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Apple, GCC, & Two-Finger Scrolling

iPod nano & MacBook by FHKE

When I was first learning about the new Macbooks and deciding if I wanted to buy one, I went to the Apple store to ask some questions. This was my first time talking to an Apple sales rep so I had no idea how advanced they were. Being a programmer, as I’m sure many Mac users are, I asked the Apple rep if Mac OS X came with GCC. I knew right then, by the deer-in-headlights look on his face, that he had reached upper bound of his Mac OS X knowledge. Like a true salesman, though, he recovered gracefully by enthusiastically demonstrating the two-finger scroll, like some kind of replacement for GCC. Needless to say, I now have a Macbook… and it runs Linux.

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  • dude

    Amusingly, OSX does come with GCC, you just have to install it. A procedure that is arguably simpler than install GCC on Ubuntu.

  • http://philharnish.com Phil Harnish

    Yeah, but does Linux have two finger scrolling?

  • http://humani.st Luke Hoersten

    I’m unfamiliar with installing GCC on Mac OS X so I Google’d and came up with this:
    http://www.tech-recipes.com/mac_system_administ…
    Is this the process you had in mind?

    On Ubuntu, sudo apt-get install build-essential grabs GCC and other common build utils like make.

    I’m happy with either OS. Both Ubuntu and Mac OS X are both infinitely easy enough for me. The point is the Apple sales rep had no idea what packages were available :)

  • http://humani.st Luke Hoersten

    I wonder if that feature does exist on Linux. I kind of like it but it also seems just fluffy enough that the serious coders wouldn’t want to spend too much time on it.

  • dude

    You can follow the procedure at your link or just pop the 2nd OSX disk that came with your machine in and click “InstallXCodeTools” (or similar, can’t remember the exact name).

    And yea that’s what I mean about Ubuntu. I’m just saying that it’s arguably easier to pop in a disk and double click than it is to open a terminal and type a slightly cryptic command which will download everything from ‘teh internets’. I’m a command line junkie, though, I just mean for the typical person.

  • dude

    And I agree with you on the last point. Sales reps are always overrated when it comes to REAL knowledge about their product (“Does this TV do 120hz?”, “err.. let me check.”). Too bad there’s no GNU/Linux store with sales reps or we’d probably get some amusing comparisons.

  • http://humani.st Luke Hoersten

    If only I knew where my OS X disk was :O

  • http://sahild.com Sahil Desai

    i like to think of it as Two Finger Panning… Because are not limited to the confines of 1 directional scrolling… Personally I think you have to give him props for being as stupid as he was… i mean WOW… i still think we should make an xkcd comic out of it!

  • http://humani.st Luke Hoersten

    Yea I have to admit, I was impressed when I first used the “two-finger panning” for scrolling around a zoomed in pdf doc. It’s nice to say the least, but definitely not a replacement for a compiler =)

  • http://agoln.net ljbuesch

    I have actually found it quite easy to do some development on my Mac. My only gripes are because how PHP is bundled with Leopard, I cannot use 3rd party extensions, so I would have to compile my own PHP installation. Alo, Java 6 is not _really_ available. They have a developer preview, but it’s a hassle to run any java program with it.

  • http://humani.st Luke Hoersten

    It’s a new OS. All the PL profs at Purdue use Mac OS X and, for example, Prof. Vitek is all about Java so they are bound to get it working. It’d be bad business to leave so many people out in the cold.

    People always complain when a new OS comes out (not saying that you are complaining; just in general) when there are problems but really, it’s unavoidable.

  • http://agoln.net ljbuesch

    Just an FYI: MacPorts (http://www.macports.org/) is a package repository for Mac’s. It has a _lot_ of work to do install your setup (think cygwin), but so far it seems easy enough:

    sudo port install gnucash

  • http://humani.st Luke Hoersten

    Mac Ports is an awesome idea coming directly from BSD. Too bad it’s not official. I think Apple could have a really cool official ports system or some other type of package management like Ubuntu has and really just blow away the competition.

    Ian Murdock has been hired by Sun Microsystems and one of his main focuses is to make a Solaris distribution (including a package management system) so after Solaris, Mac OS X and Windows will be the only two mainstream OSs that don’t have a ports type (external repo) package management system.

    It’s a pretty big investment for the packaging company but if Ubuntu (and really most Linux distros) can manage, I think a huge company should have no problem.

  • http://www.microdesign.nl/webdesign-den-haag-vormgeving-webdesigner/ Webdesign Den Haag

    why linux just keep os X leopard on it. works fantastic :D

  • http://humani.st Luke Hoersten

    Lack of package management for one.

  • http://www.microdesign.nl/webdesign-den-haag-vormgeving-webdesigner/ Webdesign Den Haag

    why linux just keep os X leopard on it. works fantastic :D

  • http://humani.st Luke Hoersten

    Lack of package management for one.