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Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

latimes.com

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Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#451

Post by criddell »

tluyben2 wrote: post #155
threeseed wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great if you're a Windows developer. If you aren't then congratulations your performance is cripped as you have to run everything inside a Linux VM. There are just too many open source projects that stupidly hard core path seperators or rely on UNIX binaries. Microsoft would really do well supporting a truly great UNIX layer.

I recently bought a Thinkpad to try if another platform would work. I first ran Windows 10 and found it unworkable and then installed Ubuntu, did some battery tweaking. It is great; have not touched my Mac since. Especially long battery life, swappable batteries and, for my taste, a better keyboard next to more ports is just better over all for my (full stack) dev.

How did you get great battery life from Ubuntu? I've never been able to get anything close to the runtime I get on OSX. In my experience, OSX gives me the longest batter life, second is Windows and any flavor of Linux is terrible (maybe 3-4 hours on a machine that Windows gives 5-6 hours).

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#452

Post by ctdonath »

xlayn wrote: post #349
rayiner wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparable laptops aren't really any better. The rMBP is a lot more repairable than say the Surface Book (which won't let you even open the case without possibly cracking the display). At least Apple has a battery replacement service at an advertised price--what'll Dell charge you to replace the non-servicable battery in the XPS13 or XPS15? And no other PC laptop hits that right sweet spot of power/battery/display qu…

>[1] My non-technical wife, who has a Mac, recently needed to use my work laptop. Her first reaction on seeing the screen was "wow, your firm cheaped out, huh?" I've got a totally maxed out ThinkPad T450s with i7, 20GB of RAM, and FHD IPS display. Oxymoron: tech reasons of how great your computer is; and an argument on why a non technical people don't like it.

I've concluded that spec sheets in advertising are at best excuses, and at worst lies. Most users don't care what the exact pixel count is, they just want enough pixels that everything looks great. They don't care exactly how much RAM or storage there is, so long as they don't run out of it (either "brick wall effect" or discernible slowdowns). They don't care exactly how fast the processor is, so long as it's perceived as "fast enough". If specifications are presented, it's done so precisely to convince the user "this is good enough" ... but if it was good enough, customers wouldn't be looking at those numbers to see if it's at least above some criteria indicating "well, I guess I can put up with it since you put it that way".

That's precisely why Apple doesn't give specifications for as many products as they can get away with. RAM specs are limited to regular computers. Devices with "retina" displays don't list pixel counts any more (or at least overtly so). Given how they're pushing to make storage size irrelevant on mobile devices (iCloud, dynamic app deletion/installation, Photos cloud storage, etc), I expect they'll eventually drop exact local storage specs in most ads (opting for "small/medium/large").

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#453

Post by rsync »

aantix wrote: post #164
Cartwright2 wrote: post #130

I dread helping anyone with iTunes related issues. The syncing process is dangerous, it's far too easy to wipe someone's collection of music / family photos / pictures. I'm not sure if this is an isolated issue but I start sweating bullets as soon as I have to connect an iDevice to iTunes. What really shocks me is that instead of showing a big red warning message before a destructive sync, it silently goes ahead and…

The second I see iTunes is syncing I think to myself "oh fuck, oh fuck" and look to force quit the app as soon as possible. Then I spend the next half hour looking at the connected device to ensure my collection is still there. It's part of the reason why I switched over to the (defunct) Rdio. Managing the individual iTunes music files was just too stressful.

I have no dog in this fight, since I use neither itunes nor idevices, but ...

You could 'chflag -R schg' the entire music dir, thus making it immutable - even for root - without chflagging it back.

Then there's no more syncing risk. Just saying.

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#455

Post by extropic-engine »

legitster wrote: post #173
untog wrote: post #38

I don't much care about the software - I haven't used iTunes in years, don't use Mail, etc. etc. - it's the operating system I care about. Wi-fi has been buggy on OS X for literally years now. And each new major release seems to bring some new pain point where it refuses to turn on, refuses to connect, doesn't transmit data... and on and on. There's no way Apple can't know about this - it must drive their own employe…

Wi-Fi is crappy because Apple cuts lots of corners as a way to save battery life. Roaming can be a huge drain on the battery, so disabling or reducing the frequency of certain wireless functions is a quick and dirty way to improve battery life. It's so easy to pass off wireless problems to access points, so I imagine Apple had been doing it for years before anyone noticed.

That actually sounds like a legitimate strategy. I would want the device which is plugged into the wall to handle more of the heavy lifting if it means I get an extra hour of battery life.

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#456

Post by grimmfang »

readams wrote: post #364
st3v3r wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS X lets you set default apps. I had Chrome set as my default browser for a while.

Try changing the app that launches when you press play/pause on the Mac keyboard. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Check out Magic Keys https://www.gearmusicplayer.com/extras.html

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#457

Post by S4M »

pyre wrote: post #204
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please express your opinions without using the term "brainwashing"? I think Safari and iMessages are vastly superior to Chrome and Hangouts and that doesn't make me an idiot.

Well, one thing about Safari is that upgrades seem to be tied to the OS. As a web developer, this makes testing things on different versions of Safari a bit difficult. Also, you have to upgrade the entire OS to get a new version of Safari, so if you were holding out on an OS upgrade you might be forced to upgrade if you need to test things on the latest version of Safari.

I'm not an Apple user myself, but isn't what you describe something good for web developers as it ensures that your users can only have one version of Safari, as opposite to lots of older versions of Chrome, Firefox and IE?

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#459

Post by pyrophane »

jjoonathan wrote: post #354
nostrademons wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, there are more options than just Apple and Microsoft. I was on RedHat from 1998-1999, Mandrake in 2000, back to WinXP in 2001-2002, Mandrake again from 2003-2004, XP again in 2005 but with Ubuntu running under VMWare, switched to mostly web-based apps from 2005-2007, but ended up going back to OS X Leopard (but again, with mostly webapps) in 2009. I had a System76 laptop running Ubuntu from 2013-2015, and of co…

Twice a year (after finals each semester) I would make a ritual of spending a day or two trying to install and use linux because I believed in what they were trying to do (also, package manager!). Every single time, without fail, within those first couple days I hit some sort of show-stopping bug. Sometimes the installer wouldn't work and I'd spend that time cycling through different disk tools / CDR drives / images.…

Linux hardware support, particularly on laptops, has come a long way in recent years. You should give it a go. Start with Ubuntu or Mint.

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#460

Post by mgkimsal »

givinguflac wrote: post #387
mgkimsal wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not believe in buying a new computer every two years. It wouldn't help anyway, because that damn ball spins even on new computers. I keep getting told I'm "doing too much". Apparently a $2500 laptop should be confined to no more than a handful of concurrent Apple-approved applications and nothing more... ? (and even then, you'll still get those beach balls).

I have a 2014 retina MBP and I run VMWare daily with Windows 7 and allotted 8 cores and 8 GB of RAM, leaving the same amount for the Mac side, and I never see a beachball. I always have at least two browsers with a few dozen Windows, outlook, slack, and a ton of software in the VM, and still don't have an issue. YMMV.

that's the danger in posting this sort of ancedote. there's always someone who's "never seen a beachball". It's not that I truly don't believe you, but I think you're in the minority. I see beach ball behaviour on pretty much every mac user in my coworking space daily.

Personally, I'm on my fourth mac over the last 8 years, various models, had both spinning disk and SSD, 4, 8 and 16gigs of ram. Wife has had various macs going back to ... 2002?

I can't recall a working day go by without pauses, hangs and beachballs. And... I've had the equivalent behaviour on Windows models and Linux machines going back to at least the late 90s. :(

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