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The End of OS X

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Re: The End of OS X

#421

Post by okamiueru »

elipsey wrote: post #368
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 consider myself a power user, and precisely because MacOS feels like the best of Unix combined with customer focus [...] 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 plugged an extra ssd into my my old thinkpad yesterday. My boot volume is mSata. The hard drive hole was empty, a…

I have the exact same experience. I've developed on Windows, and for the past 10 years on Linux. The experience for the latter has changed so much in terms of usability that I struggle to understand why alternatives are at all desirable for developers. Out of necessity I had to do iOS development on OSX, and out of the gate that already leaves a bad impression. I can cross-compile and target anything from anywhere and run in emulators or virtual machines and what not, the hardware can do it, the software allows me to use it, its all good. Except the mac ecosystem. So, purchase of a mac it is, install of xcode and the whole shebang. Very little is enjoyable, and less is particularly intuitive. I love my grandmother, and for non power-users who mostly wants to use a browser, a gnome based ubuntu seems a better option than OSX, and definitely also Windows.

As for how the experience was for me, in terms of developer and power user, everything mac has from unix seemed a bit half way. It certainly surprised me repeatedly, finding some versions of core utilities to be older and not supporting flags here and there. But this was fine. Homebrew felt sluggish. But this too was fine. Then comes iOS development, and oh lord what a shit show. This was not fun, and the release process and signing, and all that.

I've reached the point in my professional life where I want things to work. I don't wish to struggle with technical limitations caused by politics and marketing decisions. Development on OSX feels that way. You can't virtualize the OS, and can't emulate an iPhone. You have to go through way too many hoops to do what should be simple.

So, I honestly, and for no inflammatory motivation, don't see why people like to work OSX. I understand that you wish to do so if you are limited by software and tools that restrict your choice, making it either that or Windows. And I dare say Windows is, in total, even worse.

For usability and ease of use, as an OS, for use with free software and otherwise software that exists for the platform, it's in my honest and in an effort to not be too biased or fanboy-y (again, I wouldn't push my fanboyism on my grandmother), simply easier. For a power user and again not limited by language or tech, there is no competition. None. I'd chose to work for a different company if it meant I didn't have to develop on OSX or Windows. Life is too short.

Re: The End of OS X

#422

Post by kelnos »

webmobdev wrote: post #257
crystaln wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a developer and power user. I am incredibly happy with every update from Apple. Unix with good design is exactly what I want from my OS. Sure I can't disassemble my laptop and change the hardware. I have no desire at all to do that. I literally can think of no reason I personally would want to do this, although I imagine there are a tiny fraction of users who would and you may be among them.

> I am a developer and power user ... Sure I can't disassemble my laptop and change the hardware. I have no desire at all to do that. That's a lie. Every power user tries to get the most out of their machine, and so desires an upgradeable system. No power user likes to throw away a system because s/he can't replace its battery or upgrade its ram or hdd / ssd. At some point, everyone likes to upgrade their existing sy…

Hell, even an average user would likely appreciate being able to bring their laptop to the local repair shop, give them $200, and walk out with the same laptop, but with more RAM, storage, and a new battery.

The only current option is to drop $1500 on a the new model. It's not only more expensive, but wasteful.

I guess there are a lot of younger folks around here nowadays, but it was perfectly normal in the 90s and early 00s for regular non-technical home users to get out a screwdriver, open up their desktop PC, and replace the RAM, add a new/larger HDD, add a CD/DVD drive, even swap out or add a graphics or sound card. And there was a perfectly functioning computer shop industry that would do that for you on the cheap if you weren't comfortable.

In the past 15-20 years manufacturers have gotten us into the cycle of buy->discard->replace to the point that people don't even know it was ever different.

Re: The End of OS X

#423

Post by stupendousyappi »

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…

I bought my 2018 XPS 13 with a Windows 10 license, but tried installing Dell's official Ubuntu image on it after a few days, and couldn't live with it. Trackpad acceleration was awkward, fingerprint reader unlock didn't work, and font scaling was too small (along with other UI elements). I wouldn't be surprised if the trackpad and font scaling issues were fixable, but I no longer have the interest in fixing those issues. So while it's very usable, Linux is still far from parity with MacOS or Windows 10 on the "it just works" front, and I don't expect it to reach parity in the foreseeable future.

Re: The End of OS X

#424

Post by MintelIE »

Lots of pointless user-facing "innovations," some of which break things with no warning, and very little improvement of the base OS from what a Unix person would notice, combined to cause stagnation.

When Apple moved to file 'tags' from comments which one could edit which would be attached to the file, they literally nuked thousands of annotations of mine. I was never warned that they would be blown away. What kind of company just does this?

Re: The End of OS X

#425

Post by wool_gather »

saghm wrote: post #359
y7 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Even Homebrew works pretty nicely It always surprises me when people cite homebrew as a plus rather than a minus in these discussions. Compared to the experience I have with Linux package managers, I've found homebrew to be extraordinarily slow even at the best of times. A simple "brew update" will generally take at least 30 seconds; in that time on something like pacman, I'll usually not only have already finished…

In my experience this is partly because Homebrew has steadily moved to a "knows better than you" stance and every time you ask it to do one thing, it goes off and does a bunch of other things first.

MacPorts is well worth a spin if you're on a Mac and have trouble with Homebrew. I switched sometime last year and am very happy. I think I've actually been using it more because I know it's not going to be a pain every time.

Re: The End of OS X

#426

Post by thejynxed »

duskwuff wrote: post #207
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do, and being a Mac user on Steam sucks. Epic is even worse. Apple doesn't seem to be particularly worried about it. For all the hate dumped on Mac as being a "toy" computer, it is a terrible gaming computer. I use it to do work .

Valve doesn't seem particularly worried about it either. Steam's macOS support has always felt like an afterthought -- they've put more effort into supporting the miniscule number of users on Linux (through efforts like Proton) than macOS.

From my understanding it's because Valve really wants to directly interact with Apple as infrequently as possible.

Re: The End of OS X

#427

Post by edjrage »

danaris wrote: post #401
viklove wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every browser has this feature...

But "almost every browser" doesn't sync your saved passwords seamlessly between devices (mobile and desktop) with an end-to-end encrypted database, and automatically offer to autofill them, with the autofill itself protected by Touch ID/Face ID on the devices that support those.

For one, Bitwarden does all of that and more (I guess except the Face ID thing, but I don't really want that so I'd disable it anyway). It has web, mobile and desktop apps, and browser extensions. All available in the free plan. Oh, and it's open source and self-hostable.

https://bitwarden.com/

(Not affiliated with it, just a pretty happy (free) user!)

Re: The End of OS X

#428

Post by kelnos »

oneplane wrote: post #112
brightball wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time there’s a new Apple announcement, I’m happier and happier that I switched to Linux a couple of years ago. Power users want freedom and control of their own machines and hardware. The moment that Apple started soldering parts into place, I started looking elsewhere because it was a signal of the thought process.

On the flip side: does anyone still buy a low-specced machine and upgrade it mid-lifecycle? I've seen it less and less over the last 6 years and the last 2 years it hasn't happened in any work setting. I know people like to have the feeling of control (do you really control your laptop if you can't replace your EC, CSME, AGESA, SSD FW, NIC FW, VBIOS) and the concept of shuffling parts around, but the need for that (a…

Why does it have to be low-spec? I bought my current laptop with 16GB of RAM in it (soldered to the mainboard, sadly) because that's the most the manufacturer offered at the time. If I had the option today, I'd open it up and swap out the modules for 32GB. (I think they now offer a 32GB model.)

Ditto for the storage; I have 512GB in there now (probably wasn't the max when I bought it, but seemed sufficient and was a good price trade off), but I wouldn't mind swapping it out for a 1TB part. Actually, this bit might be possible to do myself; I should look into it.

Re: The End of OS X

#429

Post by cortesoft »

webmobdev wrote: post #281
cortesoft wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently ran into some trouble with some tools installed in /usr/bin a while ago, and wanted to try making some changes. Even with root, you can't touch /usr/bin. It took me way too long to try to figure out what was going on, and all the fixes were hacks.

Perhaps what you need is Gnu core utilities - https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/coreutils.html ? Just install it with macports and you can use all the tools by prefixing it with a g - gls for ls, gdd for dd etc. Some of these tools are newer versions than on macOS and hence improved (as GPL3 prohibits Apple from including newer versions).

Like I said, I could hack around it eventually.

It was annoying that I couldn't do the basic things I expect to be able to do on a machine as root

Re: The End of OS X

#430

Post by kenOfYugen »

crystaln wrote: post #123
lordleft wrote: post #64

I've looked at the trajectory of Apple these past few years with mounting bitter-sweetness. At its best, MacOS really felt like the best of Unix combined with the consumer focus alluded to in the article. I still adore the craftsmanship of the latest Macbooks, but my 2015 Macbook felt like the apex of Mac's design. It was the kind of device that was such a pleasure to develop on. You could leverage the power of Unix…

I am a developer and power user. I am incredibly happy with every update from Apple. Unix with good design is exactly what I want from my OS. Sure I can't disassemble my laptop and change the hardware. I have no desire at all to do that. I literally can think of no reason I personally would want to do this, although I imagine there are a tiny fraction of users who would and you may be among them.

> I am incredibly happy with every update from Apple.

I am incredibly disappointed with every update from Apple.

I bought my MacBook Pro in 2011. The most basic 13.3" machine that was available for sale. 320GB 5400RPM HDD, i5, 4GB RAM, Intel graphics.

I like backups. The optical drive had to go, I put it in an external USB enclosure. It was replaced by the HDD and in its place I put a Samsung SSD. The HDD contains my data archives and a macOS installation image.

Whenever macOS would become cluttered, I would wipe the SSD and enjoy a fresh macOS installation. Whenever a new macOS version would be released, I would update the installation image.

This enabled me to work on the go with no fear of data loss and no network dependencies.

SSDs are basically long lasting consumables. I had to painlessly replace the drive twice, however each time I got a faster and more robust unit with enhanced capacity. Sure I can carry an external drive with me. I have no desire at all to do that.

I like the mini jack, so that I can plug my favorite headphones. The audio-out port also doubles as an optical-out. Sure I can carry a couple of dongles with me. I have no desire at all to do that.

Sure I could have bought the top of the line 8GB RAM model back in 2011. I had no desire at all to do that. I could just buy 16GB of RAM and perform an upgrade Apple claims is not supported.

The battery lasts long enough. While coding, I get drained before the battery does. I can let the battery age with no fear of it bulging because it's contained in a shell. Replacement is easy.

I totally get where you are coming from, and agree with you that "a tiny fraction of users" want access to the hardware. However 100% would want access to the hardware when their 16" MacBook Pro SSD goes.

Don't professionals require machines that cater for their needs? If the current Apple offered choices like the ones I mentioned above, would you not pay a premium to have them?

I certainly would. And for that reason I still rely the same 2011 MacBook Pro and not the latest MacBook GoodEnough.

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