The Mac Isn't Always User Friendly

I really like using the Mac. I recommend home users look at using a Macintosh if they don't have a specific reason to use a PC. They tend to be safer and easier for people to use, and in the end, users don't care about the politics of their operating system. They just want to surf for games or porn and read email. Usually, anyway.

But just as every Batman has his movie Batsuit with nipples and every Star Wars has a Jar Jar, even the best Macintosh has it's horrible albatross. Albatrosses. Albatrossi?

I'm fighting one right now. In order to connect to the network at work from home, I have to use the accursed Cisco VPN client. I hate it. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I had in on once long ago and it screwed up my network configuration. I eventually tried using it again and while it seemed to work okay (after getting the correct version, since the version on the router and the version on the computer have to match within certain specifications or it just magically would fail...seems encryption standards apparently aren't standard enough to survive small revisions in version numbers) I am now getting an error about not being able to find an active network connection over which to connect, so the client wouldn't start.

I Googled (over my interface that the Cisco client insists isn't there) and found references to restarting the VPN subsystem from the command line. Okay...tried...can't find it. The logs say it doesn't know anything about that service. Oh dear...

Another reference I found online said to repair disk permissions. This seems to be the new "rebuilding the desktop" for the Mac (if you know that reference you're either a longtime Mac user or a true geek at heart). Seems that every bloody time I find an issue on the Mac the first thing suggested is to repair disk permissions.

What? I've been using Linux before X Windows was run by default at startup. That's right, I had to actually configure X and type "startx" at a command prompt. Both Linux and OS X are, under the hood, a form of UNIX (purists would no doubt get their panties in a twist at that, but tough. For my purposes here it's true enough) and they both use similar forms of permissions on files. I don't recall EVER having to run a utility to fix permissions on Linux. I don't have files randomly changing their permissions. So why is it that under OS X it seems to just decide, arbitrarily, to change permissions on random files?

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.

What I really wish I could do is just run SSH to create my tunnels for what I need to do. The boss said that the Cisco VPN client was superior and decreed that SSH would be cut off. "One less possible vulnerability".

The result has been, for me, far more headache. Not only do I need a special client that is available for certain clients (I think there's sort of a Linux version. Maybe. As long as I am running a certain range of libraries and dependencies that match to their client software) but that same client software seems notoriously flaky and problematic. I have yet to see why this is superior to the old way of using methods that are open standards.

Excuse me while I go rock in my corner while waiting for my "repair permissions" to complete and then hope that it works after a reboot...