If someone wants/needs an open-source, de-Appleified UNIX environment, for that use case you may as well use FreeBSD. *nix, Linux, and X Windows applications will work, but proprietary Apple and certain other drivers may not be available.
I actually used FreeBSD (with the Gnome Desktop) as an alternative for a couple of years, mostly along side my first PowerBook. From a stability standpoint it was rock solid and a good performer (especially compared to the G4 and early versions of OSX) but if you want to complain about interoperability with anything else without a lot of manual configuration it would be your staking goat.
Stranger
Excellent post.
Granted, those who spread misinformation on the internet had fewer resources before its existence—they didn’t have a repository of misleading click-bait content to draw from. Pre-internet their brains were mostly blank and their voices were less prominent; post-internet their minds are filled with garbage and they have a platform that amplifies their idiotic messages. Either way, they’re not worth listening to.
Remember, these folks are the loudmouths. They seek to impress you with their brilliant observations and stellar cognition. And they connect with like-minded idiots to boost their egos and reinforce their views. Consequently, they seem to be everywhere. Intelligent people seem to be nowhere, making it appear as though thoughtful discourse is scarce.
However, many intelligent individuals do exist; they just don’t post as much online, so they may seem absent. These are the folks who use the internet to learn for the sake of learning—for personal enrichment, not to impress others with superficial knowledge.
For this group, the internet is a valuable repository of information that they can fact-check, source, and integrate into their understanding alongside traditional education.
Having lived half my life before the internet and the other half after its advent, I wish my entire life had been in the internet era. I would have loved to have my young self-education broadened with the wealth of information now available. It might even have changed my career path for the better.
The point isn’t the availability of a shell (you can get that on PCs also) but on what interface seems natural. The only Apple thing I’ve used recently is the remote for Apple TV which really sucks. I used to have an iPod, many years ago, that was terrible also.
I don’t see any reason to pay more for a worse experience - for me.
The few times a year I need to do some processing which I would have done with shell commands, I write a little Perl script.