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>[...] you're confusing your ignorance for a decline Fair enough. That point hits home with regard to the installer-situation, however what I tried to illustra

>[...] you're confusing your ignorance for a decline Fair enough. That point hits home with regard to the installer-situation, however what I tried to illustrate with that sentence is that macos is far from the state of borderline-perfection that is often attributed to it. You're also correct on stability: I wouldn't run Windows on anything that my life depends on. As should nobody. However, serverlike stability simply isn't the core quality I look for in my OS. Its nice to have, but I can tolerate some instability as long as other benefits outweigh it. I feel like that's exactly the case now (and I wouldn't have made the same statement, say, three years ago): Windows simply serves me better as a user, the ue is miles ahead of my last year on macos. > "Windows is a fragile house of cards if you frequently add and remove software" well, I don't. I live enirely in the linuxworld, except for Chrome, Vscode and Steam (which should be stable, no? To be fair, I haven't spent the recent years in windows-land, so I might underestimate how close to water windows is built). If that's a minimal environment to you, we're in the same boat. To the point about the plist-files: I've had a few encounters when I tried to modify things to my liking, and the experience was terrible. Maybe my memory serves me wrong with respect to 'all over the place', but in order to edit them, I had to download specific software, which is a big no no, given that we talk about system config files. And by "big no no" I mean user-hostile behaviour. I probably failed to make clear enough how all my points relate to the so-perceived decline: to me it feels like apple just completely stopped caring about ux-related progression, doesn't care about powerusers, doesn't care about linux-devs, doesn't care about how terrible their window-management is (seriously, show me how to toggle through windows of the same application, or how to move a window from one screen to another with your keyboard. It's 2020 and this isn't a thing in macland, and thats just bad and can't be justified imo) - all of which is a shame, because their platform is so much more stable than windows is, and because their integration with other apple-devices is simply unmatched in any other product line. On top of that, to get my macos working the way I wanted it to, I ineeded what, four extra applications? By the time I migrated to windows, I had about 10 extra icons in that bar. Things like caffeine, that should have been implemented as system-settings about ten years ago, but weren't. Macos is full of these little issues, and at least to me it felt like its a dead-end product. Like, great, they're gonna get a touchscreen-implementation, but that's not what I missed as a user. If I'd need to bet my life on the stability of a computer, I'd take a macbook - any macbook. But I'm not in the business of betting lifes on laptop-stability, and for my consulting-job + playing games after work without a reboot, the choice seems pretty damn clear to me. I wasn't too confident before I actually made the jump, but I haven't looked back since

ubermonkey 6y ago
I'm moving quickly b/c I have a call to lead, but the installation thing is still something I find weird -- and not that YOU were flummoxed, but that anyone is. "Drag to /Applications" is about as simple as it can be, but MSFT's years of dominance led people to a place where they really, really feel like that can't be right. I've had many conversations with new Mac users about this. It's wild, and is kind of an example of something my pals and I used to say about Windows in the 90s: even in light of the monopolistic behavior, it may well be that the worst thing MSFT ever did was the degree to which they lowered user expectations. It sounds like you're on the toolchain that serves you best. That's precisely where you oughta be! Good for you! Regarding plists, I guess I wonder why you needed to edit them outside of the app that wrote them. When I've needed to do that, I've just used emacs -- they're nearly always text, aren't they? I mean, I would definitely consider myself a power user of the platform, but it's been a LOOOOONG time since I needed to mess with a .plist manually, so I could be misremembering. I would definitely be willing to stipulate, though, that editing those files manually is pretty far off the rez, so to speak, from normal user behavior. > "to me it feels like apple just completely stopped caring about ux-related progression, I don't think that's exactly fair, but it probably IS fair to say that they don't care about the things in the UX that you care about, which can feel like the same thing. > doesn't care about powerusers, doesn't care about linux-devs, This probably IS fair, to a point, but the core system is still there and is still pretty friendly to linux dev types. It's just that Windows has made a big stride in the meantime. > doesn't care about how terrible their window-management is (seriously, show me how to toggle through windows of the same application, or how to move a window from one screen to another with your keyboard. I actually prefer the Mac window management, fwiw. Cmd-tab flips apps, as you know; Cmd-tilde switches windows in the current app. I use both all the time. The distinction here between apps and windows is one that Windows doesn't make, so I totally get being wrong-footed by this, but it's really just an example of the system being different to Windows, not "wrong" in an objective way. I don't know how to move windows from screen to screen in any OS, so I can't help you there. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some way to do it, though, since Apple is typically pretty forward-thinking when it comes to accessibility. > four extra applications I have NEVER seen ANY OS that I didn't want to add bits to. I'd be lost on a Mac without Alfred, for example, plus a real cloud backup too, plus Little Snitch, plus Dropbox, etc. My "home set" includes a bunch of these things, but it was the same in Windows, and when I set up Linux environments it's the same there, too. So I guess I'm not sold that this is a problem so much as an inevitable thing that advanced users like you and I do. You get my meaning? Anyway, I don't find myself wanting anything in MacOS that I don't have, to be super honest. It's powerful and flexible enough for me, and it doesn't make me want to pull my hair out like Windows always does. I definitely DO think that desktop OS options are looking less shiny generally because mobile has taken pretty much all the limelight in these last 10 or so years, especially as iOS on iPads has become so dang powerful and usable (no lie, I rarely take my laptop off my desk anymore -- the iPad is plenty, even if I need to connect to some work server or something). Many folks are in a position where an iPad plus a keyboard is all they need, which is kind of amazing -- it's GREAT for people like my 80 year old mother.

ubermonkey 6y ago

I'm moving quickly b/c I have a call to lead, but the installation thing is still something I find weird -- and not that YOU were flummoxed, but that anyone is. "Drag to /Applications" is about as simple as it can be, but MSFT's years of dominance led people to a place where they really, really feel like that can't be right. I've had many conversations with new Mac users about this. It's wild, and is kind of an example of something my pals and I used to say about Windows in the 90s: even in light of the monopolistic behavior, it may well be that the worst thing MSFT ever did was the degree to which they lowered user expectations. It sounds like you're on the toolchain that serves you best. That's precisely where you oughta be! Good for you! Regarding plists, I guess I wonder why you needed to edit them outside of the app that wrote them. When I've needed to do that, I've just used emacs -- they're nearly always text, aren't they? I mean, I would definitely consider myself a power user of the platform, but it's been a LOOOOONG time since I needed to mess with a .plist manually, so I could be misremembering. I would definitely be willing to stipulate, though, that editing those files manually is pretty far off the rez, so to speak, from normal user behavior. > "to me it feels like apple just completely stopped caring about ux-related progression, I don't think that's exactly fair, but it probably IS fair to say that they don't care about the things in the UX that you care about, which can feel like the same thing. > doesn't care about powerusers, doesn't care about linux-devs, This probably IS fair, to a point, but the core system is still there and is still pretty friendly to linux dev types. It's just that Windows has made a big stride in the meantime. > doesn't care about how terrible their window-management is (seriously, show me how to toggle through windows of the same application, or how to move a window from one screen to another with your keyboard. I actually prefer the Mac window management, fwiw. Cmd-tab flips apps, as you know; Cmd-tilde switches windows in the current app. I use both all the time. The distinction here between apps and windows is one that Windows doesn't make, so I totally get being wrong-footed by this, but it's really just an example of the system being different to Windows, not "wrong" in an objective way. I don't know how to move windows from screen to screen in any OS, so I can't help you there. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some way to do it, though, since Apple is typically pretty forward-thinking when it comes to accessibility. > four extra applications I have NEVER seen ANY OS that I didn't want to add bits to. I'd be lost on a Mac without Alfred, for example, plus a real cloud backup too, plus Little Snitch, plus Dropbox, etc. My "home set" includes a bunch of these things, but it was the same in Windows, and when I set up Linux environments it's the same there, too. So I guess I'm not sold that this is a problem so much as an inevitable thing that advanced users like you and I do. You get my meaning? Anyway, I don't find myself wanting anything in MacOS that I don't have, to be super honest. It's powerful and flexible enough for me, and it doesn't make me want to pull my hair out like Windows always does. I definitely DO think that desktop OS options are looking less shiny generally because mobile has taken pretty much all the limelight in these last 10 or so years, especially as iOS on iPads has become so dang powerful and usable (no lie, I rarely take my laptop off my desk anymore -- the iPad is plenty, even if I need to connect to some work server or something). Many folks are in a position where an iPad plus a keyboard is all they need, which is kind of amazing -- it's GREAT for people like my 80 year old mother.