Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

Having used Linux since about 2000, gnome has regressed and KDE has improved. I switched to KDE about a year ago and haven't looked back:

> * No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff)

- Never had to do this, but I checked. Under "Input Devices" I see "Mouse wheel scrolls by:" as a setting

> * To make an icon on the favorites bar in gnome, you have to edit a .desktop text file! Madness. I mean, I'm a programmer, so I'm capable of it, but it's seriously annoying

- With KDE you can drag any application to the quicklaunch widget, or right-click to add.

> * modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent

I've not used Karabiner, but a quick look does make it look more feature-complete than any single GUI tool I know of on linux. However, keyboard shortcuts are all configurable from a central place on KDE. My biggest downside is that the organization of the "Global Shortcuts" has a UI that only makes sense to a KDE developer. IMO a single list would be more useful than having categories.

> * searching for help usually yields results that are half a decade or more old, and it's very difficult to figure out if it's current advice or not

True of most systems these days unfortunately; looking for the date of the post on forums/stack-overflow helps

> * installing a gnome-shell extension was way more difficult than it should be

I've not needed to install a KDE widget that wasn't in the base setup, so I cannot comment.

> * brew isn't the best, but on linux I need to use both brew _and_ apt because you can't reliably get anything approaching up-to-date software with apt

I have nothing good to say about Ubuntu in general except that it's popularity means that it is easier to get the correct answer by googling. It is by far the most finicky distro I've administered, including Gentoo (which is so high-maintenance that you should only run it if administering systems is a fun hobby). If you want up-to-date software from your package manager, use a rolling release distro. Otherwise the best you can do is something like a base setup and then side-load the software you want. This problem has been identified to the point where there are several brew-like systems (and things like snap as well), but no clear winner yet.

> I remain reasonably happy with it, but Mac is still so far ahead of it in terms of usability it's wild.

I think this will always be true. The Mac has such a lead in "There is a bright path and things will be fine so long as you don't stray from it" coupled with the fact that they control both hardware and software means that there just don't seem to be enough people who both want a Linux like that and have the know-how to make it happen. The counterpoint is perhaps chromebooks, which occupy such a different price-point compared to macs that they make their own niche at least in primary and secondary education.

That’s not because you have 3% macOS downloads that you can say that everyone loses around 95% potential downloads. It may simply be because your app is not marketed towards Mac users and alternatives exists.

>Prior to the touchbar model

Wait... why can't you do that anymore? I charge, drive 2 displays, and have several chargers and USB devices plugged in just via the 4 USB-C/Thunderbolt ports. Is your complaint the number of ports or the fact that they're USB-C? It sounds like the specific benefit was only the variety of ports unless I'm reading this wrong...

Sometimes people must be protected from themselves. Still, windows should allow you to delay it many times until forcing you, it's a shame it doesn't.

I wholeheartedly agree. The state of personal computing in 2019 is one of uncomfortable compromises. I'm still using my Macs; I have a 2013 Mac Pro that I regularly use at home, a 2013 MacBook Air that I also regularly use whenever I'm not at home, and a work-issued 2018 MacBook Pro that I use all the time. I believe that the macOS experience and value proposition has regressed from what it was earlier this decade. I resent the move toward non-upgradeable RAM and storage, and I resent the higher prices, especially with the 2019 Mac Pro, which starts at $5999 (compare that to the $2999 entry-level price of the 2013 Mac Pro). I am also concerned about the direction of the Mac; I am concerned that within the next five years the Mac will be a locked-down platform with some allowances for programmability.

I feel that the writing is on the wall regarding the future of the Mac, and eventually I'll have to change platforms. I've been testing the waters with Windows 10 and Linux. I have a Dell XPS 9570 with Windows 10 Professional that I sometimes use. It's an excellent machine (I like it better than my work-issued 2018 MacBook Pro), and I really like Windows' Linux subsystem, but Windows 10 has its annoyances, most notably the ads and the mandatory updates. I also think Windows 10's interface looks gaudy with its oversized bars (especially the title bars), although Windows 10 doesn't look as bad on a 4K monitor. I also use the Linux Mint distribution on a ThinkPad T430 that I use for web browsing, traveling, and some light programming. I like the Cinnamon desktop, and I can generally find replacements for many of the macOS applications I use. However, I miss the fit-and-finish of macOS. I miss the consistency between applications found in macOS. I miss macOS's pervasive support for PDFs, and macOS's superior font rendering compared to Linux. I miss macOS's Dictionary.app, which I regularly use for both English and Japanese; so far I have not found anything like it on other platforms.

So, while I could sell my Macs and switch entirely to Windows 10 and Linux tomorrow and still remain productive, I will lose many of the positive aspects of the Mac that keep me on the platform. macOS is still the desktop that emphasizes fit-and-finish and consistency among applications, and I will lose this fit-and-finish and consistency when switching to other platforms.

Honestly, I think the time is ripe for another operating system, one that picks up where macOS has left off yet is not restricted to a specific vendor's hardware. Personally I believe the desktop operating system of the future will be one that draws from some ideas from the past that have never been fully realized. The high-level interface will be inspired by the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, preferably those from the classic Mac era (I admit, as much as I like Mac OS X, I believe that the classic Mac OS era was actually superior from a usability standpoint, even if its infrastructure wasn't solid). Application software should be built using components inspired by Apple's OpenDoc project. The system should be an object system inspired by Smalltalk or CLOS that enables pervasive programmability of the environment and supports an objects-all-the-way-down environment, and the operating system should provide a REPL for programmers. The difficult part will be how to make such an operating system happen, since building an operating system is a large effort, and I believe part of the reason why the desktop computing situation in 2019 is the way that it is has to do with market forces. Still, I'm dreaming of such an operating system being developed.