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The Mac Pro Lives

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Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#371

Post by Keyframe »

corndoge wrote: post #349
Keyframe wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a wrong statement. PowerShell is a great shell! I want a shell and gnu chain from coreutils onwards within Windows. Babun takes me close, but not close enough. Namely it's slow as hell, 64-bit is no really there, and it's cygwin. I'm one of those "runs Vim and writes their own Makefiles and uses GCC and stuff like that doesn't like cygwin" guys.

Then why not run your favorite *nix and stick windows in a VM for the few applications that don't support Linux?

Great question. I use, all the time, applications which need full speed and full GPU support of which some are only on Linux and some are only on Windows and there's some overlap where most from both are on MacOS. Simple VM doesn't cut it, I've tried.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#372

Post by bobochan »

yokohummer7 wrote: post #331
bobochan wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What baffles me is that it is 2017 and Windows comes with less than it did decades ago. At least prior to Win2000 there was QBasic and edit.com, but now starting to work on a Windows machine means downloading and installing basic tools. Need to SSH/SFTP? Download. Need to edit code? Download. Python? Download. Perl? Download. A reasonable terminal? Download. Yes, I might have to go to the Mac App Store and get comman…

Windows does have a C# compiler by default. It is located in the `Windows\Microsoft.NET` folder. Not very discoverable, though. And starting with Windows 10 a metro app called 'Code Writer' seems to be installed by default for coding. (At least it's there in my installation.) I didn't try it though.

I'm glad. MS has made a lot of good programming tools. I really like Visual Studio and was a huge fan of QuickBasic 4.5 back in the day. Turbo Pascal was the killer app that first enticed me to the PC world.

It still befuddles me why some of this basic functionality cannot be a standard part of Windows. Not every Mac user uses emacs, or even knows how to open the Terminal app, but the fact that basic tools are supported means that there is just a baseline level of infrastructure to work with.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#373

Post by scholia »

maccard wrote: post #332
bobochan wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What baffles me is that it is 2017 and Windows comes with less than it did decades ago. At least prior to Win2000 there was QBasic and edit.com, but now starting to work on a Windows machine means downloading and installing basic tools. Need to SSH/SFTP? Download. Need to edit code? Download. Python? Download. Perl? Download. A reasonable terminal? Download. Yes, I might have to go to the Mac App Store and get comman…

> but someone please explain why having an absolutely fundamental ability to edit text and securely connect to work and transfer data to/from remote machines is something that any OS should be shipping without? The ability to edit text _does_ ship on windows - notepad. (not that I'd recommend it but it does exist). Also, OSX doesn't ship with anything better. FTP isn't a fundamental requirement for everyone, I don't…

> The ability to edit text _does_ ship on windows - notepad.

Windows also ships with WordPad, which is a simple word processor.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#374

Post by 013a »

jlgaddis wrote: post #5

For me -- and, I suspect, many others -- this is too little too late. Just a few months ago, I spent somewhere around $4500 (all-in) putting together a new workstation. It runs Linux instead of OS X and this has led to me using my (4-year-old) ThinkPad more than my (18-month-old) MacBook Pro (when I'm "on the go"). I actually plan on selling the MBP; I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm sure this is great news…

Don't be so dramatic. There's a massive silent majority who will not leave OSX. The new MacBook Pros are literally some of the best machines Apple has ever produced, and a renewed focus toward pro users for the 2017 refresh (with 32gb of RAM) and a refresh of the Mac Pro will easily re-secure Apple's preeminent position in this space.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#375

Post by m_mueller »

simonh wrote: post #369
m_mueller wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically: * HiDPI support in all apps, whethere they are aware of it or not. * Built-in PDF editing and creation from all printable content. * POSIX scripting and CLI. * Very clean and consistent configuration system (defaults). Reset an app to factory? Delete one plist file and potentially an app support folder. Got a new Mac? You could even boot it up from the old harddisk. Good luck doing that with windows reg…

Big items for me on MacOS * Drag-and-drop automation, scripting and workflow tools. I love folder actions. * Built-in screen recording in QuickTime Player, which also works with attached iOS devices * Time Machine backups. So easy to use and has saved my bacon over and over * iMovie and Photos. I don't use the rest of the bundled apps, both those two are essentials for me.

I agree, all of these are part of why MacOS is just more ready for work out of the box.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#376

Post by megakwood »

issa wrote: post #318
Eun wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Window management in OSX is horrible. Finder is even more horrible. It reminds me of the Windows 95 Explorer. A network drive hangs? Good luck with Finder..., the whole system halts.

My number one complaint about OSX is also window management. I've never found anything comparable to the way Windows 7 let you use the left/right arrows to line up windows on half the screen. That is the only thing I miss about Windows, but it's a pretty big one. Also, when dis/connecting monitors on OSX, windows often get lost. ps- if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

There is a great app called Hyperdock that does exactly what you want with window snapping. It works so perfectly that I sometimes forget that it's not a native feature of OS X.

Not sure about your window size problems with external monitors, I find that OS X handles this amazingly well

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#377

Post by Xixi »

jrimbault wrote: post #254
csomar wrote: post #178

Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a har…

If Macbooks, and by extension macOS, used a "normal" keyboard layout I'd agree (not talking about the touchbar, which is gimmicky at best imo). But currently, on the french layout, you can't even pipe things. A Macbook dual booted with a normal keyboard would be my dream machine I think.

You can very easily buy a MacBook with a "normal" US keyboard, even in France. Personally I gave up the french layout several years ago. It took me maybe one week to get comfortable with the US-International input to type accents when writing in French, and that was it, never looked back.

The US-International input is very simple: to do an à you do ` then a, to do a ç you do ' then c. This input mode is however quite annoying when writing code, so I switch between US and US-International input mode depending on what I'm doing.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#378

Post by blktiger »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #167
whatusername wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm not doing enough development.... As a development machine - what is a top spec iMac/MBP missing that you would need a hackintosh?

The biggest thing is greater than 16GB of RAM.

If they are all developing with Xcode I bet they also have a server farm for distributed builds. That said, why would OSX devs need more that 16GB of RAM? It's not like they are going to be running virtual machines/docker images. Xcode isn't _that_ much of a memory hog.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#379

Post by snowwrestler »

nottorp wrote: post #319
m_mueller wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically: * HiDPI support in all apps, whethere they are aware of it or not. * Built-in PDF editing and creation from all printable content. * POSIX scripting and CLI. * Very clean and consistent configuration system (defaults). Reset an app to factory? Delete one plist file and potentially an app support folder. Got a new Mac? You could even boot it up from the old harddisk. Good luck doing that with windows reg…

* Touchpad support. I think most people who haven't used an Apple laptop extensively are not aware that the touchpad actually works, and you do not need to carry an external mouse to use the device comfortably.

Apple touchpads work so well that I don't use a mouse at all anymore. I have a Bluetooth touchpad with my external keyboard, and I even bought an old Fingerworks touchpad to use with my PC.

The power of gestures is incredible. Managing macOS windows without a touchpad is awful. With a touchpad it is the best.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#380

Post by xemoka »

issa wrote: post #318
Eun wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Window management in OSX is horrible. Finder is even more horrible. It reminds me of the Windows 95 Explorer. A network drive hangs? Good luck with Finder..., the whole system halts.

My number one complaint about OSX is also window management. I've never found anything comparable to the way Windows 7 let you use the left/right arrows to line up windows on half the screen. That is the only thing I miss about Windows, but it's a pretty big one. Also, when dis/connecting monitors on OSX, windows often get lost. ps- if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

Hammerspoon! Combined with Miro's lua script [1] it provides virtually the same interface (if you've got the "hyper" key setup properly)

[1] https://github.com/miromannino/miro-windows-management

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