I'm curious how you arrived at some of these conclusions.

- Sluggish UI -> I've never experienced this in the last three years of using my 2017 MBP.

- Inadequate package manager -> Somewhat nebulous, most package managers on Linux are available on Unix.

- Slow and large updates -> I honestly don't pay much attention as I have updates install automatically while I'm sleeping, but what size differences have you noticed?

- Slow boot to work -> Never experienced this, boot is less than a minute regularly.

- Can't have a minimal desktop -> Beyond hiding all icons and the dock, what more are you looking for?

- High memory usage of base system -> Never seen this come close to the main applications I use on a daily basis. What quantified results are you receiving to notice this?

> - Sluggish UI -> I've never experienced this in the last three years of using my 2017 MBP.

Not the author, but perhaps they meant that the UI was sluggish to use?

I find OSX great if you have one browser window open, but start to multitask at all and I personally find it a real pig to work with. Open windows are hidden behind a tiny white dot on the task bar, lots of wasted space around the task bar, no snapping or window-splitting, the menus are detached from the windows they are for and you need to focus the window to get the menu to appear, the task switcher thing (expose?) is a horrible jarring swooshy animation that is awfully distracting with things moving around on the screen on their own as you are trying to look at them.

I find it so frustrating to use after almost a decade of using macs now - it does not get any better once "used to it". Linux (Cinnamon or Plasma) + Windows 10 are just so much more intuitive for me. I'd 100% bite the hands off of the IT team here if they offered me a Windows 10 machine instead of a mac for my engineering laptop.

I use bettertouchtool to get window snapping. And you can turn off the animation when switching desktops in settings.

> I use bettertouchtool to get window snapping.

This is not a good point at all. Having to rely on third party applications (without any good way to discover them) to provide something that is taken for granted everywhere else is a horrible user experience!

It's the same if you want to use an external, non-Apple, completely normal HDMI monitor - use a third party application to make it use the default (for the monitor) refresh rate (60 Hz) and resolution (1920x1080).

It's the same if you want to use a completely normal USB computer mouse with a scroll wheel - install a third party application in order to make scroll wheel work like you expect.

And pretty much all those third party tools that are required to turn a Mac into a system that is actually working and allowing the user to be productive costs money as well.

I've never had issues with default resolution/refresh rate on any external monitors, including a non-conventional 1080p 240hz monitor that I use daily. Mice work normally for me as well, and you can change the scroll direction in system preferences if you want.

Errr.. that's not true at all for the monitors or the mice.

> - Sluggish UI -> I've never experienced this in the last three years of using my 2017 MBP.

I have. Performance generally degrades over time for me.

> - Slow and large updates -> I honestly don't pay much attention as I have updates install automatically while I'm sleeping, but what size differences have you noticed?

Most OS X updates take the system down for 30+ minutes while you're staring at the black screen w/ white Apple logo. By contrast most Linux systems can update in the background, and a reboot after an update takes no more time than a normal reboot, because it is a normal reboot.

> I'm curious how you arrived at some of these conclusions.

> - Sluggish UI -> I've never experienced this in the last three years of using my 2017 MBP.

There seems to be a type a user who perceives any kind of animation as sluggishness. Before I switched to macOS, I used to hang out in #kde. From time to time someone would come in and complain about the sluggish UI. They'd often list specs that were impressive at the time.

I'd instruct them on how to globally increase KDE's animation speed. That almost always "fixed the issue".

I'm not sure what it is, but for some users animations are indistinguishable from lag.

Not OP, but I share some of his views.

> Inadequate package manager -> Somewhat nebulous, most package managers on Linux are available on Unix.

Here he probably compares homebrew with apt/dnf/zypper. Compared to these three, homebrew is quite primitive and prone to be in a bad state. Luckily now you can use nix on MacOS which is a good package manager.

> Can't have a minimal desktop -> Beyond hiding all icons and the dock, what more are you looking for?

I run a minimal desktop with a tiling window manager (bspwm) and a status bar (polybar in my case), I don't need a window decorator and so I don't have one. I also don't need drop shadows on windows and so I disabled them (while keeping them on popups). AFAIK that is simply impossible to achieve on MacOS.

MacPorts is a better long-term experience than Homebrew.

It takes the BSD ports approach, where all packages are maintained together in a centralized repository. The Homebrew approach is closer to a bunch of PPA's and other independently maintained stuff of questionable integration status.

If all you've tried is Homebrew, then I'm not surprised at the reaction.

At least as far as the UI is concerned:

- No focus-follows-mouse options means I can't layer windows in a way that accelerates my workflows. Having to switch between windows constantly is a giant speed bottleneck for me.

- No keybinds for quickly resizing and positioning windows as far as I know. I only use the mouse to quickly position windows and even then just use alt-drag on my Linux desktop.

- Animations. Anything that doesn't just instantly do whatever I told it is wasting my time. I don't need pretty or shiny.

Of course this is my own personal experience, but I am extremely less productive on Mac and Windows compared to Linux due to these and more.

After eight years of using Macs exclusively for desktop and laptop use, I still can't get used to the counterintuitive focus management. I'm scrolling up and down in an app, start using the keyboard, and the keystrokes go to a different app! Arg! It just does not compute for me that I can be interacting with app A, move my mouse to app B, start interacting with app B, see my interactions have effect in app B, then start typing and find that my keystrokes are going to app A.

It's not built into MacOS, but you may find Magnet to solve some of your window management issues, depending on how you like to work. https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/

> - Can't do Linux development

How do you figure that? Docker gives you a native linux runtime, and you can use x11 if you're developing GTK/QT clients.

To be fair, docker doesn't run well on macOS. I've got a few containers that are mostly idle on Linux, but take two cores on my mac.

The divide between doesn't work, and doesn't work as well is pretty wide.

all my laptops/servers run linux and I too have noticed Docker run on osx is just not the same smooth tool as when run on a linux host although Docker was far worse on osx until a year or two ago ... to me the fixation people have for osx is purely inertia and over time the linux laptop will continue to gain converts from the Apple fan clubbers

And it burns you or the desk in the process. I hate Docker based workflows on macOS although loving the tool.

> - Hard to add memory and ram

In fact, impossible for a long time already.

Upd: I mean laptops; not true for other products.

Except where it isn't (iMac, Mac Mini, iMac Pro, Mac Pro).

Thanks for the correction, edited my comment.

- machine marketed as "Pro" dies from a drop of water

Did this happen to you? Funny story, I spit a mouthful of La Croix on my 2016 touchbar MacBook Pro just the other day (not for fun, wrong pipe). Keyboard, screen, etc. I thought it was a goner. But I wiped it down and it's still fine.

Make sure to dry it completely, and the insides too. My friend spilled coffee on a macbook air and it was fine for a month and then died. All the internals were rusted. Coffee is different from soda, but still, take care.

OTOH, my wife's MBP was on the backseat of her car when another driver hit the back of her car at high speed, totalling both cars. Her car's trunk and backseat were compressed into about 70 cm.

The computer survived with one scratch to one of its corners.

This monsoon my backlight started to die. Kept it in a dry environment, it fixed itself. ffs apple.

Extremely bad thermals. My i9 mbp spends more time throttled then working full power, even though I'm using cooling pad.

Try Macs Fan Control or TG Pro, you can set custom fan curves.

For me, the worst of all is that you can minimize an app and it's still on focus. That gets me every single time. I don't know who thought of this, but last time I checked, it was supposed to be a feature, not a bug :D