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The erosion of the Mac experience

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Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#281
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I attach a non Mac external monitor to a new MacBook Pro from work and the text is super blurry. Much googling later and I need to use something called Better Display to create a virtual display, and project that to my monitor That’s not the correct solution. The correct solution is for the monitor manufacturer to stop reporting an EDID that identifies their monitor as a TV (and thereby forces the OS to default to…

The OPs solution is the only valid solution they have open to them though.

The personal solution is to not buy monitors from manufacturers that fail to put EDID chips in their HDMI signal path. The set of manufacturers that do this is well-documented.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#282
post #161

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

Don't worry I'm European and 90% of developers I know think exactly like you (and me). It's just that the HN crowd is typically North American, and people tend to like what they have grown with.

I'm also European, and I prefer Linux over Windows. I was using Windows and Linux in parallel for some time, but got really upset when a Microsoft Update changed system settings which was the final nail in the Microsoft coffin for me. At my last two jobs I have been using Linux as my main driver and sometimes Widows via Citrix. Now at my new job I will get a Macbook, which shouldn't be a huge difference to Linux since I already try to install most tools I need for work via Linux-Brew.

That all being said, for me a non Windows desktop at work has become a requirement. If an employer would force me to use Windows I would most probably ask for much more money or more likely leave for another company.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#283
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OPs solution is the only valid solution they have open to them though.

The personal solution is to not buy monitors from manufacturers that fail to put EDID chips in their HDMI signal path. The set of manufacturers that do this is well-documented.

Oh, ok, so the OP should, as a consumer, know about all monitor standards before purchasing one. Good to know.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#284
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry I'm European and 90% of developers I know think exactly like you (and me). It's just that the HN crowd is typically North American, and people tend to like what they have grown with.

I'm also European, and I prefer Linux over Windows. I was using Windows and Linux in parallel for some time, but got really upset when a Microsoft Update changed system settings which was the final nail in the Microsoft coffin for me. At my last two jobs I have been using Linux as my main driver and sometimes Widows via Citrix. Now at my new job I will get a Macbook, which shouldn't be a huge difference to Linux sinc…

In my experience the Windows-Linux split is around 50-50, but I've only seen exactly two people with Apple devices in my entire life here. Western Europe.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#285
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unix you layer a major role in the success of the Mac in two key markets. First max was the cool box for young developers, since it provided a Unix dev environment and this such nice things as Python, ruby, reasonable c++, git, etc. when these often worked poorly on windows. 2) while emgineering software moved from Unix to windows in the early 2000s, scientific software often did not. It was however available on macs…

Only when one equates "developers === UNIX", which is why so many still don't get Apple developer's culture, even with two decades of OS X. C++ on the Mac was already a great development experience with Toolbox and Metrowerks PowerPlant. Copland was going to be fully based on C++. If you look close enough to NeXT's history and how Steve Jobs thought about UNIX beards, NeXT only supported UNIX as means to compete agai…

I’m sure mac was a wonderful dev environment for developing Mac GUI apps. But was it a wonderful dev environment for developing high performance numerical code? Or web servers? Or robotics? Or... Most developers don’t write GUI apps.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a Mac user and have 4 monitors plus my laptop’s screen. I use this https://rectangleapp.com/ to add snappiness to my windows. And it kicks ass

Which is not a stock macOS app. Which is what the point was. Stock macOS sucks with window and monitor management. I run three screens and it's aggravating sometimes.

And windows file explorer copying was inconsistent and buggy as hell from nearly a decade, but installing teracopy fixed that issue. As long as an OS is plug-in friendly, stock issues that can be easily remedied don't bother me.

If you're using multiple monitors and you're not using the rectangle app... that's kinda on you. I switched to Mac after using windows for decades and in less than a week I solved my windows management issues with this extension.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#287
post #161

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

Don't worry I'm European and 90% of developers I know think exactly like you (and me). It's just that the HN crowd is typically North American, and people tend to like what they have grown with.

I'm European and really dislike using Windows. I also dislike using Linux and macOS, but macOS is the least bad.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#288

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

because it's easy to manage packages using brew, Windows has the... winget which is all but abandoned.

For the longest time there was no such thing as WSL so Mac had a serious advantage for us who migrated between Linux and Mac.

And as you've mentioned I've had so many quality control issues with Windows computers including Dell and Asus that eventually I just said fuck it I'd rather spend 3 to 4 grand on a machine that I know will work flawlessly.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Macs used to be for professionals Makes you wonder who is then buying these expensive MacBook Pros, Mac Studios and Mac Pros. I guess it's those grandmas needing 28 cores for their recipes.

It does indeed make you wonder considering the top composers are on Windows running Cubase/Nuendo, almost everybody in game dev is on Windows or Linux, and most of Hollywood's VFX teams are on Linux or Windows integrating with Da Vinci Resolve.

Not if they're doing mobile game development in my experience, still lots of us developing on macs.

Ableton works fantastically on my Mac, and for that matter so does Da Vinci. Anecdotal but nevertheless.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give an example of some “bad UX paradigms”?

Sure. I don't keep a running list of this (and I feel like I've seen some, but can't find them now) so it's a little off the cuff... - Scrollbars not appearing until you attempt scrolling, so no indication that there is more content to scroll to. If you mouse-wheel scroll, then try to move over to click and drag, sometimes the scrollbar disappears before you can grab it. Yes, you can change this default, but... it's…

> Scrollbars

I don't get it. If I want to see whether/how much I can scroll ... I try it. I appreciate only having to see the information when I actually need to see it instead of it distracting me otherwise.

> Having to hover over the more inner portion of a notification to get its close button to appear

This reminds me of a much worse thing regarding notifications. When you install an app, often you get a notification telling you something like "This app will send you notifications". For some reason these apps don't go away automatically, so okay, you swipe it away manually. But for some reason they keep re-appearing.

After over a year of using macOS I found out a hidden button saying "allow".

A hidden button. Asking you whether you agree to something that wasn't a question.

The fuck?

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