.</i><p>They don't? Last time I checked they had two Keynote presentations about Mountain Lion, which was released half a year ago. And they announced IIRC that they OS X will be released in an annual basis. Plus, they released several new laptops with some state-of-the-art features (hi-dpi displays) in the last 10 months and the redesigned iMacs. And yes, those are meant to run OS X.<p>><i>But, I'm stuck. All of my music is in iTunes, having been re-imported from the original CDs over a period of time. I can just re-rip all of it on my Linux box, but that's going to suck. Or, I can try to grovel around in their grungy database and try to make sense of it and "export" things, but I'm sure that will be even worse.</i><p>What exactly will be worse? Just copy the files over. You can even arrange iTunes to put it in nice folders based on album/artist for you. The mp3 metadata will still be there, because it's in the file. You might lost some data like "scores" and "recently played" but the same would be true with any player, open source or not. There's not a standard format to interchange such things.<p>><i>Another problem is going to be iPhoto. I've cropped, rotated, geotagged, sharpened, level-adjusted, and done countless other things to my thousands of pictures. They all also live in some database which is effectively opaque. While there's probably some way to get it out, it will be far from trivial.</i><p>Really? Because I find it quite trivial. Just drag the bloody images out of iPhoto and to the desktop. Or "export". Or use one of ten utilities to help you with the process and offer more control. Or write a ten minute Applescript.
I'm constantly amazed by how many informed people have allowed themselves to be locked into the iTunes ecosystem. Apple has made it pretty clear in recent years that iTunes for Windows was the exception, and that they are never going to build software for other platforms ever again.<p>I know that there is some convenience to buy iTunes if you are using Apple devices. Of course, most of that convenience is due to restrictions in the platform that make in impossible for others to be profitable and convenient at the same time.<p>But nevertheless, it amazes me that some people are so content with the Apple world that they can never foresee themselves leaving it. I've never been that content with <i>anything</i> I purchase, so maybe it's just me.<p>Remember that Apple makes its money selling hardware. So they'll never have a reason to make it easy for you to use iTunes-bought content anywhere else. That's why I buy from Amazon. It's content selection is just as good, but it is available on nearly every platform imaginable. It does this because content is its business. So I can feel confident when I buy a new tablet or set-top box that I can probably watch all of the Amazon content I've purchased over the years.
I am at a point where a computer is an appliance to me. The requirements while I develop a workflow try to keep it that way. There is of course some limit to this, but given the options I try my best.<p>The often discussed but rarely given the credit it deserves in such discussions value in linux/open source software is the, well, openness.<p>As I just mentioned in one other post, I loved Ubuntu until 10.10. With Unity, they pulled the rug from under me. It became buggy even after choosing Gnome-Classic etc to be used with latter versions.<p>But I had tens of options to choose from without affecting my workflow too much. Colleagues have since moved to Linux Mint without as much as a 'I miss this from Ubuntu..' and I have moved to Lubuntu.<p>There's Arch and Slackware if you know what you're doing.<p>None of these make you wonder what tomorrow will bring and if it does bring something you don't like, you're not cornered. You can choose what to do.<p>I mean this is the simplest most obvious advantage of choosing Linux. Some people choose to give in to the walled garden for the seamless experience, but you live by the sword, you die by the sword.<p>And that's really okay, just choose what works for you best.
I moved my music from iTunes to Linux and back many times. It's really just a matter of finding the files (trivial) and copy-pasting (trivial).<p>I also don't understand the author's preferences. Macs weren't good enough for programming, so (s?)he switched to Linux. This was the whole cause of the iTunes trouble. Why does it, then, matter whether Macs are going downhill or not?
In my opinion this is just a matter of taste, especially whether Linux or Mac is better for development. I personally use Linux on a daily basis at work and when I'm done with my day job I use my MacBook Air for my hobby projects. Both environments have pros and cons. But to my personal taste, I really love working on my Mac, it feels more stable, hardware and software is much better integrated, it just works all the time.<p>The same arguments you can use to move away from Mac OS X for development, you can also use to move away from certain Linux distros. Ubuntu's Unity is not something you could call stable for the first few releases. Looking at all the changes between GNOME 2 and GNOME 3, that also scared away many users, or at least left many at GNOME 2, who still don't look forward to upgrading...
> Android is obviously out of the question since it's just a different flavor of the same garbage<p>I'm not sure this makes sense. Prior to this she seems to be saying she'll be having issues using her iPhone without OS X. Is she saying she'll also be having issues syncing an Android phone with Linux?
It seems like backing up your media files to a Dropbox-like service instead of iCloud would solve the problem of being able to get your files from any device you want.<p>I'm not attached to any one device in particular because all of my content is stored on a third party that can be accessed from anywhere.<p>I could drop my Macbook Pro or iPhone 4 at any time and not feel like I'm missing something.<p>Good thing about Apple products is that they last awhile, my Macbook Pro is now 3 years old, and my iPhone 4 is 2 years old, and I haven't had any issues and don't plan on upgrading them until they break.
Now that makes me think twice before getting a Mac. Though I own an iPhone and an iPad and am happy with both devices. iTunes 11 is good and actually much better than iTunes 10.<p>And I have no idea why someone would stay on iOS 5. iOS 6 has quite a lot of new features. Only reason to stay on an older version would be to make sure that your phone stays speedy(I have noticed that iPhones tend to get a bit slower with each major upgrade).<p>I played with a Mac in a showroom today and it seemed much better than the mess that Windows 8 is right now(tried it for 3 months, now back to 7!)
Given the choice between having all my files stolen and my credit destroyed by russian hackers and having to eventually figure out how to get my photos out from iPhoto, I'll choose the latter any day.
While you all are debating developing software using a Linux or Mac OS desktop, I am writing some killer software using Heroku, S3, Redshift, MongoHQ, RedisToGo, New Relic, Github, SendGrid, DocRaptor, Trello, Google Docs, ...
Hmm ... so if I switch to Linux I suddenly become a more productive programmer?<p>Sorry, but that sounds like what I often read in photography forums: "If I had a better/more expensive camera I'd be making better pictures."
Music and photos and associated metadata on OSX are stored in standard file formats. It's trivial to write a program to extract them, using a programming language already installed on the machine.
the way I read this is that it is less about not having control over your data (pictures and music?) less about freedom and software and more about just wanting a piece of portable hardware that works for simple tasks. I can sympathize with you if that's the case; It seems like every laptop I've bought for the purpose of running Linux has been a hassle and I don't enjoy the tinkering as much as I used to. I haven't given in yet though.
The idea that Apple has her data all locked up is completely asinine. Frankly, saying so is dishonest. Apple has been careful to not do what she describes. It's hypocrtical to say that Linux which stores stuff in a directory structure is good while, Macs, which do the exact same thing with the data she's complaining about are "opaque"<p>Mountain Lion was the first of a once-a-year update cycle, and contrary to "not even talking about it anymore" they are updating it more frequently than ever. (we're due for the announcement of the next version in a few weeks.)<p>iTunes - Stores music you ripped in standards based format, AAC or MP3. It's easy to get at as it all lives in folders on your machine that aren't exactly opaque (it even organizes your music by artist, etc.) The database file is just an index of the music that keeps track of play counts, etc. You don't need that.<p>iPhoto - Again, stores all your images in standard formats. You can export the photos with all your changes if you want. They, again, live on your hard drive in a reasonable standard directory structure, and if you want you can export within iPhoto. Not only is there no opaque database it is QUITE trivial to get your data out.<p>iPhone Syncing- you don't need a machine to do that anymore you can do it online, including backing up to the cloud if you wish. Maybe because she deliberately hasn't updated its software it doesn't have that feature, but that's her choice, not a problem with the product.<p>iCloud- the idea that you'd have to be "crazy" to do that is BS.<p>Her saying the mac isn't good for development makes me question her tech skills. Either that or she just cant' be bothered to discover homebrew or to notice that all the open source projects support the mac for development these days.<p>Sigh, just another mindless, dishonest, ant-Apple rant.<p>The thing is, if Apple was so bad, you could bring up legitimate criticisms, rather than use "I can't be bothered to spend 2 minutes goggling therefore it cant' be done" type claims.