Daily-driving a Mac, one year later • Hacker News Board

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#161

Post by kaba0 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:13 PM UTC

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…

I think this integration is overblown, given that my experience is not complete (I own an iphone, an apple watch and use a mac book).

There are some cool features like clipboard being shared between my computer and my phone, but e.g. sending a website between the two machines is “half-baked”, as it simply shares a link, which is pretty useless when I want to continue reading the hn thread from the same point I left it on my other device. Opening the same link can be “hacked” into android and kdeconnect just as well, it’s not some difficult thing.

Focus mode and friends are yet again, quite trivial. I can accept that the ipad as an external screen thingy is cooler that these examples, but I don’t have experience with that.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#162

Post by kaba0 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:15 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #84

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…

> Considering Macs are typically owned longer than PCs Are they though? Properly specced PCs have more than decent lives too. The build quality of a Mac or an equivalent-ish ( so not the plastic cheapest possible model ) devicedecent OEM like Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus aren't that far off.

In terms of laptops, my experience is that they are more often subpar than not. Other than Thinkpads perhaps (of which newer ones are quite prone to goddamn throttling, but I guess it is up to intel mostly?)

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#163

Post by slater » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

jdrc wrote: post #85

number6 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's only undermatched by the windows desktop. Who has a file manager that's also the window manager ah and the shell...

Windows is vastly superior

[citation needed]

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#164

Post by _8j50 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:20 PM UTC

diffeomorphism wrote: post #137

_8j50 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

> 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. Which is exactly why distros have very big repos, iOS has exactly one store and so does android (yeah, yeah amazon, fdroid...; few people install these). So that you never, ever have to care about that. Simple rule…

> Simple rule of thumb as a consumer: If it is not in the repo/store/steam then it does not exist. Same for iOS or android by the way: If you need to jailbreak/root for an app, for the average user it might as well not exist.

Forget all that. I am talking about gary's clipboard manager or something. This is crazy, you can't even install elasticsearch or Mongo without adding a repo!

My whole point was this approach works om servers but on desktops, the use case is different. I want random apps by random people on their random site. Not distro accepted and approved stuff that was digested through layers of bureaucracy and one size fits all crowdpleasing. That is obviously not working.

> Er, no you don't. If the mac .dmg has those same issues you don't do that, if the windows .exe has those same issues you don't do that.

I don't have those issues on mac and windows because the gatekeeping distro maintainers aren't choosing how to build or preconfigure it. It is a direct relationship between I the consumer and the developer. No middle man! No system deps (well.. except on mac with homebrew but not dmg)

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#165

Post by kaba0 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:30 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #32

I have found time to be the biggest factor. I use to have hours every day to tinker with Linux, I enjoy the tinkering personally and I can endure the lack of features. But at some point I began spending more than 8h on average on my work and really needed a break each day to not get burned out and take care of *health,on top of which I have a backlog of things to study up on for $work, any platform (including windows…

I still on the opinion that for development, linux is the superior option. Given it does change somewhat depending on programming language, but windows is:

slowish when it comes to file operations (so for example it will take eons to delete a node_modules folder, though that is only partially the fault of windows) and has “strange” file locking mechanisms where I will get insanely angry for not allowing me to delete that shitty file n levels deep because some software is using it. Also, not being UNIXy enough, which is the common target of dev tools.

I am currently using OSX for work, but first of all, I have to believe that the kernel is simply behind the linux one in terms of resource management. E.g. intellij can’t import one of the projects because it will choke on Too many open files. I have never ever had to change this kernel param on linux for example.. second, window management is quite bad and that changing desktops must take 0.1ms is really infuriating. Also, I do like their sandboxing (in that they have one at least compared to linux’s complete lack of security) but I would have expected it being able to handle runtime permission changes. Me having to go to settings to allow screen sharing and then restart the app is quite bad.

And finally, linux kernel-wise is much better than these I believe (which is not that surprising that it pretty much runs the internet with huge players investing in this aspect quite heavily). And while I don’t like every aspect of gnome, but the most recent version is buttery smooth, and desktop switching is actually as fast as my gesture is (which is strangely what iphones do best, yet osx’s animation is constant minimum duration..). On supported hardware bluetooth is quite good especially with pipewire, and wayland is a very welcome direction. My only gripe is the lack of security.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#166

Post by vehemenz » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #107

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…

The $1999 minimal Mac Studio is M1 Max and has 32 GB RAM.

I forgot about that—an even better value.

Thanks for the correction.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#167

Post by hnaccount_rng » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

throwaway284534 wrote: post #15

goosedragons wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides running the latest and greatest MS Office and Photoshop (which is entirely out of the hands of Linux developers) what can't you do? You can browse the modern web, do office and productivity tasks, develop, game, watch a movie etc. Most of people's complaints with Linux are things entirely controlled by 3rd parties like specific software and DRM for crap like Blu-rays and 4K Netflix. Modern DEs like KDE and GN…

In my opinion as a Linux and Mac user, a lack of consistent user experience. And I’m not talking about raw functionality, but the character and demeanor of a Linux computer. Here’s a short laundry list of personal gripes: I don’t know why HiDPI support is still so flakey, especially so with multi-monitor setups. Sometimes apps just work, and other times the UI is comically small or oversized. The only *nix adjacent O…

Agreed with everything except the last one. Tux is one of the main reasons I'd like to use Linux. And yes I just like the Mascot...

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#168

Post by vehemenz » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 5:02 PM UTC

somebehemoth wrote: post #64

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 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.

The claim here is that people are priced out of Macs, not that they aren't more expensive. If a Mac is $2100 instead of $700, that's only a few hundred dollars more per year, or $20-30 a month.

In the US, $20 or $30 is negligible to the frivolous expenses of the average household budget. In laptop-buying households, even more so. Let's not confuse misperception of value to affordability.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#169

Post by StillBored » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:36 PM UTC

eternityforest wrote: post #148

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…

4 years?? I expect 5 or 6 from a $600ish laptop. They're reasonable for top end buyers, but not as reasonable for consumers, and everyday coders.

$600, 5 year old laptop user here. A couple years in I put another $500 in and upgraded the disk to 2T, and 32G of ram. More recently I put a wifi 6E card in it too.

Its still fine for most things, if I need to compile something large, I connect to my 64 core build machine. But of course I tend to use my (also fairly old) desktop more than the laptop anyway.

PS: It is a cheap dell 14" inspiron with a 1080P screen, integrated GPU, and its a bulletproof linux machine. Supports S3 standby, and idles at a few watt's. So even with its sorta crummy 3 cell battery (also replaced once) it lasts 8+ hours just browsing the web and running a text editor.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#170

Post by vladvasiliu » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:58 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #164

diffeomorphism wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Which is exactly why distros have very big repos, iOS has exactly one store and so does android (yeah, yeah amazon, fdroid...; few people install these). So that you never, ever have to care about that. Simple rule…

> Simple rule of thumb as a consumer: If it is not in the repo/store/steam then it does not exist. Same for iOS or android by the way: If you need to jailbreak/root for an app, for the average user it might as well not exist. Forget all that. I am talking about gary's clipboard manager or something. This is crazy, you can't even install elasticsearch or Mongo without adding a repo! My whole point was this approach wo…

You could do that if software vendors bothered to provide the option.

To your example, you can download Elasticsearch as an archive from their website [0], unarchive it, and you're off to the races.

JetBrains IDEs work the same way, grab a zip, unzip it, and bam, you're good to go. They can even keep themselves up to date on their own. It will also install a shortcut in your DE's menu.

Ditto for Zoom and 1Passowrd, who even support more "exotic" distributions, such as Arch, on top of Snaps and Flatpaks.

While I think that in practice the issues you describe do exist, I think the cause is mainly that Linux is still a second-class citizen and not a priority for vendors to support properly. But hey, at least they try, as opposed to others who don't give a damn at all.

---

[0] https://www.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch ; also available as a .deb or .rpm download