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Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

catfox.life

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Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#121

Post by spacexsucks »

alphabettsy wrote: post #90
goosedragons wrote: post #5

For me personally I found macOS got more in the way than out. Besides being easier to install MS Office on it seemed like every few months I'd encounter some speed bump caused by Apple and I'd have to find a workaround. Plus it just really sucks at window management and you're stuck with the macOS UI and whatever tweaks (usually paid) apps can do. For my workflow it just didn't work. I was also extremely annoyed at t…

> every few months I'd encounter some speed bump caused by Apple and I'd have to find a workaround > switched to an older thinkpad that runs Linux natively The idea of using an older Thinkpad with Linux having fewer “speed bumps” than any Mac seems hard to imagine based on my own experience. Guess it depends on what you use a computer for.

I can attest to this, no one would believe me. But i drive old Lenovos compared to the new fangled M1. Macs definitely get in the way of a variety of work

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#122

Post by spacexsucks »

gurjeet wrote: post #21
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #17

“Platform A has these features I find convenient therefore I migrated from platform B which doesn’t have them”. That’s all this article is. Platform B might as well have been windows. I’m not sure why everyone is reading it as a dismissal of desktop Linux as a concept. I tried a Mac for a while, found it too restrictive, moved back to Linux on the desktop - doesn’t mean the Mac sucks or anything, just wasn’t right fo…

I bet Linux, whatever distro you use, wasn’t right for you to begin with; but you made it yours by tweaking it to your liking. Trust me, you can tweak macOS to your liking, as well. I used to be a Linux lover, but after trying for almost a decade, for my desktop needs, I’ve given up on Linux, and adopted macOS. macOS is a POSIX environment, and you have almost the whole GNU ecosystem available to you, if you want.

Patently a lie. I have been struggling to make mac os mine for last 6 years with 40hrs/wk on it. Compared to my personal linux where I barely spend 10-12 per week. Just cant. On top SIP filesystem integrity protections just get in the way.

Mac gets int way when programming, video editing, data management, power system.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#123

Post by diffeomorphism »

sokoloff wrote: post #63
vehemenz wrote: post #60

About the final point—are Macs really "high cost"? Looking at their current lineup, configured with a minimum of 16GB and 512GB: M1 Mac Mini .......... $1099 M1 MacBook Air ....... $1399 M1 iMac ......,....... $1699 M1 Pro Mac Studio .... $1999 M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14" $1999 M1 Pro MacBook Pro 16" $2499 I'll restrain myself from listing the ways comparing Macs to PCs is not apples to apples. Unless you go for costly st…

I think the “Macs are owned longer than PCs” is under-appreciated. My previous MBPro was 6 years old when I upgraded. My wife’s daily as a freelance editor is a mid-2013 MacBook Air. That puts our total capital cost for that computer at under $10/mo. What would high-cost really be? $5/workday isn’t even high-cost to me if it was a daily coffee bill, but certainly not if it’s your main computing device.

Are they? There does not seem to be a real difference to other $1000 or $2000 PC Laptops.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#124

Post by diffeomorphism »

Sporktacular wrote: post #96
somebehemoth wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how anyone that can afford comparable PCs or UltraBooks would be priced out of Apple products. And if they can’t afford comparable PC’s, then Macs are not affordable. There are many affordable non-mac options.

And then there are used options for both PC and Mac, if they're really keen.

Not really. Just have a look at ebay: Macbooks from 2015 are still expensive.

Partially because Apple's naming is useless, e.g. would you like to buy a macbook air or a macbook air or a macbook air? All very different machines from different years.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#125

Post by sph »

spacexsucks wrote: post #122
gurjeet wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet Linux, whatever distro you use, wasn’t right for you to begin with; but you made it yours by tweaking it to your liking. Trust me, you can tweak macOS to your liking, as well. I used to be a Linux lover, but after trying for almost a decade, for my desktop needs, I’ve given up on Linux, and adopted macOS. macOS is a POSIX environment, and you have almost the whole GNU ecosystem available to you, if you want.

Patently a lie. I have been struggling to make mac os mine for last 6 years with 40hrs/wk on it. Compared to my personal linux where I barely spend 10-12 per week. Just cant. On top SIP filesystem integrity protections just get in the way. Mac gets int way when programming, video editing, data management, power system.

macOS is a great system to watch videos, collect photos, take notes and do casual and very common multimedia tasks. It is excellent and unrivalled at that. But for engineering and power users it becomes more restrictive the more your mastery and requirements increase.

Linux is pretty crap at multimedia. But for computing, tinkering and pushing your hardware to its full capacity it is absolutely the best.

Windows is average, and that's not to disparage it, au contraire. It's decent at multimedia, not as much as macOS and decent at tinkering, but not as much as Linux.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#126

Post by diffeomorphism »

_8j50 wrote: post #92
vladvasiliu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unpopular opinion: Linux desktops needs to be proprietary software friendly. As in accept blob installers that can install desktop applications that work well on any major DE and without consideration for package managers. Paid apps should also be a thing on Linux. Isn't this already the case? I'm running Spotify and Steam games with no issues here. While I agree with your greater point that a system that gets out…

They have to do a lot of work coming up with custom installers or packages for distros. If you have gentoo+kde for example you can't just download a blob, open it and just have it work. It depends on what you are doing I guess. I remember getting frustrated at windows too. Linux is the best at being configurable and controllable from an administrative workload perspective but not from a productivity or entertainment…

> you can't just download a blob, open it and just have it work

Isn't that exactly what appimages are? E.g. download Krita, double click, done.

Also, I thought with mobile people finally realized that "download blobs" is much worse than just installing from stores/repos? Even Windows has winget by now.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#127

Post by diffeomorphism »

rvz wrote: post #3

> At the end of the day, my goal in life is to make a difference, and also have a bit of fun. I want a system that is out of my way and lets me focus on that. For me, in 2022, that system is a Mac. TL;DR: Another very happy Apple customer. It seems that they are not looking back at the Linux Desktop. What can the Linux Desktop ecosystem learn from this?

That being preinstalled is important. Note that the author did not switch to a hackintosh.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#128

Post by sph »

Klonoar wrote: post #112
alwillis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple actively discourages and tries to get in the way This is false. Apple doesn’t actively discourage anything. Apple put all of options in the operating system for a reason and ships with a Terminal. The GUI allows regular people to get shit done without requiring them to be experts. Meanwhile, developers, hackers, tinkerers, can tweak to their heart’s content on the things that matter to them while getting the be…

This, yeah. You can also always disable SIP and spelunk around if you want to. There's just far less of a hivemind for macOS tinkering and it's not as readily apparent to jump into. But it does exist.

The macOS tinkering is like tuning your car engine while trying not to void the warranty, the Linux tinkering is being able to turn your car into a rocket-powered go kart. It's not the same thing.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#129

Post by _8j50 »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #126
_8j50 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to do a lot of work coming up with custom installers or packages for distros. If you have gentoo+kde for example you can't just download a blob, open it and just have it work. It depends on what you are doing I guess. I remember getting frustrated at windows too. Linux is the best at being configurable and controllable from an administrative workload perspective but not from a productivity or entertainment…

> you can't just download a blob, open it and just have it work Isn't that exactly what appimages are? E.g. download Krita, double click, done. Also, I thought with mobile people finally realized that "download blobs" is much worse than just installing from stores/repos? Even Windows has winget by now.

That's the problem with big picture thinking. You are right, in the grand scheme of things it is better. But as a consumer it sucks. Which repo? Now I have to maintain repos alongside apps? Why can't the app take care of its own compatibility and upgrade needs? Why am I involved? I just want to use the damn thing without interruption.

On mac, I don't use their appstore, I just get dmg images and get going. Same on windows. On linux, I try to stick to the package manager but man! The moment I touch python I regret not using venv and avoiding any interaction with the system's python almost every time. Or if a distro package lacks some feature because of distro decisions which should have been install time decisions and now I have to build from source and figure out aclocal dev packages,deps,ugh...I accept the pain, part of then package but I won't pretend it feels good.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#130

Post by sph »

awilfox wrote: post #71
nmstoker wrote: post #43

All seems sensible stuff, the "it just works" can't be overstated. But the Apple Maps point felt like a stretch - Google Maps is available everywhere. I don't see much to suggest you'd need it as an app, it works great in the browser with hardware accelerated graphics, which it has had for 10+ years.

I've never had hardware accelerated graphics work correctly, and I don't want to have to use the Google ecosystem – that's an article for another day, probably. When I was "all-in" on the libre ecosystem, I used a ThinkPad for laptop and Talos for desktop. The ThinkPad had just the Intel iGPU that didn't work right in Firefox, and the Talos had blue lines through everything in OSM because "lol x86 monoculture" meant…

When did you last use Linux? Because hardware acceleration has been working and default in Firefox for a while, except on NVIDIA, and video acceleration (not required for Google Maps) needed manual tweaking the Firefox config but has been available as well for a while.

The Linux desktop moves at incredible pace. The experience I had 2 years ago was more crude than my desktop in 2022.

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