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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

#611

Post by andreif »

bwat48 wrote: post #488
andreif wrote: post #142

My mother-in-law recently asked me for help with fixing her higher-level Asus laptop. It run Windows 7 and had enormous amount of malware. So I've spent a few days (incl. yesterday and today) cleaning it and upgrading to Windows 10. To say it was an awful experience is to say nothing. Rare thing works correctly. I must google each step, tying not to care about the horrific UI which is simply beyond understanding. It'…

I have a hard time believing there wasn't video drivers available for a windows pc

There are some drivers for her Asus N73SV, but they don't support 1600x900. I may be looking in a wrong place, but I find it hard to understand why Windows 10 does not support such popular resolution out-of-the-box.

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

#612

Post by nul_byte »

voltagex_ wrote: post #449
dualogy wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Maybe it's also just a Fedora thing, installed it a week ago on my laptop that only had Win on it before, and from prior Linux experiences (Xubuntu & friends) just some ~3 years back I was absolutely baffled how everything installed quickly without a hitch, without glitches. HiDPI graphics recognition with a good default scaling, there , no config-file messing required. Wifi, there . NumPad, multi-touch t…

I'm surprised HiDPI is working so well for you. See my other comment but I'm guessing you don't run anything in WINE. Yes Fedora is miles better than other distros regarding HiDPI but there's still no way to force per-application scaling in Wayland. I mean, Windows doesn't get a pass here - you still can't scale HyperV, or anything involving mmc.exe, but Mac's HiDPI support is flawless.

For gaming, I will be the first to admit Linux has a way to go yet and the coverage is much better on Windows. It is certainly moving in the right direction though, and with recent developments such as vulkan.

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

#613

Post by int_19h »

Neeek wrote: post #433
int_19h wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not actually true. Alt+F4 is exactly the same as clicking the Close window button, and sends WM_CLOSE to the app, which can then handle it gracefully (or not) as it chooses. In particular, if you have unsaved data, most apps will prompt to save on Alt+F4.

Did not know that, so if an app is non responsive but alt+f4 does the trick, does that mean the app maybe wasn't as FUBAR as I thought?

When Windows sends WM_CLOSE for any reason, it will wait for some time for the app to react (not necessarily close itself, just process the message). But if it does not react soon enough, Windows will mark the app as hanging, and you'll get that standard wait-or-close dialog.

However, Alt+F4 translating to WM_CLOSE is also handled by the app message loop - i.e. Windows sends WM_KEYDOWN events for those keys, and when they get to the event loop, it's supposed to call TranslateMessage. That one normally handles WM_KEYDOWN -> WM_CHAR translation, but it will also handle any shortcuts, and this includes Alt+F4. So if the app is hanging, messages aren't pumped, and the shortcut doesn't work. To send WM_CLOSE, you'd need to use the close button on the window.

So if the app does close on Alt+F4, it was, at the minimum, pumping messages and invoking TranslateMessage on them.

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

#614

Post by pjmlp »

lokedhs wrote: post #503
k-mcgrady wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The new "features" every cycle are more "lets put this phone feature on the desktop" What is it missing? It's been a while since I really wanted a feature in the desktop OS. All of the 'phone' features (besides launchpad) have made my life a lot easier (continuity, handoff, notification centre, even Siri from time to time).

Shipping Unix tools (like Bash) from this decade would be a start. Trying to get modern Unix software to run on OSX is getting more and more painful. Since development is the main activity I do on a laptop, this is quite important.

UNIX being part of OS X is a historical accident, Apple just wanted to save themselves from Copland's failure.

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

#615

Post by adventured »

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…

> Cook is trying to emulate the hardheadedness but fails to recognize the reasonability needed to balance that.

I don't think Cook is hardheaded. I think he has no idea how to run a product company. Pretty much everyone from the average HN user to Larry Ellison predicted this outcome. Cook is logistics / supply chain etc, Ballmer was sales, neither had any business at the top of their respective companies. Jobs did it on purpose, in my opinion, because he believed the single most important function initially was to keep Apple running smoothly and to complete the iPhone boom (ie the big product for the next decade was already in place). The only question is how long Apple will stay in the Cook era before getting a product leader replacement.

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

#616

Post by andreif »

jankotek wrote: post #147
andreif wrote: post #142

My mother-in-law recently asked me for help with fixing her higher-level Asus laptop. It run Windows 7 and had enormous amount of malware. So I've spent a few days (incl. yesterday and today) cleaning it and upgrading to Windows 10. To say it was an awful experience is to say nothing. Rare thing works correctly. I must google each step, tying not to care about the horrific UI which is simply beyond understanding. It'…

You did this wrong way. Complete wipe and reinstall is the only option for such infested computer.

Yes, I actually thought to wipe and install Ubuntu since she needs it mostly for browsing, but she wanted to keep the maybe-important files. And it's been a while since I reinstalled Windows from external drive.

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

#617

Post by rocho »

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…

> Linux is still as bad as it ever was.

Not really. It may not be suitable for all use-cases, but it has certainly much improved in the last years.

To make a concrete example, I'm running ArchLinux + bspmw on an Asus Zenbook UX305UA. Thanks to ArchLinux I don't have all the bloat that I don't need, putting me at 10 hours of battery life. The tiling WM allows me to be extremely efficient with desktop and window managing. This is why I find it really obnoxious to use both Windows and OS X when I have to.

If you don't need proprietary software that doesn't run on Linux I seriously suggest you give it a try.

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

#618

Post by lokedhs »

pjmlp wrote: post #614
lokedhs wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shipping Unix tools (like Bash) from this decade would be a start. Trying to get modern Unix software to run on OSX is getting more and more painful. Since development is the main activity I do on a laptop, this is quite important.

UNIX being part of OS X is a historical accident, Apple just wanted to save themselves from Copland's failure.

It was the main reason a lot of people (myself included) moved to OSX from Linux. I honestly believe that its Unix compatibility was one of the main reasons Macs got popular with developers in the first place.

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

#619

Post by sounds »

acdha wrote: post #507
ams6110 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, Windows 10 on my Dell laptop will heat up, spin the fan noticably and something called "Service Host: Local System" will consistently use 48 - 52% of CPU when the laptop is sitting doing nothing at all, with no applications open. I really can't understand what it's doing but have a hard time taking it seriously as an operating system.

Check the resource monitor to see which service that corresponds to: it's likely Windows Update since they changed it to mine Bitcoin or something about a decade ago when it went from being I/O to single-core CPU bound.

This is just a guess -- being very late to the conversation -- but in case someone even later is curious, this may be the well documented case of the .NET framework recompiling libraries in the background after an update.

It seems like it will never finish, but it does ... eventually. However, the lack of any UI, any indication of its presence or its progress, and also that killing it will just make it come back later are all pretty hostile.

(Google for more info.)

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

#620

Post by elaus »

skookumchuck wrote: post #505
bradgessler wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too have become annoyed recently at really basic stuff not working in macOS, like I can't drag and drop a picture out of Photos app into Pixelmator to edit. In fact, dragging and dropping a picture out of Photos into any application is completely broken and doesn't work. Its as-if the Apple QA team no longer tests to make sure their applications play nice with each other in a way that has been fundamental to deskto…

> really basic stuff not working Try selecting text in a Windows dialog box, such as the "About" box. It doesn't work, it never did as far as I can tell.

But isn't it sad if MacOS has to be compared to Windows to relativize its flaws? People were using it because they felt it was BETTER than Windows, not because "both are meeh".

Also arguably, selecting text in a dialog box (instead of copying the whole text) is a lot less used feature than drag&drop of photos.

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