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Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

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Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#51

Post by MichaelGG »

yuhong wrote: post #31
LeoPanthera wrote: post #27

I've been using OS X since 10.2, though I keep a Windows box around for games. I also feel that OS X has become less stable and performant in recent years, and every now and then I spin up a Linux distro on a spare hard disk just to try it out. These experiments rarely last very long, and almost always end because the video/graphics support is just so terrible. I have yet to find a reliable way to play videos without…

I wonder if you have tried the Win10 preview.

Windows 10 is essentially what Windows 8 should have been, or at worst, 8.1. It's quite usable. The ugliest thing in Win10 is the Store, integrated into the Start menu. The Store is filled with junk apps and outright scams. Microsoft refuses to fix these issues. In fact, I reported a fake Dropbox app that listed "@Microsoft Corporation" as the publisher. MS wrote back to say the app was fine, and if the developers were lying, I should just leave a review.

The result is that for many things you might type into the start menu, you get offers to install scams on your PC. Idiotic.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#52

Post by owenwil »

I don't think Yosemite is as bad as people are making out; there have been some odd bugs, but many of them are caused by odd legacy migrations from old laptops or botched upgrades it seems. A fresh install seems to fix many problems experienced by many.

Even if OS X Yosemite is buggy, I don't think it's worth the switch to Linux for a desktop machine. It's a step backwards.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#53

Post by nathanvanfleet »

All extremely valid points. I don't really see the upgrades to OSX as very useful and have made things strangely unstable (since it seems that even the basic OS gets broken on each release). I think OSX is still the best OS to use though even if it doesn't look like it's headed in a good direction (I also do xCode dev sooo...). I wonder if some of the tools to turn off these new features could significantly improve the experience, though you'd still need to wait a few months after a 1.0 release of the OS to wait for the basic stability fixes

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#54

Post by stormbrew »

ZoF wrote: post #23
ggreer wrote: post #11

It's important to notice that he's switching to a desktop running linux. Running linux on laptops is still a gamble. Sometimes things work great. Sometimes you spend months trying to fix basic stuff like screen brightness[1][2] on hardware certified by Ubuntu.[3] I think there's a market for a linux distro that targets a limited set of premium hardware. I'd gladly pay money for an OS that worked out of the box on any…

Purely anecdotal but I dual boot windows/linux(ubuntu) regularly on four separate ultrabooks(from three different manufacturers) with few complaints. (beyond the dearth of updates(that I appreciate anyway)). Everything worked out of the box. 100%.

Yep, my experience has been anything labelled ultrabook works pretty well. My main linux laptop is a toshiba z830. The only problem out of the box with Ubuntu is a fairly easy to solve backlight issue.

In particular, though, there's an ancient piece of conventional wisdom that always floats around that's very pro-nvidia+linux, but I think it's terribly outdated. AMD and nVidia compatibility with linux are both quite bad and both the OSS and proprietary drivers create a lot of problems for both. You're better off just using Intel straight through, their OSS drivers are plenty good for dev work and quite stable in my experience.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#55

Post by bla2 »

caryhartline wrote: post #16

Um, okay? This is like being told why someone switched office chairs. This only got to the top of Hacker News because of this guy's last name.

I think the notion of OS X being pretty good until up to 10.6 and then getting worse, with many new features feeling "strategic" (for Apple) instead of useful resonates with people. I have this impression too, at least.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#56

Post by owenwil »

jwise0 wrote: post #29

I've been considering this for a while -- especially after the Yosemite upgrade, in which my machine has been randomly hanging [0], and in which my machine gets noticeably slower (cmd-tab takes a quarter to a half a second to actually finish switching and repainting windows) over the course of a few days of uptime. OS X software quality is very clearly not a priority at Apple, which is a shame, because this machine i…

A fresh install will likely fix many of your problems. But it sounds to me like your machine needs a warranty repair.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#57

Post by mavdi »

For me it's the fact that so many of the new wave of techs are mainly focused on Linux. Docker being one. I think OSX is losing it's hacker status. Linux as an open source OS will eventually take over in this market.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#58

Post by c54 »

mattkrea wrote: post #37
MichaelGG wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution is booting to Windows for the driver support, battery, etc. then VMware. No hardware issues ever, plus additional security.

What do you mean by "additional security"? From Windows?

He probably means the additional security of whatever is running in the VM, a compromised VM wouldn't be able to escape its restricted virtual world.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#59

Post by taspeotis »

yuhong wrote: post #31
LeoPanthera wrote: post #27

I've been using OS X since 10.2, though I keep a Windows box around for games. I also feel that OS X has become less stable and performant in recent years, and every now and then I spin up a Linux distro on a spare hard disk just to try it out. These experiments rarely last very long, and almost always end because the video/graphics support is just so terrible. I have yet to find a reliable way to play videos without…

I wonder if you have tried the Win10 preview.

Windows 8 wasn't all that bad. Relative to Windows 7 it was just two steps forward and two steps back. For all the Metro haters: the core workflow to launch applications (winkey + number keys or winkey + search + enter) is still the same as Windows 7.

Windows 8.1 improved things a bit by identifying some scenarios where Metro was unnecessary and keeping it out of the way. So relative to Windows 7 it's now two steps forward and one step back.

I've used the Windows 10 preview and early signs suggest that it's going to be two steps forward from Windows 7.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#60

Post by seanmcdirmid »

TD-Linux wrote: post #36
ggreer wrote: post #11

It's important to notice that he's switching to a desktop running linux. Running linux on laptops is still a gamble. Sometimes things work great. Sometimes you spend months trying to fix basic stuff like screen brightness[1][2] on hardware certified by Ubuntu.[3] I think there's a market for a linux distro that targets a limited set of premium hardware. I'd gladly pay money for an OS that worked out of the box on any…

I've had incredibly good luck for the last several years with Linux on a laptop. You just have to be a bit careful. Here's what I've found: - Backlight bugs are usually related to ACPI tables in the BIOS. Doing a BIOS upgrade will often fix them. This is especially true on the Thinkpad line where Lenovo explicitly supports Linux in its BIOS. - Be careful with switchable graphics. While they have gotten a lot better,…

Only the highest end rMBP has a discrete card, the cheaper one is just integrated.
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