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Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

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Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#251

Post by slantyyz »

DavideNL wrote: post #190
mrweasel wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not exactly sure why this happens, but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated. In my view, Windows 10 is still miles away in consistency across the entire system, compared to macOS. Windows 10 actually made it worse, because it's trying to accommodate both Windows 7 and Windows 8 design. Currently I don't think we have alternatives to macOS. I understand that I sou…

> but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated Same here! Also i start to suffer from 'update-fatigue' when using Windows. The endless updates, reboots, and god knows what it's doing in the background which consumes resources... it all just feels so clumsy. I've never experienced anything like this in OSX.

>> The endless updates, reboots, and god knows what it's doing in the background which consumes resources...

Really? Windows has its share of hair pulling annoyances to be sure, but endless might be overstating it.

In my experience since switching, I find that resource consumption is comparable to OSX. I get that this is anecdotal, but I leave my main machines on 24-7, and I basically only reboot when an update forces me to, which sometimes is once a week (when there are frequent updates), but most of the time it is for stretches longer than two weeks.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#252

Post by jasim »

ourcat wrote: post #145
z1mm32m4n wrote: post #126

Many articles about wanting to leave the macOS ecosystem mention Sketch. Sketch is macOS only (and will be for the forseeable future), so it's understandable that people want to consider the implications of switching away from it. Recently, however, I stumbled upon Figma, a web-based, real-time collaborative interface design app (i.e., a competitor of Sketch). After convincing my group to experiment with it for a sch…

I've never really understood why people use Sketch. I recently worked on a project where I had asked for some basic vanilla templates of a mobile site from the designers and was sent a huge Sketch file. It was utterly useless and I had to code everything by hand myself, since the 'designers' very clearly had zero clue about HTML+CSS or any notion of responsiveness, thanks to apps like Sketch which teach nothing of th…

I'm a programmer like you and used to believe in the idea that you should design in the medium which is HTML and CSS, and not in a tool like Photoshop or Sketch. But I've completely reversed my stance after working with a lot of designers who create beautiful sites that goes very well with the grain of the web.

The reason is direct manipulation. You're not thinking in terms of the DOM's static flow when trying to create a design. Instead you want a medium where you can quickly transfer the idea in your head to a tangible form and try out different layouts, typography, colors, and visuals.

But there still exist the problem of converting that design into code, and that is a wasteful exercise. You might have found Protoship UIPad, a tool I'm developing (in early alpha), useful there. It can convert Sketch designs into code - HTML/CSS and even React. Sketch has been incredible for that sort of stuff. It is a vector design tool and its design elements are fully expressible through CSS and SVG, unlike say Photoshop which is a raster tool.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#253

Post by Klathmon »

hiram112 wrote: post #228
Klathmon wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gotta say I've tried to do the VM thing. I REALLY tried. But it just isn't something that will work for any significant amount of time. It would break with any updates, half the time xcode just wouldn't work, and it would sometimes be so slow that you'd need to wait minutes for some fancy animation to run. And this wasn't even to get around buying a MacBook, we had one, I just wanted to compile and sign a hybrid ap…

I've also tried to use a Linux VM on Widnows due to issues with Node, paths in various Scala libs, and a dozen other problems. Cygwin works for 50%, but not for everything. I've tried Win 10 with Subsystem for Linux (Ubuntu Bash) and unfortunately it is not even close to production ready. Besides, I'm terribly disappointed with Win 10 after having been really happy with Windows 7 since its release. Running a few Java…

I have also been disappointed with the Bash-On-Ubuntu-On-Windows thing from MS. It seems like they fixed a lot of the frustrating issues recently but it's gonna take a few months for it to get to stable so it's still a non-option for me as well.

But i've had extremely good results by using the terminal and "GNU-ish tools" provided by "git for windows" which has worked fantastically. I can interop with the windows system perfectly, I get all my favorite tools like git, cat, sed, grep, awk, all the bash shell stuff, and ssh and more, and it looks a lot nicer than the default cmd.

Until the interop with the "host" windows system is better, and they push the fixes to the missing features like inotify and some others, I'm gonna stick with that.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#254

Post by lightbyte »

DavideNL wrote: post #190
mrweasel wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not exactly sure why this happens, but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated. In my view, Windows 10 is still miles away in consistency across the entire system, compared to macOS. Windows 10 actually made it worse, because it's trying to accommodate both Windows 7 and Windows 8 design. Currently I don't think we have alternatives to macOS. I understand that I sou…

> but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated Same here! Also i start to suffer from 'update-fatigue' when using Windows. The endless updates, reboots, and god knows what it's doing in the background which consumes resources... it all just feels so clumsy. I've never experienced anything like this in OSX.

I think you are exaggerating a tad. I have my W10 set to the fast-lane for preview updates and I still do not get updates very often.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#255

Post by morganvachon »

wolfgke wrote: post #202
mrweasel wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not exactly sure why this happens, but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated. In my view, Windows 10 is still miles away in consistency across the entire system, compared to macOS. Windows 10 actually made it worse, because it's trying to accommodate both Windows 7 and Windows 8 design. Currently I don't think we have alternatives to macOS. I understand that I sou…

> In my view, Windows 10 is still miles away in consistency across the entire system In my view GNU/Linux distributions are still miles away from Windows 10 in consistency across the entire system.

One of the reasons I use Elementary OS despite my ambivalence towards systemd is the consistency. It's not your typical Linux desktop experience, it's much more cohesive than Windows or even macOS. I have my main workstation booting both Windows 10 (which I do enjoy) and Elementary, and I find myself only booting into Windows to play certain Steam games that won't install on Linux.

Give Elementary a go, you may be surprised.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#256

Post by slantyyz »

z1mm32m4n wrote: post #126

Many articles about wanting to leave the macOS ecosystem mention Sketch. Sketch is macOS only (and will be for the forseeable future), so it's understandable that people want to consider the implications of switching away from it. Recently, however, I stumbled upon Figma, a web-based, real-time collaborative interface design app (i.e., a competitor of Sketch). After convincing my group to experiment with it for a sch…

Affinity Designer is now cross platform and is starting to provide some of the functionality of Sketch. I don't think can handle Sketch files yet, but it's definitely an up and coming design tool.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#257

Post by morganvachon »

rahkiin wrote: post #224
untog wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Because OS X pesters me about pending updates via the App Store all the time, and the only deferment option it provides is "wait until tonight".

Except it will tell you and you can say no. On Windows, you can only extend the actual reboot, sometimes, and that within 30 seconds. If you go for a pee, you might return to a rebooting machine.

Sounds like you need to specify your active hours. See these settings in the Windows Update settings panel:

http://imgur.com/VfcdIEd

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#258

Post by kps »

sudhirj wrote: post #15

Trying to do exactly the same thing - I still have a maxed out rMBP 2013 that works great, so setting up alternatives now before I'm forced to. The Intel Skull Canyon NUC is what I'm using, with Elementary running on Virtualbox in Windows 10 (waiting for the Samsung 960 EVO to sell globally before setting up a native install). The one massive problem for me that keeps me going back to the laptop is that the Mac absol…

  > The one massive problem for me that keeps me going back to the laptop
  > is that the Mac absolutely nailed keyboard layout by separating
  > the command and control keys.
The saddest thing is that *nix systems generally did likewise, before the this-is-finally-the-year-of-desktop-Linux crowd arrived to insist on imitating every Windows mistake. No one else was boneheaded enough to screw up the Control key's function of generating control characters.

Traditional X11 programs have (had) fully configurable key bindings in their app-defaults.

Today, KDE (and other Qt) programs at least allow individually changing shortcuts to use Super. Qt has an internal switch to use Super everywhere, but it's hard-coded to the Mac platform. Perhaps eventually there will be enough pressure from OS X refugees to make it a user configurable setting.

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