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Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

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Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#51

Post by mbreese »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #23
gurjeet wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet Linux, whatever distro you use, wasn’t right for you to begin with; but you made it yours by tweaking it to your liking. Trust me, you can tweak macOS to your liking, as well. I used to be a Linux lover, but after trying for almost a decade, for my desktop needs, I’ve given up on Linux, and adopted macOS. macOS is a POSIX environment, and you have almost the whole GNU ecosystem available to you, if you want.

Well- one of my main gripes was that I had to spend a lot of time and work getting macOS to behave like Linux did - so at some point I decided to stop wasting my time and use the real thing :) so “whatever distro you use, wasn’t right for you to begin with; but you made it yours by tweaking it to your liking.” You’re not entirely wrong but it was far less painful than tweaking macOS. “ you can tweak macOS to your lik…

Anytime I “need” a more Linux environment (development, etc), I would default to spinning up a Linux VM or Docker container. Like you, I think it’s easier to just use the real thing. Also, I don’t like to install too much with brew, etc as I like to keep my primary computer as stock as possible. I still worry about library conflicts. This way, I have a better UI for non-dev work, but I still get the full *nix command line experience when I want it.

Anymore though, instead of a VM, I end up SSHing to a cloud server. Tools that can be run from the server (vscode, rstudio, etc) make this even easier as I can use the same interface from multiple computers.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#52

Post by atty »

I see some people in the comments saying they strongly prefer Linux desktop to Mac/Windows. If you are one of those people, I am curious - are you comfortable changing system configurations, using the terminal, updating system software by hand, etc? Because I quite enjoy playing around with Linux on the desktop, but I would never suggest it to anyone who isn’t already familiar and enjoys that sort of stuff.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#53

Post by smoldesu »

bastardoperator wrote: post #25
smoldesu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for starters, Planner is also a native application written in Vala/GTK. The only non-native part about it is that you're forced to run it as a Flatpak (which is a bummer), but that makes it just about equally as "native" as any sandboxed Mac app. Almost to a comedic extent, Planner does copy a lot of the touches that Things has. For example, dragging the plus icon in the corner to a folder will create a new tas…

I rather pay a developer for support and continued development. If the only difference between these apps is one is a rip off of the other and doesn't cost, that's not a very compelling argument from my limited perspective. Also, the commit comments on this project are total WTF.

> I rather pay a developer for support and continued development. If the only difference between these apps is one is a rip off of the other and doesn't cost, that's not a very compelling argument from my limited perspective.

If you're adverse to taking things for free, you're always welcome to donate to the lead maintainer. Nobody is forcing you to take stuff for free, but conversely, arguing that something must be lower quality because you didn't spend more money on it isn't a very compelling argument either. Sounds like the same argument all those proprietary UNIX vendors made before... well, they became irrelevant.

> Also, the commit comments on this project are total WTF.

Man, imagine if you could look inside the VCS for Things... Who knows what kind of dragons lurk in there.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#54

Post by smoldesu »

atty wrote: post #49
smoldesu wrote: post #2

> You could probably make something as nice and integrated as Things on Linux, but for someone as busy as me, it is nice to use what is already there. I find this a funny point, as Things is one of the apps that has a near-direct clone[0] on Linux. It also costs $49.99 less than Things! [0] https://github.com/alainm23/planner

Does planner have native apps on iOS/iPad that it syncs with? If it does, I can’t find it in the App Store currently.

It does. They're called "Todoist"

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#55

Post by dopeboy »

Ubuntu user since the 5.04 days. The vertical integration the apple ecosystem offers is incredible and not something linux can ever compete with. I see my fiancee use her iphone with her apple tv and her mac - everything connects together, seamlessly. There are walled garden elements to it but look, I'm done fighting the FOSS fight I waged in my late teens and early 20s. I got work to do, my life to live, etc.

My advice to the Ubuntu, Fedora, etc teams: focus ruthlessly on creating a smooth experience for the office/enterprise clientele who mostly use a narrow set of hardware (thinkpads x/t, dell inspirons, etc). Get this to a place where everything just works and lobby partners when it doesn't. Example from two days ago: shared my screen on zoom, clicked to stop screen sharing and the UI on my side didn't update. So another attendee went to share their screen and I couldn't see it - I had to rejoin. Worst still, that happens intermittently.

That said, I'm personally bearish on this ever happening against a much more well funded incumbent that is now producing ground breaking hardware with the M1s, etc.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#56

Post by yakak »

gurjeet wrote: post #21
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #17

“Platform A has these features I find convenient therefore I migrated from platform B which doesn’t have them”. That’s all this article is. Platform B might as well have been windows. I’m not sure why everyone is reading it as a dismissal of desktop Linux as a concept. I tried a Mac for a while, found it too restrictive, moved back to Linux on the desktop - doesn’t mean the Mac sucks or anything, just wasn’t right fo…

I bet Linux, whatever distro you use, wasn’t right for you to begin with; but you made it yours by tweaking it to your liking. Trust me, you can tweak macOS to your liking, as well. I used to be a Linux lover, but after trying for almost a decade, for my desktop needs, I’ve given up on Linux, and adopted macOS. macOS is a POSIX environment, and you have almost the whole GNU ecosystem available to you, if you want.

I tried to use OsX for a few years since I thought it might help with resume soft skills, etc. But nothing is worth the frustration of Apple and their damn semi-GEO-locked mess of a cloud.

Every Linux just works, even with obscure keyboard layouts, and installs security updates or necessities without ever dragging you into some store login drama.

It would be interesting if people really finished a proper Darwin setup that could provide a good POSIX without service dependencies on Apple. But at that point, there are the existing BSDs.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#57

Post by smoldesu »

gurjeet wrote: post #21
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #17

“Platform A has these features I find convenient therefore I migrated from platform B which doesn’t have them”. That’s all this article is. Platform B might as well have been windows. I’m not sure why everyone is reading it as a dismissal of desktop Linux as a concept. I tried a Mac for a while, found it too restrictive, moved back to Linux on the desktop - doesn’t mean the Mac sucks or anything, just wasn’t right fo…

I bet Linux, whatever distro you use, wasn’t right for you to begin with; but you made it yours by tweaking it to your liking. Trust me, you can tweak macOS to your liking, as well. I used to be a Linux lover, but after trying for almost a decade, for my desktop needs, I’ve given up on Linux, and adopted macOS. macOS is a POSIX environment, and you have almost the whole GNU ecosystem available to you, if you want.

If I have to spend my time tweaking an operating system to my liking, it's going to be the one that's cheaper and has less lock-in.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#58

Post by Nextgrid »

goosedragons wrote: post #10
Nextgrid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What can the Linux Desktop ecosystem learn from this? Usability and functionality trumps ideology. The Linux world has spent (and is still spending) insane amounts of time & effort on ideological battles such as software freedom or the endless arguments against systemd while commercial OSes put that time towards actual functionality and end up ahead most of the time. I don't care how "free" your thing is, none of t…

Besides running the latest and greatest MS Office and Photoshop (which is entirely out of the hands of Linux developers) what can't you do? You can browse the modern web, do office and productivity tasks, develop, game, watch a movie etc. Most of people's complaints with Linux are things entirely controlled by 3rd parties like specific software and DRM for crap like Blu-rays and 4K Netflix. Modern DEs like KDE and GN…

> what can't you do?

Latest example: I can't install a proprietary driver for certain hardware. The problem isn't just the fact that there isn't a driver available, it's that the infrastructure (ABI or API) to make such a driver is not there for ideological reasons.

Software freedom should also be the freedom to decide whether I'd like to give up said freedom if needed.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#59

Post by [deleted] »

gurjeet wrote: post #21
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #17

“Platform A has these features I find convenient therefore I migrated from platform B which doesn’t have them”. That’s all this article is. Platform B might as well have been windows. I’m not sure why everyone is reading it as a dismissal of desktop Linux as a concept. I tried a Mac for a while, found it too restrictive, moved back to Linux on the desktop - doesn’t mean the Mac sucks or anything, just wasn’t right fo…

I bet Linux, whatever distro you use, wasn’t right for you to begin with; but you made it yours by tweaking it to your liking. Trust me, you can tweak macOS to your liking, as well. I used to be a Linux lover, but after trying for almost a decade, for my desktop needs, I’ve given up on Linux, and adopted macOS. macOS is a POSIX environment, and you have almost the whole GNU ecosystem available to you, if you want.

[deleted]

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#60

Post by vehemenz »

About the final point—are Macs really "high cost"? Looking at their current lineup, configured with a minimum of 16GB and 512GB:

  M1 Mac Mini .......... $1099
  M1 MacBook Air ....... $1399
  M1 iMac ......,....... $1699
  M1 Pro Mac Studio .... $1999
  M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14" $1999
  M1 Pro MacBook Pro 16" $2499
I'll restrain myself from listing the ways comparing Macs to PCs is not apples to apples. Unless you go for costly storage upgrades (which I agree are overpriced), all of these prices are pretty reasonable for a 4-year ownership period. Considering Macs are typically owned longer than PCs, I don't see how anyone that can afford comparable PCs or UltraBooks would be priced out of Apple products.
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