Windows has adverts in the start menu!
Desktop Linux GUI is still painful and really only suitable for those who love to tinker.
Since I moved to Mac from Windows I’m thankful for macOS even if it could be better, it’s still much more usable than the alternatives.
I find myself spending more time on my professional work and less time fixing driver issues or fighting annoying in OS ads.
Also, with regards to linux, what stops you from making that the default that students onboard to? I would imagine that something like this becomes quite easy if you have a culture where group members help onboard the new ones into the ways of doing things.
It's not like we can buy them a work laptop. At least not for each undergrad.
I’ve found the following to work quite well:
Have a docker compose file setup that runs a container with all the necessary build tools and anything else.
Map home directories, /opt and anything else you want to persist as named volumes.
Run docker compose up -d
Use the remote development extension of vscode to connect to the container and develop almost as if it was local.
Yeah, "not the OS's fault" etc. But Windows did all of that fine.
But speaking of laptops made for Linux, a lot of modern Lenovo Thinkpads have unpatched issues with Bluetooth audio, and my coworkers are constantly fighting with that. So even us techies have an easier time with Macs.
Mac and Windows both have some great "power user" features - but I think for the average person, Ubuntu is far superior for usability.
I remember 10 years ago when my friends would use my Linux laptop and expect it to be impossible and couldn't believe how easy it was to use and figure out.
Maybe for a few rare laptops that have perfect driver support, it's on par. But this isn't a common case.
The main problem with Linux is for laptops - the power management is simply not in the same league as MacOS.
Has had like 20 different maybe-superior UXes, often 2-3 for a single distro... which in a way is worse than one bad one that you get to know well. Like, I logged into my Linux machine at work one day, and the entire UI was suddenly different, ???
I have an external Thundebolt dock that actually works. I'm not on the Xcode treadmill forcing me to update an OS because Apple dropped support. Updates are on my schedule instead of Apple's. I can use an actual standard 3D API (Vulkan) rather than the undocumented pile of crap that is Metal. My Bluetooth speakers are more reliable than they were on macOS. I can set my monitor resolutions without buying a dumbass Mac App. My printing system never gets confused forcing me to reinstall all my printers. I can go on and on.
Is it flawless? No. About once a week, my cursor response goes to absolute shit for about 90 seconds for no obvious reason. Occasionally, I hit one of the Wayland corner cases. Lots of software still doesn't run on Linux--so I have to keep a Windows box floating around, but I had to do that even with macOS. I've had 2 hangs over the last 12 months.
But, overall, while I can list grievances about my Macs endlessly, I have to actually think hard about what has genuinely pissed me off about Ubuntu.
I'm not going to deny anyone's experiences because when that's done to me I just get pissed off. In addition, I made a point to buy somewhat more expensive hardware that was a decent match to Ubuntu (better quality laptop, i5 for better thermal performance, max RAM and SSD). I'm just providing a counterpoint that for some of us Linux is a better environment than Windows or macOS.
It's such a convenient way to manage the desktop space and credit to System76 for making it available to other Gnome-based distros.
For what it’s worth, this is only true if you buy a device with poor Linux support which is kind of like buying a hackintosh and complaining about how much tinkering OSX requires. If you buy a good Linux box and put Fedora or PopOS on there, I think you’ll be productive instantly.
My biased 2 cents.
Nah it works completely fine. There is no photoshop, yes, but stuff does work.
Headset does not work on Windows: “This is crap, I’ll tell everybody I know to stay away from these headphones!”
My comment was in reply to someone saying Linux just works without needing to tinker, and as much as I’d prefer to be using a Linux based laptop, those are 3 things I have spent countless hours tinkering with to try and get working without success.
If not, then why do you do that for Linux?
I don’t encounter such laptops except when they run Linux.
Other OSes have their own litany of issues, however the topic under discussion was how well Linux just worked without tinkering, and these things are still pain points for Linux that I don’t encounter on other platforms.
This is not to imply that Linux is bad out that you shouldn’t use it, just that it is still not tinker free.
My point is that yes you do. You just immediately attribute the problem to the other parts, not to Windows. Myriads of Windows users everywhere have all sorts of problems with all sorts of hardware, and everyone just accepts it as some sort of problem that they’re having. But a problem where Linux is involved somewhere? Then it’s suddenly Linux which is prone to problems.
No I don't.
This was running the latest Ubuntu at the time (20, and then 21).
Perhaps things have changed in the last year?
This is still the case. I was just trying to get this to work. You can't use the mic on a Bluetooth headset. There's supposedly a workaround that requires you to install and run a smartphone software stack on your laptop, but I could never get it to work.
Is this supposed to work on Mac? Does it need configuring? Is it something I need to enable? I always had to remove and reinsert the power cord to wake a sleeping docked Macbook.
My Samson G-Track Pro USB microphone does not get recognised on M1 Macs. It worked fine on a previous Intel Mac.
- Ads to try Apple Music free for a month.
- Ads to try News+
- Ads to try Fitness+
- Try Safari (if it’s not your default browser)
- Try/log into iCloud if you’re not logged into iCloud.
- Try the latest macOS release if you aren’t on it.
As an aside, you do not want to even log into the Mac App Store with a personal account on a work computer.
Logging into just the Mac App Store effectively logs you into your iCloud on that machine and sensitive personal data is then strewn across various files under ~/Library. The iCloud sysprefs will claim you are not logged into iCloud but ~/Library will show you the truth.
In addition to that, what personal data are you talking about in your last paragraph?
Not sure if OSX is like that, though, as I haven’t used it much in the last few years.
Is there an option like that on Windows?
The old macOS provided that the new Mac, not so much.
Likewise, if I just want to play music, and I decline the free introductory offer of an Apple Music subscription, why does it keep offering?
Like newsletter popups, having something get between me and what I want to do is annoying.
It’s the creeping “Not right now”, “Maybe later”, “We’ll in your face again after a random timer” bullshit I hate.
Frankly, I am rather pessimistic with the industry as a whole. Problems never seem to stay solved. There is constant churn, constant disruption of workflow and UI patterns. Constant change for its own sake and no reflection on what is really important.
Windows is… not for me either.
It seems like after a certain level of complexity product design is a very difficult thing to do.
My guess is that few people have the skill to really get product refinement just right over the long term. So you end up with either stagnation, where people are afraid to improve things or random unnecessary changes that make stuff worse.
Linux I find what's painful about it is that some things will always be kind of broken, for me it was bluetooth, I used bluetooth all the time, it did work, but I had to fight it into submission fucking daily. Windows? My goto example of what a shitshow windows is by far is the incoherent settings menus, and generally whereas Android and iOS and MacOS and Linux and all the OSes people actually use follow a lot of similar conventions Microsoft is SUPER SPECIAL and of course must do everything in their own unique way.
KDE is pretty nice.
I'm sure that Apple would put ads in the Mac App Store if it were profitable for Apple. But it's likely not a big enough market to be worth it.
Well, there is now.
What exactly are you moving on to? Ubuntu? Windows?
Behind macOS is the most valuable company in the world adding fixes, features and security patches. There isn’t any other computing solution today that can deliver what Apple does.
My long-term solution is building my own desktop environment that is inspired by the classic Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, but also takes ideas from OpenDoc, Smalltalk environments, the Symbolics Genera Lisp machine OS, and Plan 9 (itself influenced by Project Oberon when it comes to the GUI) to form an environment that encourages flexible, programmable tools built from smaller components but can be arranged to create complete software solutions, kind of like how a painter arranges colors and tools. Unfortunately I’m still early in the design phase and I have no code to share, and this is also a side project since I work full-time as a researcher and thus I can’t devote my full time to this, but I hope that by 2024 I’ll have an early version working and released.
I am inspired by the vision of personal computing pioneers like Alan Kay, and I hate to see personal computing being transformed from user empowerment to platforms for selling services and serving ads to a captive audience.
It's like we're going from 'bicycles for the mind' to 'mass transit for the mind', where more people than ever are going places, but the bus doesn't go exactly where you want at the time you want to go there, the seats aren't adjustable, the other passengers are sometimes annoying or even dangerous, and nothing is under your control or at your convenience.
I'm also beginning to see that those of us who were lucky enough to experience the individual empowerment granted by the original vision of personal computing must work to keep it going, else we end up with the kind of world that personal computing was reacting against.
Good luck with your project.
I've considered just building a true maclike DE myself but the process of getting a garden variety traditional floating window manager for Wayland set up makes my head spin, even with things like wl-roots existing. It doesn't feel the least bit accessible to someone used to building consumer-facing native desktop/mobile apps.
How come macOS magically just happened to work the way you liked it to? Answer: It didn’t, you just adjusted yourself to use macOS, but now you’ve ossified and think everything not what you grew up with is unnatural.
The only intuitive interface is the nipple. And even grasping that interface can be a difficult task for a baby.
(After reading that, I have to append; no pun intended.)
That's what you're missing.
You're required to sign in for updates so they can track you. No software patches without monitoring, I guess.
No way to remove iTunes or stop Safari from trying to take over again and again. Even if you don't want music to open that way.
Steve Balmer would be proud.
Remember 2005-8 when you tried Ubuntu for the first time and were wowed with Compiz Fusion compared to the drab Windows XP/Vista/etc window management?
That's the feeling you get every time you step away from MacOs finder and the atrocious Mac window manager.
You shouldn't need a 3rd party plugin to manage window placement. It shouldn't be difficult to navigate to a directory via a path or run a program or have the file browser automatically resize its icon view. But that's Mac.
This hasn't been my experience. macOS still incessantly bothers you about OS updates even if you decline signing into an Apple account during first-boot, and you can download major release updaters independently from the Mac Store (e.g. using the script from OSX-KVM).
Command-Shift-G my friend.
> or run a program
Spotlight? (Command-space) Or Mission Control? (Control-space for me, but I think I customized that)
> have the file browser automatically resize its icon view
You want a window to automatically make the icons bigger if you resize the window to be bigger? No idea how to make that happen.
If it’s a feature you want, and there are multiple ways of handling it, why not go with a third party app with a windows placement scheme that works for you? I do.
>It shouldn't be difficult to navigate to a directory via a path or run a program
It’s not. I bet I can run any program on my Mac in 6 keystrokes or less. I easily navigate via paths.
>have the file browser automatically resize its icon view.
Personally this sounds like an extreme edge case preference to me. I would hate this behavior
fwiw safari is the no 1 worst browser i have ever used, as a developer. it's hot garbage. not the renderer, the browser itself and its dev tools.
plus you need an apple account and a 10 trillion gb xcode install just to port your chrome extension to safari, what a joke.
and every couple of years apple decides to drop backwards compatibility for X number of products/services you've been happily using because they need to sell new machines or something.
I’m a tech junkie, I’ve had it all. Doesn’t get better than Apple
We noticed.
I’ve used all the platforms. Windows and android are incompetent, poorly designed, serve the user LAST, poorly updated, insecure, spying on you, and annoying AF to use. Worse than nothing. Worse than no computer or phone at all.
If you can't listen, your punishment is to keep using imitation product. Harsh. But it is what it is.
The only OS I don't have much experience with is iOS. I've stayed with Android the whole time - largely with Samsung. A high end Samsung phone is an absolute powerhouse, while also looking pretty sleek, if I may say so. I personally think that iOS and iPhones are quite limiting in certain ways. But I would never knock on someone for using iOS. The OS and the phone look very nice and trendy, the whole experience is very well optimized and, at least in the U.S., you'll get certain social perks by having one. Even for older folks, it could be a great choice, because their grandkids will be able to fix most problems that could arise in their phones.
Let me revisit a prior point about iPhones - they're not very customizable. On my Samsung, I have a number of customizations: a custom "launcher" ("Nova"), which enables me to tweak things like icon sizes, density, and many many other things (my favorite feature is to use a custom icon set). I could easily keep naming countless other aspects that Android allows me to customize, even if I only customize a few of them. The default experience of a Samsung phone is quite solid, other than maybe having a few too many Samsung-specific apps pre-installed (though at least I never buy through a carrier, so I don't have to worry about any of that bloat). But it's very trivial to nerf them by disabling them or even simply uninstalling them using "pm-uninstall" through ADB. For me, it takes maybe 20 minutes total to apply various tweaks I like to a brand new phone. I have them all written down neatly and they haven't changed much for a while, so applying those customizations is not bother for me at all. But for others? It would be an unimaginable punishment. Many people prefer to buy an iPhone not only for all the benefits I listed out earlier, but also because it is more restrictive. Because of this, you don't have to deal with any of the 'pain' of trying to decide what should be customized and whether you should do so in the first place. But would I judge anyone for taking either route: 1) a Samsung that you customize to a reasonable extent - without rooting or unlocking the bootloader - vs 2) an iPhone that is effectively at stock settings, other than the apps you've downloaded? No, I absolutely would not. Which brings me to my last point..
I think we live in amazing times in terms of technology (aside from the obvious issues related to privacy and social media, which are discussed at great lengths here and elsewhere). We have many choices in terms of hardware and software and our devices can do things we could hardly fathom a few decades ago. I rather arbitrarily chose to focus on smart phones in my rant, but I could have easily discussed laptops, desktops, servers, or some other type of device to make the same point. So I say, "Live and let live."
macOS user experience continues to be driven from the UI design group and executives, as it always has been.
Feel free to criticize the design direction, but understand that it’s fully top-down intentional, not something that just happens because individual software engineering positions are suddenly filled with non-Mac people. That’s not how it works.
macOS is designed by UI designers.
In comparison, Google was a relative "newcomer" in the late 1990s. Google and Apple control nearly 100% of the consumer mobile OS market.
There are no challengers. 3 companies own all of personal computing.
Oh yeah, these companies also collectively control the web browsers: Chrome, Safari, Edge. And they control the search engines: Google, Bing. (Google leveraged its search monopoly to achieve a mobile monopoly, which is how it crowded into Microsoft and Apple's world.)
Now they are all the same.
If they play their cards right...
I doubt it, new companies spring up like mushrooms when fields gets disruptively innovated, but big companies tend to stay otherwise.
Can see it here, lots of shifts in the biggest companies the first half, while the second half is dominated by Apple, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, Facebook and Amazon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSuloaATQRA
Or ask yourself, when was the last time a new American car brand was created? Tesla thanks to the electric car disruption, but other than Tesla it was a very long time ago. Same thing will happen in software once disruptive events get less common.
Then I thought vacuum cleaners have existed for a while now. There’s the Whirlwind, Bissel, Kirby, Electrolux, Hoover, Oreck, Dyson, and most recently iRobot. Each generation had their brand.
We’re living through cycles and computers with operating systems are no different. With all the Chromebooks floating around in schools today, I bet you’ll have a generation of kids who will do everything on a web browser in the cloud and won’t complain about not having an exposed filesystem.
My favorite is one vacuum tech who said Dyson’s biggest innovation was having a clear chamber that showed you the moving dust. Not much utility, but great product marketing.
But because this is HN, I look forward to a grizzled vacuum industry veteran coming by to put me in my place.
…Or a wet behind the ears vacuum industry rookie who read a Wikipedia article yesterday
A consumer level OS on the other hand is extremely expensive to develop and basically free to copy, so the advantage of scale is extreme, you wont see that level of competition there.
Those that first put out Apple HIG, along with other software UX expert left as well. After Tim Cook fired Scott Forstall and named Jony as the CDO.
There are nonetheless many of the old guard still there — presumably navigating the Swift-UI transition.
And Craig Federighi is, in my opinion, a very capable captain to be steering the OS ship for Apple.
Apple is hiring tons of fresh new SWEs who have no understanding, nor desire to understand "The Mac Way".
I'm not saying this is right or wrong, the world needs to move on, but it's a punch to my nostalgic gut.
If you're hanging onto the Mac out of some belief that Apple will re-find their way WRT macOS, don't. That train left the station years ago. It's past time to move on.