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The End of OS X

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Re: The End of OS X

#551

Post by pjmlp »

wuwuno wrote: post #519
fluffything wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and my downsides are... what exactly? I've spent zero days, zero hours, zero minutes, and zero seconds fiddling with setting anything up in macOSX over the last 15 years. I manage a bunch of Linux systems, from laptops to desktop to servers, and over the last 15 years I've probably spent months of my life setting up stuff that should have just worked. I use a mac at home and as my dev machine, because I charge quit…

I've been a nix guy since 1983. Worked for a major nix player, wrote end user application software on the platform, built chip design software on the platform, wrote device drivers for all kinds of hardware, system admin for years and years, etc. etc. I'm not some newb who just fell off the truck. In many way *nix is still stuck in 1983 because it's a craftsman's platform, which is why there 10,000 distros, oops 10,0…

I went to a mix of Windows/macOS instead, but can fully relate to your story, as I had an UNIX zealot phase during my university years, and have been the UNIX/Windows porting guy at several projects.

My reason for giving up was reaching the conclusion that Linux distributions would never replicate the expectations of an Amiga/BeOS like experience for those that care about multimedia.

Re: The End of OS X

#552

Post by pjmlp »

fsflover wrote: post #324
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…

> hardware drivers on Mac just work Same for GNU/Linux if you choose the hardware for it (or buy preinstalled).

I did exactly that with an Asus Netbook, then Canonical and AMD broke the whole experience with their actions replacing working binary drivers with WIP FOSS alternatives, because Free is Good ™.

Re: The End of OS X

#553

Post by tonyedgecombe »

webmobdev wrote: post #332
dheera wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but also: * Apple charges +$800 for 64GB of RAM, which on Amazon would cost you around $300-350. * Apple costs $1600 for 4TB of SSD, which on Amazon would cost you around $450-600. * Soldering the SSD to the motherboard is an enormously horrible engineering decision for both servicing, backups, and data recovery.

Exactly. I feel more of us should speak up like this and not let ignorant users or shills try to sell this message that soldering down components and making it extremely difficult to replace parts like a battery is a "great thing" being done for the benefit of the consumer.

Reliability is far more important than repairability. I don't need to worry about replacing components if they don't go wrong.

Re: The End of OS X

#554

Post by pjmlp »

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…

My AMD GPU on my travel netbook begs to differ with Linux seriously "just works" now.

Re: The End of OS X

#555

Post by pjmlp »

badRNG wrote: post #445
stupendousyappi wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 iss…

Pop!_OS is far more polished than Ubuntu nowadays, scaling is better on Hi-DPI displays and theming is far more consistent (largely due to the fact that their vastly superior store defaults to either DEB or flatpak.) I will concede that the fingerprint reader doesn't work, and I haven't spent any time trying to make it work, I don't have much patience for tinkering with stuff like that these days.

That is what I have being seeing since used Slackware 2.0, followed by Yasdril, Debian, Mandrake, Red-Hat, Ubuntu, ....

It always goes as follows:

Complain: I am trying distribution X, having problems A, B, C

Standard Reply: Why are you still using X? Distribution Y is much better now.

Left as exercise for the reader when Slackware 2.0 came out.

Re: The End of OS X

#556

Post by pjmlp »

sudosysgen wrote: post #542
pjmlp wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows has been being sold in boxes since early 90s, 30 years long by now, and while rampant in some countries, not every country is/was a piracy dream.

The kind of people that need to buy Windows (ie, those that build their own computers) are the kind of people that either pirate it or buy illegally sourced volume keys for 3$.

Keep telling that to yourself.

Re: The End of OS X

#557

Post by ddacunha »

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…

> That was probably a fair assessment a decade ago, but Linux seriously "just works" now.

My anecdotal experience tells me otherwise. During confinement, I tried to install OpenSUSE on an old laptop I had around for the kids to do their classes online. The laptop kept losing wifi credentials. Able, but not wanting to, troubleshoot I proceeded to install Unbuntu. That was all good until I went on the GUI to enable auto-login. Now I cannot log in. Not big issues, I have the skills to fix it but not the time.

edit: typos

Re: The End of OS X

#558

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

pier25 wrote: post #264
jmull wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that non-App Store apps for the Mac may be seeing the twilight. I doubt it. There's literally no reason at all to transition macOS to be like iPadOS... since iPadOS already exists. If they wanted to do that they could literally simply discontinue macOS and only sell devices with iPadOS. Boom, done. Of course, there are a million reasons to not do that, which is why macOS will continue to exist.

I agree. I just can't see Adobe, Autodesk, etc, distributing their desktop apps via the Mac App Store.

I think Apple wants to achieve the “philosopher’s stone” of software development: write once, deploy everywhere. Securely and robustly.

I’m not sure that making money (in this case) is their biggest goal. I think having as much control as possible, over every aspect of the process is more what I suspect they want. That’s fairly typical “strong brand” stuff, and Apple has one of the strongest brands in the world.

I’m not sure they can achieve it, but everything they are doing (SwiftUI, etc.) points that way. Since they have full control of the hardware, SDKs and operating system, as well as a huge pile of money, they may actually pull it off.

There’s no reason to think they wouldn’t establish “special deals” with Adobe and Microsoft, to allow their software to be distributed through the store at a reduced (or possibly even subsidized) rate, as it would definitely be to Apple’s advantage to have the software in the store. Big corporations do that all the time. In a previous job, Intel gave us tens of thousands of dollars worth of help in optimization, for similar reasons.

They seem to have done a number of really difficult things. I’ve learned not to write them off. They are fairly good at playing the long game.

Re: The End of OS X

#559

Post by ArgyleSound »

mattigames wrote: post #136
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #53

What I think a lot of us programmers miss is the experience of the end-users who are likely to buy a Mac. The fact of the matter is, 99.9% of people who buy a Mac are not going to know what subpixel hinting is. Or care too much that they can't delete Chess.app. To them, the Mac is nicer looking and easier to use than ever. Will iOS devs care? Not at all - developing for the Mac has become easier with Catalyst. It's e…

The problems I have faced with my 2018 MacBook Pro that make me dread working with it (I have to due my job) are not development issues but mostly end-user ones: https://ivanca.tumblr.com/post/615979862803562496/15-flaws-o...

> I know you can Opt+Cmd+V but thats not the point, which is extremely poor UI/UX.

Cutting files is generally bad UX, and Windows (which has the function) handles it rather awkwardly. To be honest many of these issues you point out are tenets of macOS since the very first release of 10.0 and in many cases earlier.

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