It’s pretty bad when you show everyone enthusiastically that when you open your MacBook it wakes up immediately and actually works. They think you’re insane rather than a former Linux user who has programmed irrational fear that the AMD mobile GPU drivers are going to cause a panic.
I ended up working there through a different route and bought a 2010 13” MBP that served me perfectly for four years before I sold it for an impressive amount of cash to buy a 2014 15” which was also flawless.
I might be unlucky, but I can't count on my two hands how many times did my 2019 MacBook Pro become unresponsive (and occasionally it restarted itself... After being unresponsive for 10 minutes). It's a work laptop and there is some admin software on it (afaik), so that might influence my experience... But after a year of use, I still sometimes feel the need to defenestrate it...
My favorite bit is that after a restart sometimes it gives me a screen where I can't change the keyboard layout.. and I can't type my password because of the special characters I use. So, I just restart again and hope I get a login screen with the keyboard layout change possible. (And yes I have changed the default layout multiple times, but it always switches back to some other default)
I see people in this thread complaining that Linux distros are unreliable, but my Linux machines don't do things like beachball for 20s at a time or have complete audio system crashes requiring reboot twice a week. (Always right before a videoconference! I missed fifteen minutes of a call last week scrambling to fetch another device because the audio subsystem died and the Mac decided it had to install updates for a half hour when it rebooted.)
It's not uncommon to see uptimes on my ThinkPads measured in months. The Mac? At least it boots fast. I have to restart it once or twice a week.
Reliability aside -- and I realize that everyone values ergonomic factors differently -- Linux is just a better choice in every regard for me and the kind of work that I do. Interactive performance is much better, the docker-based workflows everyone's using are so much faster when they're native, and there's no mismatch between Darwin's BSD userland and the Ubuntu/CentOS you're probably using in prod.
I’ve been using Macs since 1984. They’re not perfect, but throughout that time, they have demonstrated over and over again that they are the least horrible hardware/os platform that I have used. Some years are better, but all years have been better on macOS than any other hardware platform I have experience with.
My verdict is: the hardware is usually GREAT but MacOS isn't. It bothered me when I quit the platform ages ago, and it is still bothering me now: little I care about has changed or improved. New annoyances though!
In aggregate I'd say I've spent ca. 15 hours staring at the beachball. Intrusive admin software has been a problem in the past for sure -- especially at Google -- but I've bought dozens of these for home use as well. Either 90% of their units are defective or we're using our computers very differently.
Terrible keyboards are another thing entirely, Lenovo went through a bout of that with the X1. My gripes about Macs are almost entirely about OSX performance/reliability and command-line habitability: version over version, it almost never improves. For my workflows
... so a bit more commonplace than "defective unit" or "admin software".
Huh, they said they really tried to like macOS for an entire year ...
I think they just tried to convert it to Linux for 1 year and that didn't work, which as I said, that's expected, it might not be the OS for you and that's fine. We're lucky we have options, and we are all not the same.
As I said in the comments, macos is for people that can accept the trade offs, that can adapt to a more rigid and propietary system in exchange for something that just works and allows you to focus on your actual work, and not on tuning your computer as if it was a hobbies sports car.
Again, nothing wrong with that, I've been like that in the past. Now I just prefer things that just work and I don't have to waste my time maintaining. We are all not the same, thanks God.
No, it doesn’t, perhaps works better than the alternatives most of time, but definitely not all the time.
Then in 2014 I was given the next Macbook Pro at work, and that did not support Linux anymore. Then I got upgraded version in 2019, and that one has even worse support.
During that time I had to get used to macOS, but I simply could not. Those animations or something else make it feel so slow in comparison to Linux desktop.
Then once pandemic hit and I started working from home, I could use my Linux desktop for work. It feels so much better. I am not sure why macOS feels so sluggish in comparison.
Now I am hoping for Asahi Linux to support the new M1 Macbooks well enough to use them on a daily basis, but not sure if it will ever happen. I think the main thing that is missing is the GPU driver. I have not yet seen a good community build open source GPU driver that has decent performance.
interesting, the MBP 2014 is what I will forever remember as "one of the best computer I ran linux on". With archlinux almost everything worked from the very beginning except the webcam driver, and much faster than macOS. It just took some time for Chrome and Firefox to adapt to Retina because those weren't following Xft.dpi system property, but otherwise...
I have also installed Linux on my work T2 2019 MBP, and it is looking much better but still rough around the edges and you can't use mainline kernel. At least hidpi on wayland works nicely, though not all of the apps do.
I hope that people behind Asahi will have better luck. :)
The first thing I do when I get a new Android phone is enabling the developer options and turning off all animations. The phone feels a lot faster then, especially switching apps.
I have more than one friend who I showed this and they suddenly didn't feel the need to replace their phone with a newer, faster one.
Battery life was terrible compared to a Mac (6 hours if I was lucky, barely 4 hours when in video meetings). S3 Suspend worked badly, the battery would drain very quickly. Devices would often not come back after wake (particularly the trackpad). During video meetings, the fans would go into full blast (though they were more quiet than most non-M1 laptops). Noise cancellation was quite bad on Linux (ok-ish in Windows). Lenovo’s own USB-C dock wouldn’t work with 4k@60Hz (works with Windows, Linux misconfigures the lanes and didn’t use HBR3).
It was one of the models that was certified for Linux (IIRC even Fedora). But the whole experience was miserable. I bought an M1 MacBook and didn’t look back.
Fortunately the bios bugs are fixed and the latest kernel (5.15.11) supports s3 pretty flawlessly so far, although I was using traditional suspend before that without issue. I haven’t had any other issues and has been stable over the last month of usage. Temps and performance are great and around 9-10 hrs battery life. So I think it's worth buying now.
I lost count the amount of times it’d panic or something would break when I needed it. The same laptop was rock solid running windows and my daughter has it now as her daily driver.
I love my thinkpad t14s, it's fast and quiet and all hardware works (even lte, although does admitedly require an alpha driver, it works fine)
That said, I am not one to have their high refresh rate screen at anywhere near even mid brightness levels. That includes desktop, TV, phone, etc
According to Wikipedia, AMD's Turbo Core feature depends on power draw, while Precision Boost and Extended Frequency Range features depends on power and temperature.
was refering to the figure of 68°C which i consider very low and hence asking the question "why would the thermal management enact any limits at that temperature?"
- Windows has better Linux support than macOS (WSL gives better integration which means Docker is easier to use compared to Minikube via Hyperkit vm)
- macOS doesn’t have the crucial software I need: FAR Manager
- I’ve had terrible experience with Apple’s customer support in the past where they couldn’t fix broken font antialiasing for external monitors
- I’ve been plagued by serious macOS bugs where it would cause 100% cpu load that could only be cured with closing/reopening the lid, and there are still some sleep-related bugs in it, whereas on Windows everything’s fine
- The window manager in macOS lacks basic features compared to Windows: no tiling, but Windows gets it out of the box with Win+arrows
- All hotkeys on macOS are different from the rest of the world (Windows, Linux) for no good reason and it makes switching between computers very difficult. And no, switching Cmd to Ctrl doesn’t solve it
- Rounded window corners make the first character on the bottom line of terminals unreadable
- GUI feels slow compared to Windows
Originally, Windows followed the IBM CUA [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access] standard, which it still does to a great extent today - Pressing Alt will still activate the menu for instance. In this standard, the cut command was Shift+Del, Copy was Ctrl+Ins and paste was Shift+Ins; which I believe still work as of Windows 10. Microsoft introduced CTRL-Z/X/C/V in Windows 3.1, released in 1992.
In short, the keyboard shortcuts for undo/cut/copy/paste have been constant on the Mac since it’s inception 37 years ago. It’s been “standard” in the Windows world for 29 years
'bit of a duh, that.
> My biggest gripes with macOS, after decades of Windows and Linux: [...] macOS doesn’t have the crucial software I need: FAR Manager
...
FAR doesn't work on linux either, the unofficial linux port (of 2.0) advertises macOS support, and midnight commander works everywhere.
> - The window manager in macOS lacks basic features compared to Windows: no tiling, but Windows gets it out of the box with Win+arrows
BigSur added a tiling system, but it's really just a split-window fullscreen (so you can't have one half of the screen full and the rest mixed-purpose). Much easier to use a tiler like divvy or BetterSnapTool.
Then again I find windows' tiling just as useless as macos' though it's less prescriptive, I use PowerToys' FancyZones there.
> All hotkeys on macOS are different from the rest of the world (Windows, Linux) for no good reason
That's next-level dishonest. There are excellent reasons for it:
1. macos was first
2. macos has always dedicated its own modkey to system-level shortcuts
3. this also makes ctrl and opt (alt) much more regular and convenient
The windows key is a half-assed aping of it.
> And no, switching Cmd to Ctrl doesn’t solve it
Things like controlling and moving windows is not supported without third party app.
Thus macOS is a more mouse centric operating system, but at the same time macOS has by default fewer mouse settings too (eg speed vs acceleration)
There is a reason they’re different, and it’s because those are the shortcuts that macs have used since 1985. It would extremely upsetting to Mac userbase if all of the sudden shortcuts were wincloned.
I also think that most Mac shortcuts make more sense in the modern context; they’re nearly all mnemonic (e.g. Cmd+W to close a window and Cmd+Q to quit) whereas Windows shortcuts are more arbitrary and rooted in limitations of legacy platforms (Alt+F4 doesn’t mean anything to someone new to computers, for instance).
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you switch tabs with ctrl+tab but close a tab with cmd+w on macOS. How is that not arbitrary and not based on a limitation on a legacy platform?
Ctrl-Tab at least builds on the concept of [modifier]-tab cycling tabs, and Cmd-W makes sense for closing browser tabs because there tabs are functionally the “windows” you’re working with most often.
I've never come across this? Do you use some xwindows app that lays characters right on the borders or something?
> Mac os doesn't come with a compose key feature built-in
There is is pretty handy, built-in, text replacement tool.
Settings -> Keyboard -> Text
Here are my top "compose" shortcuts "_shrug -> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" and "_stare -> ಠ_ಠ" :)
He responded with several follow up questions, but nothing came of it unfortunately… Hopefully it’s on someone’s task list somewhere
My kingdom for a way to cmd-tab through all windows. Truly horrific stuff.
Enjoy!
I actually use it for the opposite function—to make cmd+` better at switching between windows within the same app—but it works great as an alternative cmd+tab if “window switcher” fits your mental model better than “app switcher”.
Why there isn't just an option to have cmd-tab show all windows is beyond me. As someone with sometimes several browser windows and often dozens of terminals open, this is just so painful.
1. Install Yabai
2. install skhd
3. disable SIP (ugh): https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki/Disabling-System-I...
4. add `f13 : yabai -m space --focus prev` and `f14 : yabai -m space --focus next` to your `~/.skhdrc` file.
1 - https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/14001/how-to-turn-...
Yet with all of this effort I still went back to linux after a year (Arch with Qtile and Gnome). What really killed macos for me was the fact that animations could not be disabled entirely and everything felt like it's behind several ms of a delay. I work on the move so I don't have the luxury of multi-screen setup so switching between programs, workspaces and windows is the most important part of my workflow - it just drove me nuts.
Now I run simple Lenovo yoga laptop with arch+qtile+gnome and honestly, my performance at work at least doubled. That's my anecdote anyway.
1 - https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai
2 - https://github.com/Granitosaurus/macos-compose
3 - https://github.com/Granitosaurus/choosem