241–250 of 277 posts
I’m looking for a replacement OS for my mother in law whose computer is aging out of Windows 10 support. I’m glad to see slick distributions like this trying to fill that gap. That said her requirements are _so_ simple that Debian with Chromium would probably satisfy 100% of her requirements which are ‘download documents from gmail and print them’.
Get her on a Mac if you can. I got my mum to switch to Mac from Windows over a decade ago and it’s been fantastic for both of us. Her support needs dropped from once every two months to once every few years, and she’s been able to do more with her computer than she would ever have attempted on Windows. She’s been using knitting software to make patterns to share and learnt how to use photoshop, all by herself. The co…
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Get her on a Mac if you can. I got my mum to switch to Mac from Windows over a decade ago and it’s been fantastic for both of us. Her support needs dropped from once every two months to once every few years, and she’s been able to do more with her computer than she would ever have attempted on Windows. She’s been using knitting software to make patterns to share and learnt how to use photoshop, all by herself. The co…
No I don’t think I’ll spend a minimum of A$999 so she can use chrome and print things.
Very sleek marketing, but why did they rebrand (the fantastic) KDE Connect to "Zorin Connect"[1]? From the mere If it was tightly integrated into the OS I could sort of understand not mentioning its name, like you don't want "Foobar Control Panel" and "FizzBuzz Start Menu". But KDE Connect is a standalone app you can install even on Windows. And this is not just hiding the name, it's replacing it! So, why the "rebran…
If it quacks like a duck...
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My 8 and 11 year old both use KDE. About 10 minutes and they figured out enough to start a browser and mod Minecraft. I think the people who have the hardest time are those who think they know what they’re doing so feel they need to change things. I’ve never seen a beginner at anything start digging through settings wildly, and experienced people know what they want to change. It’s that middle ground.
maybe i'm less smart that your 8 years old, i remember i wanted to switch the bottom bar to the left and the overlay was so cumbersome... i tried a few things and ended up breaking the layout.
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Every major maker is decades ahead of the competion in some specific niche. By that token Lenovo is 30 years ahead of Apple in customizability and Asus 20 years ahead in RGB lights. I'm not sure that that wins hearts. On what I care the most, and as a goal Apple set for themselves, Apple still couldn't make the iPad Pro a general use computer. Microsoft is 10 year ahead of them in that regard, even Samsung's Chromebo…
> Every major maker is decades ahead of the competion in some specific niche. Apple is ahead in every aspect which matters for consumers. Touchpad, speakers, battery, performance, operating system, display. And those are incredibly important aspects. Not gigabytes of RAM and such things which people here care about. If another manufacturer made a device which would be as good as Apple on any of those points, people w…
> If another manufacturer made a device which would be as good as Apple on any of those points, people would be singing their praise for years.
If Apple was really hitting perfectly all the important aspects, they would have 90% market share on the PC market. For the record they're at about 15%.
On the bias coming from sticking around nerd circles, yes "normal" customers don't long for shoving 128Gb of RAM in their space heater PC. But they're also not raving about how good the trackpad is, or how the display is such a technical marvel.
You'll see people walking from meeting to meeting with their mouse because they just don't use trackpads (though they might touch their screen if/when it's supported), others spending their days with earbuds in ear because it dual connections to the laptop audio and they never hear the speakers in the whole device's life. Some dock their macbook all day and hook it to a FHD monitor. Everyone will care about different things.
That's the part for me where the Apple laptop line is so uniform, you need to fall pretty near the middle of the target to properly get the benefits.
> Apple is ahead
They are ahead regarding the exact balance they are targeting. But you'll get better perfs if you're willing to go full desktop for instance and don't care about the size and power consumption (the mac pro going the way of the DoDo doesn't help). You'll get more/cheaper memory if you don't care about a unified architecture. Apple's GPU isn't the market leader. You also won't get anything smaller or lighter than the macbook Air. And of course no USB-A on laptops, which surprisingly still stings.
It's obvious but merits to be said: Apple targets a very specific consumer, and won't be optimal for everyone, including people who want more than what Apple offers.
> manufacturers seem to not be able to understand how to deliver quality in their products.
This is more a matter of taster I'd argue, what people see as "quality" will vary. I'm still amazed by people praising the glass backs and metal on the iPhones for instance. An eink laptop will probably be the same deal, going the pragmatic way (mostly plastic/composite) or the Apple way (glass and aluminium)
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I fired up my 10yrs old windows 7 PC for the first time in forever and was appalled at how snappy and quick the OS was compared to my same spec win10 PC. As a career primarily-microsoft-shop engineer I'm done with windows for personal use. I'll never forgive the for wasting everyones time with this garbage. Meanwhile I constantly find bugs from before 2002 that are still in windows10. Windows honestly made me slowly…
I was recently using an ancient Celeron laptop from like 2006 with Windows Vista, a HDD, and something like 256 MB of RAM, and was blown away by how reasonably performant it was compared to my expectations, especially considering it was a budget laptop in its time.
I've been a Windows user since 3.1; and I've even defended Microsoft in the past (particularly when they made unpopular choices, but for technically correct reasons, like UAC or forcing vendors to rewrite their drivers into userland or using a safer driver model). BUT, I won't defend Windows 11 and Microsoft's general direction. I feel like there has been a slow cultural shift within Microsoft, from a core of fantast…
It’s been my experience that matter what OS you try to pick up, the most likely case is you mutter “why the fuck do people put up with this” and go back to the one you’re used to, because at least you mostly know the tricks and pitfalls and can get it to do what you want.
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> Every major maker is decades ahead of the competion in some specific niche. Apple is ahead in every aspect which matters for consumers. Touchpad, speakers, battery, performance, operating system, display. And those are incredibly important aspects. Not gigabytes of RAM and such things which people here care about. If another manufacturer made a device which would be as good as Apple on any of those points, people w…
You are lopping "consumers" in a single basket where they are all supposed to want the exact things Apple focuses on, and even on these aspects Apple isn't guaranteed to be the top choice. > If another manufacturer made a device which would be as good as Apple on any of those points, people would be singing their praise for years. If Apple was really hitting perfectly all the important aspects, they would have 90% ma…
Then some things are up to individual preference and needs. But nobody prefers having a bad touchpad, for example. As for market share, that doesn't say too much about innovation, nor quality. The cheapest beer is always going to sell more than any other beer.
Keeping USB-A or cheaper RAM per dollar aren't innovations in my book. Neither is keeping a computer plugged in. We've had plugged in computers since the beginning, but it's only in recent years that they became truly portable.
> But they're also not raving about how good the trackpad is, or how the display is such a technical marvel.
Everybody I've seen who've tried a MacBook have been ecstatic about the display and the touchpad.
I really wish that other manufacturers made good products to compete with Apple on other aspects than price. And they do, in limited niches. And they also innovate, but they never make good implementations. A plastic e-ink laptop with a next-gen e-ink display would be fantastic. But you just know that the manufacturer is going to make the computer horrible in every other way. Unfortunately.
Greatest non-Apple innovations I can think of on the top of my head: E-Ink, 120hz displays, under-display fingerprint reader, AI/LLM (which is massive), wireless laser mouse. And everything related to gaming/gpu. But nobody is complaining about nVidia not innovating, like everybody is complaining about Apple.
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Every major maker is decades ahead of the competion in some specific niche. By that token Lenovo is 30 years ahead of Apple in customizability and Asus 20 years ahead in RGB lights. I'm not sure that that wins hearts. On what I care the most, and as a goal Apple set for themselves, Apple still couldn't make the iPad Pro a general use computer. Microsoft is 10 year ahead of them in that regard, even Samsung's Chromebo…
> Every major maker is decades ahead of the competion in some specific niche. Apple is ahead in every aspect which matters for consumers. Touchpad, speakers, battery, performance, operating system, display. And those are incredibly important aspects. Not gigabytes of RAM and such things which people here care about. If another manufacturer made a device which would be as good as Apple on any of those points, people w…
Their hardware is very good, but it's not as far ahead as you think. Intel makes SOC very comparable to M series in terms of compute and power efficiency. They're rare, but they exist.
And MacOS as an operating system is slipping in many ways to open source competitors. The UI is stagnant in a lot of ways, and actively regressing in others, while open source competitors truck forward. Mind you, the same is true for Windows and to a much larger degree, but still.