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The erosion of the Mac experience

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Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#431

Post by dagmx »

Half of this rant is “things were better in my day and the younger generation can’t do what the older generation did”.

No, the space has moved on from catering to you. That’s different than them not caring.

This entire rant is so ego-centric that it doesn’t really add anything of value to the public discourse. This however, in my experience, is endemic of the author. Steve Troughton-Smith has some of the worst takes on Apple. A lot of his understanding of the technology is just outright wrong.

His subjective opinion is valid but he states them as facts and that rarely holds up on closer inspection .

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#432

Post by zamalek »

yurishimo wrote: post #429
zamalek wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you here. I've been using a Mac at my new job since November. I fucking hate it. I have burned so much time on stuff not working, and it's not just me - others seem to just accept and forget it. One great example of this is the recent bout of zero days: forty five minutes for a minor release update? How on earth does anyone think that's acceptable? I'm no longer a fan of Windows, having moved along to Linux…

Can you outline some other problems you have lost time to besides a software update? I agree that they’re pretty long too, but if that’s your only complaint it’s a bit moot since every OS provides a mechanism for installing updates during off hours.

Notwithstanding that you don't leave a zero day unpatched til after hours, some other time sinks:

* M1 compatability issues.

* Problems surrounding containers. Yes, I have used Rancher Desktop, yes I have used Colima. Neither is a first-class citizen. (As-per usual with Mac dev tools).

* Dual monitor.

* External keyboards, keyboard shortcuts, and customizations.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#433

Post by dagmx »

skneko wrote: post #161
lastangryman wrote: post #133

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

Don't worry I'm European and 90% of developers I know think exactly like you (and me). It's just that the HN crowd is typically North American, and people tend to like what they have grown with.

This is such an odd extrapolation. You can see tons of Macs or Linux in use in Europe, at conventions , in lots of dev communities, in design studios.

I suspect you’re in a self selected bubble. Which you sort of allude to by saying “developers you know”, but I don’t see how that extrapolates to the continent as a whole.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#434

Post by janef0421 »

hot_gril wrote: post #175
geysersam wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used Ubuntu for almost a decade now. Wouldn't call myself a tinkerer with respect to the OS, the defaults are totally fine. Drivers are rarely an issue ime. Maybe things have become better since last you tried?

I installed Ubuntu on my Acer laptop a few years ago. Fans didn't work after waking from sleep, so it'd overheat. Wifi was finicky. I didn't even try Bluetooth. Couldn't run Adobe Flash and thus couldn't watch the World Cup on the only legit website to watch in the US (Fox Sports). Yeah, "not the OS's fault" etc. But Windows did all of that fine.

Windows did all of that fine because the manufacturer made the machine with the intent of running windows and shipped it with drivers for its particular hardware. A System76 machine would be the same with linux, apart from the flash thing, so you aren't really saying anything meaningful about any operating system.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#435

Post by ShamelessC »

account-5 wrote: post #195
firecall wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When I'm using it I have to Google how to do simple stuff like copy and paste." Really? everytime? :-)

Actually I got this mixed up with taking a screenshot, which kinda proves my point because I had to Google to find this out. Also no one can say CMD+shift+5 is intuitive to take a screenshot, prtsrn is much easier.

pretty subjective

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#436

Post by SaltyFetus »

vikingerik wrote: post #352
lastangryman wrote: post #133

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

FYI for anyone who doesn't know: that other shortcut is Command+` to cycle between windows of one application. It's totally nondiscoverable (I read about it here), but once I learned that, it felt amazingly intuitive to separate the concerns of application-switching and window-switching. And Command+` works consistently on MacOS, unlike on Windows where every app reimplements its own multiple-document interface and s…

I've been using a Mac now for about a year, and I still don't know if I can move windows around in 'Mission Control' or whatever it is where I see all my open windows.

Like, when I swipe three fingers up and see all the open windows, my current window flys to a random part of the screen and all the other windows appear. I can't move these windows, much less get them to stay in an area to find easily later. Is there something I'm missing? I am learning to like other parts of the interface, but this just baffles me especially when I have 20 browser windows open.

Or is there an app that helps with this? I find there are tons of app and tweaks that, as a new Mac person, I have no clue about. I don't even know what I don't know!

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#437

Post by roiboosxh »

philistine wrote: post #293
throwaway675309 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because it's easy to manage packages using brew, Windows has the... winget which is all but abandoned. For the longest time there was no such thing as WSL so Mac had a serious advantage for us who migrated between Linux and Mac. And as you've mentioned I've had so many quality control issues with Windows computers including Dell and Asus that eventually I just said fuck it I'd rather spend 3 to 4 grand on a machine t…

Hear hear for Homebrew, who in my mind is single-handedly responsible for getting Apple to stop shipping old versions of scripting languages. We can soon, with Ventura, link the Brew version of Python, and Ruby, and everything. Hear hear !

Can you expand on the Ventura news please? A quick google revealed nothing…

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#438

Post by danbolt »

lastangryman wrote: post #133

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

> Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the project I want from another application.

I find your feelings really interesting here. Or, I grew up with Windows, but realizing that on Mac OS X was an "a-ha! brilliant!" moment for me. I really loved that it was available on Pop!_OS.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#439

Post by hammyhavoc »

altairprime wrote: post #426
hammyhavoc wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said nothing about modifying anything, if anybody is assuming things, it is you. Case in point: my 70 year old aunt and 8 year old neighbour can change the RAM and storage on their computers, that doesn't make them power users. An Academy-winning Hollywood director I know bought his Windows-based computer pre-made, doesn't modify anything on it, just uses Da Vinci Resolve, but requires the absolute pinnacle of perf…

You’re absolutely right: the term “power user” isn’t well-defined enough for us to use in this discussion without considering what it means. What definition are you using in your comment above? I don’t have any strong preference, and will accede to yours.

The typical one of having advanced skills and advanced needs. The thing that Macs did used to cater for.

Software-wise, now both Logic and Final Cut are a bad joke, especially by modern standards. That's just one of dozens upon dozens of reasons why Apple aren't the go-to anymore.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#440

Post by davrosthedalek »

ssivark wrote: post #314
davrosthedalek wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the "analysis software coordinator" for a nuclear physics experiment (MUSE). The software framework we use was originally developed by me, on a macbook pro, mainly, targeting both MacOS and Linux. We have to onboard new students regularly, and it's quite a software stack to compile (Geant4, root, helper libs, our framework). 5-10 years ago, I was happy if a new student was on Mac. Slap homebrew on it, install th…

On a tangent -- You might want to look into Guix (at least just the package manager, if not the whole system/distribution); it seems quite popular for similar use cases. See, eg: https://hpc.guix.info/about/ Also, with regards to linux, what stops you from making that the default that students onboard to? I would imagine that something like this becomes quite easy if you have a culture where group members help onboar…

They typically have one laptop, and a) they are not happy if I tell them that they need to switch to linux (and no word, less games...) b) it's often cheaper laptops with questionable linux support.

It's not like we can buy them a work laptop. At least not for each undergrad.

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