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Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

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Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#231
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

For most people, eyes will start glazing around the second paragraph or so, which doesn't bode well for your "you just have to" argument.

How about this: just by a system with all Intel chipsets and you'll probably be fine.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#232
post #164

I just do not get why people complain about Pulse. Don't get me wrong, I think Poettering is a blight on the Linux landscape but I've installed pulseaudio dozens of times and never had a problem once.

Counter-anecdote: over several years and across multiple installs, I've experienced intermittent stuttering, multi-second latency, and random crazy-high CPU usage. Uninstalling Pulse and going back to alsa in each case completely fixed the problem, with no noticeable loss in functionality.

I've used Linux exclusively as my desktop OS since 1999 - I'm happy to mess with things till they work. I've never had a piece of software frustrate me so much. It made me feel like I was taking crazy pills; everyone else seemed fine with such an obviously broken addition to Linux, worse yet they standardized around it.

Basically, you got lucky, I didn't. Leads to a very different perspectives!

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#233

I haven't quit it, but the problems, annoyances, surprises, seeming ineptitude, and creeping iOSification of OS X that the author describes sure do resonate. Every new major release of OS X is a day or week spent disabling things, shutting down Spotlight again, trying to restore things back to the way they were instead of the way some Designer with a capital D thinks they should be, for no other reason than, "Beauty.…

I agree completely. And believe it or not, I went back to Windows. Sort of. I'm testing the waters. My big issue is iTunes. Yeah I drank the kool-aid and now have an iTunes library of about 100GB. Despite how much I hate what iTunes has become at least is runs on Windows.

Also, it's easier to "turn features off" in Windows than OSX these days. I'm sad about it though. But after 14 years on Mac I'm done. It was the upgrade to 10.10 that finally pissed me off enough to leave.

By the way, anyone know of a good terminal app for Windows? Not too crazy about Powershell. I have been using Git Bash and that's decent so far.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#234
I was planning to move to OSX and then Yosemite happened! Been running Windows 10 Technical Preview for 2 months on an i5, 12GB laptop and it's been pretty stable. Just rebooted the machine yesterday after 4-5 days of heavy use; it didn't even need the reboot. Even computer viruses seem to have been plugged. My only grudge is with the Web Development environment and unavailability of XCode on Windows. I use Ubuntu exclusively for all web development work.

Trying to make Windows 8, OSX and Ubuntu Unity more like mobile OSes was a really bad move. All that people want is a great desktop experience, why make a small 5" touchscreen the inspiration for the desktop?!

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS X upgrades are free, more like Windows Service Packs in a way. Microsoft also drops support for pre-SP versions of Windows after a time. The clock is ticking for Windows 8.0; you have to upgrade to 8.1.

Free upgrades can still come at a cost. Multi-monitor full-screen was broken from 10.7 through 10.8. Thousands complained, Apple claimed it a feature. Not fixable, not tweakable, not reversible. 10.6 or one full-screen monitor at a time. Fuck off, Apple.

> Fuck off, Apple.

Log off, user.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#236
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 we…

> 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.

Or the other form of support: post to Twitter/HackerNews/etc. and light a fire that they will quickly need to put out...

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#237
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…

> On Macs, OS X is practically guaranteed to work out of the box. Wifi, bluetooth, trackpad, screen brightness, power management, hardware graphics acceleration, resume from suspend/hibernate, etc Just Works™. Interesting - my experience with respect to this is that Apple will "just replace it" if a user complains enough. Both my MBPs (17" 2009, last 17" made (2012?)) had chronic sleep/resume issues, where they would…

I'm sorry you had a poor experience, but I think most would agree that such problems are quite rare compared to other OSes. Also, it sounds like you had decent support from Apple. Though they failed, they expended significant effort and money to try and solve the problem.

But your anecdote doesn't address my point: Do you think any combination of laptop brand and linux distro would be more likely to have everything work out of the box than Apple hardware running OS X?

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read what I said about OS X upgrades being like Service Packs? Did you read your link? > Support for Windows 7 RTM without service packs ended on April 9, 2013.

A service pack doesn't completely redesign how people interact with Windows, though. But OS X "service packs" tend to do just that. In fact, that was the author's frustration. Seeing as OS X service packs also come out very frequently, whereas Windows are very rare, I'm not sure the two are comparable. I should probably bow out now. I just thought it was interesting.

Bow out if you will, but I've agreed with everything you've said thus far and don't think you made any false/slanderous/etc statements.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all true and I love it on a theoretical level. But I write code for a living and I really can't justify ever having my laptop out of commission because of hardware/OS issues. "Hey, boss. I'm not going to have my work done today because I installed an $DISTRO update and now my laptop is having driver issues."

Well, then, you can't afford to have less than two laptops then - because every single operating system, including Linux, Windows and OS/X, had botched upgrades.

True, though I wouldn't personally buy two laptops just to avoid update hell. I'd rather just manually update once I'm sure it won't bork my system, and only when I can afford some potential downtime.

That said, I can't imagine too many developers or IT professionals who only have one working computer at their disposal. I am typing this on my Windows 7/Slackware main workstation, with an old laptop running OpenBSD to my left and an old tower running NetBSD to my right. I can jump on either of those two and get back to work in a few minutes if this one goes down.

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