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Perhaps you're not sure what kinds of controls you're missing because you haven't often left the Apple bubble? Here are the types of control that I enjoy as a L

Perhaps you're not sure what kinds of controls you're missing because you haven't often left the Apple bubble? Here are the types of control that I enjoy as a Linux/Windows PC user: - All of my non-Mac PCs have a BIOS interface that lets me control very low level behaviors of my motherboard and CPU. Macs expose just the bare minimum. - Windows, and to a much greater extent Linux both offer vastly more API hooks to customize things that I want about the OS. Apple does things like making NSScreen.visibleRect readonly so that only their Dock program can change it and nobody else. Meanwhile, on Windows/Linux I can programatically do just about anything I choose to, so I can replace the taskbar (and even app window chrome/menus) with something else if I want. - Macs have extremely limited GUI configuration options. You can't even change the color of your mouse pointer from black to white if you wish to! You can't have "themes" that change anything significant. You can only put the Dock left/right/bottom. You can't move the menu bar. For a long, long time you could only resize app windows by the lower right corner until they finally implemented that. It's very often Apple's way or the highway - and there's a reason why that phrase is often associated directed towards Apple; because they just don't offer nearly as much control to users... - Even if you try to customize these things by using third party hacks, there's no guarantee that your hack will continue to work after an update - and that's a loss of control. My Macs have broken many times from updates, way more than any of my real PCs. Even if I do hack Windows to do something that I want, Microsoft bends over backwards to stay compatible. Obviously Linux offers even more control, i.e. you can get right into the source code of almost anything on your desktop. - I can only run macOS on Apple hardware. This is a severe loss of control for users. If Apple decided to stop making Intel machines tomorrow, I'd be screwed. - If I'm running a cloud business, I can't even rent out a cloud Mac for an hour at a time. I have to rent it out for 24 hours at a time. That's a loss of control. I'm sure I missed some things because I wrote this pretty quickly. I thought at some point that I should keep a running list of things that Macs just can't do, but that would be a waste of time - better to just accept things and relegate my Macs for doing iOS/Mac things only. So that's exactly what I did.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago
A whole lot of what you're describing -- not all, obviously, but a good chunk -- have to do with not being able to significantly affect the aesthetics of the operating system, or in some cases, the functionality of the widgets. This is fair, but I think people who haven't really gotten deep into "the Apple bubble" don't really understand how much control Apple does, in fact, give you over the functionality of the operating system, whether through OS-level features or hooks third-party applications can latch onto. When I think of "customizing my environment," I think of running things like Alfred and Keyboard Maestro. I think of using Automator (and soon, Shortcuts) to control applications and create system-wide services like "select any Markdown text in any application and convert it to BBCode, HTML, or Rich Text". I think of editing the default keyboard finding file to add ^W as "select word" in every application that uses standard system input. None of these are "hacks" that are going to go away tomorrow. Personally, I don't care whether I can "move the menu bar" (where the hell would I move it?) or turn window chrome purple, and I don't really care that I can only put the dock in one of three places. :) As for some of the others, well, again, yes and no. I mean, in the history of computing, "I can only run FooCo's OS on FooCo's hardware" was the norm"; I don't think it's Apple's fault if you can't rent out a cloud Mac for an hour at a time; I think it's debatable whether the lack of fine-grained editing of BIOS settings is a material loss on the Mac platform. Also, > If Apple decided to stop making Intel machines tomorrow, I'd be screwed. I have bad news. :)
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
> Apple does things like making NSScreen.visibleRect readonly so that only their Dock program can change it and nobody else. Meanwhile, on Windows/Linux I can programatically do just about anything I choose to, so I can replace the taskbar (and even app window chrome/menus) with something else if I want. If you turn SIP off, you should be able to swizzle those methods with your own implementations. I admittedly haven't tried with NSScreen.visibleRect specifically, but I've swizzled plenty of other low-level objective-c stuff. When I need to go even deeper, there's dyld interposing. You just need to turn off SIP. It's the magic switch that lets you do whatever you want. Some people argue "letting the user do whatever they want" is poor security, and perhaps it is, but you can't have it both ways—either grant yourself control and accept the security consequences, or leave Apple in control and accept the restrictions.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago

A whole lot of what you're describing -- not all, obviously, but a good chunk -- have to do with not being able to significantly affect the aesthetics of the operating system, or in some cases, the functionality of the widgets. This is fair, but I think people who haven't really gotten deep into "the Apple bubble" don't really understand how much control Apple does, in fact, give you over the functionality of the operating system, whether through OS-level features or hooks third-party applications can latch onto. When I think of "customizing my environment," I think of running things like Alfred and Keyboard Maestro. I think of using Automator (and soon, Shortcuts) to control applications and create system-wide services like "select any Markdown text in any application and convert it to BBCode, HTML, or Rich Text". I think of editing the default keyboard finding file to add ^W as "select word" in every application that uses standard system input. None of these are "hacks" that are going to go away tomorrow. Personally, I don't care whether I can "move the menu bar" (where the hell would I move it?) or turn window chrome purple, and I don't really care that I can only put the dock in one of three places. :) As for some of the others, well, again, yes and no. I mean, in the history of computing, "I can only run FooCo's OS on FooCo's hardware" was the norm"; I don't think it's Apple's fault if you can't rent out a cloud Mac for an hour at a time; I think it's debatable whether the lack of fine-grained editing of BIOS settings is a material loss on the Mac platform. Also, > If Apple decided to stop making Intel machines tomorrow, I'd be screwed. I have bad news. :)

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

> Apple does things like making NSScreen.visibleRect readonly so that only their Dock program can change it and nobody else. Meanwhile, on Windows/Linux I can programatically do just about anything I choose to, so I can replace the taskbar (and even app window chrome/menus) with something else if I want. If you turn SIP off, you should be able to swizzle those methods with your own implementations. I admittedly haven't tried with NSScreen.visibleRect specifically, but I've swizzled plenty of other low-level objective-c stuff. When I need to go even deeper, there's dyld interposing. You just need to turn off SIP. It's the magic switch that lets you do whatever you want. Some people argue "letting the user do whatever they want" is poor security, and perhaps it is, but you can't have it both ways—either grant yourself control and accept the security consequences, or leave Apple in control and accept the restrictions.