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Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

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

#81

Post by ivraatiems »

Cowicide wrote: post #43
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…

What makes Windows 10 better than macOS Sierra, in your opinion? I use both every day for similar projects and find that Windows 10 is lacking compared to Sierra overall.

Despite my bellyaching, Windows is built on much more solid ground than macOS is these days. All the new stuff introduced in 8/10 - Metro stuff, control panel stuff, etc. - can be wacky, but the core OS is strong. It works, it doesn't crash, it acts the way you expect it to. That's all I really want from a desktop OS, and given that Apple has total control over their ecosystem, they are frighteningly bad at providing it.

What areas do you find W10 to be lacking in?

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

#82

Post by johndoe4589 »

> The progress in macOS land has basically been dead since Yosemite, two years ago,

And the progress on Windows's side is what exactly?

For the end users, instead of business corporations, practically nothing changes. I swear every freaking version of Windows nearly everything about the user experience is similar to before. It looks nicer at first glance, but once you open some apps, particularly the windows apps like msconfig, disk management and such, you find yourself with UI from ten years ago.

Just look at the file copy window. What a joke. They made it look a bit nicer, they added a fancy animation while copying, but really, it didn't change at all. It stills sucks majorly at giving you a proper estimate of the time it will take to copy a file.

The single biggest change for me in Windows 7 was the ability to use Win + to switch quickly between apps. It's incredibly useful, and thart's pretty much the ONLY real change in may day to day experience of Windows compared to earlier versions.

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

#83

Post by wtbob »

If someone wants a good development platform and is leaving the Mac, why not switch to Linux rather than Windows? Windows is IMHO not pleasant to use: the ads, the UI, the lack of speed. Linux is ad-free, pleasant & beautiful (with StumpWM anyway; Unity, GNOME & KDE aren't so great), and blazingly fast. Plus it's free software.

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

#84

Post by mdekkers »

coldtea wrote: post #31
addicted wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it makes sense. But it also indicates that Apple isn't really designing for the Mac as the author points out. I mean, Siri is the biggest feature Apple is touting for Sierra ( http://www.apple.com/macos/sierra/ ). And as you point out, it's something that doesn't even make all that much sense on the Mac.

> But it also indicates that Apple isn't really designing for the Mac as the author points out. Maybe they don't but I don't see them doing anything major on the iOS side either. Both platforms are quite mature by now anyway. (And Apple was never about revolutionary new designs and jumps. Back in the day of the iPod and early MBPs etc, we cheered and waited anxiously for at best incremental changes -- now it has USB,…

Apple was never about revolutionary new designs and jumps.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple

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

#85

Post by diego_moita »

It is so funny to read these Apple vs. Windows discussions when you live outside of North America...

The truth is that, for the rest of the world, "Apple platform" means only iOS, only the IPhone, nothing more.

In Asia, Africa, Latin America and some parts of Europe, Macs and OSX are a rare species, most people spend years without even seeing a Mac computer "in the wild". They are used only for graphics editing and IPhone development.

These discussions only show how exotic HN is, a Silicon Valey bubble.

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

#86

Post by Asooka »

hossbeast wrote: post #19

Probably switching from macOs to Arch Linux soon myself

I use Arch myself, but at this point I'm absolutely convinced I do so only because I'm a masochist. I work as a C++ dev on a large multiplatform project and from what I've observed there is almost nothing that Linux does better than Windows for a person looking to do work on his computer. The only two things I would miss if I switched to Windows right now are rr (Mozilla's record and replay debugger) and ccache.

Linux can definitely fare better as a server OS, allowing you to hit higher concurrent connections, etc. But while it has a strong focus as far as providing a fast and robust platform, it completely lacks any focus, coherence and direction in being a tool used by humans, i.e. a Desktop OS. I kind of like dealing with it and make good money doing so, but I would never recommend anyone switch to Linux.

At this point it's a bit like that old joke about Stroustrup making C++ complicated because C was too easy and the jobs didn't pay enough - if I wasn't 100% certain of the sheer hubris present in everyone involved, I'd chalk up all the problems to "we want to minimize the number of Linux devs so they can be higher paid".

Note, I'm not calling anyone stupid - all the people involved are highly intelligent, but it works out like that experiment where you get 100 monkeys banging randomly at typewriters to produce the works of Shakespeare; except here the monkeys are professors with PhDs in literature, each of which has a different, very well thought-out idea of how best to fix it. Then some poor sods bundle it all up and you get Fedorio and Debliet with instructions on the cover like "if you want to read about Romeo's sidequest of slaying a dragon, turn to page 1257" and a few of the pages are blank so you can stitch up the story in exactly the way you want it. Some people like that. The rest of you, please save your sanity, just go to the library and check out Winter's Tale or Macbeth.

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

#87

Post by maxxxxx »

owenwil wrote: post #15
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.

Why not spin it around the other way? What advantages does Mac now have over Windows, in a world where Microsoft is catering to developers from both sides?

I work on Windows and have a Mac at home. Windows looks cool at first but when you actually need a workhorse the MacBook is still the best option in my view. Windows 10 and the Surface Book look really nice on paper but once you start using them they have a lot of little problems that make an unpleasant experience.

So in my book the Mac is still best but I also agree that the direction Apple is going doesn't look too promising.

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

#88

Post by makecheck »

quinndupont wrote: post #34

I'm in the same boat (with everyone, it seems). One remaining big differentiator, for me, is the resell value and service support of Macs. I can use a Mac for three full years, under warranty, and then turn around and sell it used the day AppleCare expires. And, I can regularly get 50-60% of original sale price (realizing that I've also sunk $300 for AppleCare and taxes). After three years, you'd be hard pressed to g…

While that has been true in general for Macs, is that going to be true for Touch Bar Macs?

They are more expensive to buy, not really “great” over their predecessors, and there is no doubt that some future-generation Touch Bar 2 with a feedback engine, etc. will be far superior to use (kind of like buying an iPad 1 with not enough memory, being too heavy, etc. and iPad 2 blowing it out of the water, not to mention Apple unceremoniously ending OS support for iPad 1). These first-generation Touch Bar laptops will really age poorly I think, I doubt they will resell as well as Macs typically have.

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

#89

Post by jsgo »

coldtea wrote: post #31
addicted wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it makes sense. But it also indicates that Apple isn't really designing for the Mac as the author points out. I mean, Siri is the biggest feature Apple is touting for Sierra ( http://www.apple.com/macos/sierra/ ). And as you point out, it's something that doesn't even make all that much sense on the Mac.

> But it also indicates that Apple isn't really designing for the Mac as the author points out. Maybe they don't but I don't see them doing anything major on the iOS side either. Both platforms are quite mature by now anyway. (And Apple was never about revolutionary new designs and jumps. Back in the day of the iPod and early MBPs etc, we cheered and waited anxiously for at best incremental changes -- now it has USB,…

I'm sure they'll figure it out at some point, but the mystique of Apple only releasing something when it was "ready" has been over for a while now. So not only did it come later, it was less evolved than the Windows implementation a year prior. Cortana felt useful from day one for various tasks. Siri? Only in a subset cases.

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

#90

Post by reavon »

Same here. I gave up 2 years ago and went Fedora on my laptop and Android on my phones.

Currently I have a Thinkpad X1 Carbon running Fedora 25 (Gnome 3) and do not miss OS X at all. Gnome 3 is very clean.

I have a Google Pixel XL. All I can say about it is wow

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