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The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

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Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#161

Post by linguae »

pjlegato wrote: post #152
linguae wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the exact same way. I've been a Mac user for over ten years largely because of OS X, but I've been disappointed in Apple's direction for the past few years, and yesterday's MacBook Pro announcement was the last straw for me. Linux is a wonderful server OS, and in fact I do most of my development inside of a VirtualBox VM running Debian, but in order for me to move to a full Linux workflow, I need to use some p…

I 'd buy it! Who's going to fund the upfront development? "We're going to make a new desktop OS that takes on both Apple and Microsoft" sounds like a hard sell for the VC crowd.

And that's the hard part....OS/2, NEXTSTEP/x86, and BeOS were examples of alternative OSes that failed to successfully take on Microsoft in the 1990s. It would be difficult for a VC firm to fund a business model that has failed multiple times in the 1990s. Moreover, the desktop market as a whole is shrinking, and my understanding is VC firms are interested in growing markets. An alternative OS dedicated to power users is definitely a niche market.

I wonder, though, if these is enough interest in the FOSS community to make such an idea a reality, where the project could be started by volunteers and donations could be requested?

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#162

Post by grzm »

klodolph wrote: post #159
randallsquared wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't. Preferences, but also 'defaults write ...', or just edit a plist...

Technically correct but very few people care about "defaults write". I can't remember the last time I used it, but I do use RegEdit often enough.

One place I've found it useful is for scripting the setup of a fresh machine, something like this:

https://blog.vandenbrand.org/2016/01/04/how-to-automate-your...

I agree it's likely very few people use it. It can be exactly the right tool for the job in some circumstances.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#163

Post by pjlegato »

dpacmittal wrote: post #157
pjlegato wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you need a new computer for work. Your other options are Windows or a Linux desktop experience, both of which are vastly worse in other ways. (No, I don't want to dork around with spending days compiling kernel patches and installing soundcard drivers before I can use the computer.) I'd gladly buy any other laptop that was simple and just worked out of the box in the sense that a Mac does. But there aren't an…

I've been using Linux as my primary OS since 2009. Not once I had to compiled anything at all. It works surprisingly well with almost any hardware you throw at it.

It's not just hardware support (though even that still requires stuff like editing text files before the GUI will start on certain common machines.) The UX of the GUIs leaves much to be desired - certainly relative to an Apple machine. Linux GUIs were all designed by committee and coded by volunteers, and it shows.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#164

Post by orionblastar »

Apple should have had touch screen Macs a few years ago with a pressure sensitive pen and other devices. They should have given the iMac a touch screen, and given the Macbook series a touch screen as well.

Microsoft got artists with the Surface Pro tablets and pressure sensitive pens, etc.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#165

Post by visarga »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #7

> Just check out its striking video for the Surface Studio — it is so influenced by Apple’s playbook that I’m surprised there’s no Jony Ive narration. What's happened is that other companies have figured out how to emulate Steve Jobs's playbook that's now several decades old and there's nobody at Apple to write new plays. Jobs always talked about how Microsoft didn't have taste and when you look at MS products up unt…

> "Need a new phone? ... Like new new?"

This line seems so superficial, so fluff. New new? No Google, I want them hot off the tables of production, not yesterday's cooled phones. Really, is new-newness the factor here?

Sounds more like a drug dealer:

"Hey bro... Need some shit? ... Like, new new shit?"

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#166

Post by otisfunkmeyer »

linguae wrote: post #134
tajen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A paid Linux! That's what I said on this comment about "Ask HN – What innovation would you want to see", which 84 people upvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12570030 I wish we would have executed on that wish a year ago, because with the two Microsoft & Apple events, it's clear there is demand for "a Surface Studio, but not with Windows 10". Yesterday people effectively said they stay on Macs because of mac…

I feel the exact same way. I've been a Mac user for over ten years largely because of OS X, but I've been disappointed in Apple's direction for the past few years, and yesterday's MacBook Pro announcement was the last straw for me. Linux is a wonderful server OS, and in fact I do most of my development inside of a VirtualBox VM running Debian, but in order for me to move to a full Linux workflow, I need to use some p…

I actually think that this is likely to happen over the next 2-3 years. Every single one of these companies is now going in the wrong direction in a specific way--which opens up a real desire for a real alternative.

We all used to love Mac, we all see that Apple has lost its way and seems to be heading more and more confidently in the wrong direction, and that may be just the push the community needs to actually build something.

And what an amazing achievement it would be--an actually open alternative that runs on lots of (powerful) hardware with the beauty of Mac OS (before Lion lol).

I really think it's going to happen because I think a very large percentage of the community now realizes that there is no existing private company heading in the right direction. So we now have to take the steering of the ship into our own hands.

Abracadabra.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#167

Post by otisfunkmeyer »

kartickv wrote: post #150
tajen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A paid Linux! That's what I said on this comment about "Ask HN – What innovation would you want to see", which 84 people upvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12570030 I wish we would have executed on that wish a year ago, because with the two Microsoft & Apple events, it's clear there is demand for "a Surface Studio, but not with Windows 10". Yesterday people effectively said they stay on Macs because of mac…

Your paid Linux idea won't work, because money is not the only thing holding back the open-source community. Other reasons are: - Design isn't appreciated or valued. A successful OS effort can't be driven only by engineers. - An obsession with choice as an end to itself, and being unable to say, "This is what we think the best user experience will be. You can't change it." - Fragmentation with too many APIs, GUI tool…

If it's a paid Linux though, then you can get a team that:

-Appreciates design.

-Makes choices.

-Supports the most powerful and popular hardware.

-Yes, focused first and foremost on tinkerers and geeks, who are the main people losing out in the current environment. It's all a group that's increasing in size and will likely continue to for the foreseeable future.

How's that plan sound?

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#168

Post by linguae »

otisfunkmeyer wrote: post #166
linguae wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the exact same way. I've been a Mac user for over ten years largely because of OS X, but I've been disappointed in Apple's direction for the past few years, and yesterday's MacBook Pro announcement was the last straw for me. Linux is a wonderful server OS, and in fact I do most of my development inside of a VirtualBox VM running Debian, but in order for me to move to a full Linux workflow, I need to use some p…

I actually think that this is likely to happen over the next 2-3 years. Every single one of these companies is now going in the wrong direction in a specific way--which opens up a real desire for a real alternative. We all used to love Mac, we all see that Apple has lost its way and seems to be heading more and more confidently in the wrong direction, and that may be just the push the community needs to actually buil…

I agree. In my opinion Snow Leopard was the high water mark of Mac OS X (although there are some features of later versions I like such as the auto-save feature of open documents between reboots). From a UI standpoint each subsequent version of OS X has been a deviation from the ideal user interface.

A fully open community "Mac" operating system that runs on any x86-64 hardware would be an excellent thing. I believe the best way of getting there is contributing to the GNUstep and Darling projects so that the underpinnings are fully functioning, as well as working on a Snow Leopard-esque interface.

I have some free time over the next week or so; I'm going to start developing a plan for making this idea a reality!

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#169

Post by nxc18 »

serge2k wrote: post #113
nxc18 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take a close look at windows, you'll see that WSL is already doing a pretty good job of giving you that UNIX environment (really Linux) on windows. Things like proper apt-get and not having to deal with Homebrew are nice. It is early days, but things keep getting better. The 'I need Unix' crowd will soon find that Windows is a much better Unix than macOS ever was.

> Windows is a much better Unix Cutler must be crying right now.

Tears of joy, I presume. This certainly does feel like a golden opportunity for NT to reassert itself... Lackluster team at Apple clearly can't maintain quality standards for macOS + strong Windows 10 performance, faster iteration, and a full Linux environment that's better than macOS's.

Now if only Windows Phone wasn't being completely ignored (who knows, maybe it could have been a better Android than Android)...

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#170

Post by nilkn »

rayiner wrote: post #39
aaron-lebo wrote: post #7

> Just check out its striking video for the Surface Studio — it is so influenced by Apple’s playbook that I’m surprised there’s no Jony Ive narration. What's happened is that other companies have figured out how to emulate Steve Jobs's playbook that's now several decades old and there's nobody at Apple to write new plays. Jobs always talked about how Microsoft didn't have taste and when you look at MS products up unt…

Microsoft lacked taste and the ability to execute. With the Surface Book, they absolutely nailed taste. But they still have no ability to execute (the SB suffered at launch from firmware glitches that took months to iron out: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/new-firmware-finally-... ).

First, I want to state that I have a ton of respect for what Microsoft is doing. This is the Microsoft I've been waiting to see for over a decade.

That said, here's the truth. Just a week ago I tried out a Surface Book, and within the first few minutes I could immediately tell it was not as polished as a MacBook Pro.

The first thing that stood out is that the screen suffered from a considerable amount of ghosting. It looked great as long as I wasn't actually doing anything. Dragging a window around or even just moving the cursor though revealed clear visual defects.

I also immediately noticed that the trackpad, while high quality physically, struggled with gestures involving multiple fingers. Maybe this is configurable through software, but I just didn't find the trackpad's recognition of gestures to be nearly as good as that of a MacBook Pro.

On the same topic of gestures, doing a four-finger horizontal swipe in Windows 10 to switch between virtual desktops resulted in a very visually jarring animation. The experience just isn't polished like it is in macOS. This surprised me because I use Windows 10 extensively on my home desktop and generally find it very polished, but that's all using a normal mouse, not a trackpad with gestures.

Next I noticed that the laptop's screen was physically wobbling. I suspect this is because the screen is so much heavier than normal due to its unique detachable design. But I found this quite annoying. It was apparent that even just typing on the laptop with it on my actual lap would lead to screen wobble.

All this popped up within minutes before I even tried out any of the laptop's unique features. The version I was looking at had a price tag of $2800. At this price range, I think Microsoft still has work to do. None of this is to say it's a bad product. I was just expecting a bit more from something with such a premium price.

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