8 ms·

As someone who just switched from windows to Mac, when you pick windows you also gain periodic show stopping problems, kafkaesque hoops to jump through randomly

As someone who just switched from windows to Mac, when you pick windows you also gain periodic show stopping problems, kafkaesque hoops to jump through randomly in the middle of your workflow, a slightly terrible security architecture and the ability for family and friends to see you using windows and are clearly an expert and then ask you to fix their crapware ridden death boxes. At least you gain thousands of google results for every problem coming your way. Incidentally yesterday I ran out of disk space on my old windows laptop. There was a windows problem reporting process that ate 100MiB once an hour. Eventually over the space of weeks you lose your entire disk then spend an hour googling the numerous incantations that need to be applied to fix this most of which don't work. Random shit like this happens at least once a week or so and just ruins an afternoon. Also don't think that the built in ubuntu or windows shell stuff actually works properly. There are many horrible bugs. Nothing on windows works properly for months if not years. Even with creators update, I used putty and virtual box because it was that bad. Also you're going to miss things like keychain in OSX. Edit: also my old T440 which I was running windows on, Lenovo couldn't ship working drivers for creators update and the moment that got rolled out TSHTF. This resulted in the SATA controller hanging for 30 seconds every five minutes and locking the machine up. I wasted six hours trying to find a combination of drivers and PM config that actually didn't do this. That's a whole day of work down the pan. There is just ZERO quality on the platform and I'm done with it.

ivan_gammel 9y ago
Looks like your problem was in using Lenovo, not Windows. Btw, what kinds of tasks did you do there?
- staofbur 9y ago
  No it's really not. I've been using windows since 1992 across tens of vendors and it's the same story. It has literally never changed. I find Lenovo to be the least crap. I was 50/50 Linux/windows dev. Windows dev is dead for me now (my hair is growing back). Tasks are now python, Postgres, ansible, vim, ssh and a browser and not a lot else. I've worked with Linux for about 18 years as well for ref.
  - ivan_gammel 9y ago
    So, no any special needs. It's quite strange to see such judgements from a software engineer about a tool that serves many other people very well (I'm 80/20 on Windows/Linux for more than 20 years and have very different experience, for example). Probably, it's the matter of personal preferences, not of the quality?
    - staofbur 9y ago
      It is definitely a matter of quality because I support a team with the same issues. I see the cumulative cost of quality issues daily.
      - ivan_gammel 9y ago
        Well, at least since you mentioned Lenovo, this vendor does have problems with firmware on its devices. On the other side, neither of my colleagues had ever problems with their working environment on Windows (I've developed a lot of very different products on Java, which indeed requires a lot of automation and containerization these days, so it's an multi-OS environment by its nature). There's something wrong either with how you use it or which hardware do you choose. Probably, this OS is simply not for your style of work, just like Linux is not for others. I don't think it's the OS fault.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        I would disagree, having been a Linux zealot between 1995 and 2004, nowadays doing mostly Windows, Web and Android development. Just keep a GNU/Linux netbook around for traveling. The only machines I had issues where the ones managed by local IT, with their strange images. The ones managed and installed by me seldom had problems.
        staofbur 9y ago
        I'd say the ones I have managed have less problems but not seldom had problems :)
      - 9y ago
- kalleboo 9y ago
  I've heard stories like that about every PC laptop manufacturer. Including Microsoft themselves with the Surface! Somehow desktop hardware seems a lot more solid though.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pzduniak 9y ago
Same here, also you can't really map NTFS to Linux filesystems (perms + max path length, have fun using Go with vendor / NodeJS), so you run into stupid issues where the only solution is to boot up a VM anyways - and then, most of the time, the VM file sharing does not support proper permissions. After dealing with that for about a month, I was pleased to hear that NVidia released drivers for 10-series GPUs for OSX, so I transformed a Haswell-E 8-core workstation into a Hackintosh and I get best of both worlds (except some USB soundcard issues, but it automatically switches to Bluetooth when it dies, so it's all fine). Regarding notebooks, I paid the premium over Windows notebooks just to get a MBP. The quality is far superior to anything I could find and for some reason there's no equivalent of a MBP15 in terms of performance, size and portability. Everyone's stuffing the low-TDP 2-core i7s and 14 screens into their "ultrabooks" and calling it a day.
- staofbur 9y ago
  To be technically honest here, NTFS and NT don't have a max path length problem and are optionally case sensitive. This is the abstraction layer over it (win32). I'm not sure if that does trip over that issue as I didn't experience either way myself but it is a massive problem when running things like Jenkins on windows. Disparity between the Vm and the host OS is problematic when you use things like vagrant too. Much smoother on macOS. 15" i7 MBP here as well. It's really not much bigger than my T440 and a lot thinner.
- istoica 9y ago
  This, this on so many levels! But this issue affects VMs too, the shared folders are always mounted with strange permissions, this is propagated to Docker too so Docker XP on Windows, in any configuration is seriously affected by the NTFS, put simply, awful. For developers this is critical. I don't know, maybe a software layer on top of NTFS permission might be able to emulate Posix style perms. The difference between Windows and Unix is too big compared to OSX, that is why OSX will always be more ergonomic. But this does not mean that it is not to be appreciated, they did an awesome job. Maybe one day things will be solved, maybe you will be able to start native windows apps from UOW, maybe even Docker will be supported, maybe permissions will be cleverly emulated ... the work they did so far clearly focuses on getting things running, the QA period will be there soon too.
unityByFreedom 9y ago
> the ability for family and friends to see you using windows and are clearly an expert and then ask you to fix their crapware ridden death boxes Hah, thanks for the laugh, funniest thing I've seen today. So true! =)
ReverseCold 9y ago
Also just switched from Windows > Mac, don't really want to go back. Battery life, speed, ease of use, everything is just better so far. (Razer Blade > 2016 MBP)
mb_72 9y ago
"There is just ZERO quality on the platform and I'm done with it." This is clearly an exaggeration, as is "Nothing on windows works properly for months if not years.". If 'nothing' works, then how do developers like myself use Windows very successfully for creating and maintaining software? Either you've been very unlucky or made bad choices of hardware.
- staofbur 9y ago
  It's really not. I suggest you sit down over the next couple of weeks of your life and tot up the time spend on trivial issues that shouldn't exist. That Visual Studio hang or crash that kills your entire debug rig that took you an hour to get a test case up for, that windows update notification that pops up, that windows defender notification that tells you it has nothing to report, that hour wondering why outlook has suddenly stopped talking to exchange etc.
  - Nition 9y ago
    Windows is a mess and the 16 pages of privacy settings to disable on Windows 10 aren't great either, but if there's one OS that demands the most time troubleshooting and dealing with issues, I'd struggle to claim it isn't Linux.
    - dotancohen 9y ago
      As a Linux user since 2001, I would have agreed with you up until 2008-2010 when Ubuntu really started making strides. If you haven't tried Ubuntu in the past decade, you really should. Other than one motherboard with some wacky onboard NIC, I have had zero problems that took more than a casual google to solve. This is across literally dozens of installs for friends, family, neighbours, etc. I won't do other people's installs anymore as the support adds up, such as Powerpoint presentations not opening properly in LibreOffice, but the systems just work. Most people spend their entire time in a web browser anyway, so there isn't much to go wrong. Note that I praise Ubuntu as a desktop even though I personally use CentOS as my desktop. It is Ubuntu that brought Linux to the masses.
emsy 9y ago
As a Mac user I agree with you on the security side, but if you think you will get away from obscure bugs and issues I have bad news for you.
bkovacev 9y ago
No, not really. I have a high-end laptop from Asus (no plastic etc) that I installed ubuntu on. It would overheat, have issues with the drivers and just simply would consume more power. It'd maybe last for an hour, while on windows same processes it would last for two and a half. No matter how many hacks I had to google for and how many hacks I tried, still nothing worked. You've wasted six hours, I've wasted a month trying to optimize my laptop to work at 50% of what it did. I have had a Mac as well that I sold in a heartbeat, because it required an upgrade that I simply was not willing to pay for. For less than double of the amount of money it required for an upgrade I got 32GB of RAM, 512SSD and a neat i7 processor, zero plastics. Mac would also overheat and would also crash, your point? Plus the support in the region where I am located is ZERO. No I'm definitely not going to miss the keychain as I have last pass that handles just about everything nowadays. I also work on Python, postgres, ansible, redis (which has limited support on windows but still works). Not sure where your problem is. So there's also the other side of the coin, plus your isolated case + opinion does not prove the "ZERO quality" statement, just like mine doesn't that's it's good.
- apexalpha 9y ago
  >It would overheat, have issues with the drivers and just simply would consume more power. This is hardly Linux's fault. ASUS just didn't bother writing (proper) drivers. I have a HP laptop that has support for RHEL, and therefor Linux distro's in general. I only had to install TLP for power management and I get the same battery on Ubuntu as on Win10.
  - sitepodmatt 9y ago
    Asus Zenbook UX330C - Ubuntu 16.04 64bit / stock kernel / i3wm - No TLP or power tweaks or additional powertools - 88.97% remaining 8hr30mins - and that's pretty accurate. I think you just have a bad SKU of a laptop if Linux gives you 1hr and Windows only 2.5hrs.
    - sitepodmatt 9y ago
      Down to 76% now, so pretty accurate. That with Chrome with several tabs, and a GPU/CPU heavy application called Slack/electron running. Message to OP try 16.04.2 LTS (or a later version) and I think you'll find very different results with Asus laptops and Ubuntu.
627467 9y ago
Funny, I did the reverse migration at work (windows->mac) and I'm still having countless issues around corporate printer drivers, certificates and provisioning that no other windows or Linux machines in the same environment have. And macs are the only machines that cannot have passwords freely changed at will by the user. Windows 10 has its share of issues but I think it has well above ZERO in quality.
- __sr__ 9y ago
  > And macs are the only machines that cannot have passwords freely changed at will by the user Not sure what you mean here. Can you elaborate?
- omikun 9y ago
  Sounds like an IT issue. When I have been able to use Macs at work, they involve less IT hassle than Windows machines.
sclangdon 9y ago
Isn't it just what you're used to? I recently (2 years ago) went the other way - from Windows to macOS - and I feel the same way as you but in reverse. I'll never buy another Mac, and I can't wait to get back on Windows, but I know it's not because macOS is inherently bad. It's because I have over 20 years of Windows knowledge and despite it's flaws, I know it well and I know nothing of macOS. There's plenty of quality on Windows, and Windows itself is a very good OS. It's just what you know, and what you're used to. Indedentally, in over 20 years I've never encountered a show stopping problem, or kafkaesque hoops I've had to jump through. Maybe our definitions are different...
- chrisan 9y ago
  I've had the same experience as you. Both windows and mac have bugs (or the software/drivers they use) and it is by far easier (for me) to debug and fix the windows problems than diagnosing that darned pinwheel of death. By far the most annoying experience is waiting for the laptop to be responsive after opening it up. Either the screen stays dark or the mouse/keyboard do nothing or both. I've learned to just open and go get a drink or something while it does "its thing" I've been trying for the last few days just to make a bootable osx install flash drive so I can wipe and do a clean install before selling yet I can't get the thing to boot from it no matter which keys I hold during boot or resetting the PRAM. I'm sure its something stupid I did (am doing), but I would have been long past this step if it were a windows machine.
  - omikun 9y ago
    All Macs can remotely install OSX over the internet from the boot screen so you don't need a bootable USB. To manually start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet, hold down Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R at startup.
    - chrisan 9y ago
      Thank you. I thought I was losing my mind, you were the first I read that mentioned Option-Command-R, which worked. Some guys had just Option, others were Option-R.
tcfunk 9y ago
Incidentally, there have been similar space-consuming issues on OS X [1] [2]. Granted, the second one was a third-party application (probably) misusing file versioning APIs, but it's still 200GB of disk space being used in a way that is non-obvious to the owner of the machine. 1. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/84784/128gb-ssd-and-23gb-of-sleep-image-swap-file-what-to-do https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/84784/128gb-ssd-an... 2. https://medium.com/@thomasdegry/how-sketch-took-over-200gb-of-our-macbooks-cb7dd10c8163 https://medium.com/@thomasdegry/how-sketch-took-over-200gb-o...

ivan_gammel 9y ago

Looks like your problem was in using Lenovo, not Windows. Btw, what kinds of tasks did you do there?

staofbur 9y ago
No it's really not. I've been using windows since 1992 across tens of vendors and it's the same story. It has literally never changed. I find Lenovo to be the least crap. I was 50/50 Linux/windows dev. Windows dev is dead for me now (my hair is growing back). Tasks are now python, Postgres, ansible, vim, ssh and a browser and not a lot else. I've worked with Linux for about 18 years as well for ref.
- ivan_gammel 9y ago
  So, no any special needs. It's quite strange to see such judgements from a software engineer about a tool that serves many other people very well (I'm 80/20 on Windows/Linux for more than 20 years and have very different experience, for example). Probably, it's the matter of personal preferences, not of the quality?
  - staofbur 9y ago
    It is definitely a matter of quality because I support a team with the same issues. I see the cumulative cost of quality issues daily.
    - ivan_gammel 9y ago
      Well, at least since you mentioned Lenovo, this vendor does have problems with firmware on its devices. On the other side, neither of my colleagues had ever problems with their working environment on Windows (I've developed a lot of very different products on Java, which indeed requires a lot of automation and containerization these days, so it's an multi-OS environment by its nature). There's something wrong either with how you use it or which hardware do you choose. Probably, this OS is simply not for your style of work, just like Linux is not for others. I don't think it's the OS fault.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      I would disagree, having been a Linux zealot between 1995 and 2004, nowadays doing mostly Windows, Web and Android development. Just keep a GNU/Linux netbook around for traveling. The only machines I had issues where the ones managed by local IT, with their strange images. The ones managed and installed by me seldom had problems.
      - staofbur 9y ago
        I'd say the ones I have managed have less problems but not seldom had problems :)
    - 9y ago
kalleboo 9y ago
I've heard stories like that about every PC laptop manufacturer. Including Microsoft themselves with the Surface! Somehow desktop hardware seems a lot more solid though.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pzduniak 9y ago

Same here, also you can't really map NTFS to Linux filesystems (perms + max path length, have fun using Go with vendor / NodeJS), so you run into stupid issues where the only solution is to boot up a VM anyways - and then, most of the time, the VM file sharing does not support proper permissions. After dealing with that for about a month, I was pleased to hear that NVidia released drivers for 10-series GPUs for OSX, so I transformed a Haswell-E 8-core workstation into a Hackintosh and I get best of both worlds (except some USB soundcard issues, but it automatically switches to Bluetooth when it dies, so it's all fine). Regarding notebooks, I paid the premium over Windows notebooks just to get a MBP. The quality is far superior to anything I could find and for some reason there's no equivalent of a MBP15 in terms of performance, size and portability. Everyone's stuffing the low-TDP 2-core i7s and 14 screens into their "ultrabooks" and calling it a day.

staofbur 9y ago
To be technically honest here, NTFS and NT don't have a max path length problem and are optionally case sensitive. This is the abstraction layer over it (win32). I'm not sure if that does trip over that issue as I didn't experience either way myself but it is a massive problem when running things like Jenkins on windows. Disparity between the Vm and the host OS is problematic when you use things like vagrant too. Much smoother on macOS. 15" i7 MBP here as well. It's really not much bigger than my T440 and a lot thinner.
istoica 9y ago
This, this on so many levels! But this issue affects VMs too, the shared folders are always mounted with strange permissions, this is propagated to Docker too so Docker XP on Windows, in any configuration is seriously affected by the NTFS, put simply, awful. For developers this is critical. I don't know, maybe a software layer on top of NTFS permission might be able to emulate Posix style perms. The difference between Windows and Unix is too big compared to OSX, that is why OSX will always be more ergonomic. But this does not mean that it is not to be appreciated, they did an awesome job. Maybe one day things will be solved, maybe you will be able to start native windows apps from UOW, maybe even Docker will be supported, maybe permissions will be cleverly emulated ... the work they did so far clearly focuses on getting things running, the QA period will be there soon too.

unityByFreedom 9y ago

> the ability for family and friends to see you using windows and are clearly an expert and then ask you to fix their crapware ridden death boxes Hah, thanks for the laugh, funniest thing I've seen today. So true! =)

ReverseCold 9y ago

Also just switched from Windows > Mac, don't really want to go back. Battery life, speed, ease of use, everything is just better so far. (Razer Blade > 2016 MBP)

mb_72 9y ago

"There is just ZERO quality on the platform and I'm done with it." This is clearly an exaggeration, as is "Nothing on windows works properly for months if not years.". If 'nothing' works, then how do developers like myself use Windows very successfully for creating and maintaining software? Either you've been very unlucky or made bad choices of hardware.

staofbur 9y ago
It's really not. I suggest you sit down over the next couple of weeks of your life and tot up the time spend on trivial issues that shouldn't exist. That Visual Studio hang or crash that kills your entire debug rig that took you an hour to get a test case up for, that windows update notification that pops up, that windows defender notification that tells you it has nothing to report, that hour wondering why outlook has suddenly stopped talking to exchange etc.
- Nition 9y ago
  Windows is a mess and the 16 pages of privacy settings to disable on Windows 10 aren't great either, but if there's one OS that demands the most time troubleshooting and dealing with issues, I'd struggle to claim it isn't Linux.
  - dotancohen 9y ago
    As a Linux user since 2001, I would have agreed with you up until 2008-2010 when Ubuntu really started making strides. If you haven't tried Ubuntu in the past decade, you really should. Other than one motherboard with some wacky onboard NIC, I have had zero problems that took more than a casual google to solve. This is across literally dozens of installs for friends, family, neighbours, etc. I won't do other people's installs anymore as the support adds up, such as Powerpoint presentations not opening properly in LibreOffice, but the systems just work. Most people spend their entire time in a web browser anyway, so there isn't much to go wrong. Note that I praise Ubuntu as a desktop even though I personally use CentOS as my desktop. It is Ubuntu that brought Linux to the masses.

emsy 9y ago

As a Mac user I agree with you on the security side, but if you think you will get away from obscure bugs and issues I have bad news for you.

bkovacev 9y ago

No, not really. I have a high-end laptop from Asus (no plastic etc) that I installed ubuntu on. It would overheat, have issues with the drivers and just simply would consume more power. It'd maybe last for an hour, while on windows same processes it would last for two and a half. No matter how many hacks I had to google for and how many hacks I tried, still nothing worked. You've wasted six hours, I've wasted a month trying to optimize my laptop to work at 50% of what it did. I have had a Mac as well that I sold in a heartbeat, because it required an upgrade that I simply was not willing to pay for. For less than double of the amount of money it required for an upgrade I got 32GB of RAM, 512SSD and a neat i7 processor, zero plastics. Mac would also overheat and would also crash, your point? Plus the support in the region where I am located is ZERO. No I'm definitely not going to miss the keychain as I have last pass that handles just about everything nowadays. I also work on Python, postgres, ansible, redis (which has limited support on windows but still works). Not sure where your problem is. So there's also the other side of the coin, plus your isolated case + opinion does not prove the "ZERO quality" statement, just like mine doesn't that's it's good.

apexalpha 9y ago
>It would overheat, have issues with the drivers and just simply would consume more power. This is hardly Linux's fault. ASUS just didn't bother writing (proper) drivers. I have a HP laptop that has support for RHEL, and therefor Linux distro's in general. I only had to install TLP for power management and I get the same battery on Ubuntu as on Win10.
- sitepodmatt 9y ago
  Asus Zenbook UX330C - Ubuntu 16.04 64bit / stock kernel / i3wm - No TLP or power tweaks or additional powertools - 88.97% remaining 8hr30mins - and that's pretty accurate. I think you just have a bad SKU of a laptop if Linux gives you 1hr and Windows only 2.5hrs.
  - sitepodmatt 9y ago
    Down to 76% now, so pretty accurate. That with Chrome with several tabs, and a GPU/CPU heavy application called Slack/electron running. Message to OP try 16.04.2 LTS (or a later version) and I think you'll find very different results with Asus laptops and Ubuntu.

627467 9y ago

Funny, I did the reverse migration at work (windows->mac) and I'm still having countless issues around corporate printer drivers, certificates and provisioning that no other windows or Linux machines in the same environment have. And macs are the only machines that cannot have passwords freely changed at will by the user. Windows 10 has its share of issues but I think it has well above ZERO in quality.

__sr__ 9y ago
> And macs are the only machines that cannot have passwords freely changed at will by the user Not sure what you mean here. Can you elaborate?
omikun 9y ago
Sounds like an IT issue. When I have been able to use Macs at work, they involve less IT hassle than Windows machines.

sclangdon 9y ago

Isn't it just what you're used to? I recently (2 years ago) went the other way - from Windows to macOS - and I feel the same way as you but in reverse. I'll never buy another Mac, and I can't wait to get back on Windows, but I know it's not because macOS is inherently bad. It's because I have over 20 years of Windows knowledge and despite it's flaws, I know it well and I know nothing of macOS. There's plenty of quality on Windows, and Windows itself is a very good OS. It's just what you know, and what you're used to. Indedentally, in over 20 years I've never encountered a show stopping problem, or kafkaesque hoops I've had to jump through. Maybe our definitions are different...

chrisan 9y ago
I've had the same experience as you. Both windows and mac have bugs (or the software/drivers they use) and it is by far easier (for me) to debug and fix the windows problems than diagnosing that darned pinwheel of death. By far the most annoying experience is waiting for the laptop to be responsive after opening it up. Either the screen stays dark or the mouse/keyboard do nothing or both. I've learned to just open and go get a drink or something while it does "its thing" I've been trying for the last few days just to make a bootable osx install flash drive so I can wipe and do a clean install before selling yet I can't get the thing to boot from it no matter which keys I hold during boot or resetting the PRAM. I'm sure its something stupid I did (am doing), but I would have been long past this step if it were a windows machine.
- omikun 9y ago
  All Macs can remotely install OSX over the internet from the boot screen so you don't need a bootable USB. To manually start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet, hold down Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R at startup.
  - chrisan 9y ago
    Thank you. I thought I was losing my mind, you were the first I read that mentioned Option-Command-R, which worked. Some guys had just Option, others were Option-R.

tcfunk 9y ago

Incidentally, there have been similar space-consuming issues on OS X [1] [2]. Granted, the second one was a third-party application (probably) misusing file versioning APIs, but it's still 200GB of disk space being used in a way that is non-obvious to the owner of the machine. 1. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/84784/128gb-ssd-and-23gb-of-sleep-image-swap-file-what-to-do https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/84784/128gb-ssd-an... 2. https://medium.com/@thomasdegry/how-sketch-took-over-200gb-of-our-macbooks-cb7dd10c8163 https://medium.com/@thomasdegry/how-sketch-took-over-200gb-o...