The Details

Two weeks ago I made an experiment installing Ubuntu on a MacBook Air. Initially it went smoothly but ended up in a total fiasco. I mean - it worked, but the overall experience was very poor. The battery life dropped down to 2 hours (from around 6 with OS X). After digging around and installing some extra power saving tools and drivers I got it up to 4 hours. But it was unreliable. A couple of times the machine did not turn off after closing the lid. The effect - unexpectedly dead battery. The touch pad was also somehow impaired. Not sure what the problem exactly was, but simply the touchpad operation was not that smooth as on the original Apple software. And I am comparing apples to apples (pun intended), because on both systems the only application I run is Google Chrome. So yes, the Chrome experience on the OS X MacBook is much better then the Chrome experience on the same machine running Linux.

I am back to OS X with relief. Which spells again: the devil is in the details. Thousands of tiny details. And then I thought whether there is any other open source software that I use for my professional work. Answer: there is not. Seems like if you want quality, you have to pay. Be it Microsoft Office or Adobe Lightroom or the operating system. Sure, there are may phenomenal open-source systems and applications but usually when you want them tailored down to a particular task or device, you have to pay. Or spend hours or even days digging around and polishing wrinkles.

The wrinkles - or the lack of them - often make the day-and-night difference in the overall experience and customer satisfaction. And they are willing to pay to get this.