> and yet people love apple

That doesn't minimise the impact of open-source software.

I've yet to see an Apple user who doesn't install brew as a first step before doing anything with their computer.

From what I see, people may love Apple's OS, but they can't use it with without open-source tools.

> I've yet to see an Apple user who doesn't install brew as a first step before doing anything with their computer.

Most Apple users don't even know what brew is, and I'd be willing to bet that most devs using Macs don't install it either.

Anyway, the larger point that gnome can't succeed because it doesn't offer "choice" is nonsense.

I know exactly zero developers that use a Mac without homebrew installed.

I didn't say it can't succeed. Just that KDE is a better (and more powerful) desktop. Gnome obviously suits some people The problem is the people whom it doesn't suit, they can't change anything. They are beholden to the choices made by Gnome's developer team. That will never suit everyone. Of course extensions are a thing but they tend to cause conflicts between them and not be updated to work with newer Gnome versions quickly enough.

I moved away from Apple too for this reason in fact.

People love Apple because it makes very high quality hardware, and its software is generally very reliable. They don't really like that you can't configure things. They just put up with it.

There's a whole industry of little apps that let you fix things about MacOS that doesn't really exist on Windows. Rectangle, Karabiner Elements, SteerMouse, SteerMouse, etc.

Gnome copies the worst things about MacOS.

My macbook had severe cooling problems, which became worse when the fan broke.

Apple are designed to look cool, not to BE cool.

Yes

Because Preview works, KPDF works and Gview behaved weird or in the wrong way most of the time

Apple builds the automatic car by removing the gear shift, Gnome builds it by removing the gas pedal and just having a button called "Go" which makes you go at 10mph

Not my experience. I have a Gnome desktop that maybe a Gnome developer have a hard time to recognize as such. It works as I want and I keep the convenience of being able to Google problems and solutions of a mainstream desktop (KDE being the other one) and not a more or less obscure one.

This means that under the hood, using extensions, you can customize that Gnome car. Can an Apple automatic car do that as easily?

It's good that you can do this, but most people prefer the default experience instead of fiddling with customizations to make it more special. And yes, fiddling and customizing is cool, when you have time.

So between the Apple automatic and Gnome "pick customizations" I know which one I prefer (and yes Apple does have extensions, settings, etc). Yes, there won't be a perfect solution and sometimes you kinda miss some minor thing but it is minor.

For example, looking at: https://extensions.gnome.org/#page=2 there's Date and Time formatter (you can do that in Apple) and "Sound Input & Output Device Chooser" which you can do by going in settings in Apple - but it doesn't matter most of the time because the out of box experience works almost perfectly

I do use Sound Input & Output Device Chooser. Great improvement over the default.

If I'll ever buy a Mac (and I can't imagine why) I'd want to totally change its windows management and make it as close as possible to Gnome 2 and Windows XP, with virtual desktops (Gnome 2 had them.) I would probably disable all gestures except scrolling and zooming.

I'd also shed tears about the lack of physical buttons on the touchpad but that starts to be about the hardware, which is off-topic.

Extensions aren't great though. I tried using Gnome that way for a while but some extensions cause conflicts between one another and in many cases they are not updated in a timely manner when a new gnome version comes out.

In contrast, KDE also supports extensions but I've never needed any because it's so configurable.

> Apple builds the automatic car by removing the gear shift

Which, btw, means that you can never overtake anyone while going up, unless your engine is 2x of the power it'd need with gears.

It means it is an automatic car, not that you're stuck in the same gear

Is this another comment from someone who tried linux for 20 minutes ~30 years ago and since then keeps parroting reddit comments?