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Originally Posted by arjaybe
Apple is nearly opaque to me.
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I find that hard to believe (at least at the end user level we are talking about).
One of the reasons I had no problem getting the hang of my Mac this past week, having never before used one, is that the desktop experience is almost identical to my Ubuntu Unity desktop. OSX is, after all, *ix under the hood, as I understand it.
But the other reason is that EVERYTHING I needed to do to get it set up and usable on my home network and decked out with all the apps I needed was doable through a mostly-intuitive GUI with clear consistent online help and documentation for the stuff that wasn't intuitive, and a consistent user experience across the entire user community, so if I did need to look something up on line (like how to make the secondary display primary) there were clear, GUI-based answers easily found. No command lines*, no bash scripts, no .tar.gz files.
I cannot say the same for getting any of my Linux boxes set up.
At a deeper level, Apple WANTS the Mac to be opaque, of course. And end users like that.
Can Windows be difficult? Harder than Linux, when it comes to advanced tasks and troubleshooting? Heck yeah. That's why I have a job.
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As for the paucity of pre-installed Linux systems, I'm sure that will change once computers become appliances like phones and tablets.
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You don't see the inherent irony in that statement?
Reduced to it's tautological essence, I agree: When Linux is as easy to use as a consumer appliance, then it will be as easy to use as a consumer appliance.
ApK
*I did need to go to the command line once to work around a bug in the not-officially-supported Synergy+ utility.