4 ms·

• Nothing available that's as lightweight and good as Apple's "office"-type suite. • Nothing as all-around good as Preview (yes, seriously). • Worse battery l

• Nothing available that's as lightweight and good as Apple's "office"-type suite. • Nothing as all-around good as Preview (yes, seriously). • Worse battery life, partly due to worse OS optimizations and partly due to not having Safari available. Solutions to this in Linux that actually yield good results usually involve hard-capping performance at a pretty low level, IME. • Little things like screen recording and screenshot capabilities not being as nice for basic use, out of the box. • AFAIK not only is the default English keyboard on Linux far worse at the task of writing in English than that on macOS, there's not a single alternative layout that's close to as good as the Mac default. Yes, I'm dead serious about this, and frankly it's friggin' weird they'd have such a significant advantage on something like that in the year 2020, and I really wish other operating systems would catch up because I do not like being forced to use Apple products just so my experience composing documents in English isn't bad. I do not understand how they still have such a large advantage here, but somehow, they do. Totally baffling. • If you do anything serious with software-UI-related graphic design, or work closely with people who do, you pretty much need a Mac because odds are good you'll be using at least some mac-only software or have things shared with you that work only in mac programs. • You lose a variety of time-saving integrations with i-devices, if you're someone who takes advantage of those.

PaulBGD_ 6y ago
I'm not understanding the English keyboard complaint, am I missing something?
- spanhandler 6y ago
  Look up how you type: those • characters I used in my post, an m-dash (—), a c-cedilla (ç), a german double-S (ß), basic accented characters for various Western European languages (we have many, many loan words and phrases from those in English—façade, résumé, áñ∂ §ò öñ), punctuation for French and Spanish (no, you don't strictly need these for English—but in practice, depending on the register you're writing in, actually you do), major world currency symbols ($, £, €, ¥, ¢), basic mathematical symbols and mathy Greek letters (≤, ∑) and so on. Look up how you do that on US English keyboard layouts in macOS, Linux, or Windows. Then check AltGr and US International alternative layouts for the latter two. Marvel at how macOS manages to crush all those options in usability with their default, without affecting the experience for someone who doesn't need those at all. Join me in wondering how no-one else has at least matched them on this, which is not some recently-added feature in macOS, but is practically ancient in computing terms.
  - boogies 6y ago
    > Look up how you type: those • characters I used in my post, an m-dash (—), a c-cedilla (ç), a german double-S (ß), basic accented characters for various Western European languages No thanks! I already new how to type — (Compose - - -), and I was able to guess how to type the others simply by trial and error in less time than it would take to duck/google how to type them: Compose + . + - → · (close enough for me Edit: Compose + . + = → •) ┃ Compose + c + , → ç ┃ Compose + s + s → ß Compose + e + ` → è ┃ Compose + e + ' → é ┃ Compose + ` + e → è ┃ Compose + ' + e → é Bonus: Compose + - + > → → ┃ Compose + = + / → ≠ ┃ Compose + / + = → ≠ ┃ Compose + : + ) → ┃ Compose + L + L + A + P → (Edit: HN seems to have stripped out the last two, a smiley face emoji and the \\// / Star Trek/Live Long And Prosper hand. So I guess the compose key can type more characters than HN even allows.) ß°ηυ5 þē 5€¢•ηⅾ: Pressing the alt key reveals underlines under selectable gui elements. Press any letter that's underlined (while still holding alt) to activate the element (menu item, button, etc.). Try this in every GUI you use regularly and then race a macOS user stuck with reaching for a trackpad or mouse everytime they need to click something. Јоⅰη ⅿе ⅰɳ wօɳԁеrⅰηg Һօw ɳօ‐օɳе аt Аррⅼе tҺօυgҺt tо аⅾԁ tҺіѕ, wҺⅰϲҺ іѕ ɳօt ѕоⅿе rесеɳtⅼу‐аԁԁеԁ fеаtυrе ⅰɳ ԌΝU⁄Ⅼіɳυⅹ, Ьυt ⅰѕ рrасtіϲаⅼⅼУ аɳсіеηt ⅰη ϲоⅿρυtⅰɳg tеrⅿѕ (¡ΝаѕtУ Wⅰηԁоwѕ, рrеҺⅰѕtоrіс Wіηԁօwѕ 95, Һаⅾ tҺеѕе υηⅾеrⅼіɳеѕ аⅼwаУѕ ⌵іѕⅰЬⅼе!).
    - spanhandler 6y ago
      Great! Linux, I assume? goes looking OK yep, I'll enable it and start re-training myself on that, for when I'm not on mac. It's not quite as quick for most of the things I need frequently, but seems tolerable. Remaining questions: 1) why would the default be bad? Like, why ever would one make a default bad if there are non-bad options? Especially for something everyone should want to be good on a computer, like composing text in the user's language, and 2) ugh of course even once enabled the default compose key is bad (there's a theme here) and both enabling it and configuring it depends on which WM/DE you're in, Wayland vs. Xorg, and so on, and from some googling it's even possible to run into inconsistent behavior between different friggin' GUI toolkits under the same DE. OK that second one is a comment, not a question. Still. I'd recently googled the problem of (specifically) typing an em-dash on Linux, and just tried it again, and sure enough this solution doesn't come up until the sixth hit, in an unassuming Google documentation style guide. "Just memorize a 4-digit number" is the overwhelming answer to that question, on search engines, for some reason, despite plainly being awful. Maybe the configuration hurdle and bad default behavior is why that's the go-to solution, I dunno. [EDIT] none of the above irritation aimed at you, I hope is clear, and sincerely, thanks for the pointer.
boogies 6y ago
> • Nothing available that's as lightweight and good as Apple's "office"-type suite. I personally create markdown documents in vis (a text editor like vim, but lighterweight — < 4 MB including optional syntax highlighting, and opens instantaneously enough that I use it to edit many of my HN comments, including this one, by pressing Control + I in my macOS-unsupporting browser) and can compile them to html with discount (< 1 MB) or to PDF, docx, reveal.js slides, etc with Pandoc. This is the peak of ‘lightweight and good’ to me. Apps like Abiword (an extremely lightweight WYSIWYG word processor, but I don't even know how tiny it is because it’s built in to the miniscule Puppy Linux distro that is currently running entirely in my RAM — making any traditional OS look bloated and sluggish to be constrained to run off a PCIE SSD at fastest) may better meet other people’s personal definitions of these words. Given the popularity of web “apps” like Google Docs, I think a native application like any in the LibreOffice suite is probably more efficient than most people care enough to notice. > • Nothing as all-around good as Preview (yes, seriously). Not having ever needed to fill out a PDF form, I won’t comment. > • Worse battery life, partly due to worse OS optimizations and partly due to not having Safari available. Solutions to this in Linux that actually yield good results usually involve hard-capping performance at a pretty low level, IME. “not having Safari available” — there are a million WebKit based browsers on Linux from the extremely Safari-like Gnome Web to Luakit to suckless Surf. “hard-capping performance at a pretty low level” — Macbooks have their performance capped by cooling systems that can’t sustain high clock speeds anyway > • Little things like screen recording and screenshot capabilities not being as nice for basic use, out of the box. Speak for yourself, Simple Screen Recorder has been exactly that, simple and nice, out of the box, for me.¹ > • AFAIK not only is the default English keyboard on Linux far worse at the task of writing in English than that on macOS, there's not a single alternative layout that's close to as good as the Mac default. Yes, I'm dead serious about this, and frankly it's friggin' weird they'd have such a significant advantage on something like that in the year 2020, and I really wish other operating systems would catch up because I do not like being forced to use Apple products just so my experience composing documents in English isn't bad. I do not understand how they still have such a large advantage here, but somehow, they do. Totally baffling. Like a sibling comment, I don't know what you’re talking about. However, I can say I love typing with my current layout.² > • If you do anything serious with software-UI-related graphic design, or work closely with people who do, you pretty much need a Mac because odds are good you'll be using at least some mac-only software or have things shared with you that work only in mac programs. ~~ It’s too bad if this niche has failed to produce more portable programs. But I don’t see it as a failing of the OS for the vast majority of users.~~ elementary OS is itself a serious commercial software-related graphic design project. I am not aware of it’s designers using any macOS only software > • You lose a variety of time-saving integrations with i-devices, if you're someone who takes advantage of those. I don’t and I don’t see them as things to be taken advantage of by consumers as much as things to take advantage of and consume them and all their hardware-purchasing decisions through lock-in. [1]: On the distro I use, PrintScreen instantly pops open a screenshot in a lightweight MS P aint-style editor (mtpaint, which can crop with one shortcut). On ChromiumOS there’s one shortcut for fullscreen shot and one for drag-to-capture (Control + [Shift +] Show Apps IIRC), either one of which triggers a notification with a thumbnail of the shot that can be clicked to open the folder. I've also seen a small gui for taking shots of windows, areas, or the full screen with or without the cursor and/or a specifiable delay (on an old Puppy). I imagine elementaryOS has a very similar method to macOS, but I’ve never bothered to distro-hop to it because after using macOS for a while at school I didn’t miss it at home (it seems like a good OS only compared to Windows). [2]: Eg. I can type a superscript one simply by tapping <Compose> <s> <1>, where Compose is mapped to tapping my left shift key. IIUC this would require installing third-party software like Karabiner Elements on macOS.

PaulBGD_ 6y ago

I'm not understanding the English keyboard complaint, am I missing something?

spanhandler 6y ago
Look up how you type: those • characters I used in my post, an m-dash (—), a c-cedilla (ç), a german double-S (ß), basic accented characters for various Western European languages (we have many, many loan words and phrases from those in English—façade, résumé, áñ∂ §ò öñ), punctuation for French and Spanish (no, you don't strictly need these for English—but in practice, depending on the register you're writing in, actually you do), major world currency symbols ($, £, €, ¥, ¢), basic mathematical symbols and mathy Greek letters (≤, ∑) and so on. Look up how you do that on US English keyboard layouts in macOS, Linux, or Windows. Then check AltGr and US International alternative layouts for the latter two. Marvel at how macOS manages to crush all those options in usability with their default, without affecting the experience for someone who doesn't need those at all. Join me in wondering how no-one else has at least matched them on this, which is not some recently-added feature in macOS, but is practically ancient in computing terms.
- boogies 6y ago
  > Look up how you type: those • characters I used in my post, an m-dash (—), a c-cedilla (ç), a german double-S (ß), basic accented characters for various Western European languages No thanks! I already new how to type — (Compose - - -), and I was able to guess how to type the others simply by trial and error in less time than it would take to duck/google how to type them: Compose + . + - → · (close enough for me Edit: Compose + . + = → •) ┃ Compose + c + , → ç ┃ Compose + s + s → ß Compose + e + ` → è ┃ Compose + e + ' → é ┃ Compose + ` + e → è ┃ Compose + ' + e → é Bonus: Compose + - + > → → ┃ Compose + = + / → ≠ ┃ Compose + / + = → ≠ ┃ Compose + : + ) → ┃ Compose + L + L + A + P → (Edit: HN seems to have stripped out the last two, a smiley face emoji and the \\// / Star Trek/Live Long And Prosper hand. So I guess the compose key can type more characters than HN even allows.) ß°ηυ5 þē 5€¢•ηⅾ: Pressing the alt key reveals underlines under selectable gui elements. Press any letter that's underlined (while still holding alt) to activate the element (menu item, button, etc.). Try this in every GUI you use regularly and then race a macOS user stuck with reaching for a trackpad or mouse everytime they need to click something. Јоⅰη ⅿе ⅰɳ wօɳԁеrⅰηg Һօw ɳօ‐օɳе аt Аррⅼе tҺօυgҺt tо аⅾԁ tҺіѕ, wҺⅰϲҺ іѕ ɳօt ѕоⅿе rесеɳtⅼу‐аԁԁеԁ fеаtυrе ⅰɳ ԌΝU⁄Ⅼіɳυⅹ, Ьυt ⅰѕ рrасtіϲаⅼⅼУ аɳсіеηt ⅰη ϲоⅿρυtⅰɳg tеrⅿѕ (¡ΝаѕtУ Wⅰηԁоwѕ, рrеҺⅰѕtоrіс Wіηԁօwѕ 95, Һаⅾ tҺеѕе υηⅾеrⅼіɳеѕ аⅼwаУѕ ⌵іѕⅰЬⅼе!).
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    Great! Linux, I assume? goes looking OK yep, I'll enable it and start re-training myself on that, for when I'm not on mac. It's not quite as quick for most of the things I need frequently, but seems tolerable. Remaining questions: 1) why would the default be bad? Like, why ever would one make a default bad if there are non-bad options? Especially for something everyone should want to be good on a computer, like composing text in the user's language, and 2) ugh of course even once enabled the default compose key is bad (there's a theme here) and both enabling it and configuring it depends on which WM/DE you're in, Wayland vs. Xorg, and so on, and from some googling it's even possible to run into inconsistent behavior between different friggin' GUI toolkits under the same DE. OK that second one is a comment, not a question. Still. I'd recently googled the problem of (specifically) typing an em-dash on Linux, and just tried it again, and sure enough this solution doesn't come up until the sixth hit, in an unassuming Google documentation style guide. "Just memorize a 4-digit number" is the overwhelming answer to that question, on search engines, for some reason, despite plainly being awful. Maybe the configuration hurdle and bad default behavior is why that's the go-to solution, I dunno. [EDIT] none of the above irritation aimed at you, I hope is clear, and sincerely, thanks for the pointer.

boogies 6y ago

> • Nothing available that's as lightweight and good as Apple's "office"-type suite. I personally create markdown documents in vis (a text editor like vim, but lighterweight — < 4 MB including optional syntax highlighting, and opens instantaneously enough that I use it to edit many of my HN comments, including this one, by pressing Control + I in my macOS-unsupporting browser) and can compile them to html with discount (< 1 MB) or to PDF, docx, reveal.js slides, etc with Pandoc. This is the peak of ‘lightweight and good’ to me. Apps like Abiword (an extremely lightweight WYSIWYG word processor, but I don't even know how tiny it is because it’s built in to the miniscule Puppy Linux distro that is currently running entirely in my RAM — making any traditional OS look bloated and sluggish to be constrained to run off a PCIE SSD at fastest) may better meet other people’s personal definitions of these words. Given the popularity of web “apps” like Google Docs, I think a native application like any in the LibreOffice suite is probably more efficient than most people care enough to notice. > • Nothing as all-around good as Preview (yes, seriously). Not having ever needed to fill out a PDF form, I won’t comment. > • Worse battery life, partly due to worse OS optimizations and partly due to not having Safari available. Solutions to this in Linux that actually yield good results usually involve hard-capping performance at a pretty low level, IME. “not having Safari available” — there are a million WebKit based browsers on Linux from the extremely Safari-like Gnome Web to Luakit to suckless Surf. “hard-capping performance at a pretty low level” — Macbooks have their performance capped by cooling systems that can’t sustain high clock speeds anyway > • Little things like screen recording and screenshot capabilities not being as nice for basic use, out of the box. Speak for yourself, Simple Screen Recorder has been exactly that, simple and nice, out of the box, for me.¹ > • AFAIK not only is the default English keyboard on Linux far worse at the task of writing in English than that on macOS, there's not a single alternative layout that's close to as good as the Mac default. Yes, I'm dead serious about this, and frankly it's friggin' weird they'd have such a significant advantage on something like that in the year 2020, and I really wish other operating systems would catch up because I do not like being forced to use Apple products just so my experience composing documents in English isn't bad. I do not understand how they still have such a large advantage here, but somehow, they do. Totally baffling. Like a sibling comment, I don't know what you’re talking about. However, I can say I love typing with my current layout.² > • If you do anything serious with software-UI-related graphic design, or work closely with people who do, you pretty much need a Mac because odds are good you'll be using at least some mac-only software or have things shared with you that work only in mac programs. ~~ It’s too bad if this niche has failed to produce more portable programs. But I don’t see it as a failing of the OS for the vast majority of users.~~ elementary OS is itself a serious commercial software-related graphic design project. I am not aware of it’s designers using any macOS only software > • You lose a variety of time-saving integrations with i-devices, if you're someone who takes advantage of those. I don’t and I don’t see them as things to be taken advantage of by consumers as much as things to take advantage of and consume them and all their hardware-purchasing decisions through lock-in. [1]: On the distro I use, PrintScreen instantly pops open a screenshot in a lightweight MS P aint-style editor (mtpaint, which can crop with one shortcut). On ChromiumOS there’s one shortcut for fullscreen shot and one for drag-to-capture (Control + [Shift +] Show Apps IIRC), either one of which triggers a notification with a thumbnail of the shot that can be clicked to open the folder. I've also seen a small gui for taking shots of windows, areas, or the full screen with or without the cursor and/or a specifiable delay (on an old Puppy). I imagine elementaryOS has a very similar method to macOS, but I’ve never bothered to distro-hop to it because after using macOS for a while at school I didn’t miss it at home (it seems like a good OS only compared to Windows). [2]: Eg. I can type a superscript one simply by tapping <Compose> <s> <1>, where Compose is mapped to tapping my left shift key. IIUC this would require installing third-party software like Karabiner Elements on macOS.