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Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief

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Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief

#331

Post by chb »

stefanfisk wrote: post #65
coldpie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it helps, I've been using XFCE since 2007 and it's remained functionally identical for all of those almost 20 years. It just works, it improves a tiny bit with each major upgrade, and they don't rearrange everything every couple years for the sake of justifying a salary. Maybe it's a good opportunity to consider whether you actually have to keep running on Apple's treadmill.

I’ve combined my MacBook with a Linux desktop for about five years now. Linux has its pros as a developer, but IMHO daily driving it is like walking around with pebbles in my shoes. Something as basic as scrolling feels slightly inconsistent in just about every app and keybindings are all over the place. There’s always the allure of getting the config ”just right” but after a while I swear I start seeing Sisyphus’ re…

I'm in the same position and understand your complaints about the lack of uniformity across applications in Linux DEs. But I use the Linux desktop as a daily driver because I absolutely despise the lack of customization in macOS, especially as it relates to "virtual workspaces" or "virtual desktops." In Linux, I can have multiple different desktops, each named intuitively, and each with its own set of applications. In macOS, I can't even _name_ the virtual desktops. What's more absurd is the "logic" around when an application has focus when it's minimized, and how its window behaves when you Cmd-Tab to it. Utterly exasperating that Apple, a company who has long prided itself on HCI, falls so far short of the mark in intuitive interface behavior.

Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief

#332

Post by mort96 »

manoDev wrote: post #229
eoskx wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had similar observations with different behaviors in Safari and Finder. One would think the quality of Apple's software would be increasing with the usage of Swift over Objective-C, but the opposite seems to be true.

Swift was the worst thing that happened to Mac OS, because we’re now suffering second system syndrome.

I think it's worse than that: we're now suffering being a "supported but deprioritised platform" for a cross platform GUI.

AppKit was developed for the Mac from the ground up. All effort that went into it was to make the Mac as good as possible. Experience from that went into making UIKit, which was made to be as good as possible for iPhone. Focus on iPhone made the Mac suffer somewhat from a lack of resources, but AppKit was still a rock solid foundation.

Swift UI is primarily made for iPhone. It's secondarily made for iPad. I'm willing to bet that almost all the effort that goes into it is focused on making iPhone and iPad apps better. And it is succeeding there, to some degree (though not without its own issues; especially now with iOS 26). Mac support, however, is clearly an afterthought. Yet it's now the foundation of everything in macOS.

It's not too dissimilar from what it would look like if Apple had decided to rewrite large swathes of the system in GTK when the GTK developers only really care about how well GTK works in a GNOME desktop.

Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief

#333

Post by heresie-dabord »

analogpixel wrote: post #126
7e wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switch to what? Windows is horrible and Linux is just as bad (but in different ways).

I think a lot of people on HN don't realize that some people require software outside of a terminal and a web browser. Can I run Ableton on linux? can I run all the audio plugins that only ship windows/mac versions? is there a decent graphics editor? (gimp is not it.) If all I did was play in the terminal and a web browser, I'd have switched to Linux by now.

> a lot of people on HN don't realize that some people require software outside of a terminal and a web browser. Can I run Ableton on linux?

"$OS is wonderful because I can run $myapp"

and

"$OS is terrible because I cannot run $myapp"

are both very narrow (even wrong) assessments of what $OS offers.

Linux is much more than "a terminal and a Web browser" and I think the abundance of software available in Linux should make that obvious to anyone who is actually trying to do more than find satisfaction with $myapp.

Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief

#334

Post by QuiEgo »

kibwen wrote: post #127
7e wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switch to what? Windows is horrible and Linux is just as bad (but in different ways).

Windows is horrible, yes. But Linux definitely isn't "just as bad" as MacOS, it's already better, and it keeps getting better every year while MacOS keeps getting worse.

> But Linux... it's already better

I think that depends a ton on what your hardware is.

For desktop, I think there's a real arugment to be made for Linux at this point.

For laptop, what laptop running Liunx has comporable hardware quality, battery life, and perfomance to an Apple Silicon mac? AFAIK most people say "Thinkpads!" and then immeidately turn around and say "well, the battery life is worse but I can just plug it in! Or "the trackpad is worse but I don't care!"

Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief

#335

Post by runjake »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #319
runjake wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my shining moment! I just happened to setup a new Dell. It was far more cumbersome than dealing with a new Mac. Here's some of the stuff I had to do on my new Dell, from memory: - Uninstall all the bloatware apps that come installed with Windows 11. They nag and beg you not to uninstall them, but after several prompts, they mostly seem uninstalled? - Remove the trial offers from the Start menu. - Remove the t…

> Here's some of the stuff I had to do on my new Dell, from memory: Or, you know, just format the disk and install Linux.

If it were my choice…

Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief

#336

Post by runjake »

jkestner wrote: post #245
runjake wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my last straw that caused me to disable Spotlight: Typing something into Spotlight, having it pull up the right result and highlight it, and me hitting the Enter key, and the search results suddenly updating after and highlighting some new result and then opening that instead. It’s not just Liquid Glass. It’s bugs like these where I realized Apple software was truly rotten to the core. Whomever is running th…

That laggy behavior plus indexing not appearing to find some obvious files made me switch to Raycast.

Same. It’s closed source and has a subscription fee, but I’m all in on Raycast.

Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief

#337

Post by adolph »

egypturnash wrote: post #182
adolph wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually it will go away just like brushed metal, lickable, green felt, and woodgrain. Unfortunately for that to happen they will need to invent something so heinous you will wish for liquid glass.

Personally I would be down for a return to woodgrain or brushed metal.

I was going to reply "Susan Kare's bitmap pinstripes or bust" but based on this interview [0] that was Andy Hertzfeld.

0. https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/primary/intervie...

Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief

#338

Post by danpalmer »

cglan wrote: post #36

I think for the first time I’ve been considering moving off iOS because of liquid glass. The bugs on apple products have hit a breaking point for me. Mac is still unequivocally the best laptop around imho, but it’s less clear cut for phones. My iPhone 15 pro is borderline unusable. Every day is a new issue. I’m very much over it. You used to be able to count on the basics working smoothly, but stuff like the camera a…

Yeah I switched to Android in large part because of Liquid Glass. Not the look, pictures of it are quite nice, but because of how it works or rather, doesn't. It's buggy, slow (on a 1 generation old pro phone), and way too UI-forward, prioritising UI over content in the same way that skeuomorphism did. Overall it just felt dated in the same way that skeuomorphism did when it died.

Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief

#339

Post by bigyabai »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #225
bigyabai wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, my parents are both Android users and have to ask "where is the home button" when someone passes them an iPhone.

> ask "where is the home button" when someone passes them an iPhone. This is actually hilarious because Android had all-screen phones with only virtual buttons long before iPhones did :)

Sure, but neither my Pixel nor Samsung handset defaults to gesture navigation. I consider myself pretty tech savvy but just never use Apple's multitasking provisions on iOS and iPadOS.

Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief

#340

Post by db48x »

dundundundun wrote: post #298
hagbard_c wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new ${computer_brand} with Linux doesn't show you any ads, doesn't add more bloat than you let it, doesn't insist on you creating any iCloudy or Microsofty accounts, doesn't try to police what software you run on the thing, doesn't try to upsell you to some ${precious_metal} plan, doesn't insist your 5 year new computer is obsolete, doesn't spy on you, etcetera. What are you waiting for?

Proper sleep.

If your computer fails to sleep, or fails to wake up correctly after sleeping, when running Linux then the problem is almost always the hardware manufacturer’s fault. Many motherboards come with frankly broken ACPI tables that should never have made it out of QA. Remember this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45271484>) recent story? This is just the tip of the iceberg. For every well–researched story we have about ACPI problems there are a dozen more that are quietly fixed by Linux kernel developers (who instruct the kernel to simply ignore the broken ACPI tables and write a custom kernel driver to do the work instead) and an unknown but presumably large number that never come to the attention of a kernel developer.
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