The analogy of OS as cars (Windows is a station wagon, Linux is a tank) is brought up in the recent Acquired episode on Microsoft, where Vista was a Dodge Viper but Windows 7 was a Toyota Camry, which is what users actually wanted.
"I embraced OS X as soon as it was available and have never looked back. So a lot of 'In the beginning was the command line' is now obsolete. I keep meaning to update it, but if I'm honest with myself, I have to say this is unlikely."
https://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal-stephenson-...
But people still dredge this quarter century old apocrypha up and use it to pat themselves on the back for being Linux users. "I use a Hole Hawg! I drive a tank! I'm not like those other fellows because I'm a real hacker!"
It's kind of ironic that you're using a post from 20 years ago to invalidate an essay from 25 years ago, about an OS that's been substantially dumbed down in the last 10 years.
Bad corporate blood will tell.
It’s a zsh shell with BSD utils. 99% of my shell setup/tools on Linux just work on macOS. I can easily install the gnu utils if I want 99.9% similarity.
I very happily jump between macOS and Linux, and while the desktop experience is always potentially the best on Linux (IMO nothing compares to hyprland), in practice macOS feels like the most polished Linux distro in existence.
Do people just see, like, some iOS feature and freak out? This viewpoint always seems so reactionary. Whereas in reality, the macOS of the past that you’re pining for is still right there. Hop on a Snow Leopard machine and a Ventura machine and you’ll see that there are far, far more similarities than differences.
For the most part the macOS user is of the religious zealots' type and they barely know how to do the basics, far worse than you average seasoned windows user, even though in principle macOS should be easier to handle (in practice it's not exactly true but still...).
People here who seemed to think otherwise really live in the reality distortion field and it seems to be linked to the mythical Silicon Valley "hacker". At first, I drank the kool-aid on that definition but it actually seems pretty disrespectful for "real" hacker; but whatever, I guess.