Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#251

Post by silviogutierrez » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:06 AM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #175

_delirium wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until a version is EOL'd, sure, and that's what I've been doing. But 10.6 was EOL'd in late 2013, and by early 2014 at the latest it had unpatched major flaws, so I had to upgrade to 10.9.

So Windows has become more sane than OS X in terms of security updates? EDIT: Windows 7 was released in 2009 and is still receiving security updates. 10.6 was released in 2011 and has been EOL'd. Seeing as both people still want to use these products, but one group is being forced not to, that's why I'm saying OS X is taking a less sane stance than Windows. Is this false?

I believe 10.6 was released in 2009, not in 2011[1]

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#252

Post by tedunangst » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:06 AM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #211

tedunangst wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read what I said about OS X upgrades being like Service Packs? Did you read your link? > Support for Windows 7 RTM without service packs ended on April 9, 2013.

A service pack doesn't completely redesign how people interact with Windows, though. But OS X "service packs" tend to do just that. In fact, that was the author's frustration. Seeing as OS X service packs also come out very frequently, whereas Windows are very rare, I'm not sure the two are comparable. I should probably bow out now. I just thought it was interesting.

I think the principle attribute that determines how long support lasts is the cost to get to the next supported version and not anything to do with feature differences. Apple made the decision to give away upgrades precisely so they could move people off old versions I suspect.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#253

Post by verisimilidude » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:07 AM UTC

dkulchenko wrote: post #156

jmgtan wrote: post #143

After experiencing the awesomeness that is Continuity and Handoff, I wouldn't give up OSX for Windows/Linux. I do agree with some of his points about instability especially for .0 releases, better wait after a few patches before upgrading. I do disagree about Yosemite's installation time, coincidentally I just updated my wife's 2011 MBA last night and it took around 40 mins. The funny thing is once Yosemite was insta…

> I do disagree about Yosemite's installation time, coincidentally I just updated my wife's 2011 MBA last night and it took around 40 mins. He's referring to the infamous bug for Homebrew users or just anyone with a lot of files in /usr/local on which the OS X install chokes hard, copying each file individually, taking many hours to complete the install.

Yup. I have a huge LaTeX installation on my Mac. Took over a day to update to Yosemite.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#254

Post by uherdwong » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:07 AM UTC

lordbusiness wrote: post #118

Truth be told, I'm feeling the same urges. The golden age of my Mac was years ago. I switched to Macs in 2002, and had the most amazing computing period of my life between then and approximately 2011. Since then the random reboots of both the uncontrolled variety and controlled (though forced through needing to kick a random weird glitch) variety have increased to the point that I no longer consider my computer to be…

>Does anyone have any pointers or suggestions regarding laptops of comparable build quality and design as a MacBook Pro?

Check out the Razer Blade 14". It's like a black/green Macbook Pro with a real GPU, higher res screen, and thinner chassis. It could use a magsafe and thunderbolt, but after reading about thunderstrike, I'm not missing that last one so much :D

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

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Post by morganvachon » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:08 AM UTC

prapam2 wrote: post #217

morganvachon wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Desktop Linux is mostly install an work. It is...until it isn't. Nine out of ten Ubuntu or Mint installs will go off without a hitch, with no weird issues or regressions, and a warm, friendly, comfortable development environment welcomes you. Then there's that one time you install it on your laptop so you have a to-go environment that matches your workstation, and BOOM! your wifi isn't recognized (what year is it a…

More wifi then Sound were common for me before don't have them now. Actually i face these issues when doing a fresh installation of Win7. Many times i had use Ubuntu to find windows drivers! My Macbook pro Ubuntu installation went without any problems. Touch pad mouse clicks weren't as exact as OS X. I am used to it hence was not able to use Ubuntu. Maybe i should tinker a bit.

On this particular machine I'm using, some distros have excellent sound out of the box and some require snoop=0 added to the snd_hda_intel options in /etc/module.d/ to avoid stuttering audio. I didn't discover this bug until after I'd bought the motherboard and tried various distros; in my research it never came up.

And on a completely different note, I have a Dell Latitude laptop from around 2000 or so, a Pentium III machine, that has no built in networking unless you count the dial-up modem. I picked up a random CardBus wifi card for $5, and OpenBSD recognized and configured it flawlessly.

It really all comes down to whether the OS developers have access to the hardware the rest of us use. If, for example, your wifi doesn't work, it's not likely to until enough bug reports are submitted that the kernel hackers responsible for wifi drivers get their hands on the hardware and write or improve a driver. It's the same for those trackpad issues you had; someone somewhere has to debug that.

This is why it's a good idea to research your hardware if you intend to run anything other than Windows or OS X. And even with research, it's rarely 100% working out of the box. That's the tradeoff for having what (in my opinion) is a very productive and comfortable working environment.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

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Post by jackmaney » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:09 AM UTC

I came into the OS X game very late, starting at 10.8 (which was at a start up last summer). It took some adjusting, but in the end, it beats the hell out of Windows for a coding environment.

One thing that I loathed, though, was Messages. I find myself unable to make it work. Contacts? Nope, can't find 'em. Oh, wait there's one--nope, it's gone. Oh, wait, it's there again. Oh, did you send a message? Nope, it didn't get through. Sent another one? That one got through, but not the reply.

OS X is fine, but Messages is horribly, horribly broken. I could write better software, and I am a self-taught programmer.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

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Post by MichaelGG » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:10 AM UTC

pyre wrote: post #236

MichaelGG wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is essentially what Windows 8 should have been, or at worst, 8.1. It's quite usable. The ugliest thing in Win10 is the Store, integrated into the Start menu. The Store is filled with junk apps and outright scams. Microsoft refuses to fix these issues. In fact, I reported a fake Dropbox app that listed "@Microsoft Corporation" as the publisher. MS wrote back to say the app was fine, and if the developers we…

> In fact, I reported a fake Dropbox app that listed "@Microsoft Corporation" as the publisher. MS wrote back to say the app was fine, and if the developers were lying, I should just leave a review. Or the other form of support: post to Twitter/HackerNews/etc. and light a fire that they will quickly need to put out...

AFAIK, there's no way to link to the Windows Store, just the phone store (which is marginally better). I've written Satya and the PM in charge of the store. Many devs are in contact with them about it. There's even a third party report on how bad the situation is, and in August, MS announced they were cleaning up and published reportapp@Microsoft.com, which seems unmonitored.

It's so bad that Netflix required three takedowns for the same publisher before MS decided not to allow scam "official" Netflix apps. The second hit for Facebook is a scam (FB has no way I found to report stuff if you don't have a FB account - lame for security.)

I'm betting that some high level people at Microsoft have a bonus tied to "number of apps published". That's the only way this crap makes sense. Even unpaid 14yr olds would do s better job cleaning up the Store. It's far worse than Android Marketplace ever was.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

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Post by moinnadeem » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:10 AM UTC

roadnottaken wrote: post #244

crag wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. And believe it or not, I went back to Windows. Sort of. I'm testing the waters. My big issue is iTunes. Yeah I drank the kool-aid and now have an iTunes library of about 100GB. Despite how much I hate what iTunes has become at least is runs on Windows. Also, it's easier to "turn features off" in Windows than OSX these days. I'm sad about it though. But after 14 years on Mac I'm done. It was the up…

Cygwin

You cannot get better. About as close to Bash as you can get on Windows.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#259

Post by zak_mc_kracken » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:10 AM UTC

I recently did the same thing: switched my personal laptop from Mac OS (since 2004) back to Windows. Couldn't be happier.

All my development environment transferred without a hitch (bash and git worked right out of the box) and compared to Windows 8, Mac OS feels like a clunky, antiquated OS.

I still use Linux (work desktop) and Mac (work laptop) but Windows is really where I feel I'm the most productive these days.

Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak

#260

Post by cbhl » Sun, Jan 04, 2015, 5:10 AM UTC

LaSombra wrote: post #66

cbhl wrote: post #47

Oddly enough, I switched from Ubuntu Linux to OS X because of upgrade pains of my own -- regressions in the Intel display drivers on my older hardware, suffering performance as a result of Unity, and cloud services making changes to messaging protocols in ways that constantly broke Pidgin/libpurple/Empathy. At one point, I had a workflow consisting of a Chromebook + Chrome + GMail + Secure Shell[0] + Linux VPS runnin…

Have you tried other Linux distributions before the move?

I had been dabbling with couple of big distributions - RHEL, Debian, SuSE, Knoppix, and maybe one or two others - when dual-booting on an older machine before I switched to Ubuntu; each one had problems with some hardware or another (sound, dial-up modem, required a DVD drive for installation, monitor, and later, Wi-Fi adapter) whereas Ubuntu just worked.

I also tried Arch Linux both in a VPS and in a Virtual Machine after switching to OS X, but at some point realized that I had more money and far less free time to spend tinkering with config files than when I was in middle school.

Sometimes I look at the latest Intel-based Surface Pros and wonder whether it makes sense to go back to Microsoft-land.