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Tim Cook's Apple Inc is really a nightmare. Sure we have sleek shiny laptops and devices that are amazingly powerful but at what cost? I still haven't found a t

Tim Cook's Apple Inc is really a nightmare. Sure we have sleek shiny laptops and devices that are amazingly powerful but at what cost? I still haven't found a trackpad as good as MagicTrackpad sadly otherwise I'd ditch the MacBook Pro. To be fair to Apple though, it's their OS, they can do what they want and we agree every time we update MacOS or iOS. It's crazy to me that we basically only have 3 phone device choices, 2.15 environment choices (OS wise... Linux Desktop is crap, but getting better), and only 2 choices in GPU's, CPU's, etc... What can we do about this?

ProAm 6y ago
Would you use a good trackpad that connects via USB or bluetooth? Its a real question because I see a lot of comments about people not leaving the Macbook because of the trackpad even though they dislike the rest of the laptop? Seems like something that could be a product?
- kccqzy 6y ago
  No you wouldn't. It's not about the trackpad hardware (Apple sells a separate Bluetooth trackpad after all), but it's about the software.
  - ProAm 6y ago
    What about the software makes it good? Ive never used a macbook so have zero experience with it.
    - daniel-thompson 6y ago
      For me, two things combine to make it feel super responsive: 1. The latency between you moving your finger(s) and seeing movement on the screen feels imperceptible. 2. There isn't any "lost" movement - if you scribble your finger around really quickly and come back to where you start, the cursor or window scroll position will be back to where it started too.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24700537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24700537
    - passwordreset 6y ago
      Spaces, the virtual desktop manager, makes it good. A few years ago, multiple desktops were accessible with a 3-finger swipe left or right. Now, when you make an app full-screen, it creates a new space to contain the app, so multiple full-screen apps are easily accessible. Linux has a virtual desktop manager, and Windows has some 3rd-party apps that provide multiple desktops. None of those apps seem as tightly integrated and useful as this Mac OS feature.
- ucosty 6y ago
  You can already buy an external Magic Trackpad from Apple (https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MJ2R2Z/A/magic-trackpad-2-silver https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MJ2R2Z/A/magic-trackpa...). Not terribly useful for a laptop unless you want to set up at a desk.
- tapland 6y ago
  That’s called a mouse. The trackpad is important because it’s the default interface when moving the portable computer. External devices kill that.
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  Nah, it’s just people whining and finding excuses.
- hrktb 6y ago
  The trackpad is just the saillant point. As we(I) go deeper the "let's try linux" route, thousands more papercuts come to the surface. It's fine for specific use cases (e.g. just focusing on backend dev), it becomes worse for wider use cases.
jonny_eh 6y ago
Look on the bright side, having at least 2 choices is waaaay better than only 1.
vinay427 6y ago
What is distinct about the direction of Tim Cook's Apple Inc compared to any previous Apple Inc?
- bayindirh 6y ago
  Jobs' Apple created technologies which have rooted deeply in POSIX standards and standard UNIX* conventions. If you knew UNIX(Linux/BSD/whatever), you can find the same data streams on the same places. OS was obscure but, predictable. Different but, familiar. It had kernel extensions, logs and devices. Nothing was extremely obfuscated. It was a UNIX device but, shinier. Now it feels like a glorified iOS box with more transparent walls. You can see some gears but can't touch them. There are only limited interfaces to some of those, which you can touch remotely but, not alter completely. I wonder what will happen to my EXT drivers from Paragon though.
  - Arubis 6y ago
    I intend this with kindness: normally I don’t nitpick on grammar and punctuation, but you’ve got a repeated error here that’s easily corrected. Generally, you want to break your sentences with commas _before_ usage of “but”: “He wanted to buy a pen, but the store had run out.” If you’re a native speaker, the comma goes where you’d naturally have a brief pause in speech. If you’re not a native speaker, it may be helpful to remember that the clause with “but” should be able to be removed & what remains should still be a valid sentence: “He wanted to buy a pen.”, not “He wanted to buy a pen but.”
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      I read this as a poetic choice by GP—it evoked Apple's "Think different" tagline in my mind, although now I'm not actually sure why. I could be wrong though!
      - joshiee 6y ago
        to me it's plainly wrong for a comma. but I also don't like to color outside the box. perhaps an ellipses would've been ok.
vlunkr 6y ago
I used to be really tied to the Apple trackpad. After switching to Linux and a keyboard-driven window manager I couldn't care less. I'm not going to say Linux Desktop is perfect, but at this point I'd pick it over everything else.
x87678r 6y ago
New XPS 15 has great trackpad and is a good alternative. Its not any cheaper than MBP though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCM8FZlFTas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCM8FZlFTas
- kibwen 6y ago
  Can confirm that my 2016-era XPS 15 model has the best trackpad I've used on a PC. I did have an issue where after a few years it became almost impossible to physically click (still important for click-and-drag operations), though after investigation it turned out that the dying battery was swelling up from below and interfering with the trackpad. So, full marks on the trackpad, but I hope they've ironed out their battery story.
- horsawlarway 6y ago
  Second this - XPS machines on Wayland are basically spot on for trackpads. Honestly - just Wayland in general has dramatically improved my linux desktop experience. 10/10, will never go back to X.
  - darthrupert 6y ago
    Did Wayland start being good recently? Its glacial progress is one of the reasons I switched to macs a few years ago.
    - horsawlarway 6y ago
      Yes, at least in my experience over the last two years with Arch running Gnome as the DE. Wayland's trackpad support is excellent, I can switch from my mac for work to my personal machine without noticing. Multi monitor support is MILES (I literally cannot emphasize how much better it is) better. Different scaling ratios for different monitors, much better automatic detection and configuration. There are two remaining problems in my opinion - Screen sharing is still rather hit or miss. Pipewire is functional for me on latest versions of chromium, but does not work for some electron apps that package older versions (Slack, in this case). - X-Wayland applications still make you feel the hurt from Xorg. Most times I don't care, but the default builds of chromium and chrome both rely on X-Wayland. There are AUR builds of chromium that have moved to Ozone and have native Wayland support, though (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/chromium-ozone/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/chromium-ozone/) ---- Long story short, Wayland is why my personal machine no longer has windows on it. It's genuinely much better, and I don't spend any time at all dicking around with xorg config files (literally not once have I touched a config file related to monitors or user input devices on my current linux box in the last year. It feels very nice.)
michaelmrose 6y ago
The talos raptor has a power9 cpu. The Ampere is powered by arm. There is an upcoming risc-v based pc by SiFive That is at least 3 niche entries in addition to the 2 mainstream choices. Intel wants really badly to be a 3rd player in the GPU space and its integrated graphics are already good enough if you aren't gaming although I have doubts about their upcoming dedicated GPU. The Linux desktop space is nicer in the keyboard centric simple environments space or at least ditch gnome and switch to KDE running on an distro that actually stays up to date. The challenge is not mostly using such an environment its setting it up in the first place. Looks like every category has 3-5 options.
m463 6y ago
don't upgrade and/or don't continue with apple. Alternatively firewall your machine, but apple keeps allowing itself workarounds, like find my where "offline" machines aren't so offline. And then 5G has all kinds of inter-machine connectivity.

ProAm 6y ago

Would you use a good trackpad that connects via USB or bluetooth? Its a real question because I see a lot of comments about people not leaving the Macbook because of the trackpad even though they dislike the rest of the laptop? Seems like something that could be a product?

kccqzy 6y ago
No you wouldn't. It's not about the trackpad hardware (Apple sells a separate Bluetooth trackpad after all), but it's about the software.
- ProAm 6y ago
  What about the software makes it good? Ive never used a macbook so have zero experience with it.
  - daniel-thompson 6y ago
    For me, two things combine to make it feel super responsive: 1. The latency between you moving your finger(s) and seeing movement on the screen feels imperceptible. 2. There isn't any "lost" movement - if you scribble your finger around really quickly and come back to where you start, the cursor or window scroll position will be back to where it started too.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24700537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24700537
  - passwordreset 6y ago
    Spaces, the virtual desktop manager, makes it good. A few years ago, multiple desktops were accessible with a 3-finger swipe left or right. Now, when you make an app full-screen, it creates a new space to contain the app, so multiple full-screen apps are easily accessible. Linux has a virtual desktop manager, and Windows has some 3rd-party apps that provide multiple desktops. None of those apps seem as tightly integrated and useful as this Mac OS feature.
ucosty 6y ago
You can already buy an external Magic Trackpad from Apple (https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MJ2R2Z/A/magic-trackpad-2-silver https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MJ2R2Z/A/magic-trackpa...). Not terribly useful for a laptop unless you want to set up at a desk.
tapland 6y ago
That’s called a mouse. The trackpad is important because it’s the default interface when moving the portable computer. External devices kill that.
jeromenerf 6y ago
Nah, it’s just people whining and finding excuses.
hrktb 6y ago
The trackpad is just the saillant point. As we(I) go deeper the "let's try linux" route, thousands more papercuts come to the surface. It's fine for specific use cases (e.g. just focusing on backend dev), it becomes worse for wider use cases.

jonny_eh 6y ago

Look on the bright side, having at least 2 choices is waaaay better than only 1.

vinay427 6y ago

What is distinct about the direction of Tim Cook's Apple Inc compared to any previous Apple Inc?

bayindirh 6y ago
Jobs' Apple created technologies which have rooted deeply in POSIX standards and standard UNIX* conventions. If you knew UNIX(Linux/BSD/whatever), you can find the same data streams on the same places. OS was obscure but, predictable. Different but, familiar. It had kernel extensions, logs and devices. Nothing was extremely obfuscated. It was a UNIX device but, shinier. Now it feels like a glorified iOS box with more transparent walls. You can see some gears but can't touch them. There are only limited interfaces to some of those, which you can touch remotely but, not alter completely. I wonder what will happen to my EXT drivers from Paragon though.
- Arubis 6y ago
  I intend this with kindness: normally I don’t nitpick on grammar and punctuation, but you’ve got a repeated error here that’s easily corrected. Generally, you want to break your sentences with commas _before_ usage of “but”: “He wanted to buy a pen, but the store had run out.” If you’re a native speaker, the comma goes where you’d naturally have a brief pause in speech. If you’re not a native speaker, it may be helpful to remember that the clause with “but” should be able to be removed & what remains should still be a valid sentence: “He wanted to buy a pen.”, not “He wanted to buy a pen but.”
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    I read this as a poetic choice by GP—it evoked Apple's "Think different" tagline in my mind, although now I'm not actually sure why. I could be wrong though!
    - joshiee 6y ago
      to me it's plainly wrong for a comma. but I also don't like to color outside the box. perhaps an ellipses would've been ok.

vlunkr 6y ago

I used to be really tied to the Apple trackpad. After switching to Linux and a keyboard-driven window manager I couldn't care less. I'm not going to say Linux Desktop is perfect, but at this point I'd pick it over everything else.

x87678r 6y ago

New XPS 15 has great trackpad and is a good alternative. Its not any cheaper than MBP though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCM8FZlFTas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCM8FZlFTas

kibwen 6y ago
Can confirm that my 2016-era XPS 15 model has the best trackpad I've used on a PC. I did have an issue where after a few years it became almost impossible to physically click (still important for click-and-drag operations), though after investigation it turned out that the dying battery was swelling up from below and interfering with the trackpad. So, full marks on the trackpad, but I hope they've ironed out their battery story.
horsawlarway 6y ago
Second this - XPS machines on Wayland are basically spot on for trackpads. Honestly - just Wayland in general has dramatically improved my linux desktop experience. 10/10, will never go back to X.
- darthrupert 6y ago
  Did Wayland start being good recently? Its glacial progress is one of the reasons I switched to macs a few years ago.
  - horsawlarway 6y ago
    Yes, at least in my experience over the last two years with Arch running Gnome as the DE. Wayland's trackpad support is excellent, I can switch from my mac for work to my personal machine without noticing. Multi monitor support is MILES (I literally cannot emphasize how much better it is) better. Different scaling ratios for different monitors, much better automatic detection and configuration. There are two remaining problems in my opinion - Screen sharing is still rather hit or miss. Pipewire is functional for me on latest versions of chromium, but does not work for some electron apps that package older versions (Slack, in this case). - X-Wayland applications still make you feel the hurt from Xorg. Most times I don't care, but the default builds of chromium and chrome both rely on X-Wayland. There are AUR builds of chromium that have moved to Ozone and have native Wayland support, though (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/chromium-ozone/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/chromium-ozone/) ---- Long story short, Wayland is why my personal machine no longer has windows on it. It's genuinely much better, and I don't spend any time at all dicking around with xorg config files (literally not once have I touched a config file related to monitors or user input devices on my current linux box in the last year. It feels very nice.)

michaelmrose 6y ago

The talos raptor has a power9 cpu. The Ampere is powered by arm. There is an upcoming risc-v based pc by SiFive That is at least 3 niche entries in addition to the 2 mainstream choices. Intel wants really badly to be a 3rd player in the GPU space and its integrated graphics are already good enough if you aren't gaming although I have doubts about their upcoming dedicated GPU. The Linux desktop space is nicer in the keyboard centric simple environments space or at least ditch gnome and switch to KDE running on an distro that actually stays up to date. The challenge is not mostly using such an environment its setting it up in the first place. Looks like every category has 3-5 options.

m463 6y ago

don't upgrade and/or don't continue with apple. Alternatively firewall your machine, but apple keeps allowing itself workarounds, like find my where "offline" machines aren't so offline. And then 5G has all kinds of inter-machine connectivity.