4 ms·

Good for them staying native and not getting caught in a least-common denominator Electron hell. People uses Macs because they want to use Macs and software th

Good for them staying native and not getting caught in a least-common denominator Electron hell. People uses Macs because they want to use Macs and software that takes advantage of the reliability and consistency of that ecosystem.

xyst 6y ago
> software that takes advantage of the reliability and consistency of that ecosystem probably true ~4-5 years ago, but not so much today. Catalina broke a lot of apps (due to SIP?). Big Sur is likely to break even more existing apps. In one case, it was seen that Apple apps do not obey the same rules that third party developers must abide by (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816). I use a mbp at this point because it's not Windows.
- dhagz 6y ago
  I'm 80% certain that my next computer is going to be either a desktop or a ThinkPad X1 running Arch. A lot of what I do doesn't require a Mac, and frankly I enjoy Linux more.
  - 0df8dkdf 6y ago
    I'm considering that. Mac has really gone a direction I don't like, and I have being use Apple since the screen is B&W. However, this is to be expected from organisations that is powered by one charismatic leader.
  - JellyBeanThief 6y ago
    That's basically what I did. After my last Mac died a few years ago I dusted off an older Mac and purchased a new ThinkPad P50. I thought it would take me most of a couple years to get as comfortable with Linux as I was with macOS. Instead it took just one month for the ThinkPad to become my main driver and another two months before I mothballed the Mac. The only thing I really, really miss is OmniGraffle.
    - dhagz 6y ago
      I know. I'm loathe to give up my Mac specifically because of OmniGroup and their products. I'm hoping org-mode can become a replacement.
- thelittleone 6y ago
  >> I use a mbp at this point because it's not Windows. Precisely the same. I used to be a big fan of the Apple ecosystem. When Jobs said the customer doesn't know what they need, he was usually right... he of course was a gifted visionary. Apple has continued with the same mindset but without the gifted visionary, in some cases with comical decisions e.g., keyboard, touchbar, soldering SSD to logic boards with high failure rates). Can't we just rustle up a few obscenely rich billionaires to donate a hundred million to develop an OS with a top priority of quality and usability rather than lock in.
  - csharpminor 6y ago
    The harder part of this proposal might be finding a visionary who could lead the effort.
untog 6y ago
> People uses Macs because they want to use Macs and software that takes advantage of the reliability and consistency of that ecosystem ehhh. I think if you did some analytics of “apps Mac users use” an absolute ton would be “a web browser and very little else”. I can think of very few truly native Mac apps I depend upon and that keep me on the platform. What does keep me on Macs is that every now and then I need to compile an iOS app. Apple give me no choice. Aside from that I’d say a lot of developers choose Macs because they’re the least worst POSIX platform, not because Mac native apps are a shining beacon on a hill.
- robertoandred 6y ago
  Just because you use non-native apps doesn't mean you like them. I mean, does anyone actually like Slack?
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    > I mean, does anyone actually like Slack? Should I feel ashamed or something for saying yes? I hear all the bitching about how Electron is bloated, but I run Slack and VS Code all day and never have resource issues on my MBP.
    - vijaybritto 6y ago
      No you dont have to be ashamed. If they run without any problems in your macbook pro then great. But they are massive resource hogs in my brother's PC where the RAM is limited to 8GB. Of course he complains that the slack app is quite heavy because he is not able to run a couple of other apps in parallel. The solution we settled on is to run an android emulator and run slack and spotify in that. This restricts the usage to 500Mb and his PC is able to breathe a bit now
      - marcinzm 6y ago
        Slack on my computers with 4 workspaces is around 400-600mb of memory usage.

xyst 6y ago

> software that takes advantage of the reliability and consistency of that ecosystem probably true ~4-5 years ago, but not so much today. Catalina broke a lot of apps (due to SIP?). Big Sur is likely to break even more existing apps. In one case, it was seen that Apple apps do not obey the same rules that third party developers must abide by (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816). I use a mbp at this point because it's not Windows.

dhagz 6y ago
I'm 80% certain that my next computer is going to be either a desktop or a ThinkPad X1 running Arch. A lot of what I do doesn't require a Mac, and frankly I enjoy Linux more.
- 0df8dkdf 6y ago
  I'm considering that. Mac has really gone a direction I don't like, and I have being use Apple since the screen is B&W. However, this is to be expected from organisations that is powered by one charismatic leader.
- JellyBeanThief 6y ago
  That's basically what I did. After my last Mac died a few years ago I dusted off an older Mac and purchased a new ThinkPad P50. I thought it would take me most of a couple years to get as comfortable with Linux as I was with macOS. Instead it took just one month for the ThinkPad to become my main driver and another two months before I mothballed the Mac. The only thing I really, really miss is OmniGraffle.
  - dhagz 6y ago
    I know. I'm loathe to give up my Mac specifically because of OmniGroup and their products. I'm hoping org-mode can become a replacement.
thelittleone 6y ago
>> I use a mbp at this point because it's not Windows. Precisely the same. I used to be a big fan of the Apple ecosystem. When Jobs said the customer doesn't know what they need, he was usually right... he of course was a gifted visionary. Apple has continued with the same mindset but without the gifted visionary, in some cases with comical decisions e.g., keyboard, touchbar, soldering SSD to logic boards with high failure rates). Can't we just rustle up a few obscenely rich billionaires to donate a hundred million to develop an OS with a top priority of quality and usability rather than lock in.
- csharpminor 6y ago
  The harder part of this proposal might be finding a visionary who could lead the effort.

untog 6y ago

> People uses Macs because they want to use Macs and software that takes advantage of the reliability and consistency of that ecosystem ehhh. I think if you did some analytics of “apps Mac users use” an absolute ton would be “a web browser and very little else”. I can think of very few truly native Mac apps I depend upon and that keep me on the platform. What does keep me on Macs is that every now and then I need to compile an iOS app. Apple give me no choice. Aside from that I’d say a lot of developers choose Macs because they’re the least worst POSIX platform, not because Mac native apps are a shining beacon on a hill.

robertoandred 6y ago
Just because you use non-native apps doesn't mean you like them. I mean, does anyone actually like Slack?
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > I mean, does anyone actually like Slack? Should I feel ashamed or something for saying yes? I hear all the bitching about how Electron is bloated, but I run Slack and VS Code all day and never have resource issues on my MBP.
  - vijaybritto 6y ago
    No you dont have to be ashamed. If they run without any problems in your macbook pro then great. But they are massive resource hogs in my brother's PC where the RAM is limited to 8GB. Of course he complains that the slack app is quite heavy because he is not able to run a couple of other apps in parallel. The solution we settled on is to run an android emulator and run slack and spotify in that. This restricts the usage to 500Mb and his PC is able to breathe a bit now
    - marcinzm 6y ago
      Slack on my computers with 4 workspaces is around 400-600mb of memory usage.