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Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

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Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#601

Post by glaberficken »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #267
glaberficken wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Meanwhile, there's little consistency between apps (and Elementary tries to remove menu bars as a concept, what's up with that?), and everything feels put together randomly by people with widely divergent ideas of what a kind of desktop environment to aspire to." This is the product of dictatorship style development on one side (Windows, OSX) Vs democracy on the other side (Linux distros). Democracy implies divers…

It's not democracy vs dictatorship. It's individualism/pluralism vs central planning. You can have central planning with democratic legitimacy or without it. But I don't actually think the horrible state of desktop Linux is down to any of that. Device drivers are Linux's big problem. Desktop environments are a simple matter of getting used to them and learning what to tweak.

> "the horrible state of desktop Linux"

I don't assume the state of desktop Linux to be horrible. It's simply more diverse than the state of Windows and OSX.

For many people that is a good thing. There's intrinsic value in variety.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#602

Post by verbify »

enjo wrote: post #125
taigeair wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on its impact on how you do development? One reason I still have a mac is because it's so developer friendly. Linux is very time-consuming to make things work with and is incompatible with various hardware. Also some mac software is great.

Windows 10 have built a very impressive Linux compatibility layer. It's not a VM, they are executing native ELF binaries using the windows kernel. They run a version of Ubuntu 14.04 on top of it that most notably includes package management. It's currently missing upstart, so some things don't work nicely, but MOST things work just fine. I believe upstart is available on some preview versions now. Everything on our d…

I wish it could access hardware. Currently want to play around with machine learning, I only have one graphics card that I regularly use for gaming, so I have to dual boot to get anything like TensorFlow working.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#603

Post by fauigerzigerk »

glaberficken wrote: post #601
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not democracy vs dictatorship. It's individualism/pluralism vs central planning. You can have central planning with democratic legitimacy or without it. But I don't actually think the horrible state of desktop Linux is down to any of that. Device drivers are Linux's big problem. Desktop environments are a simple matter of getting used to them and learning what to tweak.

> "the horrible state of desktop Linux" I don't assume the state of desktop Linux to be horrible. It's simply more diverse than the state of Windows and OSX. For many people that is a good thing. There's intrinsic value in variety.

As I said, it's driver issues that make the Linux desktop/laptop experience horrible, not the diversity of desktop environments.

I don't think it's a good idea for Linux advocates to deny or downplay the effect that driver issues have on the overall desktop/laptop Linux experience.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#604

Post by mikegerwitz »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #540
mikegerwitz wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're still figuring out what it's supposed to even be "It" can be any distro. GNU/Linux distros aren't a single entity, and they never will settle on a common interface---that's a good thing. Larger distros like Ubuntu will, but if you're going to adopt this perspective, you'll need to start thinking about the individual distributions and companies/communities behind them rather than "the" GNU/Linux desktop.

> that's a good thing Not if you're looking for a macOS alternative. I'm fine with the "distros" doing what they want. However, that is not going to lead to a cohesive experience of the kind that macOS is able to provide. A bigger problem than the desktop environment may be that apps are written to different UI toolkits (these days mostly GTK+ and Qt), and the different environments provide themes to get a unified lo…

> A bigger problem than the desktop environment may be that apps are written to different UI toolkits (these days mostly GTK+ and Qt)

I can agree with this criticism (granted, I don't use many GUI programs)---not that they're different toolkits, but that they often have drastically different theming and UX. Uniformity through common theming/UX APIs would be beneficial.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#605

Post by ooqr »

wineisfine wrote: post #588
mattkevan wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get it either. Most themes or skins or whatever for Linux desktops (including the default ones) are pretty terrible - the fit and finish is generally poor. If I'm going to be staring at something for 8+ hours a day the inconsistencies really start to grate. Most of those desktop screenshots remind me of Winamp skins from back in the day - yes it's a great piece of software and endlessly customisable, but most o…

Maybe someone should do a kickstarter project for this: to get a decent Linux distro well designed. Hah!

do y'all really think Cinnamon is unpolished? I use a Mac at work and definitely prefer Cinnamon over the Mac interface

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#606

Post by collyw »

alxndr wrote: post #598
collyw wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have noticed that as well. Mac users seem to feel the need to use them in public for some reason.

This could be explained by Macs working better on random networks and having better battery life than other laptops. Anecdata: I know of several Windows laptops, but only one Mac laptop, which are now effectively desktops.

Did those laptops start out as expensive as a Mac, or were they low end machines?

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#607

Post by NEDM64 »

quantumwannabe wrote: post #463
ClassyJacket wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The Apple Watch is a fantastic execution. The Taptic engine is one of the coolest and most useful pieces of technology I've seen in years.

I found Android Wear to be superior to it. Some gripes I've had: read notifications aren't synced with the phone, it is impossible to mark an email as read without opening it, no third-party watch faces, the appointment shown on the watch face won't change to the next one until the current one is over (horrible with back to back appointments, Android shows the next one 10 minutes into the current one), the iMessage a…

So you didn't even used it...

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#608

Post by NEDM64 »

toyg wrote: post #542
ClassyJacket wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The Apple Watch is a fantastic execution. The Taptic engine is one of the coolest and most useful pieces of technology I've seen in years.

> The Apple Watch is a fantastic execution Compared to Android alternatives already on the market, it's nothing special. The other i-devices were distinctive, this one is an also-ran.

That's why all Android smartwatches failed commercially, right?

The Apple Watch is so much superior.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#609

Post by rleigh »

jasoncchild wrote: post #34
mulmen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head I can think of a couple: 1) OSX was a viable operating system that was first class in the Apple ecosystem. 2) Laptops and desktops that were actually better than the competition including models geared toward power users.

Thanks! I've not much personal experience of pre-iPhone Apple. I'm curious about why OSX is no longer viable.

It's poorly maintained. Large parts haven't been updated in a decade.

Take a basic command, `readlink -f`. Works everywhere except MacOS X. This comes from FreeBSD, which added `-f` years ago, but MacOS X hasn't resynched its code with FreeBSD for an age, so it's running the version from 2007 or similar. I can show you plenty of examples of this sort.

It would take very little effort to do this on a regular basis, and it could probably be automated.

This creeping incompatibility due to being outdated and unmaintained is becoming increasingly problematic. Not something a regular user cares about, but for development and technical users, it's lacking.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#610

Post by 234dd57d2c8db »

mattkevan wrote: post #342
hollander wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never get these screenshots of desktop backgrounds. It's background-porn. The fact that it's made on Linux and has a Linux menubar and different fonts than Windows or Mac - who cares? I've used Ubuntu since seven years at work, the mac since 17 years, Windows not anymore since seven years, unless when helping others. I would change to Linux anytime if all would just work, meaning Photoshop and other software that n…

Don't get it either. Most themes or skins or whatever for Linux desktops (including the default ones) are pretty terrible - the fit and finish is generally poor. If I'm going to be staring at something for 8+ hours a day the inconsistencies really start to grate. Most of those desktop screenshots remind me of Winamp skins from back in the day - yes it's a great piece of software and endlessly customisable, but most o…

The problem with your rant is that people have different opinions on what is "good". You would probably hate my setup because it's a tiling WM with nothing. No conky bar, no date/time in the bar, no power monitors, etc. But it works the best for me because I don't like any distractions at all.

Linux gives you the freedom to choose the environment that suits you personally best. Windows doesn't give you ANY choice, and it's still bad! If you like to be told what is good and make no optimizations for your personal workflow, more power to you. But don't go saying that Linux is "not the right answer", that's just silly. Works on my machine :)

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