Welcome (back) to Macintosh • Hacker News Board

Re: Welcome (back) to Macintosh

#161

Post by bigstrat2003 » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 1:50 AM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #134

marcus_holmes wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Linux ? Good luck getting decent hardware that will run without having basic functionality issues. I think that's probably a few years out of date. Certainly, it used to be completely true and was a major problem. I'm just not finding that now. Drivers are better, and more widespread, and there are less odd hardware innovations in standard PC components that screw it up. And, if you want a laptop that runs Linu…

Get serious, none of them have a working fingerprint reader.

Since when is using a fingerprint reader on laptops at all common? If that's a requirement for you then fair enough, but not having a fingerprint reader doesn't make a laptop so niche that one would be justified in saying "get serious".

Re: Welcome (back) to Macintosh

#162

Post by vrosas » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:10 AM UTC

itopaloglu83 wrote: post #136

nsbk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m right where you are. Very happy Apple customer since my first PowerBook G4. Currently have an M1 Max, an iPhone 17 Pro, the iPad Pro, HomePod, Apple TV, and Watch Ultra. All the _just works_ feeling and reliability seem to be gone. Tahoe is so unstable that I now restart the Mac every day, when in the past it happened on software updates only. Apple Music is another huge mess, I can’t comprehend how can it be so…

And yet Apple engineers are going through numerous forums and Reddit posts to gaslight people by commenting “well, it doesn’t happen to me, mine works perfectly”. They managed to mess up an entire ecosystem and they’re acting so stupid about it that I cannot believe all this software was made by Apple. There’s no elegance, no thought out user experience, no good design, it’s all stupid glass design with comical amoun…

It often feels like Apple hires the best hardware and marketing people in the world and holds them to the highest standards, but the software design and engineering people are left to just kind of screw around, redesign stuff for shits and giggles, and laugh as people fill their forums with bug reports and (very obvious) feature requests.

Re: Welcome (back) to Macintosh

#163

Post by bitwize » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:12 AM UTC

Absent the Satanists who run California and the nation conducting a dark ritual to summon Steve Jobs back from the abyss, the chances of him saving Apple from total enshittification collapse again the way he did the first time are slim to none. It's peak Apple fan to grouse about how rotten everything is in the Fruit Empire, and then conclude "Welp, nothing to be done for it except smoke hopium that Apple somehow gets better."

Hint: This is what happens when you commit to joining any single company's ecosystem. No matter if it's Apple, Microsoft, Google, Commodore, or frickin' IBM. At some point, the beancounters are going to smother what drew you to them in the first place, and find ways to nickel-and-dime you whilst flipping the table on you UX-wise hoping to tap some rich vein of unconverted users to continue the illusion of quarterly growth.

Re: Welcome (back) to Macintosh

#164

Post by technothrasher » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:13 AM UTC

kevinskii wrote: post #20

LeoPanthera wrote: post #5

I've been running Tahoe since 26.2, after cowardly skipping 0 and 1. And... it's fine? Am I only using the happy path? Or are people just particularly confident about complaining about Tahoe after seeing everyone else do it. For sure it has glitches, but as far as I can tell, they're the same glitches that were in Sequoia. (If anyone at Apple is reading this, can you take a glance at your NFS client code? It does lik…

I have a dirty confession to make too: I’ve been running Tahoe and Windows 11 on my devices, and both are working fine for the most part. If I ever switch to Linux desktop, it will be mostly out of boredom.

I run Tahoe on my MacBook Air, Windows 11 on my home desktop, and Debian Trixie on my two desktops at work. They all have their pluses and minuses. I don't feel an overwhelming pull to run one OS on all my machines.

Re: Welcome (back) to Macintosh

#165

Post by talkingtab » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:14 AM UTC

Apple has created a social system - the company which causes this. Perhaps it could be called "The Next Big Thing" syndrome. In the past this worked for Apple. Unfortunately creating the "Next Big Thing" requires a creative process they collectively do not understand and are not able to instantiate. They could adopt another strategy, but doing so would be an admission that they do not have a clue. So instead they follow a cargo-cult system of enacting the side trappings without understanding the functionality.

Personally my guess is the core of the problem is their contempt for the users. The willingness to act directly against the best interest of the users, as this article points out so well, is bewildering. You just have to wonder that a company so large, with so much money and so many resources can be so utterly dysfunctional.

The iPhone, the iPod, the early Macs all demonstrated a profound understanding and care for users. And now? Contempt.

Oh well.

Re: Welcome (back) to Macintosh

#166

Post by grvbck » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:18 AM UTC

stockresearcher wrote: post #73

mrbuttons454 wrote: post #59

I have been a Mac user since the classic mac days. I waited in line for the first iPhone. macOS/iOS 26 are bad enough that I've begun switching to Linux. I preordered a Clicks Communicator and Pebble Round 2. Switching from a Macbook Pro M4 to an Asus ROG Flow Z13 with Debian. macOS 26.3 updated clang and broke my emscripten workflow. I tried to unrar a file but the version of unrar provided in homebrew is deprecated…

From an outsider just going by what you wrote: you are trading a $2000+ year-old computer for a new $2000+ computer because you are annoyed about some temporary problems (yes, they are temporary). Apple marketers are just going to think that in another year you’re going to get annoyed by some Linux thing (yes, there will be something annoying) and buy a brand new $2000+ Mac. These kind of posts get a lot of upvotes,…

> they do nothing to change corporate behavior.

Well, they should. I've been on Mac since System 6.0.7. I've had a Mac Clone. I've been mocked by more Windows users for "using a toy computer" than I can remember. I remember (and briefly used) BeOS. I remember The Mac Performa-series fiasco. The Copland failure. Steve's return. The launch of OS X.

In all those years, I have NEVER witnessed such widespread dissatisfaction among long-time, loyal users, heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. Users so frustrated with Apple's moronic decisions and the design of the OS that they are literally paying money to abandon it. I'm one of them. The frustration isn't rooted in nostalgia or resistance to change. It's the accumulation of what feels like contemptuous decision-making.

If that doesn't set off alarm bells in Cupertino, I guess it's just one more proof that parting ways is indeed the right call.

Re: Welcome (back) to Macintosh

#167

Post by jbverschoor » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:29 AM UTC

mceachen wrote: post #112

runjake wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because you are annoyed about some temporary problems (yes, they are temporary) What leads you to believe that anything he mentioned is temporary?

Before anyone downvotes this guy, spend some time on the official Apple support forum. I can't point at a bug that I've seen addressed in subsequent OS releases. Seizure-inducing HDMI flickering from Night Shift. Finder Trash not supporting put-back _sometimes_. Printers becoming permanently "paused" sporadically, or worse, very consistently. Mouse lag/stuttering because you used "the wrong USB port." Apple photos li…

Countless of issues are not being resolved. I stopped submitting detailed and reproducible bug reports a while ago.

I basically don’t care anymore. Timeline consistently pinkscreens my laptop.

I just don’t give a f anymore. I barely run any Apple software on my Mac.

The only reason I stop use it, is because I have not spent the energy into researching:

- performant + long battery laptop with a good build quality

- disk encryption + while on X attempts

- good trackpad

The rest, the os, the shortcuts, I can change or adapt.

Re: Welcome (back) to Macintosh

#168

Post by marcus_holmes » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:30 AM UTC

actionfromafar wrote: post #146

marcus_holmes wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good point. I hated that butterfly keyboard, and the Touch Bar was an utterly useless gimmick for me. And they realised that and rolled it back (and added ports again!). They do eventually listen to their customers. Let's hope it doesn't take as long for these changes to get rolled back. I'm kinda stuck with Mac at work. I don't mind it, but I run Linux on all my personal computers and find that is way better.

I wonder how much connect there is between those in charge of hardware and those in charge of working software. It would be one thing if the software had a design direction, we all hated it, but it was implemented to its logical conclusion and pure stupid bugs weren't left to linger for years. That would be a matter of difference in taste and vision. But I wonder if they have the ability to execute... anything , anym…

It does feel like the decision making is internal-politics-driven rather than customer-satisfaction-driven, for both Mac and Windows now. Senseless changes that have little in common with other changes.

We've had this for decades with Windows, and internal leaks confirming that it's all to do with turf wars between departmental heads.

As you say, it's an indication that Apple are going down the same road, and are unable to actually execute a vision anymore.

Re: Welcome (back) to Macintosh

#169

Post by jbverschoor » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:32 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #90

pembrook wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [on windows 11] my network samba shares stay connected and mounted through restarts. I could never make this work reliably on macOS. It’s wild to me that Apple has allowed SMB on MacOS to be so broken/slow and poorly implemented for so long. It’s been this way for over a DECADE. I have friends who work at production studios who complain about network storage and MacOS all the time given any modern video workflow in…

They rewrote their own SMB handler because they didn’t want the Samba license. Which means they get none of the improvements from the Samba code.

I didn’t know.. that explains so much

Re: Welcome (back) to Macintosh

#170

Post by trimethylpurine » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

giobox wrote: post #135

trimethylpurine wrote: post #105

I've run IT at two different multi-hundred million dollar companies (IT director 15+ years and help desk before that). I want Mac users to know that using a Mac, if you aren't very tech savvy, can have a dramatically negative impact on your career. When yours is the only computer in the meeting that can't load the graphics network share, and you're the graphics expert, your boss will be calling IT and sternly asking…

This would ring slightly true to me if it was say 20-30 years ago, but Apple are in many ways the IBM of end user business machines now and vast numbers of corporate drones have MacBooks - the rough edges are long ago sanded off. An IT team that treats Mac users this way today is just a bad IT team.

Disagree. Explaining that they can't fix Apple's Samba implementation isn't "treating Mac users this way" such as to be called a "bad IT team." Or the rest of the laundry list of bugs in the post. How do you recommend an IT team should handle Apple's inability to function for basic business file sharing so that the user's boss doesn't think less of the end user or the IT team?

They are being friendly, and objective. Their job is to fix problems so that employees can be productive. It's not to lie for them, or to them. It's Apple's marketing team who has that job. You'll notice they don't do much in the way of advertising to IT directors and business decision makers. Their focus is college kids, specifically graphic designers and iOS app developers. It's definitely not businesses.

IBM? These are software issues. IBM doesn't make desktop operating systems for end users. Do you mean Microsoft? Apple never was and still isn't the Microsoft of business OS. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.