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The End of OS X

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Re: The End of OS X

#301

Post by fsflover »

oneplane wrote: post #238
fsflover wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not allowed to use a browser I want on iOS. Do you count this as “using their machine”? The reason is the lack of freedom to do what I want with the software.

Not sure what that has to do with hardware but I'll bite: users don't care. They don't know what a browser is, what a client is, or an URL or URI or address bar. They want a device that when they turn it on and type in 'tictoc dance dog' it shows them something that resembles what they had in mind. Doesn't matter if it runs WebKit or Gecko or if someone thought it'd be cool to emulate a trident-based engine on iOS on…

> users don't care. They don't know what a browser is, what a client is, or an URL or URI or address bar.

All true but irrelevant. The problem is that artificial lack of choice prevents competition and innovation. Microsoft from the 90s is here again. And users don’t care, again.

I do not count another UI as a new browser. It should be different under the hood.

Re: The End of OS X

#302

Post by pcwalton »

y7 wrote: post #288
banachtarski wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just "use linux" and I get all the benefits with much better hardware (more memory, disk storage, speed for compilation), better drivers (important especially for GPU support for either graphics/rendering work or machine learning) and my downsides are... what exactly? Itunes, Mail, etc, none of the software shipping with MacOS is actually any good. I don't use Safari. From your perspective, what aspect of the "cust…

Applications and hardware drivers on Mac just work. Even Homebrew works pretty nicely. The visuals of Mac are vastly superior to any flavor of Linux I've tried: smooth graphics, font rendering, HiDPI support, etc. Some aspects of Mac hardware (screen, touchpad) are very hard to come by with other manufacturers. At this point I'll probably switch to Linux as soon as my 2015 Macbook stops working, but I would've really…

At this point FreeType is generally better (faster, more featureful) than Apple's Core Graphics, although FT is very customizable and I prefer Apple-like defaults to the ones most Linux distros use. You can definitely get Apple-like rendering out of FreeType; disabling hinting and making sure stem darkening is on gets you most of the way there.

Re: The End of OS X

#303

Post by webmobdev »

slmjkdbtl wrote: post #287
banachtarski wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just "use linux" and I get all the benefits with much better hardware (more memory, disk storage, speed for compilation), better drivers (important especially for GPU support for either graphics/rendering work or machine learning) and my downsides are... what exactly? Itunes, Mail, etc, none of the software shipping with MacOS is actually any good. I don't use Safari. From your perspective, what aspect of the "cust…

Apps shipped with macOS are actually good imo, or there's just not a lot of better alternatives. Never found a better alternative for itunes or mail (used Thunderbird and mutt for a while and they're either bloat or have bad UX). macOS designers seem to be good at cramming functionalities (i know it's not unix philosophy) while making it not look bloat at all.

Some are good. But many have better alternatives. All mac apps leech your data to the cloud though. And that should be a huge no from all of us.

Re: The End of OS X

#304

Post by metalforever »

fanatic2pope wrote: post #245
metalforever wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is not what I want, and I’m a power user. I want my machine to solve my problems and not get in my way when I am creating solutions. I do not want to be messing around with the internals, I have better things to do . I pay for it to just work in an environment I hope is vaguely private.

> I want my machine to solve my problems and not get in my way when I am creating solutions. That's literally why I switched to Linux in 2018, after a decade on OS X.

Linux does not solve my problems (as a power user with Linux). It does not work with the proprietary tools I need to do my job and I’ve broken apt way too many times. I’m not remotely interested in debugging this at this stage of my life.

Re: The End of OS X

#305

Post by oneplane »

banachtarski wrote: post #243
mstade wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep reading these types of comments on HN but I just can't relate. I consider myself a power user, and precisely because MacOS feels like the best of Unix combined with customer focus is why I'm wholly invested in the Apple ecosystem. I simply can't relate to the statement that Mac is a "platform that contends with me every step of the way" and I'm curious to know more specifically why you feel this way?

I just "use linux" and I get all the benefits with much better hardware (more memory, disk storage, speed for compilation), better drivers (important especially for GPU support for either graphics/rendering work or machine learning) and my downsides are... what exactly? Itunes, Mail, etc, none of the software shipping with MacOS is actually any good. I don't use Safari. From your perspective, what aspect of the "cust…

Have you noticed how all your arguments are fine yet only personal preferences? (except dataloss)

The UX, UI and 'feel' is what makes people use one thing over another. Unless you can replicate that, or can do better, nobody's getting swayed either way (and that's fine, do what you want).

There is no objective 'my pc is better than your pc' because you're not the same person as the one you'd be attempting to compare against.

Better hardware and better drivers are useless arguments if someone wants to go to a shop, take a device home, plop it down and do some work. None of the betterness of the other stuff is going to undo the work, or undo the experience.

It's like telling someone their 24-pack of toilet paper is stupid because your shipping container full of toilet paper is cheaper and you have more than they have. (especially when all they wanted to do was wipe their butt)

Re: The End of OS X

#306

Post by toomuchtodo »

webmobdev wrote: post #272
davedx wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Safari as my main browser now due to the password generation/sharing with my iPhone. It's a killer feature for me.

Use a password manager. It's safer than trusting Apple or Google who are after your personal data.

Apple and Google aren't going to sell users' login credentials, and if law enforcement is requesting information, they will go directly to the provider who contains your data they're seeking.

Re: The End of OS X

#307

Post by scotu »

badRNG wrote: post #210
_bxg1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux is only free if your time has no value Hah, that's great. I'll have to tuck that one away.

That was probably a fair assessment a decade ago, but Linux seriously "just works" now. About a year ago I bought a Dell XPS 13, I've thrown Pop!_OS on there, and it worked out of the box, no driver downloads, no sneakernetting Wi-Fi drivers, no codec installs, no track-pad problems (two fingers to right click works!), no scaling issues, no 3rd party repos. It just works. (I'm sure FOSS folks may dislike the distribu…

> two fingers to right click works!

I really live by trying not to be snarky but this is testing my principles given how nice a mac trackpad is... (used Linux for a long time and now I've been on macos for almost the same amount of years, I love Linux and appreciate all the work people put into it, to be clear)

Re: The End of OS X

#308

Post by the_af »

oneplane wrote: post #248
sudosysgen wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If SSDs don't fail, more RAM isn't needed, and so on, then why do people feel the need to buy a new laptop every three years? I think the percentage of users that would buy a new, 1500$+ machine instead of a small 100$ upgrade is much lower than one expects living in a bit of an echo chamber. There's a lot of people that get burned by outrageous repair prices or that buy new computers when they could simply upgrade a…

Because the overall degradation. Sometimes I want 10% of 'everything', plus a new feature, plus less weight to carry around. That's practically been the only driver of my personal upgrades over the last 15 years. And by degradation I don't mean the existing device degrades per se, but the degradation of productivity on the current device vs. new device. At the same time, the way work is done has changed a lot for me…

> but the degradation of productivity on the current device vs. new device.

What does this mean? Do you mean your current device starts working poorly (but that would mean "existing device degrades per se", which you ruled out) or that the existence of a new device automatically makes you perceive your device as being of "degraded productivity"?

Re: The End of OS X

#309

Post by badRNG »

jjcon wrote: post #280
badRNG wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was probably a fair assessment a decade ago, but Linux seriously "just works" now. About a year ago I bought a Dell XPS 13, I've thrown Pop!_OS on there, and it worked out of the box, no driver downloads, no sneakernetting Wi-Fi drivers, no codec installs, no track-pad problems (two fingers to right click works!), no scaling issues, no 3rd party repos. It just works. (I'm sure FOSS folks may dislike the distribu…

> but Linux seriously "just works" now I agree it’s far better than it used to be but until I can install programs without having to crack open terminal I feel like it still has a ways to go. The latest LTS version of the largest distro doesn’t even let you drag and drop to the desktop.

You don't need to crack open a terminal.

System76 maintains a list of trusted repos that allows you to install all of your software from the Pop!_Shop. All of the examples I gave are real, you can install VSCode, IntelliJ, Android Studio, Steam, and much more from official sources and official repos with one click on the Pop!_Shop. It is essentially a pretty, managed app store that handles updates, installs, and repos for you.

Re: The End of OS X

#310

Post by qeternity »

luma wrote: post #275
wuunderbar wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be missing something here, but why would you need to change the stock installed tools in /usr/bin? Seems like an easy way to screw up your OS installation. And it's not like a VM where you can rollback to a snapshot or relaunch. If there really was an issue there then you either need to file a bug and have them mainline a fix, or yes hack/shim a fix on top for your needs. Perhaps leveraging PATH precedence.

Embedded in your response is the general attitude one hears when concerned about not being able to do "a thing" in the Apple ecosystem: why would you want to do that? Questioning the use case and insisting that one doesn't actually _want_ to do a thing instead of allowing the user to control their own system is the quintessential Apple experience.

You can still do this thing, you just do it a different way that doesn't fundamentally risk breaking the OS. I understand that there may be some non-zero sized group of people who absolutely want to screw with protected OS files, and even for this group of people you can go and disable SIP and mess with the OS all you want (one of the Macs I have is a hackintosh, which requires some decent modification).

However most people, including me, and I'd venture most engineers too, would rather have a hardened system.

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