And he's behind the times...
The very best hackers are already thinking of moving away: http://tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/03/29/Switch.

And he's behind the times...
I wuldn't exactly call one Sun employee having a cranky bad day "The very best hackers are already thinking of moving away."

FWIW, I've also moved away from Safari (for other but similiar reasons), and while Mail can be annoying, it sucks less than the alternatives for my use. Also, I can't for the life of me imagine what you'd need a laptop "twice as fast" as a 2003 PowerBook or iBook. Sounds like this guy just wants bragging rights. For me, if the tool gets the job done it's a good tool, and I don't spend time looking over the stall's wall at the other guy's tool.

Apple isn't perfect, but it's far and away better than the alternatives (Sun included). Until something clearly better comes along, I sure as hell ain't switching back.

And he's behind the times...
Well, singular hacker in this case, but only because Tim Bray says taht he has political problems with Apple. That he doesn't use Safari or Mail.app doesn't surprise me: I'm guessing most of the "hackers" don't.

He further admits that the alternative is not as good.

And Bray's talking out of where the sun doesn't shine
"Very best"? He sounds a bit of a clown to me.

This one has been done to death, anyway:

http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000514.html

Some choice comments:

"So he works for Sun and wants to run their stuff. Why not? ... But for most people "switching back" would mean going back to Windows and that really is a dumb move."

"Tim Bray claims that ... transparency [is] emanating from Redmond. That's got to be a joke."

"I also use Windows and Fedora Linux at work, so I know what the current state of play across the platforms is, and neither of them is 'insanely great'."

"Tim Bray really lost me when he said he preferred Firefox and Thunderbird. Now I wonder if he knows what he's talking about. Camino and Gyazmail I could believe. But Firefly and Thunderpants aren't even Cocoa. What is he on?"

"Sounds like a good decision to me. I'd trade zeo viruses, reduced security problems, stability and great hardware for ... viruses, ... malware and an obsolete OS any day."

To sum up: IOW, Bray hasn't a clue what he's talking baout

And Bray's talking out of where the sun doesn't shine
Despite what you may think of Tim Bray personally, his comments were limited to himself and he clearly marked parts of them as political. He's not telling anyone else what to do. I disagree with him, but I don't think his comments were unfair or outlandish.

He's the only authority on what he thinks and why he does what he does. Anyone else talking about Tim Bray is more likely to be talking out of their ass than he is.

And he's behind the times...
I met some serious hackers from sun and they used and loved macs. ;)
The sparcbooks I've used were just too cludgey for a real engineer-on-the-go.

Also, mozilla on the mac doesn't honor the screen size when you open new windows and the international language support isn't as good as safari. (check out wikipedia)

And he's behind the times...
However, solaris 10 is pretty sweet. You should all check it out.

and so what?
I'd be interested to know that top hackers are switching to a new methodology / programming paradigm, definitely. A new editor / IDE, maybe.

What OS they're running is hardly relevant - the one that's best for their needs, I presume. Maybe they're into GarageBand - great, but nothing to do with their hacking.

I've known 2 great programmers with ponytails - I'm not growing one because of that. Nor a sex change 'cause I've read of Grace Hopper's achievements, either...

and so what?
If most of the top computer hackers started using some OS P, you say that this wouldn't matter?

Do you really believe that it wouldn't indicate that P is a great OS for developing in?

If you're intrested in accesing the quality of an OS (specially respecting programming and hacking) what is a better indication than the fact that super-hackers like it and use it?

OS choise is a technological choice. Top hackers are technology experts.

It's not the same as with their ...hair styles and sex!!!

and so what?
There is a correlation - if their needs are precisely same as my needs (I was hoping my 1st post made this clear).

Hackers == technology experts? In their specific field (web servers, router, Perl, ...), yes of course, by definition. In all fields, certainly not.

And Bray's talking out of where the sun doesn't shine
A certain degree of transparency is emanating from Redmond. There is a lot of weblogging going on over there. The qualitative difference between Sun and MSFT in this respect is that Jonathan is weblogging, while Bill is not, and by extension the same applies to their entire upper echelon of each company, respectively.

Apple, on the other hand, keep an iron grip on the company’s outbound flow of information.