Here's why I moved away from Linux to macOS:
- I'm sorry, but no Linux DE I've ever used beats macOS in terms of stability. The file explorers are also a joke and frequently changing.
- I've never booted to a black screen when upgrading macOS.
- 99% of the work I do never needs anything that has to be virtualized under macOS.
- Macbooks are solid laptops. Every other laptop I've owned hasn't stood the test of time as well as my Mac.
- More [actually good] software supports macOS. It's just a fact.
- macOS is fundamentally the same as it was 10 years ago, just with some relatively minor changes to the design. I'm pretty confident they're not going to move the dock to the top and force a new window toolkit on me that most existing software can't use.
- macOS has hardware that I know it will work with. Finding compatible hardware for Linux can be frustrating and not as complete as is claimed.
- Windows and macOS solved vsync issues long ago. Somehow, even with Wayland, you can still experience horizontal tearing if you have the wrong monitor or graphics card.
---
All the customization doesn't offset the trouble that desktop Linux can bring.
There are many ways macOS improves over Linux desktops, but file explorers is not one of the arguments I would have made. Finder is practically unusable.
Honest question, what's wrong with Finder? I use ForkLift for the heavy lifting (lol), but it works just fine for "navigate to file, open/move/delete file, sort by size/date, tag files, find files".
- It's slow
- Middle-click don't open the folder in a new tab
- It doesn't natively handle SFTP mounting
- The visual fixed arrangement of icons can be weird
Finder still can't handle SFTP connections. In 2021. I feel like I'm going insane, or I've missed some sort of critical update, but no, it's just sitting there.
It hardly handles SMB/CIFS connections correctly, and it's been fucked up for years.
Well.. you’ll have to install an fs driver for that. Exactly like in Linux.
Or just use mountainduck
What makes you think that you need to install a driver on Linux to make SFTP mounts work in a file manager?
Every file manager I've used on Linux has support for SFTP out of the box. Not quite sure what you're talking about here.
This.
It's incredibly useful basic functionality that both Finder and explorer inexplicably lack. This alone makes Linux desktops far more friendly even for novice users who want to do something beyond sharing gifs on web forums.
Not mentioned yet:
- no explicit refresh - if you're using network shares you often won't get an update notification, but have to go out and in again
- insistence on abstractions - I don't want to click through all the folders, sometimes I have a path ready to paste
Saving a file as /tmp/blah saves it as :tmp:blah the current directory, then you curse and have to press cmd shift g to pick a folder, paste the filename with path, remove the file name bit, then finally get to save your file.
Care to explain? I'm not saying Finder is great, but I find it perfectly usable and I've never noticed it drop features willy nilly (as was the case with Nautilus back in the day).
The Finder doesn't even allow me to middle-click to open a folder in a new tab, it's horrible. I miss KDE Dolphin.
True that. Finder is only slightly better than nautilus, but it gets beaten up by Dolphin badly. It would win outright for me with the "Press F4 for an integrated shell" feature alone.
I see what's wrong. I just don't have middle mouse button - problem solved.
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I have to use TotalFinder to be able to cut and paste files which I find very strange after all the years of experience on other OSes. I also resent not being able to conduct basic file management in file selection dialogs. Other missing features I have to hack around with scripts or add-ons: Copy terminal-friendly path, open current folder in terminal, create a blank text file here. Probably more.
I don't particularly like it, but I've not seen it crash or glitch out with the frequency that Linux file managers have ever since I've used them (a couple decades across a dozen or so desktop and laptop systems; mostly Nautilus, Dolphin [wasn't Konqueror also the file manager for a while, or am I mis-remembering?] and IIRC Thunar)
Not that I'll say Linux filesystem managers are any real good (last one I liked I think was replaced by nautilus), but Finder is no great piece of software. It actively opposes me finding hidden folders and files. It intermingles folders and files, with (AFAIK) no way to to change it. It won't show to-the-byte files sizes (AFAIK). Cut and paste and moving files is annoying. It constantly forgets I want details and not other views. It won't show zip contents without exploding it.
There are a dozen other things I recall shaking my head at but don't remember the specifics. File extension hiding, program association issues, split view crashes, integrations constantly broken between releases.
> It intermingles folders and files, with (AFAIK) no way to to change it.
“Keep folders on top” is a Finder preference as of Big Sur.
> file extension hiding
Also a Finder preference
> program association issues
That’s nothing to do with the Finder, but rather with how macOS discovers app-bundle file association claims through Spotlight. It applies equally to files opened through CLI open(1).
(Hint: if you downloaded the app from a website/through Homebrew, try opening the app itself once. It’s probably quarantined. Spotlight ignores quarantined things until you vouch for them. This is also why you won’t find the app in a search until you open it.)
Hidden file/folder visibility can be toggled with ⌘-Shift-. and zip files can be previewed with QuickLook after BetterZip is installed.
> Macbooks are solid laptops.
I desperately wish this were still true, but I can't even see myself keeping my M1 Macbook Air as a Linux laptop. Too many compromises, too little power. Not to mention, it's a fragile little sucker too. I somehow managed to scratch the bezel on the second day of owning it...
Dont' forget:
- Multi- and highres monitor support out of the box with proper scaling and readable fonts
- A package manager with up to date packages (granted there are Linuxbrew and things like Snap now for Linux.)
- Applications that have a consistent UI/UX and all use the same keyboard shortcuts
> All the customization doesn't offset the trouble that desktop Linux can bring.
It's nice you can customize almost everything on Linux, but most of the time I feel I must customize everything to get to a basic standard.
> A package manager with up to date packages (granted there are Linuxbrew and things like Snap now for Linux.)
On what planet is is homebrew better than Linux package managers? I agree with many of the other items in these lists, but this makes literally no sense to me. Homebrew is probably one of the worst things about doing dev on a mac.
> - I've never booted to a black screen when upgrading macOS.
My wife got bit by the Big Sur bug, 2 weeks ago, were the installer doesn’t check if there’s enough disk space available before starting the upgrade.
Reached out Apple whom, had I not been next to her, wanted her to create a new volume on her disk and reinstall
Stopped her. Jumped in. Asked what the plan was and it was to format.
The initial question was if there was a way to recover the data.
I stopped the conversation and started searching.
Was working until midnight because everything I found basically said that you’re f’ed and lost all your data.
I was able to recover it.
.
- Yes, she didn’t have a backup. But the installer also should do the minimum of checking if it can run.
- I have no idea how old the installer is, but if Apple can remove Zoom due to a security issue with a web server, they can do it with a bad installer of theirs (or at least blacklist it).
- Before giving steps that are destructive, they should have prefaced with it or at least warn that they’re SOL and need to reinstall and restore from a backup.
.
It works the majority of the time, but honestly, this left a REALLY bad taste for me. If it wasn’t because we are basically in the ecosystem and that it usually works, I’d be looking around to others.
> All the customization doesn't offset the trouble that desktop Linux can bring.
To be fair, those that desire that typically don't use file explorers.
I personally find them a hastle when they must be used, such as some websites for file upload have no easy way around using a file picker, perhaps they are much more convenient on MacOS, but I generally find it more convenient to use a shell command and simply provide the file to upload by way of an argument to the command. Modern shells also typically have advanced history search functionality to quickly enter a file path that one has already used in the past for something.
> Macbooks are solid laptops. Every other laptop I've owned hasn't stood the test of time as well as my Mac.
If you are American.
In the UK, I find the keyboard layout bewildering. It is not ANSI and it isn't ISO. It's some other thing, with keys that don't exist in any other English speaking keyboard. They even hide # behind a special alt key combo.
Other things about it are good, but there are some design decisions which are just plain wrong.
[Edit] I received downvotes, so as someone who uses a UK Macbook Pro I just have to reference this because they layout pisses me off.
Here is an Apple link to prove that this is real.
https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4668/as-images.apple.com/is/MLA22B?wid=4000&hei=1800&fmt=jpeg&qlt=95&.v=1496943865511 https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4668/as-images.apple...
In the UK ISO layout, the `~#` key is normally where the `|\` key is on the Apple keyboard, and the backtick which is down by the Z is to the left of the 1. We get range and paragraph next to the 1, which is horrible.
The thing that makes me concerned about the build of this 2019 i7 Macbook Pro is that is is always extremely hot. I'm only running one 4k screen off it but it is regularly running with fans on. I've had Macs in the past, and they haven't been quite as noisy as this. I'm sure its mostly due to crappy Intel hardware which is why they are being dumped, but this is a Mac and I can only judge them on what they sell.
> - I've never booted to a black screen when upgrading macOS.
Haven't had anything close to this happen to me in Linux in like 15 years. I've had to reimage my macbook thrice in 5 years. I really don't get it, my linux laptop is pretty wild (touchscreen, hidpi, tablet mode) and everything is supported out of the box, and I'm not even using a friendly distro.
These sorts of lists always just sound like someone laundry list of personal preferences which have no bearing on what I would pick. Is is just a narcissistic tendency to think that one person's personal preferences are that generalize-able? Or is it more just the general love people have of talking about themselves?
Most of your above list would be taken care just by sticking to Ubuntu on Thinkpads using gnome-session-flashback. Its basically a polished version of the same DE I have been using since 2004 and love... rock solid (not of the boot or HW issues you mentioned, etc). I spend like no time ever messing with it and its been that way since 2014, 2016?
> - macOS is fundamentally the same as it was 10 years ago, just with some relatively minor changes to the design. I'm pretty confident they're not going to move the dock to the top and force a new window toolkit on me that most existing software can't use.
I don't know anything about macOS but that is an interesting point. I actually use Linux because of its stability. It is a deeply conservative operating system that tries its hardest to never break existing software. I recently booted up an old Netbook running Linux that is surely much more than a decade old now and hasn't seen any update and I still felt right at home.
Sure the Linux ecosystem has seen a bit of changes but most of them are opt in and can be avoided. If you were on Ubuntu you got experimented on quite a bit but thank god nobody is forced to use Ubuntu.
In contrast I am not even able to use a modern Windows system productively these days. The last version I used was Windows XP and it does not seem to have improved for the better UI wise to say the least.
>o Linux DE I've ever used beats macOS in terms of stability.
Maybe this is because I exclusevely use naked WMs with Xterms but OSX is horribly unstable. The GUI is fantastic though in every way you would expect a good gui to be that Windows and kde/gnome disapoint you.
>macOS is fundamentally the same as it was 10 years ago
It's way more service focused and a lot less performant. Opening apps sometimes pops up a "verifying authenticity" dialog with a progress bar for example.
>Windows and macOS solved vsync issues long ago.
If the tearing really does bother you then yes you should use OSX.
> I'm sorry, but no Linux DE I've ever used beats macOS in terms of stability. The file explorers are also a joke and frequently changing.
Dolphin on KDE hasn’t changed in 10 years and is far more functional than Finder. Frankly I think Finder is an appalling file manager so I’m surprised to hear anyone advocate it.
> MacBooks are solid laptops. Every other laptop I've owned hasn't stood the test of time as well as my Mac.
5 years ago I would have agreed with you but MBPs these days are really built more like expensive consumer devices rather than workstations that expect to see heavy usage.
Ultimately I think the real reason people use Macs is just personal preference and there isn’t any tangible, provable benefits of one over the other. Despite our engineering minds thinking every decision can be distilled down to fact and reason.
I wouldn’t say I work with files a lot, but when I do, Finder seems to work ‘fine’. What do you find ‘appalling’ about it? If I’m missing the option to make my life much easier by using an alternative I’d like to at least try something else out.
> I'm sorry, but no Linux DE I've ever used beats macOS in terms of stability.
Been running Xfce since 2004 with no stability issues whatsoever.
> Macbooks are solid laptops. Every other laptop I've owned hasn't stood the test of time as well as my Mac.
Oof, I guess you never got a Mac during 2016-2020 or so. They've been gradually declining in build quality. I owned Mac laptops continually from 2005 until 2019, and they've been going downhill pretty much the entire way, especially since 2012 or so.
> More [actually good] software supports macOS. It's just a fact.
That's pretty much the definition of an opinion, not a fact.
> Finding compatible hardware for Linux can be frustrating and not as complete as is claimed.
It really isn't. The problem is that everyone already has a laptop when they decide they want to switch, and then get frustrated when their existing laptop doesn't work well with Linux. These days there are quite a few laptops that work perfectly or near-perfectly with Linux, and they're not hard to find.
> All the customization doesn't offset the trouble that desktop Linux can bring.
That's a fair opinion, but I've found my experience to be the opposite. Every time I go back to macOS, I get frustrated with the inflexibility of it all. I get that it's a pain to feel like you have to customize everything to get something usable for you, but macOS goes too far in the opposite direction for me: Apple just does not give me enough knobs to turn to make me feel comfortable in their environment.
These are all just anecdotes. From you, OP, and me...
> Been running Xfce since 2004 with no stability issues whatsoever.
I ran Linux (and was a _fierce_ OSS fanatic) from ~2002 to 2012. I've been a mac user since 2012. I moved around, using LXDE, Xfce, Gnome, KDE, no DE at all (openbox...)... I used Ubuntu, Mint, Gentoo, ADIOS, Crunchbang, Fedora...
Linux DEs were solid, but they never felt sufficiently polished. When I first touched a Mac, everything just felt better -- drag and drop worked like a charm, and the visual queues and feedback were amazing. Often we'd realize that some things also worked in Linux, but they just weren't visually advertised as such -- cursors wouldn't change, things wouldn't slightly fade. It looked like a jumbled mess with no coherent design team behind it.
> Oof, I guess you never got a Mac during 2016-2020 or so. They've been gradually declining in build quality. I owned Mac laptops continually from 2005 until 2019, and they've been going downhill pretty much the entire way, especially since 2012 or so.
The quality of apple laptops has indeed been far from stellar in recent years, but I'm pretty happy with my 16' beefed-out Macbook Pro. It is undeniable, though, as you say, that they have been going downhill. Nevertheless, going downhill from where they were still means they're quite close to the highest peak you can find, IMO.
> > More [actually good] software supports macOS. It's just a fact.
>
> That's pretty much the definition of an opinion, not a fact.
Agreed, it is a matter of opinion. For what it's worth, if we exclude games (most of which I can play perfectly fine in a VM in parallels anyway), in my opinion, indeed more actually good software supports macOS. There are very very very few things I miss from my linux days, and I heavily customized everything I had.
> It really isn't. The problem is that everyone already has a laptop when they decide they want to switch, and then get frustrated when their existing laptop doesn't work well with Linux. These days there are quite a few laptops that work perfectly or near-perfectly with Linux, and they're not hard to find.
I completely disagree with the sentiment of this paragraph. While, yes, many laptops work flawlessly, and you may actually be able to google them somewhat quickly, the experience of finding a linux compatible machine that one wants to use and fits their needs is still a perilous road of doubt and uncertainty. This is a consequence of the many different choices one has, because while we can find reports that someone's favourite distro ran on a particular laptop at version X, we might not want that distro, or that particular version, and things instantly go south. Finding linux-compatible hardware and having to "jump into it with our money" is an extremely risky and stressful move -- one which can leave anyone with buyer's remorse pretty quickly if anything fails to work properly. Worse, "failing to work properly" can be as innocuous as "feeling that the laptop is running out of battery too fast" or "is running too hot". While all of these things definitely also happen on a Macbook, it is much easier to simply know that the hardware will be supported, much like we know that most games built for a console are sure to work on that console. If money is not an issue, and if there are no particularly clunky software requirements or vendor-lock-in issues (these are big ifs, I know), then buying a Mac is by far the easiest decision, because it lifts weights off of your mind, and puts them in Apple's hands -- to make sure that things work.
Many of my friends run Linux, some of them as a daily driver. Some of these people are among the smartest I've ever known with computers, and some even make hundreds of thousands of dollars in the IT world, be it in cybersecurity fields or other such areas -- yet, most of them, too, do not really know which laptop to buy when upgrading, ever. They choose Linux _in spite of this_, but they most definitely see this as an annoyance and problem. Linux has to work everywhere and, so, it is only natural that there are pieces of hardware where it doesn't work -- or it works poorly. I would expect nothing less.
> That's a fair opinion, but I've found my experience to be the opposite. Every time I go back to macOS, I get frustrated with the inflexibility of it all. I get that it's a pain to feel like you have to customize everything to get something usable for you, but macOS goes too far in the opposite direction for me: Apple just does not give me enough knobs to turn to make me feel comfortable in their environment.
I can perfectly understand this sentiment. I don't really feel like there are things I can't configure on my mac, but I can recognize that I had more configurability on the Linux side of things. I used to be the guy who had dozens of scripts and wrappers for everything, and the one crazy guy who got pulseaudio to play along with ALSA before it actually worked, all while getting the latest games to run on Wine with custom patches made for them. My computers always looked "slick" to other people, and I used to have this amazing feeling of having tailored it all to myself. Then, at some point in my life, I realized I was spending more time adjusting my configurations than actually doing stuff with them. Ever since circumstances led me to a Mac, I've never looked back. I've migrated data from my first Mac all the way to the latest always through Time Machine, and it feels magical.
I'm a big fan of Linux. I think it's an incredible achievement. I'm not the OSS fanatic sending e-mails to RMS that I used to be, but I still feel the OSS cause deeply. I also think linux on the desktop is much more usable today than it was before (when I used it). It certainly fits the needs of many people. To me, though, the mac strikes a perfect balance for everything I do in my life. It literally just works. Everything just works. I airplay to my TV and it works. I migrate it with time machine across the span of 10 years and it works. I upgrade it and everything (mostly) works. Things don't change _too_ much in between updates. Stability has its ups and downs. Apple's decisions sometimes might leave one a bit infuriated (cough cough 32 bit support), but I've never been this happy with a computer as I am with the mac. In fact, even though I have theoretically less to configure, my mac feels like it's "more configured to me" than my Linux machines, because things just work like I want them to. It's like my mental model of a computer is better represented by the mac. Whenever I touch Linux and have to use it for a couple of days or in a VM, things are always out of place (this also happens a bit with Windows, but Windows feels coherent and I can instantly tell that after a couple of days I'd get used to it). Drag and drop doesn't do what it should. Things don't respond for no reason. Work is being done but no loading icon is present, leading me to do double-clicks and other shenanigans. I'm sure the right combination of tools and software for me is out there in the Linux world -- and the hardware too (I love the macbook trackpads -- they're actually the original reason why I started thinking of moving to the mac) --, but I have more to do with my life than keep tinkering with linux nowadays to make it work with me. I do that with my raspberry pis, as a fun thing.
I have nothing against people running Linux on the desktop. The more, the better -- maybe one day I'll come back. I never thought I'd use a Mac -- I despised them -- and yet, here I am, 10 years later.
> I've never booted to a black screen when upgrading macOS.
I never had Linux physically damage my hardware after an update, MacOS sure did.
> Macbooks are solid laptops. Every other laptop I've owned hasn't stood the test of time as well as my Mac.
If we go with anecdotes, in the last 2 decades, I used a mix of laptops from bargain bin to thinkpads. I used macs only the last 3 years (2 different mbp models) and those are the only ones that ever needed servicing.
1. Key caps falling off (replace the top),
2. Weird memory corruption on boot (out of warranty, get a new model),
3. Charging issues (replace the inside),
4. (kind of mac issue due to lack of ports) Their usbc-hdmi dongle started failing. (not serviced, get a new one)
I know this is comparing to Linux, and honestly I would prefer my MacBook running Linux flawlessly as I can on my desktop. However, I was like you - wanting to do everything on macOS, and as much as I generally like macOS and Apple tech (e.g. Metal), I installed Windows 10 on my MacBook and it's just so much better with WSL. Things just integrate well and there's an upcoming WSL upgrade that lets you use GPU and integrated windows server - this will probably never happen on macOS.
I use both. Here is my take on it:
1. Mac has shit for a window manager. When I focus and get in the flow, Mac's window manager becomes a massive showstopper for me. My productivity lives and dies by my window manager customizations and shortcuts. Mac's is just a joke when it comes to controling 20+ windows. I sometimes have 100+ editor, terminal, and browser windows. Linux has many window managers up to the task (i3, xmonad, openbox, and countless more). Mac has the default one which you CAN'T change. There are Window Manager "Apps" which use the default window manager's APIs to tell it to, say, move this window to this area. As a result, I haven't found a usable third-party window manager on Mac that can operate at a fraction of the speed of the simplest window managers on linux.
2. Mac's official builtin package manager is a joke. The community's effort to fix it (Homebrew) is halfway between the debian maintainers community and the nodejs community, closer to the latter. I wouldn't say Homebrew is a joke, but it's not really comparable (and fair to compare) to the many human-years that has been poured into QA and patches the Debian community does. Also, you can touch all aspects of the system with apt/dpkg, unlike the like of ports or Homebrew. For people who want more control there is also Arch, and many other distros to pick.
3. Laptop build quality: IMHO Mac doesn't really have a contender here. Every year I try to hard-force myself to buy a non-mac laptop and fail. There is really no one serious enough (or, to be fair, with the same order-of-magnitude of cash and operations and hardware expertise) to pull of the same build quality. An anecdote (but very generalizable): A while back my non-mac (yet, a very well-known brand) laptop's fan died. I got a fan and replaced it. My wife's mac laptop's fan also died about the same time. I replace that one, too. At one point I had both laptop's open on my desk beside each other. I never want to buy a laptop with _visibly_ poor engineering ever again. Guess you have to compare the internals of a few laptops to get my point.
4. Software compatibility: I think this is a very fragmented area, to be fair to all OSes. A lot of vendors only produce on Windows. Some are Win+Mac. Some are Win+Mac+Linux+ChromeOS+Android+iOS. Also a very (yet very significant in some sectors) are Win+Linux, or Linux-only. So, one has to check the availability of the critical software they need. My gut feeling, lacking any better measurement, is that Mac has far more compatible Apps than Linux, especially Apps for the general public (not taylored to a high-tech profession).
5. Appeal: Mac has clearly undergone far better UI/UX design and QA processes than all existing linux DEs. This is very visible to some people (if not to most people), and does change the personal choice of people.
6. Stability and similar problems with Linux: I use both Mac and Linux everyday, and for me Linux and Mac has been about the same in terms of stability (with linux maybe a bit more stable). This is obviously hardware dependent, and linux runs on a vast number of hardwares, so it's not easy (or reasonable) to compare all Mac and all Linux instances. Or at least I don't care about such a comparison. Only the Linux configurations that make sense (well supported, without undocumented hardware blobs, etc.) matter (to me at least).
Overall, I prefer my Linux machines (not just because of software freedoms, but also because Mac is unusable for me when I work on large/serious software projects), but I simply can't live with current batch of Linux laptops either. Maybe in a few years some decent ones show up (purism could get somewhere, or system76, etc). Or maybe Apple finally works to scale up their window managers and package managers to make them suitable for special-cases and make it a bit less frustrating for some of us.
> I've ever used beats macOS in terms of stability
laughs in elinks as I read PDFs in fbi
Scoffing aside, MacOS has all kinds of crazy edge cases. Linux is pretty good considering free -- but it also actively encourages you to get to the command line. I view this as a net positive.
One of the interesting things I have encountered with Linux vs Mac users is that Mac users tend to blame faults much more on tools than on the system, while Linux users blame things more on the system and often try to workaround it or fix it.
To give an example, I've tried to convert colleagues to use meet.jit.si instead of zoom. On macs to share your screen you apparently have restart safari and give it some permission (I think you even need to do it every time? ). The people who were using macs were quick to dismiss jit.si because of this, even though it's completely an apple problem.
You don’t need to do it every time; you only need do it once per application. It’s a privacy feature that prevents an application being able to record your screen (or use your camera/microphone) without your explicit knowledge and permission.
And frankly Zoom just works, and works well. What advantage would using a random site with an unheard of record possibly give you?
MacOS full screen mode has been at least as quirky as i3 for me, but without all the benefits of i3.