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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

#151

Post by dhzhzjsbevs »

dopeboy wrote: post #55

Ubuntu user since the 5.04 days. The vertical integration the apple ecosystem offers is incredible and not something linux can ever compete with. I see my fiancee use her iphone with her apple tv and her mac - everything connects together, seamlessly. There are walled garden elements to it but look, I'm done fighting the FOSS fight I waged in my late teens and early 20s. I got work to do, my life to live, etc. My adv…

Email zoom your info. They have excellent Linux support and staff work to resolve issues quickly.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#152

Post by prmoustache »

awilfox wrote: post #145
prmoustache wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe softwares can be replaced by other tools and their licensing these day make it something you don't want regardless of the platform it would run on. Office 365 works well enough on the web, calligra and libreoffice are compatible enough to make it a non issue. You can even upload and work on odf documents on office 365 these days. I like having 4k in the living room and I have a chromecast for that but I'd rathe…

> You don't miss retina if you never used it. This line of thinking baffles me. I should put up with subpar text-rendering and pixelated fonts and widgets because that's how we did things before? > I guess it comes from poor buying skills. I purposefully went out of my way to buy a Radeon that was explicitly supported by amdgpu.ko. I poured over driver code to see which USB Wi-Fi would work best. I gave up on 4K back…

> This line of thinking baffles me. I should put up with subpar text-rendering and pixelated fonts and widgets because that's how we did things before?

My fonts are fine thank you, and look much better than on the windows 10 that was provided to me initially by my employer.

Now let's take an example. My employer sent me 2 1080p external displays for work. What would Retina on my laptop provide if I don't benefit from it on my external displays? Yes sometimes it is better not experiencing better/nicer technology if you can't afford or if your emplyer can't afford to equip all your devices with it. Otherwise you just get frustrated.

I am not saying you should go back to CRTs and vintage techs. You like it or not, the market and world is not yet ready to provide affordable retina/4K/5K monitor/displays with decent refresh speed and latency in all sizes at prices anyone can afford.

> The reason your experience is so good is because people find these bugs and fix them.

Are you saying other OSes / apps ecosystems are bugfree? They are not. And the bug aren't necessarily fixed earlier than on free software.

For instance, Windows has been virtually unusable in a non US/english only context for decades and they have never cared fixing the default keyboard layouts.

On linux I don't have to memorize arbitrary ALT + 3 digits numbers to type common, daily used letters in my language, I just compose them easily from the default keys.

I can name countless of people swearing every day because their app has bug, eratic behavior, crashes, all OS and software license included.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#153

Post by brailsafe »

sph wrote: post #149
brailsafe wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya but... how could those differences be so impactful? I tile my windows occasionally, it's handy, but I can't imagine that being my single issue vote.

I don't tile my windows, macOS' window management is a death by a thousand cuts. I haven't used it since Mojave so I forgot what exactly used to bother me, sorry. It's certainly serviceable, Windows feels better to me, Linux is the best: Super+right click to resize windows, and Super+drag to move them around are killer features.

> Super+drag to move them around are killer features

Do you mean that they're locked in-place unless you hold down whatever super is? I use CMD+direction for a segment of the screen on whichever half or third I want, and other hotkeys for corners, and click and drag if I need. Lately I've just not been bothering much, as a lack of tiling hasn't been bothering me so much.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#154

Post by sph »

brailsafe wrote: post #153
sph wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't tile my windows, macOS' window management is a death by a thousand cuts. I haven't used it since Mojave so I forgot what exactly used to bother me, sorry. It's certainly serviceable, Windows feels better to me, Linux is the best: Super+right click to resize windows, and Super+drag to move them around are killer features.

> Super+drag to move them around are killer features Do you mean that they're locked in-place unless you hold down whatever super is? I use CMD+direction for a segment of the screen on whichever half or third I want, and other hotkeys for corners, and click and drag if I need. Lately I've just not been bothering much, as a lack of tiling hasn't been bothering me so much.

No they're not locked, but I can drag them without having to actually drag the titlebar. Just hold super and click anywhere in the window to move it. Don't knock it till you've tried it.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#155

Post by marssaxman »

alphabettsy wrote: post #104
marssaxman wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my experience. I never consciously switched; I just realized, one day, that I had stopped bothering to use my Mac in favor of my Linux-based, second-hand Thinkpad. MacOS used to be my home, but over time it steadily felt more like Apple's home, in which I was only welcome if I did things their way. Linux offers its own frustrations, but at least it's my machine.

Sure but that’s a completely different argument. I don’t think anyone would argue that Linux is not more customizable or does not give you more options.

I don't mean customization - I prefer to leave things as they are, for the most part, since all that work gets lost whenever you switch to your next machine.

I mean that Apple has grown steadily more opinionated about how "their" machines ought to be used, and not in ways that suit me. Every new version of MacOS requires me to struggle through a bunch of new stuff I don't need or want before I can get back to using the machine the way I'm used to. I don't want to create an Apple account, I don't want iCloud backup, I don't want to use an app store, and I can't stand the constant barrage of notifications blinking away in the corner of the screen. I don't want Apple to protect me from running the application I just downloaded a minute ago, and I really don't want Apple to protect me from using applications they haven't approved and cryptographically signed... On it goes. I understand why they think all this stuff matters, but I have different priorities. I don't need Apple to manage my digital life, and I wish they'd stop trying to force me into their groove.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#156

Post by smoldesu »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #144

As someone who exclusively used Linux desktops since the early Gnome 1.x days, who migrated to MacOS around 2005, the major selling point of MacOS is "it just works". Your experience may differ if you're not "all in" on the Apple ecosystem, but using mostly/only Apple devices means that everything integrates, and integrates well. You may recreate a similar experience with Android and KDE (or Windows i guess), but it…

> Your experience may differ if you're not "all in" on the Apple ecosystem

This is something that frustrates me, and it's one of the reasons I'll never go "all in" on the Apple ecosystem. It's tantamount to John Deere designing special cupholders in their tractors that cost $150, lest you risk your drink tipping over. I'm not paying more money to a company that actively wants to price me out of new experiences. I think Snow Leopard to Mojave was a really good time to own a Mac; generally speaking, the software and hardware experiences complimented one another. Nowadays, Apple is a hardware company that sells software products, and Tim Cook is doing everything he can to continue driving up the marginal utility they capitalize on. It's an absurd business, I refuse to support it.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#157

Post by smoldesu »

sph wrote: post #131
_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…

> custom installers or packages for distros Heard of Flathub?

I really wish I hadn't.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#158

Post by tharne »

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.

> I think the “Macs are owned longer than PCs” is under-appreciated.

I don't like Macs these days, but this is 100% true. In my experience, people who buy macs keep them significantly longer, so comparing simply the price tag of Mac vs. PC is very misleading. The correct comparison is "total cost of ownership".

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#160

Post by smoldesu »

sph wrote: post #159
smoldesu wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish I hadn't.

Yawn. You've told us about your hate for Flatpak multiple times—we discussed it before. Good bait though.

You've also suggested Flatpak as a panacea for packaging several times. There's really nothing to discuss here; I'm just letting people know that from a user perspective, dealing with Flatpak feels like a second job.
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