Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#301

Post by ronjouch » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:41 AM UTC

crag wrote: post #233

brianstorms wrote: post #101

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 up…

> 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.

Reading your expectations and gripes, I'd say try http://bliker.github.io/cmder/ , the goodness of clink bundled with ConEmu and a sexy Monokai theme.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#302

Post by RoseO » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:43 AM UTC

I got fed up the other week and on a whim switched to Xubuntu on my 2013 MBA and other than no drivers for the PCI based webcam (Apple webcams no longer sit on the USB bus) which I barely used anyway, everything is pretty much fine apart from a few quirks (Trackpad settings and brightness control which were easily fixed). I had a Time Machine backup just in case if I hated it.

If anything after spending years using various distros on servers it makes sense to start using it on the desktop too as it is exactly the same experience I'm used to, with a bonus of a GUI.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#303

Post by bphogan » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:44 AM UTC

crag wrote: post #274

TD-Linux wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you migrate your music collection away from iTunes? I thought the DRM was killed long ago.

Know a good music player for Windows? And don't tell me Windows Media Player. :)

I can't tell you in words how awesome this is.

http://www.jriver.com/

But I have used it for 10 years and it's the only reason I still have Windows machines in my house. It's that good.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#304

Post by kalleboo » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:44 AM UTC

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.

If you look at the comments, it seems like a lot of people agree and are glad to have an opportunity to vent about how OS X has gotten worse lately.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#305

Post by _almosnow » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:45 AM UTC

hisyam wrote: post #185

_almosnow wrote: post #102

Apple's screwing it up with software. Too bad because they undoubtedly had the best OS ever. I remember seeing a few posts here and there where people complained about performance degrading each time they upgraded OS X. My last 3 laptops had been Mac's (a White Macbook, then a Macbook Pro from 2010, then a Retina Macbook Pro from these days...) and while I feel 'satisfied' I also kind of noticed that performance is a…

> My last 3 laptops had been Mac's (a White Macbook, then a Macbook Pro from 2010, then a Retina Macbook Pro from these days...) and while I feel 'satisfied' I also kind of noticed that performance is always worse, and somehow the morethe more I upgrade, the more I feel like a pain the ass when I use that computer. Are you using SSD or normal HDD?

SSD on retina.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#306

Post by morganvachon » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:46 AM UTC

crag wrote: post #274

TD-Linux wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you migrate your music collection away from iTunes? I thought the DRM was killed long ago.

Know a good music player for Windows? And don't tell me Windows Media Player. :)

WMP actually isn't that bad these days, though all I use it for is ripping CDs (yep, those shiny plastic things for you young'uns) since it's great at that. For playback in Windows, I've stuck with Winamp through the years as I haven't found anything that works the way it does without a bunch of features I don't need. I tried Foobar2000 and couldn't get into it, and MediaMonkey just seemed like overkill.

By the way, a great site for finding apps in specific genres is alternativeto.net. Here's a list of alternatives to iTunes:

http://alternativeto.net/software/itunes/?platform=windows

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#307

Post by badsock » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:46 AM UTC

brianstorms wrote: post #101

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.…

You can switch to Linux, but unfortunately it's been degrading along similar lines.

Big, wrong ideas are destructive, and the two biggest, wrongest ones right now seem to be: "desktops are just out-of-date tablets", and "the only good affordance is a dead affordance".

Affordances are what make computers humane, and there's a world of difference between how phones are used (mostly social), tablets are used (mostly media consumption), and how desktops are used (mostly productivity).

The visionaries in charge of all three of Windows/OSX/Linux are of similar mind about the "big ideas", and it's caused a lot of grief for productive people.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#308

Post by girvo » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:46 AM UTC

crag wrote: post #233

brianstorms wrote: post #101

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 up…

http://bliker.github.io/cmder/

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#309

Post by overgard » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:47 AM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #149

brianstorms wrote: post #101

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.…

Why do people update OS X? Just curious. If it works how you like, why update it? Security flaws are probably the main reason, but isn't there a way to get those without acquiescing to an OS redesign?

Because you have to: OSX doesn't have much of a culture of backwards compatibility, and every update tends to pressure developers into the latest greatest thing. Maintaining old software is just not a cultural value.

Once the developers move, the users pretty much have to. I have an iMac from 2009. I had two OS's on it. Windows 7? Everything still works there. Runs fast, new software is great, etc. OSX 10.6.8? DEAD. It's basically useless. I guess it's nice that apple offers free upgrades, except that they mysteriously make a system that used to be lightning fast extremely slow, even though other OS's seem to run just fine..

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#310

Post by shurcooL » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:51 AM UTC

I've noticed a pattern. If you're unhappy with the "default out of box experience" of an OS/distribution and you need to apply an increasing amount of tweaks/hacks to get it to be the way you like, you will be unhappy and eventually switch away.

How "pleasant to use" the default experience is, and "number of steps needed to be done" after a fresh OS install are a very important metric to me. If see that metric going up, I will switch to something where that metric is lower. I care more about this metric than the end result usability (including personal tweaks).

Tweaks and adjustments are fine in the short term, but in the long term, if you're unhappy with the design decisions and the direction the OS developers are making, there's no winning.

I'm more happy to make small sacrifices and adjust myself to to like the default experience so that this metric can be lower, and I can enjoy using the OS more. But that's me.