8 ms·

It is a shame to watch the decline of Windows. There isn't much I can recommend to non-technical users looking affordable computing relatively under their contr

It is a shame to watch the decline of Windows. There isn't much I can recommend to non-technical users looking affordable computing relatively under their control. Manipulation and user hostility is unacceptable. Any of these possibilities would be nice: * The market presents a kinder (and equally-affordable x86) solution and users follow. * ReactOS lurches leaps and bounds ahead. * Microsoft realises this trajectory is wrong and rows back. * Everyone wakes up and realises that Stallman was right. For the foreseeable, none are likely. What we really need is something to go horribly wrong that demonstrates practically why remote control and data collection of your own system is a bad idea. That will be the only way the point is driven home for the passive masses, unfortunately.

elliekelly 5y ago
Why does Apple make it so difficult/borderline impossible to run MacOS on non-apple computers? Would it cut into their computer sales that significantly? I would imagine most people who want (and can afford) a Mac would still buy one.
- voakbasda 5y ago
  No, they wouldn’t. My last “Mac” was a PowerComputing clone, because other manufactures were doing hardware better than Apple. Jobs killed the clones, and I became a Linux user that never looked back. Apple maintains their walled garden because they know that their users would quickly realize the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
  - macintux 5y ago
    > Apple maintains their walled garden because they know that their users would quickly realize the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. I've been on both sides of the fence, worked for a Linux company for a few years, and I'm very happy in the walled garden.
- neodymiumphish 5y ago
  > Would it cut into their computer sales that significantly? Is this a real question? Many of the edge cases, both high cost and low, would disappear for Apple. Additionally, all the tech support will fall on them. Lastly, any bad user experience (cheap device with crap battery, low quality hardware that doesn't match the software experience, etc) would have a negative effect on them as a brand.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  What do they stand to gain in making macOS easy/possible to run on other vendor hardware? That opens them up to headaches that don't bring in revenue. They are in the hardware business, not the OS business. Their OS development is just a necessary evil. Apple wants people to buy their hardware. If the customer wants macOS, they'd be best off buying the one hardware that's designed specifically for macOS. This is unlikely to ever change because it's been Apple's business model from the very beginning, and it's served them well overall. I'm not saying anyone has to like it, but there's an inherent advantage in not having to support other hardware of varying degrees of quality. Honestly, I'll take that form of vendor lock-in over frequent pointless changes, having advertising shoved in my face, and being forced to have an online account. Perhaps my opinion will change if Apple follows suit (they won't), but for now it was pretty easy to set up my M1 Macbook Air without signing in with an Apple ID.
- TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
  Holy moly! If there was ever a self-answering question on this site! Look at how much traffic is being generated by Windows 11's lack of support for older hardware, and how confusing it is -- even for technical users -- to figure out of their machines are TPM-capable at all, or if it just needs turned on in the BIOS -- in order to install it. After 19 years of Linux on the desktop, and always dual-booting Windows for gaming, I'm delighted to spend the extra money on Apple hardware (and game on a PS) to avoid all of that sort of nonsense now. You may not like them, but Apple makes the answers to these kinds of questions pretty clear. I'm glad Apple doesn't waste their time and energy with supporting every piece of kit under the sun.
- nine_k 5y ago
  In short, Apple is a hardware company. It sells you electronic devices with some software and firmware required for these devices to function. The software component in a Mac or an iPhone is larger than in a microwave oven. There is still equally zero incentive to port it to third-party devices, because it's the devices that bring in the revenue; software is a cost center.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  It’s super disappointing to receive such hostile responses to a genuine question but I appreciate the two people who replied kindly.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  If you can sell a computer for 500-1000 more than your competition why sell an OS for 100-200.
queuebert 5y ago
It would also help if decision makers at large organizations would stop forcing everyone into Microsoft products such as Teams, Outlook, etc., when much better alternatives exist.
- sys_64738 5y ago
  What is a suitable replacement for Teams?
bserge 5y ago
Year of Linux on desktop, it's coming home boys! I'm joking but secretly hoping it happens.
- kiawe_fire 5y ago
  Perhaps I’ve just become “one of those people”, but I honestly think if not for the buzz around the M1 from Apple, we would be seeing a lot more activity on the Linux side. “The year of the Linux desktop” always feels like just a couple of bad big tech decisions (and an absence of good decisions) away.
  - gentleman11 5y ago
    Linux needs killer app equivalents. Many of the foss versions of windows programs have pretty painful UX or are missing key features (eg, smart select in gimp is really frustrating to use vs photoshop or affinity). Foss really needs to start tempting designers to participate more
    - willtim 5y ago
      It's worse than that. The desktop efforts are heavily fragmented and arguably the leader, RedHat's "Gnome", while quite polished, is actually quite user hostile (e.g. works very differently to anything else, perhaps to dodge patents; and constantly changes/removes popular features). Linux needs to have a standardised "platform" with stable APIs.
      - techrat 5y ago
        Good luck getting anyone to agree on anything. It's why everything is so fragmented to begin with. "Oh, I don't like what X is doing, so I'll fork it and make Y." If I were in a position where I managed several distros... I could say we could just suck it up and universally use XFCE, but then there's always someone who won't like that and they'll respin a distro to have some other DE instead. It seems with every decision we end up with another fork.
nickjj 5y ago
Running native Linux for non-technical users ends up being a great move as long as the programs they want to run work on it. For example imagine a retired non-technical person who occasionally trades stocks. Even major trading platforms like Interactive Brokers have native Linux clients. Non-technical users want a stable system that doesn't constantly change. Windows loves to hit you with popup notices or UI changes where if you take the "ok" route things about your system change, or you accidentally click a notification that comes up and suddenly your browser is changed or worse. They also don't want to turn on their machine and have to wait 30 minutes for an "important update". They just want to turn their machine on and have it be exactly how it was yesterday. A non-technical person I know thought he was hacked and wanted to buy a new computer because a shortcut icon was moved from his desktop to his recycle bin and he thought someone wiped out his computer. Now in Microsoft's defense they didn't delete his shortcut, but that's the type of mindset non-technical folks have. The slightest change is a catastrophic event.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > Non-technical users want a stable system that doesn't constantly change. ...and you're recommending Linux Desktop for that? An operating system famous for breaking compatibility with itself every 2 years or so? Not to mention between distros. I mean, I suppose you can just leave them on some arbitrary un-updated version of Ubuntu forever, but the same could be said for Windows 2000.
  - dgan 5y ago
    This is misleading, as you can always turn on security updates, and turn off applications upgrades. I don't even know that's possible on Windows (I guess answer is a loud and clear NO)
    - wrs 5y ago
      For a few years, until that version stops getting security updates. E.g., about three years for Debian. [0] [0] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases
unknown_error 5y ago
Why would non-technical users want computing under their control? Isn't the market going the other way, more and more towards walled gardens? Seems like a Chromebook or iPad would have far fewer headaches for the typical user who just wants Facebook and email. The web as an open platform is a dev manifesto; for everyone else it's just a glorified entertainment and information hub, and making it safer and easier for them is what the market wants. Not more openness, but less of it, because less openness means less cognitive mode. They don't want to think about 100 ways to do the same thing, each with a different license and complex venn diagram of incompatibilities. They just want to get on with their day. "If something goes horribly wrong"... even in that case, the vendors are less likely to fuck up than most users. Google/Apple/Microsoft clouds are much better at keeping data safe against device failures and ransomware than local Windows installs managed by average users ever were or could be. If anything the future is really dumb computing, where the internet is just another appliance not too different from your radio or the television. Apps with corporate content hubs, not open platforms. Computing as an open platform was due to the industry by and large being created by engineers. Now with mass adoption, we're seeing a switch to producer vs consumers, with different paradigms/devices/needs for each, like the differences between magazine publishers and readers. Readers don't care what software was used to create a magazine, they just want to pick it off a newsstand and read it. Same with digital entertainment; the underlying stack shouldn't be their concern if their intended usage is simply content consumption. Windows adds only unnecessary complexity to their usage. Stallman is not an average user, and it would be a massive disservice to humanity to design for the average user as though they were Stallman. Not all freedom is beneficial. Sometimes it's just yet another useless decision to have to make in a world already overflowing with excess information. The human brain did not evolve to make careful cost-benefit analyses for every trivial thing in a post-internet world. Even devs are moving towards serverless. Content creation might eventually move to "OS"-less, where content creation is moderated by walled hubs like Adobe apps on the iPad and developer experiences happen in virtualized clouds with web-based IDEs. Bare metal appeals to engineers, but for everyday users and developers, again, it's just excess cognitive load. Please don't make people think about useless crap. There are already infinite upcoming crises -- of the global sort -- for anyone born in the last few generations. Computing trivia is just... trivia, no more inherently interesting than the proper type of lubricant to use on the machines in the factory that makes their toaster. Don't make them think without good reason.
fouric 5y ago
I would also settle for: * The FTC actually does its job and takes action against Microsoft for antitrust violations.

elliekelly 5y ago

Why does Apple make it so difficult/borderline impossible to run MacOS on non-apple computers? Would it cut into their computer sales that significantly? I would imagine most people who want (and can afford) a Mac would still buy one.

voakbasda 5y ago
No, they wouldn’t. My last “Mac” was a PowerComputing clone, because other manufactures were doing hardware better than Apple. Jobs killed the clones, and I became a Linux user that never looked back. Apple maintains their walled garden because they know that their users would quickly realize the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
- macintux 5y ago
  > Apple maintains their walled garden because they know that their users would quickly realize the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. I've been on both sides of the fence, worked for a Linux company for a few years, and I'm very happy in the walled garden.
neodymiumphish 5y ago
> Would it cut into their computer sales that significantly? Is this a real question? Many of the edge cases, both high cost and low, would disappear for Apple. Additionally, all the tech support will fall on them. Lastly, any bad user experience (cheap device with crap battery, low quality hardware that doesn't match the software experience, etc) would have a negative effect on them as a brand.
ravenstine 5y ago
What do they stand to gain in making macOS easy/possible to run on other vendor hardware? That opens them up to headaches that don't bring in revenue. They are in the hardware business, not the OS business. Their OS development is just a necessary evil. Apple wants people to buy their hardware. If the customer wants macOS, they'd be best off buying the one hardware that's designed specifically for macOS. This is unlikely to ever change because it's been Apple's business model from the very beginning, and it's served them well overall. I'm not saying anyone has to like it, but there's an inherent advantage in not having to support other hardware of varying degrees of quality. Honestly, I'll take that form of vendor lock-in over frequent pointless changes, having advertising shoved in my face, and being forced to have an online account. Perhaps my opinion will change if Apple follows suit (they won't), but for now it was pretty easy to set up my M1 Macbook Air without signing in with an Apple ID.
TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
Holy moly! If there was ever a self-answering question on this site! Look at how much traffic is being generated by Windows 11's lack of support for older hardware, and how confusing it is -- even for technical users -- to figure out of their machines are TPM-capable at all, or if it just needs turned on in the BIOS -- in order to install it. After 19 years of Linux on the desktop, and always dual-booting Windows for gaming, I'm delighted to spend the extra money on Apple hardware (and game on a PS) to avoid all of that sort of nonsense now. You may not like them, but Apple makes the answers to these kinds of questions pretty clear. I'm glad Apple doesn't waste their time and energy with supporting every piece of kit under the sun.
nine_k 5y ago
In short, Apple is a hardware company. It sells you electronic devices with some software and firmware required for these devices to function. The software component in a Mac or an iPhone is larger than in a microwave oven. There is still equally zero incentive to port it to third-party devices, because it's the devices that bring in the revenue; software is a cost center.
elliekelly 5y ago
It’s super disappointing to receive such hostile responses to a genuine question but I appreciate the two people who replied kindly.
michaelmrose 5y ago
If you can sell a computer for 500-1000 more than your competition why sell an OS for 100-200.

queuebert 5y ago

It would also help if decision makers at large organizations would stop forcing everyone into Microsoft products such as Teams, Outlook, etc., when much better alternatives exist.

sys_64738 5y ago
What is a suitable replacement for Teams?

bserge 5y ago

Year of Linux on desktop, it's coming home boys! I'm joking but secretly hoping it happens.

kiawe_fire 5y ago
Perhaps I’ve just become “one of those people”, but I honestly think if not for the buzz around the M1 from Apple, we would be seeing a lot more activity on the Linux side. “The year of the Linux desktop” always feels like just a couple of bad big tech decisions (and an absence of good decisions) away.
- gentleman11 5y ago
  Linux needs killer app equivalents. Many of the foss versions of windows programs have pretty painful UX or are missing key features (eg, smart select in gimp is really frustrating to use vs photoshop or affinity). Foss really needs to start tempting designers to participate more
  - willtim 5y ago
    It's worse than that. The desktop efforts are heavily fragmented and arguably the leader, RedHat's "Gnome", while quite polished, is actually quite user hostile (e.g. works very differently to anything else, perhaps to dodge patents; and constantly changes/removes popular features). Linux needs to have a standardised "platform" with stable APIs.
    - techrat 5y ago
      Good luck getting anyone to agree on anything. It's why everything is so fragmented to begin with. "Oh, I don't like what X is doing, so I'll fork it and make Y." If I were in a position where I managed several distros... I could say we could just suck it up and universally use XFCE, but then there's always someone who won't like that and they'll respin a distro to have some other DE instead. It seems with every decision we end up with another fork.

nickjj 5y ago

Running native Linux for non-technical users ends up being a great move as long as the programs they want to run work on it. For example imagine a retired non-technical person who occasionally trades stocks. Even major trading platforms like Interactive Brokers have native Linux clients. Non-technical users want a stable system that doesn't constantly change. Windows loves to hit you with popup notices or UI changes where if you take the "ok" route things about your system change, or you accidentally click a notification that comes up and suddenly your browser is changed or worse. They also don't want to turn on their machine and have to wait 30 minutes for an "important update". They just want to turn their machine on and have it be exactly how it was yesterday. A non-technical person I know thought he was hacked and wanted to buy a new computer because a shortcut icon was moved from his desktop to his recycle bin and he thought someone wiped out his computer. Now in Microsoft's defense they didn't delete his shortcut, but that's the type of mindset non-technical folks have. The slightest change is a catastrophic event.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> Non-technical users want a stable system that doesn't constantly change. ...and you're recommending Linux Desktop for that? An operating system famous for breaking compatibility with itself every 2 years or so? Not to mention between distros. I mean, I suppose you can just leave them on some arbitrary un-updated version of Ubuntu forever, but the same could be said for Windows 2000.
- dgan 5y ago
  This is misleading, as you can always turn on security updates, and turn off applications upgrades. I don't even know that's possible on Windows (I guess answer is a loud and clear NO)
  - wrs 5y ago
    For a few years, until that version stops getting security updates. E.g., about three years for Debian. [0] [0] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases

unknown_error 5y ago

Why would non-technical users want computing under their control? Isn't the market going the other way, more and more towards walled gardens? Seems like a Chromebook or iPad would have far fewer headaches for the typical user who just wants Facebook and email. The web as an open platform is a dev manifesto; for everyone else it's just a glorified entertainment and information hub, and making it safer and easier for them is what the market wants. Not more openness, but less of it, because less openness means less cognitive mode. They don't want to think about 100 ways to do the same thing, each with a different license and complex venn diagram of incompatibilities. They just want to get on with their day. "If something goes horribly wrong"... even in that case, the vendors are less likely to fuck up than most users. Google/Apple/Microsoft clouds are much better at keeping data safe against device failures and ransomware than local Windows installs managed by average users ever were or could be. If anything the future is really dumb computing, where the internet is just another appliance not too different from your radio or the television. Apps with corporate content hubs, not open platforms. Computing as an open platform was due to the industry by and large being created by engineers. Now with mass adoption, we're seeing a switch to producer vs consumers, with different paradigms/devices/needs for each, like the differences between magazine publishers and readers. Readers don't care what software was used to create a magazine, they just want to pick it off a newsstand and read it. Same with digital entertainment; the underlying stack shouldn't be their concern if their intended usage is simply content consumption. Windows adds only unnecessary complexity to their usage. Stallman is not an average user, and it would be a massive disservice to humanity to design for the average user as though they were Stallman. Not all freedom is beneficial. Sometimes it's just yet another useless decision to have to make in a world already overflowing with excess information. The human brain did not evolve to make careful cost-benefit analyses for every trivial thing in a post-internet world. Even devs are moving towards serverless. Content creation might eventually move to "OS"-less, where content creation is moderated by walled hubs like Adobe apps on the iPad and developer experiences happen in virtualized clouds with web-based IDEs. Bare metal appeals to engineers, but for everyday users and developers, again, it's just excess cognitive load. Please don't make people think about useless crap. There are already infinite upcoming crises -- of the global sort -- for anyone born in the last few generations. Computing trivia is just... trivia, no more inherently interesting than the proper type of lubricant to use on the machines in the factory that makes their toaster. Don't make them think without good reason.

fouric 5y ago

I would also settle for: * The FTC actually does its job and takes action against Microsoft for antitrust violations.