81–90 of 756 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“You can get great hardware and battery life with system76 for instance.” The build quality of these two platforms is nowhere, and I mean nowhere close. Apples (heh) and oranges. I’m rooting for system76, but they have a long way to go.
Absolutely agree. Build quality is meh, not even good. But the battery is seriously good. Like 10+ hours good.
Despite the warning, I didn't find it nearly as "ranty" as the author cautioned, and instead seemed like a fairly comprehensive and fair take on his experience. Having gone through the same thing myself several years ago, the UI aspect of it is something that I'd be curious to see how it develops for the author. I think it is not uncommon for Windows folk to find the windowing experience on macs rather painful, at le…
What I miss most in macOS is Super + Left and Super + Right to tile windows left and right..
Just long press on the green button on the window for a tiling menu.
> Package management This always floors me when I have to use a non-Linux computer. The difference between package management on Linux and other OSes is shocking. Dnf, Yum, Pacman are all so convenient and straightforward. I can't understand why Windows and MacOS don't have anything official that fills this gap.
The main problem is that the majority of software in the Windows and Mac world doesn't come in a "package-manager" format, not really. For *BSD and Linux, the package manager is great because if you can think of it, it's probably there ready to be installed; as long as it's software like TeX or emacs or vi or something else available in an open-source way. But stand-alone programs? Not even things like Photoshop, I'm…
There's definitely some room for improvement here, but fwiw you can double-click executables on Linux to run them just like you would on Windows (or to an extent, MacOS). I think the "solution" here is not to rely on portable software, and when you do need to rely on it, use a packaging format like AppImage.
> And homebrew (and anything equivalent for WSL?) works pretty well.
I hate to burst your bubble, but Homebrew is genuinely awful. The vast majority of Mac devops issues I've encountered stem from a Homebrew issue, as a matter of fact. Oh no! Software (x) isn't running on Mike's M1, but it runs just fine on Melissa's x86 machine! The problem? Homebrew installs software to different locations depending on your system architecture. That's right, the same package will end up in different places when the only difference between machines is CPU architecture. That's just one issue, I have gripes about reinstalling, leftover files, formulae syntax, Linux "compatibility", UX and more... the author isn't wrong when they say the experience simply doesn't compare to apt or pacman.
As someone who switches around between primarily Windows and secondarily OSX, and GDM3, I find OSX to have the most intuitive window manager. I don't like apps being maximized, and I feel like I can always intuitively find the window I'm looking for in OSX, just under the active window. I find myself arranging windows in Windows like OSX might arrange them. Maybe Apple is just using a different metaphor. I understand…
(But then the dongles they need to buy to attach to that monitor or keyboard or what have you is the straw that will break their financial bank!)
All credit due, Homebrew is amazing given that it doesn't have the same opportunities for deep integration that Linux package managers do. It certainly made MacOS bearable for me. But, it's only good in a walled vacuum. There's almost nothing else on the platform to compare it to. I have been using nix-darwin, but packages routinely break on darwin (not that I blame them for it).
Windows might have never had a package manager, but there are decades of workflows build up around not having one. Downloading an .exe/.msi and installing is sub-optimal, dangerous, and barbaric, but it does work. Linux has pacman, RPM, deb, nix, ostree, flatpak, and more, which (from personal experience) are all amazing. The Mac package workflow has been built up around a second-class citizen: Homebrew. And the fact that Homebrew is a second-class citizen shows. If you've used almost any other package manager as a daily driver you get an idea just how wanting the whole MacOS ecosystem is. There are a few ones worse than your options with Apple (cough Snap cough), but not many.
I wonder how many Apple power users understand just how bad they have it with Apple.
As someone who switches around between primarily Windows and secondarily OSX, and GDM3, I find OSX to have the most intuitive window manager. I don't like apps being maximized, and I feel like I can always intuitively find the window I'm looking for in OSX, just under the active window. I find myself arranging windows in Windows like OSX might arrange them. Maybe Apple is just using a different metaphor. I understand…
Funnily enough, for the ~5 years I used macOS, the Window Manager was the most frustrating aspect for me. I could not maximize apps (there was only a weird fullscreen/focus mode), I would accidentally end up dragging a window very often etc. All this gave ended up creating this feeling in my brain that the windows are just "floating" on the screen instead of being tightly bound to an arrangement.
* Put the Dock left or right, vertical space is precious (trust me, do it for a week and then decide)
* Setup Hot-Corners (Settings -> Mission Control -> Hot Corners)
- Upper-Right Corner as Mission Control (Must be upper right so spaces are immediately shown)
- Lower-Left Corner as Application Windows
- just fling your mouse curser into the corner (use std. gestures on the trackpad)
* Maximise Windows by double clicking the Window title bar.
* Disable auto-{correction, capitalize, etc}, smart-quotes under Keyboard settings (if you want)
* Learn about the screenshot shortcuts CMD+shift+{3,4}, 3: full screen, 4: select area or switch to window select with hitting space bar once.
* Learn about CMD+space for launching apps
* Set Key-Repeat to fast and shorten the delay
* Disable spotlight for everything except what you want to use it for.
* Enable File-Vault
* Disable "Wake for Network Access" under Energy
* Enable the ssh server under Sharing "Remote Login" (If you want)
* Disable the visual/audible bell in the Terminal profile.
* Install MacPorts/Homebew
And one thing to internalize is that Apple is a little authoritarian about some UX aspects.
For example the snapping and window thing... Apple has a thing with continuos freedom opposed to the discretisation one is used to. I've come around to that view as well actually, free your mind, nature is not a stepped slider.
Cool Utilities:
MenuMeters with a CPU usage graph. this allows you to see if something is killing your battery.
MonitorControl (on github) to set brightness of external monitors.
LittleSnitch ($$) for fellow paranoid control freaks
IINA (github) best video player
UTM for VMs (free on github) paid options are good too
MacPass for KeePass databases
Hope it helps.
> give anything to replace macOS with Linux (or even Windows) I agree that this was a fair, measured post, but I find it bizarre that a Linux enthusiast would ever want to replace their Mac OS with Windows when the biggest complaint is... window management? I feel like they left something out here.
I tried the m1 mini when it came out because I was hyped by all the m1 HN talk. This was my first time using macOS and besides the window management what I loathed was having to re-learn all the shortcuts I've been using for 20+ years, how no one mentions this is baffling to me. I tried to make it work more like "normal" windows / linux but I didn't find any good options and I always felt like I was running with my s…
>you use what they give you, how they give it to you, using their workflows, barely customizing anything. Apple products are supposed to be revered the world over as the pinnacle of design, used by artists, engineers, professionals, and creators. Why do I feel like there are training wheels on a machine I use for productivity? Gosh, this is exactly how I felt in a similar situation. Really hit the nail on the head. I…
system76? sounds cool can it run excel and apple music?