I treat any windows machine as if it has a keylogger and submits all my activity to all major governments (maybe only one today and “all” in a few years when my data gets sold, shared or stolen).
This is a serious issue for me.
He mentions that people don't trust Windows for savely restoring their session, but if i'm not mistaking, it's Ubuntu ( i think) that had such a bug for a VERY long time ( https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2321399 ). I have never heard such problems on Windows...
It's measuring activities and performance yes, it's not stealing your information. Ubuntu did it too and even integrated Amazon in the search field.
You can even see what it sends: https://www.howtogeek.com/348699/how-to-see-what-data-window...
PS. Probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, but please respond with comments and not with (too much) downvotes.
PS 2. I also use Ubuntu a lot, which is why i can compare it too Windows on experience. Can't compare to other distro's, if i didn't use it. Both have their pro's / cons.
1. Apple doesn't slow down due to not being rebooted. I rarely reboot for this reason; basically only for system updates.
2. Suspend I believe is the service? I just close the lid, open, login and keep working. This last time I used Windows wasn't possible. From crashing applications and the direct loss of data due to that crash to not waking and needing me to reboot the whole system.
3. My entire experience with Windows aside from the need to frequently reboot is that it always slows down from the first day of purchase until the day I lose my mind over the speed of it's activity and go buy a new one... This slow down is the slower more incideous one that progresses over months until nothing not even a reboot nurses enough out of it to make it performant anymore.
These are literally the three issues that cause me to be terrified of switching. When Apple did the 'it just works' commercials I switched, because I didn't want to be so involved in the OS. I wanted to just use it and do my things, which aren't nearly as intensive as some others ex. I just do front end work minus the crazy designer apps that require huge RAM and expensive Graphics Cards.
If these 3 things are no longer issues on Windows then I'd really consider it because they are the only reason I'm with Apple at this time. Since Jobs died they've gotten even worse at servicing their MacOS base that it's crazy to be using their product at this point, since they clearly don't give a shit about us.
Lastly I used to use Linux back in the day, but left it because the lips stick (GUI) doesn't abstract away enough of the day to day tasks and I refuse to be a 'programmer' when I just doing regular stuff like writing emails, productivity tools and looking at photos. I'd totally be game if losing a file on download wasn't still a distinct possibility along with the anxiety of not knowing if an app was installed right or full removed; an issue I have with Windows too btw, but not with MacOS.
I do research the laptop that I buy though, but can't think of anything else, except my laptops are about 1000€, not 500 :)
Not sure why you think that is a justification. People weren't happy about that either.
The discussion was also about hibernate or suspending, where some seem to complain about. I have never had issues with it, i mentioned issues about it in Ubuntu.
--> at least apples machines are high quality -> Didn't read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17413572 + https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15496745 + https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13797042 ? Top dollar for a failing critical component. Yeah, you are so right ;) - you can keep your device :)
I will keep working on my Convertible HP Spectre x360 with docking station for attaching 2 external monitors through the USB-C standard on Windows :) .
Probably due to the fact that you're using whataboutism[1] as a defence rather than tackling the fact that Windows does log user activity and report it.
My relevant point was : It's measuring activities and performance yes, it's not stealing your information as the user activity is also anonymous.
I don't see you making a relevant comment though.
Firstly, how do you know it is truly anonymous? And is this anonymisation being done on the users machine, or one Microsoft's servers? If the latter, MS has access to unanonymised data.
Secondly, cross-referenced with other 'anonymised' data sets it is quite possible to de-anonymise people. I'm not convinced there is any such thing as a truly anonymous data set anymore, not when it comes to data collected from a users device.
A governement can automate it to follow it back to the user, but a corporation can't.
They are the only ones that show it this straight forward, can you find a page like that on one of the other big tech companies? ( Apple, Google, Amazon)
TL;DR; You can follow it back to a specific device, but you can't follow it back to "who is the user". Which seems to be a valid business decision, considering the complex matter they are in ( the biggest variety of devices and users).
You can also check it for yourselve: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/24/16927056/microsoft-window...
Telemetry can also be disabled
This seems to be the worst, if a part of a document contains your personal data, when you are working on it and it crashes.
Full data includes all Basic and Enhanced data, and also turns on advanced diagnostic features that collect additional data from your device, such as system files or memory snapshots, which may unintentionally include parts of a document you were working on when a problem occurred. This information helps us further troubleshoot and fix problems. If an error report contains personal data, we won't use that information to identify, contact, or target advertising to you. This is the recommended option for the best Windows experience and the most effective troubleshooting.
Why is Apple's OSX, which exhibits a lot of the same behavior with spotlight, exempt from this concern?
Don't get me wrong, I don't like these as-you-type-send-it-up search interfaces. But if we're gonna call companies on doing this, Microsoft has scaled back its analytics more than Apple and its App store have.
Disabling Windows 10 telemetry is difficult and cannot be done via user settings. Microsoft has also been adding telemetry to other products such as VSCode and .NET Core.
And you cannot disable application telemetry in the App store which everyone has, including Apple's apps. Apple's approach doesn't stop anyone from turning their apps into a privacy disaster.
But sure. Windows telemetry is unique. Right.
They aren't. Neither is Ubuntu[0]. Luckily there are plenty of other operating systems that take your privacy seriously.
Join the bright side.
To be dogmatic, either you have to have enormous amount of resources to create your own secure hardware, or abandon all computing devices.
I prefer using off the shelf computing devices. The only level of security I excpect of them is that no-one will abuse my credit card if I don't act stupid.
Meh, that's true, but you can always monitor your device from an upstream router or network traffic monitor.
But I don't trust any given computer os very much. They're all projects run by folks that have given me 0 reason to trust them.
One of the most insufferable parts of your post is the assumption I don't use Linux as a primary OS. I do. I hate it slightly less than OSX. But they're all awful in equal but unique measures.
There are good and trustworthy projects out there IMO. I use GuixSD and OpenBSD for all my computing needs and have 0 reason not to trust them. Curious to hear any arguments against either.
To paraphrase the venerable Mutt email client: All operating systems suck. These ones just sucks less...
If I could use them for anything besides bespoke server projects and really awful desktop environments I might be more interested. As it stands, they're of no use professionally, I've had poor luck on the kinds of hardware I am interest in using as a hobby, and they make Linux seem thoughtful and snappy when it comes to desktop environments.
> To paraphrase the venerable Mutt email client: All operating systems suck. These ones just sucks less...
I'm trying not to be too Negative Online, so don't get me started on that. :D
Does the GDPR do anything to put your concerns on this issue to rest?
(By those regulations, MS is required, under penalty of very large fines, to not do what you are accusing them of doing.)
However, I'm probably less informed on GDPR than the average HN user, so it's very possible that my understanding is off-base or incomplete.
If the company starts doing things right ONLY after there's some legislation making the wrong thing illegal, what does that tell you about the company?
We did a lot of work to comply and provide these tools and people still think MS is part of some grand conspiracy.
Given Microsoft's history I'm not sure why you're surprised.
I found the problem
At my workplace it's about 60:40 Windows to Mac user ratio. Regardless of the machine, nobody closes the lid when moving in the office between desks and meeting rooms. So, I'd say it's probably not that.
The ssh client had no keep alive. And the sshd had no keep alive. There was not firewall and a long DHCP lease. So it all just worked.
But because of firewalls aggressivly closing xonnections, these days we tend to need keep alives and so I don't this this would work today.
alias my-server='ssh server-hostname -t "tmux new-session -s user || tmux attach-session -t user"'
You could also tell it to try reconnecting every second and bind it to something easy to type like 'kj' (too bad df is already taken)
alias kj='while true; do my-server; sleep 1; done'Now that you mention it... I have exactly the same problem with rMBP since upgrading to 10.13.5. Just this monday morning I've spent 20 minutes checking all the cables and why it doesn't work, until I rebooted the machine and then it suddenly worked.
Mnyeah. The fabled Mac-Windows convergence, as foretold in the days of yore. MS hardware gets sleek commercial blogposts from evangelists, like Macs; and Apple's OS needs to be rebooted every once in a while to work right, like Windows.
It's surprising how many people never change the settings on their computers. Whenever I saw someone with the taskbar icons combined, I always asked them if they liked it that way, and they would say "No." So I always offered and they always accepted me going into the settings for them and changing it to 'never combine'.
That's not really what's meant by state though...
However, I've had my laptop wake up from Sleep while in a bag several times, causing it to overheat. That pissed me off. If I recall correctly, I think it was a Bluetooth event causing it to wake up.
Yikes! Why? I haven't had an issue with a laptop properly going to sleep and coming back in many years. This was something I used to do back in 2008 but it's hard to imagine today.
The normal situation, 99% of times, when one closes the lid on a laptop is to not use it, and to not want to have any programs run in the background. You close the lid to put the laptop in your back, take it to the office, etc.
Except if you have your laptop always on your desk and never leaving it. In which case it's not really used as a laptop...
This is exactly how I use all of my laptops, both personal and at work, about 90% of the time. I consider them "portable desktops" ;)
(side note/separate complaint, windows 10 tries to update one driver repeatedly, every time I check. I wish there were some way to disable that update.)
Or you can get a Mac laptop, where getting the computer to sleep when you close the lid and start again fast when you open it just works.
Why would you let the laptop keep running, waste battery, risk overheating and endanger any spinning HDs you might have in it, when the lid is closed?
You could say it’s my (non-OS) software and you might be right, god only knows how much redundant shit security teams put on there to protect us (read: cover their asses) but why is any software allowed to prevent the laptop from sleeping when I close the lid? It should be assumed it’s going in a bag and should take protective action.
Also, you may want to talk to my laptops about kernel panics on docking or randomly losing window placement for no apparent reason.
I think it’s pretty neat that you’ve had such a bug-free experience but unless you work for Apple and are intimately aware of the frequency or infrequency of these types of issues it might be worth exploring a decrease in snarkiness.
Except it doesn't "just work." It sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, and the doesn't work happens often enough that I don't close my laptop. And let's not get started with plugging into external Apple monitors.
With the added compromise of a touch bar instead of function keys. And a horrible typing experience. And a default OS with a recent history of downright laughable security issues.
Interesting. I've never seen or even heard of this. Windows didn't do a great job at this in general like a decade ago and the Surface Pros had a bug that was eventually fixed relating to it but I've never heard or seen an issue beyond those. I have multiple Windows and Mac machines and they both do great at preserving state when closing the lid.
If you closed the lid while Chrome is running, it prevents Windows from sleeping.
https://techjourney.net/chrome-prevents-windows-from-going-i...
Do they really just tell you to go pound sand when a corporate client asks them for support?
I'm guessing they tell you to call Dell or HP because that's who's responsible for whether hibernation works on their specific machines.
Windows is far from perfect, but these other tools that are supposed to help you are more often the source of site-wide problems like what you've described.
I get so much crap when I say this online, but Windows is a complete shit show. Yeah, there are issues with macOS, but it is lightyears better. Yeah, I know Apple has dropped the ball on hardware, but my 5 year old MBP is just fine.
I have more problems with my late 2016 MBP now than I do with any of the Win10 machines I use, and I've been using both OSs for 25+ years. The whole" Windows is a shit show" feels like the tired diatribe of people that want to crap on Microsoft but haven't actually used the OS themselves in years.
So we’re sitting on a plane and he’s showing me how easy it is to sort email in tablet mode, and it blue-screens. Really unlucky, right, because normally it doesn’t do that of course. But hey, shit happens, we chuckle, whatever.
So he puts it in the seat pocket. Then 45 minutes later we land, so he gets it out of the seat pocket. And the thing is burning hot because it hasn’t shut down. It’s just sitting there, on the blue screen, fans going mental.
This is a device made by Microsoft, running Microsoft software. And we’re in 2018. And that’s the default behaviour. It’s not great, is it?
“Closed laptop at office. Put in bag. Took car to Paddy’s. Got on train to finish off email. Laptop still on. Bag almost of fire. 7% battery left. Microsoft, your products are total shit.”
I’ve run a Mac for 15+ years and I can say, hand on heart, this has never happened to me.
If the OS can recover, it should just say “you may still shut down at any time but the update will start from the beginning if you do”.
My 2016 MBP has been the worst laptop I've ever owned... fails to sleep, fails to wake, physical keys keep dying, touchbar freezes and won't unlock the machine, it can't keep external monitors straight (to be fair, that might be more of an OS issue than hardware?)
Keep that old one as long as you can! I wish I hadn't "upgraded".
There is no Mission Control, no Time Machine, no Spaces, the UI still thinks of document windows as applications, there is no Application menu, the keyboard shortcuts are crap, application installs dump stuff all over, settings don't apply immediately, resolution scaling is broken, ... People who think Windows is on par with macOS don't know jack about macs and never bothered to get good at them. It'll be a cold day in hell before an NT-derived windows can compete. MS needs to clean house and commit to doing what Apple did with OSX in 2001... Get rid of the cruft, put the user first, and make everything work.
The article's mention that ejecting the screen takes a software release and that certain apps can prevent it is the kind of bullshit Steve Jobs would've mocked and told the developers to fix if they expect to be taken seriously. A product should serve the user and provide affordances, not hold them hostage.
Migrating to my new MacBook was trivial, and the machines set up an adhoc WiFi network automatically to transfer all the files. Once done, everything worked as before. All without my involvement. That's why people use and want Macs.
Just upgraded to a 2015 MBP, and still use Win10 for my home system which is fine there. For mobile tried a new Dell XPS with both Windows and Ubuntu for a couple of weeks thinking the shiny HW would make up for the OS, but it was not a good experience. Was a relief to get back to OSX...
I have one monitor that used to work fine on Windows and Mac. After a software update the Mac only recognizes it about 1 in 20 tries of plugging and unplugging.
Linux is a lot better than it used to be. I can reliably close the lid on my Lenovo X200 running Fedora. And anecdotally there seem to be fewer people going between meetings with laptops open these days so that's presumably a common experience with RHEL and Fedora on company-issued laptops.
I am afraid of my brand new MBP w/ touchbar. I use it with the lid shut as a powerful Mac Mini.
It is too fragile to move frequently.
man pmset
As it turns out, that's the default mode on desktop. And you can set your laptop to do that too (assuming you're ok with the tradeoff).
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
hibernatemode supports values of 0, 3, or 25. Whether or not a hibernation image gets written is also dependent on the values of standby
and autopoweroff
For example, on desktops that support standby a hibernation image will be written after the specified standbydelay time. To disable
hibernation images completely, ensure hibernatemode standby and autopoweroff are all set to 0.
hibernatemode = 0 by default on desktops. The system will not back memory up to persistent storage. The system must wake from the con-
tents of memory; the system will lose context on power loss. This is, historically, plain old sleep.
hibernatemode = 3 by default on portables. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will power memory
during sleep. The system will wake from memory, unless a power loss forces it to restore from hibernate image.
hibernatemode = 25 is only settable via pmset. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will remove
power to memory. The system will restore from disk image. If you want "hibernation" - slower sleeps, slower wakes, and better battery
life, you should use this setting.It could be my monitor or usb-c to displayport adapter, though.
Also, this is my 2nd current gen MBP in less than 6 months.
It's the 'basic' stuff like this and bizarre feeling UI pauses at blank windows that make it unbearable to work with. It's the opposite of snappy and constantly interrupts a productive workflow making me wonder 'why is it doing this' rather than thinking about my work. It's like having an essentially perfect phone that inexorably buzzes every 1-5 minutes (at random), you would throw it against the wall in less than a day.
One thing I noticed that was fixed with Windows 10 that was a problem in Windows 7: my laptops now handle state properly after the lid is closed (assuming you use hibernate or sleep rather than just screen-off).
Yes, I absolutely get that it's probably a hardware issue, but I couldn't figure it out based on the logs and driver installs/reinstalls. I had nearly identical hardware with Windows 7 and Linux and never encountered these problems. I get that these things happen but I'm a lot more confident in 1) it almost never happening on modern linux distributions and 2) it being more-or-less diagnosable if it does.
There were other issues as well. Mysterious microstutters on top-level hardware, more and more unwanted crap being installed and re-enabled after each major update, the update system as a whole....
After a while I got tired of it and switched back, regretting wasting the money.
Not Windows fault, but annoying none the less.
I have sleep wake problems on my 2015 mbpr and a bunch of other complaints. But it’s still light years ahead of my work laptop.
I can’t say how much is windows fault and how much is corporate spyware.
Win10 on my mbpr is a vast improvement, but macOS is still the clear winner for me.
Never had any problem connecting 3 different MacBook Pro's (across the years) to 3-4 different external monitors (Dell, LG, Samsung, etc) and to several projectors (including through a VGA adaptor and HDMI ones).
>MacOS also ignores commands to lock the screen until it’s done changing screens.
So for all of 2 seconds it takes?
Consider yourself lucky.
> So for all of 2 seconds it takes?
Most times. But occasionally I've seen the OS seemingly get confused/stuck in the process. Flickering, moving windows into various locations on the screen, taking 10-15 seconds to get back to functional/usable.
I use and seriously like OS X but...those are two of my biggest pet peeves with the OS. I constantly need to re-arrange my windows every time it notices that an external display had been added or removed, and it frequently (maybe 2 per week) will inexplicably refuse to recognise an external display until I go through a little dance of power cycling things, unplugging them, plugging them in, and trying again.
Worse, it also periodically stops working with my (bog standard USB) keyboard and mouse until I unplug them and plug them back in. It's amazing how confusing it can be trying to debug why a UI element isn't working when clicked until you determine that the computer has decided a modifier key is stuck down.
The Apple ecosystem was fantastically stable and reliable a few years back, but things are changing, sadly.
I’ve never not liked windows, though I did skip both ME and 8, but windows 10 has been such an awful experience that I bought a mbp late 2015 version last year, and I doubt I’ll ever use windows as my main OS again.
I still use it at work, and while you avoid a lot of the shit, like auto-installed pre-installers for Facebook styled games in an enterprise setup, it still lowers the brightness of my screen when I undock it, even though I’ve specifically told it not to in every setting I’ve been able to find.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, windows 10 is quite frankly the worst OS I’ve ever used.
To be fair, this one happens to me with Spotlight all the time.
I get that people want some more variety and excitement, and maybe feel like the Thunderbolt port thing is problematic (despite absolutely enabling my most “pro” setup I’ve ever had on my ’17 13” TB MBP) and obviously the keyboard design has issues.
But as a whole package it’s still the best commercial product you can buy in its space, and considering actual size, has no real competition even if you ignore the many, many software issues one faces when leaving the warm, design-loving embrace of the macOS software ecosystem.
I’ll reconsider this situation after Microsoft releases a Surface product that isn’t almost guaranteed to require one or more returns to the store and oh, yeah, has Thunderbolt 3 support so I can plug in 2 cables to get: 6 external displays (1 4k, 5 2560x*), NVMe speeds to external storage, gigabit ethernet, digital audio, SD card reader, spare ports, etc. etc. (aka OWC TB3 Dock with nearly every port in use.)
There are a few non-MS laptops that might handle the hardware requirements I meet with my current setup, but, nothing that couples the hardware with the Software. Show me even one single app that matches the care and design of Things for macOS + iOS, for example. These are things I use every. single. day. for nearly every. single task.
Frankly, I look forward to Apple fixing some of their issues with the MBP line and hopefully by then the situation with mobile processors will be improved enough to allow for some bigger memory footprints and the like, though, honestly, despite running minikube based workflows locally, I’ve never ran out of RAM at 16GB. I guess it’s because I don’t use Slack.
I have many friends, most of whom are professionals, but none of whom are software devs. A bunch of them do devops and SRE work, a bunch of them are creative professionals, and a bunch of them are in other professional services, like finance and law. Personally, I work for an "IT services" company, essentially doing outsourced devops and ops for numerous other professional services companies.
What I'm getting at is that I know literally hundreds of professionals, across my personal and work life. The sum total of those in my life who need or use 6 displays: Zero.
You are not, in any way shape or form, a typical professional. If you need 6 displays (which you might, but I'd bet a dollar you don't) you're basically so far out of the ballpark of standard professional that you're on the moon.
Let's not pretend that the Surface Pro — or the Macbook Pro, for that matter — are in any way not suitable for the vast majority of professionals.
No, I’m a developer, I work in, I dunno what you want to call it, Machine Learning Data Engineering? Stuff like that.
I use seven displays because I like spatially organized workspaces. Four of them are only 10”, effectively 1280x800 displays, two of which are always showing terminals. I have a particular way I like to work that I’ve developed around how macOS handles multiple displays/Spaces that benefits more from many small displays than few large ones.
In the long run, I more greatly value the software I get to use on macOS (not to mention things like first party hardware and software support) over the window managers and that type of thing available elsewhere, and frankly, as a geek, it feels cool having a matrix-operator-like setup as my workstation so I’m happy.
On the other controller, although it’s the one that doesn’t actually offer the full 40GBps, we have a 4k and a 2560x1400 display actually driven via DP over TB3 so that does eat up a lot of bandwidth. About 24Gbps. What’s left is basically powering a USB 3 hub with a handful of devices rarely using their full capabilities simultaneously. So it’s plenty of remaining bandwidth. But the official requested throughput is actually well above the real capability of the hardware so it’s hard to say exactly how close to maxed out it all is. Just that I’ve not yet had any issues or conflicts with the setup.
Both of my MacBook Pros (2015 and 2018, Sierra and High Sierra, respectively) exhibit this exact behavior.
I deliberately avoid letting my laptops go to sleep, and try not to unplug them from their monitors because I don't want to spend time re-positioning every single window and tool palette. It really defeats the purpose of having a laptop.
My understanding is that window size and positioning issues on Windows are a graphics card driver issue and it's up to the graphics card maker to finally fix it. I don't know the details though, that's just what I've read. It's obnoxious for sure.
I like to walk short distance with lids open to maintain wifi connection as I usualy keep remote connection to server. For longer walk distance, close the lid for easier walking.
[0](https://mosh.org/)
I guess it's just that Windows users know the system they use and its flaws (even perceived so) better than Apple users
And I keep waiting for them to fix just the basics in Windows 10. Not utterly losing both the sizes and positions of all windows just because the laptop was undocked. Not failing to recognize the external display upon docking, despite the display working a few minutes earlier. Not completely failing to find files and apps based on how I typed them (“A” brings up “abc” but typing “ab” makes “abc” go away!?). Such a long list.