Live data from Hacker News

Can't you just right click?

lapcatsoftware.com

281–290 of 765 posts

Re: Can't you just right click?

#281
post #12
post #5

Windows is starting to pull the same shit. Walled garden OS's are the future for most regular users.

Good. Regular users are not sufficiently computer-savvy to avoid being tricked into installing malware.

I developed a pretty cool piece of freeware to control a consumer hardware device and I ran into this "very scary Windows dialog" problem. I specifically don't want to charge for this application as then it's a business and it's just a hobby for me.

Thankfully one of my users is also a developer and now he signs all my releases.

What does this have to do with users being savvy or not? Unsurprisingly nothing at all.

Re: Can't you just right click?

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do the trackpad and battery life compare?

Have yet to see a non Mac track pad that has more than two gestures..

If you use Wayland (which... has its issues, but maybe they're better now?) on an XPS 13 Developer Edition... or even my junk Chromebook with MrChromebox's firmware installed so I can install Linux, you can get all sorts of gestures that are more than just "two gestures." Heck, even Windows supports gestures just fine. So...

Re: Can't you just right click?

#284
post #12
post #5

Windows is starting to pull the same shit. Walled garden OS's are the future for most regular users.

Good. Regular users are not sufficiently computer-savvy to avoid being tricked into installing malware.

I mean, you're right, but I feel like the approach we're taking is that we have to cater to the least tech-savvy person that might every use the computer, even if that damages the experience for millions of folks that are tech-savvy. I really disagree with this this one-size-fits-all approach. It seems like a local optimum, at best.

Of course, more tech-savvy users can always use a system that doesn't impose this on them, but I really wish Apple would provide different experiences to different users. If they hadn't diluted the "Pro" moniker, I'd advocate for "Pro" editions of MacOS that remove all this stuff. As it is, every amateur user thinks they should get a Macbook Pro, and my user experience on any distro of Linux is miles ahead of any other platform available. That's fine for me (I'll probably never leave Linux unless something drastic changes), but what about folks that love Apple and are tech-savvy? Why should they have to jump through increasingly arcane hoops to do very reasonable things (like run unsigned code) on a machine they bought? It seems like a massive missed opportunity.

Re: Can't you just right click?

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do the trackpad and battery life compare?

Have yet to see a non Mac track pad that has more than two gestures..

Try fusuma (gem install fusuma, may need user adding to input group to run, or run it with sudo).

Gestures on trackpad for recent (libinput) Linux. It runs xdotool to stuff the keyboard buffer with keystrokes when it sees certain gestures. E.g. three finger swipe left and right do Alt-Left and Alt-Right, which have the effect of Back and Forward in the browser and some other browsing apps (e.g. IntelliJ). Four-finger swipe left and right switches desktop on my machine. It's one more finger than Mac but probably required not to conflict with two finger scroll.

Re: Can't you just right click?

#287
post #80

This feature is at about the right spot for me. It is still convenient enough for me to run software I want that isn't signed, but sufficiently obtuse that neither of my parents have figured it out. Given they are both prone to running any executable that any website tells them to download and run, this feature has probably save me several dozen hours of fixing their computers.

Apple has been making things more and more restrictive over a decade now. New versions of mac os introducing new restrictions. Doesn't take a genius to see that their end goal is to make mac os as restrictive as ios. When that happens, will it still be the right spot for you?

> Doesn't take a genius to see that their end goal is to make mac os as restrictive as ios.

I don’t see that. I see them trying to protect average users from malware, something they have done a pretty decent job of.

It’s the job of a gui shell (finder/explorer) to discern user intent and do the thing it thinks the user wants. This is that happening. Users don’t want to run malware.

I’ve not seen anything that suggests that Apple wants to remove the ability of people to run arbitrary programs. Indeed, it is essential for developers to run novel binaries.

Re: Can't you just right click?

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like anything in life there is balance, and anyone living in any sort of society today has already given up some freedom for some security.

They never had a choice. There seems to be a trend in the US society today to error more on the side of safety than liberty than I've seen ever before. Particularly, this is a change in the tech community which has been a bastion in the fight for individual freedoms since I've been alive. In the end, when you make that bargain at the levels we are making it today, the safety is only temporary but the damage to libert…

Most people would hypothetically eagerly trade a miniscule amount of freedom for a massive amount of security, because it'd be a good deal.

You're welcome to be an ideologue and paint the world in black and white of course, but more people will try to assess the tradeoffs and have some appreciation for nuance.

Obligatory disclaimer: I'm a staunch supporter of open source software and don't own any Apple devices because of it, but I do appreciate and understand why a company or an individual would want to have a device with a more locked down ecosystem.

Re: Can't you just right click?

#289
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be surprised how much equivalent laptops from other OEMs have caught up. The Dell XPS is very similar to the Macbook Pro, and Dell supports Ubuntu on it.

How do the trackpad and battery life compare?

Battery on my recent Dell is over 10 hours with Firefox usage.

Leaps and bounds ahead of where things were at 4 years ago.

Libinput, while less fully featured than synaptics, seems to have a better physics model for the trackpad pointer translation. It still doesn't have fractional scrolling though, every scroll is still a discrete increment.

Post reply on HN