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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

#91

Post by atl4s »

More FOTM moaning about the state of Apple.

I can't believe people keep reading these "I left Apple and here's why you should care" articles by front end devs with no real idea of what goes into OS dev and where macOS has come from since the days of OS8.

Give me a break, surely if you want to use Windows you don't need to write 2000 words in the form of some needlessly pronoun heavy (because your opinion is really important) diatribe telling us all about how detatched Apple is from reality and how suddenly Windows is the 'place to be' because suddeny Windows has bash support, tell me again why I should drop a fully featured, mature *nix shell for one bolted on top of Windows.

Do people get paid to write articles specifically like this or are these devs so full of their own self importance that they feel like it's their duty to inform us of their opinions on the state macOS and why it's suddenly so much worse than ever before when in reality, macOS has never been more stable or developer friendly.

It's honestly so predictable I could have guessed 90% of the content of this article just from the sensationalist headline alone.

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

#92

Post by otterley »

AdeptusAquinas wrote: post #80
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 Nod…

> Cheaper and faster, broadly

Presumably the author has already purchased the Mac, in which case, s/he's already obtaining the benefit from that purchase. To rationally justify the replacement cost (which is not just the cost of the hardware itself, but the opportunity cost of learning the new platform, purchasing new software, etc.), the benefits of switching have to be greater.

It's those benefits--not necessarily of the platform itself, but of switching--that aren't clear to me.

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

#93

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

Razengan wrote: post #21

Oh please. Not this again. I recently had the pleasure of checking in on Windows for the second time in 7 years. I had been a PC user since the DOS days, starting on a 286, and going all the way to Windows 8 when I switched to Macs around 2010. I've only ever needed Windows for games since then, and decided to install Boot Camp on the 15" 2016 MacBook Pro that I just got (which happens to be a pretty good machine [1]…

Sad but true. Apple may be on a slow descent, but they have years until their flight path intersects the nether realms of Windows.

Granted, Windows has a usable file manager (Explorer) and Finder is an embarrassment, but theres always Path Finder.

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

#94

Post by klurriplurrr »

jmcdiesel wrote: post #17

I used to be hardcore windows guy... Then 10 years ago I got a mac. I never went back.. But what am I saving money for right now? To build a nice PC again. Mostly because of the exact reasons in the article. I have a fondness for apple... but they have definitely lost their way. First, they were a computer company driven by a man who loved computers ("first" here is the Jobs return era) ... then they became a Compute…

> I wont buy a laptop without a magsafe or similar connection

Check this out: https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-po...

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

#95

Post by AsyncAwait »

owenwil wrote: post #27
Jdam wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't constantly give me "Windows Explorer has stopped working"

I don't think that's been a thing since 2006.

We get similar arguments on the Linux side, which haven't been true for a decade.

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

#96

Post by elcritch »

baobrain wrote: post #68
mycall wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wont buy a laptop without a magsafe or similar connection What about wireless charging? I see magsafe as deprecated and only Macbook air has it now.

Wireless charging is horribly inefficient...IIRC there aren't even any that go over 10W. Magsafe may be deprecated by Apple, but that's a step backwards in functionality. One cannot deny that using USB C for charging is inferior in terms of protecting the device.

Thought the same thing, but then saw this:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/branchusb/magneo-first-...

Gotta say the idea of a single USB C adaptor carrying power, data, and having a general purpose mag-safe like adapter is pretty compelling.

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

#97

Post by ChuckMcM »

Interesting story, and one I understand because I've been using Windows 10 a lot more since the WSL announcement/availability.

Basically in 2006 when I joined Google I had a choice, Macbook or Linux laptop, I chose a macbook. Really liked it and used a Macbook for more portable computing for the next 10 years. I also got a Linux desktop at Google and learned the various bits you had to know in order to run a Linux desktop full time with my laptop filling in for things I couldn't get on my desktop. When the Surface Book was announced, the hardware was just amazing. I figured even if Windows sucked I could eventually get Linux working on it. When WSL became available suddenly Linux was sort of just their and all my ARM development tools just worked. My home desktop which had been windows 7/Linux dual boot (defaulting to Linux) and I booted Windows 7 and took the free upgrade when it was offered. Then went back to Linux. And then needed to run my ECAD program so brought the windows side up to snuff. And have been running on the Win10 partition for the majority of the last 3 months.

At this point I use my Macbook Pro less and less.

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

#98

Post by makecheck »

suprgeek wrote: post #20

The Mac is a victim of the iPhone's success - pure and simple. From a short & medium term perspective the business/ops guys will tell you that any engineering resources spent on Mac would yield better results in iPhone land. It requires fundamental "long-game" mindset to realise that once you lose the high-end Mac guys - you lose your best proponents - then you go into a decline, a long and very profitable decline. T…

It really depends on what you’re doing, I think.

For instance, if you are developing a game with Sprite Kit, you will find that around 95% of the code is IDENTICAL on Mac and iOS. Sprite Kit itself works the same on both. Sister frameworks like AVFoundation are mostly the same and they have peanut-buttered some #define values to allow “different” classes like UIColor and NSColor to be SKColor, etc. to make it easier to have code that does not needlessly vary. You end up having to clearly think about UI differences between the two but that is true anyway between desktop and mobile.

On the other hand, sure, a utility-style application is not that similar between iOS and macOS once you get past the likes of NSString and NSArray. Yet, utility applications often look and work quite differently between desktop and mobile so this may make sense. And if you rely on the cloud to implement part of the functionality (and share it between the two), you may find that again you are dealing with mainly a lot of UI-centered differences on the two platforms that would have been different anyway.

The iPad is the weird one. Here, Apple probably needs a middle API that really can use exactly the same constructs between mobile and desktop where they actually do end up looking or even working the same.

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

#99

Post by edko »

ivraatiems wrote: post #81
Cowicide wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have switched from Mac to Windows a few months ago. My biggest annoyance is privacy. I do not feel my data is safe while using Windows. I had to switch off too many defaults (keylogging, for example!), and I really do not know if I missed any, or if some update has sneaked in any new way for MS to spy on me.

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

#100

Post by oconnor663 »

diego_moita wrote: post #85

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 I…

To be fair to HN, Apple laptops are very common in American universities too. It's not a purely Silicon Valley thing.
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