Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#71

Post by smt88 » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 6:32 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #41

I'm not 100% happy with where Apple is at, but I don't think I ever was. But I'm not going to switch. I get the slickest hardware, great battery life, the best touchpad and keyboard, and a hi-resolution screen that doesn't have battery life, flicker, tint, or scaling issues. Windows is still...Windows. The bash subsystem is half-baked. Windows itself is still the same mess. Docking is still a joke. Performance is ter…

Are you sure you're working off of recent, in-depth Windows experience?

> I get the slickest hardware, great battery life, the best touchpad and keyboard, and a hi-resolution screen that doesn't have battery life, flicker, tint, or scaling issues.

None of these things are universal among Windows machines. I can't remember which model, but a Verge review recently said that a Windows laptop had surpassed the best Mac (in terms of hardware quality).

> display scaling is a joke

It's fine. Everything works and looks good. Sometimes you use legacy apps (which is a feature of Windows -- legacy apps still work) that don't handle scaling well, but the OS helps resolve those issues.

> Performance is terrible

Reviewers, people on this thread, and I have all reported Windows being much snappier than OS X. I actually switched to Windows for performance alone. I hate not having a bash terminal, but it's better than using buggy, slow OS X.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#72

Post by Cowicide » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 6:32 PM UTC

randiantech wrote: post #12

Yeah, as a MBP 15 owner, Im sure my next in home computer will be a Windows 10. In my MBP, Bootcamp with w10 works much faster than OSX.

What's faster, specifically? I'm running both and they're both equally snappy even though the macOS has superior functionality with Mission Control, etc. compared to Windows half-baked, recent copy of the functionality.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#73

Post by intrasight » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 6:32 PM UTC

As a jack-of-all-trades developer, I use both Windows and MacOS. But I "left" MacOS (meaning isn't my "desktop") over twenty years ago when Windows NT became solid. I'd use it more if I was able to run it as a VM like I do all my other OSs.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#74

Post by eptcyka » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 6:34 PM UTC

bobsam wrote: post #56

hossbeast wrote: post #19

Probably switching from macOs to Arch Linux soon myself

Why is arch so popular among switchers? It is not very user friendly and requires manual work to set up unlike, say, ubuntu

Whilst it may not be easy to setup (but I'd argue it's more tedious than hard), it gets out of your way once it's up and running. And, since it's rolling and not release based, once it's setup, you barely ever have to change anything about it. At least that is why I've chosen to use arch. Well, that and recent GCC releases.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#75

Post by AsyncAwait » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 6:34 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #41

I'm not 100% happy with where Apple is at, but I don't think I ever was. But I'm not going to switch. I get the slickest hardware, great battery life, the best touchpad and keyboard, and a hi-resolution screen that doesn't have battery life, flicker, tint, or scaling issues. Windows is still...Windows. The bash subsystem is half-baked. Windows itself is still the same mess. Docking is still a joke. Performance is ter…

> Somehow I shut my laptop off and it booted backup to a failure message, I had to make another bootable USB and go online to find out how to do a fsck. I was using external monitors without issue for a month, and then one day the configuration changed to a point where I couldn't even use the laptop with it's built-in display. The sound and volume controls are a joke. I was prevented from installing any packages because of an issue with a package from Google.

A bit of a rant ahead, but I am really tired of people still treating Linux like it's 1997 or expecting it to work like their old OS did and then running into silly problems that none of us, who actually spend our day in Linux, run into.

These problems sound more like inexperience in using Linux to me than anything else. fsck works automatically after a power failure, configuration doesn't override itself and installing a package from the web, while not a great way of doing things, definitely does not prevent you from installing other packages, unless you somehow broke a whole lot of other stuff by deleting dependencies without really understanding what you were doing.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#76

Post by edko » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 6:34 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #6

Agreed on Apple dropping the ball. But Windows 10, while certainly better than modern OS X or Windows 8 does not have the stability or adherence to well-tested design that Windows 7 had. W10 has seen serious quality assurance issues[1], partly as a result of Microsoft cutting large amounts of QA testers as it switched development methodologies. This has lead to an immense number of mistakes, bugs, and unhandled cases…

I do not agree that Windows is better than OS X. In my own personal opinion, I feel strongly it is the other way around. However, that is only a personal opinion. The Windows alternative clearly wins when it comes to hardware: you can choose the components you want, at competitive prices, and you can update them whenever you want. Also, Apple hardware's aesthetic advantage is not as big as it used to be. Many manufacturers can create thin pretty laptops now.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#77

Post by klurriplurrr » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

Hilarious rant!

* talks about developing VR apps, shows screenshot of editing html

* complains about lack of innovation in macOS, has zero ideas of things he lacks

* praises slack for being a great windows app

* is impressed by bash for windows

* never considered using Linux

check, check & check!

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#78

Post by coldtea » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

RileyKyeden wrote: post #61

coldtea wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forcing phone features into a desktop and slowly turning the desktop into iOS is not a good thing. Siri, maybe, but there's nothing about an FS or a programming language like Swift that makes them a "phone feature". Same for memory compression (which only exists on the Mac IIRC) and continuity (which would be useful even if it only worked from Mac to Mac). If anything Apple has adamantly refused to "force phone fea…

> Same for memory compression (which only exists on the Mac IIRC) and continuity (which would be useful even if it only worked from Mac to Mac). Windows 10 has memory compression.

"On the Mac" as opposed to "also on iOS".

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#79

Post by michaelmrose » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

jmcdiesel wrote: post #23

coldtea wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Byproduct of mobile" doesn't really say much -- if anything. They support all three on Desktop systems, and they have features and APIs for both that only make sense on desktop systems too.

It says a lot. The desktop isnt a phone. Forcing phone features into a desktop and slowly turning the desktop into iOS is not a good thing. We were just fine without an app store. Just fine. I cant think of any of the "use this mobile feature on your desktop" that provides any real value...

If the mac allowed the "store" to have more than one source, allowed usage via cli and gui and didn't require a 30% cut most of your software would probably come from the store and it would be a good thing.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#80

Post by AdeptusAquinas » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

otterley wrote: post #13

The question I'm left asking from posts like these is: As a non-game developer, what practical advantages does Windows hardware and software provide over Mac? The writing doesn't make it clear to me. Sure, there are some interesting facts noted, but there's no connection drawn or relationship established between the facts and the impact on the author's ability to work, or the work product itself.

Cheaper and faster, broadly, which has been the same for as long as I remember: for an equivalent price, you can get a much more powerful PC than you can a Mac (though there are exceptions: the surface book matches up closely with a 2015 macbook pro I believe).

After that, it depends on what you are doing. I develop using a PC, macbook (for iOS builds usually) and a Linux machine (running mint).

Linux is best for Node/JS heavy development, IMO, largely because of the long filenames in Nodeland and the general linux-first documentation and help. Recently I have found its also pretty good for Dotnet Core development. The OS is nice as well as in that sort of bare-metal coding, it kind of gets out of the way.

Windows, either with VS or VS Code, is for things that require a lot of power or are huge (usually related): Docker stuff is easier, solutions with hundreds of projects, etc. When I want to throw code against a tiny god, the PC is my go to.