Broken • Hacker News Board

Re: Broken

#301

Post by oneplane » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:40 PM UTC

dingus wrote: post #272

blunte wrote: post #203

It's all very depressing. Like most of us here, I have become increasingly frustrated with the state of Mac (touch bar, bad keyboards, odd choices that fit neither creators nor developers well, and so on). No point rehashing it all. But where does that leave us? I spent a year on Windows 10 not so long ago, on upper end laptop hardware with HiDPI screen, and it was less fun and more problem prone than macOS - especia…

It's frustrating because it's the "least worst" option. I use MacOS because it has a thoughtful, consistent, coherent, beautiful user interface and desktop environment. The things I use all day are basically a web browser, mail client, code editor, and terminal. I can do actual work on any BSD really, there is no proprietary app that causes lock-in, I don't use iCloud or any of their services. All I want is their des…

That is definitely the most frustrating thing about all of this over the past few years. Even with a customised Windows 10 to get rid of the nonsense nobody wants and adding what is missing to even work on the damn thing it's still not as 'least worse' as macOS. It's almost like all commercial OS development moved towards STB's and mobile and nobody gives a crap anymore.

I'll probably still stick to macOS on my mobile hardware (Linux and BSD on the fixed machines, embedded and servers), as it is still least worst, but I miss the feeling of high stability and productivity you would normally get when you work on your machine and don't have to touch any of the other flavours.

Right now, all any other vendor has to do (besides the create-a-BSD-desktop) is good hardware integration. Because that is more effective than people might think. Even with the whole butterfly crap the whole package deal is unbeatable. The only time I ever had hardware/firmware issues was back in the 90's where OpenFirmware got sad because one of the data lines of the ROM was corroding and the SMU would reset every boot making sleep unreliable.

Having a machine that has a good hardware-software relation down to the firmware and no weird double powerons or a bunch of stupid splash screens, one where you can just add your tools and work, it's the best thing. It it used to be exactly that when you got a Mac... any Mac, even if you don't get a powerful one. It always works the same way, it always delivers consistently (unless you break it yourself), always stays out of the way so you can do what you actually came to do.

Sigh.

Re: Broken

#302

Post by chapati23 » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

Apple fanboy and software developer here. Also disappointed with the Catalina release. Had do an NV RAM reset, boot into safe mode, talk to Apple support to solve iCloud issues, and also click away dozens of privacy notifications.

But I still really don’t consider windows or Linux as legitimate alternatives because of the ecosystem log in.

Yes, macOS has its downsides. But what keeps me from even thinking about Linux are all these little niceties: - copy something on my iPhone, paste it on the Mac (still regularly leaves people speechless when they watch me do it: “what!? You can do that?”) - my watch unlocks my Mac - my desktop is always in my pocket, all files sync’ed per default, zero config - Start Reading something in safari, Hand it over to my iPhone in a second and walk out the door - All my browser tabs synced across my Mac, iPhone and iPad - I can curate my TV Watchlist on my Mac and it’s automatically available on my AppleTV when I get home that night

I could go on with dozens more of these little things that I can’t imagine living without anymore. I know that it’s probably possible to achieve most or all of this with a Linux/Android/Chromecast Setup. But every time I watch some of my friends do it, it just looks like so much work to set up and maintain.

The only argument I understand here is the joy of tinkering and that feeling of achievement when you get it to work in the end. Apple is a bit boring in that regard. A lot of the integration stuff just works (yeah, yeah, sure not all, but still more so than on any other platform I know).

I’m not 20 anymore and I just prefer to spend my time with other things these days than tweaking my OS.

So although I wish Apple would invest more into quality on macOS again, for me the walled garden just totally works, and I’ll stick with the lesser evil.

Re: Broken

#303

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

renaudg wrote: post #300

snapples wrote: post #131

Things are so broken here at Apple. I joined about 4 years ago. I am awed by the fact that we manage to release any software at all, let alone functional software. The biggest problem is communication. No one fucking communicates. - No communication between orgs. Tons of bureaucratic tape to cut through just to get a hand on someone working on a different product - Barely any communication between teams. Literally ev…

> - So what happens is that you’re working on a product that’s part of another product but you never talked to any other teams or orgs on how to make your product fit in I'm surprised to read this, because I've always thought tight integration and clever synergies between product lines were precisely one of the things Apple excelled at. And I was wondering how exactly they managed to make that happen in such a famous…

[deleted]

Re: Broken

#304

Post by ottobonn » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

remlov wrote: post #255

blunte wrote: post #203

It's all very depressing. Like most of us here, I have become increasingly frustrated with the state of Mac (touch bar, bad keyboards, odd choices that fit neither creators nor developers well, and so on). No point rehashing it all. But where does that leave us? I spent a year on Windows 10 not so long ago, on upper end laptop hardware with HiDPI screen, and it was less fun and more problem prone than macOS - especia…

Eh... I've been on Ubuntu 18.04 for about 1.5 years now on my Dell Precision 5510. Zero problems, all hardware works out of the box. Suspend and hibernate still works flawlessly.

Do you have any tips for getting the touchpad to work well? Mine picks up palm touches and the only solution I've found is to disable the edges of the touch pad.

Re: Broken

#305

Post by josiahtullis » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

michaelmarion wrote: post #227

I was thinking on this the other day, and I think what ultimately boils down to is this: there’s no “why” anymore at Apple. Go back and watch old keynotes with Steve. Almost always, whenever he’s talking about a new feature or piece of hardware, he starts with the “why.” Not everyone will agree with the “why,” of course, but it’s still given. Why do we want to get rid of the CD drive on MacBook Airs? (We see OTA soft…

There's still a "why" to those product launches. It's just that the "why" is no longer design-driven and is instead driven by business needs– namely, "we need to diversify our revenue streams away from just hardware sales and into services." This started when Tim Cook (instead of Jony Ive) took over as CEO.

Re: Broken

#306

Post by waynecochran » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:43 PM UTC

dingus wrote: post #272

blunte wrote: post #203

It's all very depressing. Like most of us here, I have become increasingly frustrated with the state of Mac (touch bar, bad keyboards, odd choices that fit neither creators nor developers well, and so on). No point rehashing it all. But where does that leave us? I spent a year on Windows 10 not so long ago, on upper end laptop hardware with HiDPI screen, and it was less fun and more problem prone than macOS - especia…

It's frustrating because it's the "least worst" option. I use MacOS because it has a thoughtful, consistent, coherent, beautiful user interface and desktop environment. The things I use all day are basically a web browser, mail client, code editor, and terminal. I can do actual work on any BSD really, there is no proprietary app that causes lock-in, I don't use iCloud or any of their services. All I want is their des…

Yes. Snow Leopard was the greatest OS release of all time!

I actually went to WWDC 2008 when it was announced and they handed out CD’s for it — no new user-level features — just a hardened OS (grand central station and kernel level threading and stuff under the hood was changed).

Sigh. Marketing now rules the world. Look new emoji’s!

Re: Broken

#307

Post by lol768 » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #230

MisterOctober wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched from macOS to Linux [Fedora now] about a year and a half ago, out of the same frustrations that affect a lotta folks -- It took a little while to adjust, but since there are a lot of similarities between the Linux and Darwin command lines [and Linux package management being better than homebrew by my lights] , it wasn't very long before I was like "Damn, why didn't I switch 20 years ago!!!" Plus now my har…

Does the hardware actually work? I've used Linux several times over the years and the hardware never totally works. I've always had trackpad issues, issues with suspend and hibernate, wifi issues, screen resolution issues, battery life issues, sound issues, driver issues etc. It 'works' in terms of you can technically do work on it, but you have to make a huge number of concessions and this is before considering it h…

>[Edit]: The replies suggest this is mostly still the case, people say it works flawlessly - except for [insert issue here]

I count 7 or 8 broadly unconditional "it works fine" child comments. 1 "it mostly works", 1 "I had to write my own ACPI driver", 1 "it works fine except HDMI sound switching isn't automatic sometimes", 1 "drivers were hard to set-up, WiFi is iffy", 1 "it's not perfect so try it first".

IMO that's majority positive - more than can be said for e.g. macOS which fails to do basic things like mount and copy files off an Android phone out of the box.

I don't think your conclusion is a fair one (or perhaps it was premature) and is perhaps tainted by your own negative experiences.

Re: Broken

#308

Post by vvillena » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

wldlyinaccurate wrote: post #241

gonehome wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the hardware actually work? I've used Linux several times over the years and the hardware never totally works. I've always had trackpad issues, issues with suspend and hibernate, wifi issues, screen resolution issues, battery life issues, sound issues, driver issues etc. It 'works' in terms of you can technically do work on it, but you have to make a huge number of concessions and this is before considering it h…

In my experience most hardware works flawlessly, although admittedly some hardware is better-supported. I've owned two (soon three) Dell XPS 13 laptops since 2013 and have always had a really smooth experience running Ubuntu. The worst of my Linux woes were the usual suspend/hibernate issues running Ubuntu on company-provided Thinkpads. I've also had to use various Macs for work in the past and have had terrible issu…

I run Archlinux on a gaming laptop (a Lenovo Legion) and it's perfect for my needs. And everything works! Linux becomes better and more compatible with each passing year. This laptop is a portable development machine with a nice keyboard and a powerful enough processor (I specifically wanted a 45W CPU).

All the "pro" laptops seem to be focused on smaller sizes, and on premium/luxury features and price. I'm glad cheap gaming laptops running Linux are a perfect fit for my use case.

Re: Broken

#309

Post by renaudg » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #186

saagarjha wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there are people who get around the secrecy/isolation veil, they just have long-standing friends in other projects and can rely on them to push features and bugs though the bureaucracy. If you don’t have that, well, expect your Radars to sit in “punted from this release” until the end of time.

Or just escalate to your Product Manager. It's not like cross communication doesn't happen it's just via a formal process.

And what do PMs tell engineers on their team once they're back from their super secret meeting with the PMs from the other team ?

"Do exactly this, I can't give you context but it'll make sense on release day" ? Sounds like extreme Fordism (and basically a hellish way to work for creative minds) and a great way to prevent people from spotting problems early.

Re: Broken

#310

Post by tpmx » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:46 PM UTC

novok wrote: post #295

tpmx wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the years I've been surprised a number of times by seeing Apple hire a particular software engineer that I wouldn't hire for my own little company. You're still kinda junior @ 4 years there, but.. have you seen seen any slippage in hiring standards?

Apple hiring is independent per team. You can literally interview forever at apple and the way each team interviews is wildly variant. Had some pretty cool interview loops. I got rejected and then got an offer after interview 4 or 5 with a team on a high profile app that I really liked. Apple doesn't give good offers although, so I took another one at a company / team I also really liked with a better offer.

Ah, interesting!