13 ms·

Google's ecosystem != Windows ecosystem. There's FLStudio (or Bitwig, or Reaper) to match Apple's Logic, 1Password (or Bitlocker from what I hear) to match Goo

by tomc1985 5y ago

Google's ecosystem != Windows ecosystem. There's FLStudio (or Bitwig, or Reaper) to match Apple's Logic, 1Password (or Bitlocker from what I hear) to match Google's passwords.google.com, and Backblaze+others to match Time Machine Sure 'switching to apple' is a choice, but only one of many. Personally I am tired of using tech designed for and by managers and SWE's gunning for promotion and not personal empowerment or passion for personal computing Besides, everyone needs to ditch Chrome. Firefox could use the love

monkeyfacebag 5y ago
Of course I agree with your point that there are many options when it comes to switching. I tried, but clearly failed, to imply this very point. For me, after consideration of my requirements and tolerances, Apple seemed like the best fit, but I wouldn’t suggest that it has any kind of broader implication for the state of various software ecosystems. Suffice to say I think all of the software in your list is pretty great and I chose what I chose for reasons that are wholly mine!
phire 5y ago
There is no windows for phones (anymore). If you aren't using an apple phone, you are pretty much forced to use google's android (or one of the various linux phones with little financial backing) Windows/Android can be considered a natural pair, Microsoft seem to think so. Personally use Linux/Android pair, and I've been vaguely considering switching to an iphone to avoid Google.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Windows/iPhone isn't a bad pair either, provided you're not drinking the cloud services koolaid
  - phire 5y ago
    Or if you want to do any form of app development.
    - tomc1985 5y ago
      If I ever wanted to get into iOS development I'd probably purchase a cheap Macbook Air for the bare minimum of stuff and use one of the multiplatform SDKs that can produce iOS builds alongside every other platform
  - schraeds 5y ago
    How do they integrate at all? Windows has ability to link to a android phone to view texts, place calls etc, but no such link exists for iPhones and Windows.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
dundercoder 5y ago
+1 for Reaper. Fast and fantastic piece of software. I switched from ProTools and have never looked back.
runjake 5y ago
+1. File History is the Time Machine equivalent for Windows. It works great. It should be used in concert with an offsite backup service like Backblaze.
- stuartd 5y ago
  Does that allow you to set up a new PC as an exact copy of the old one? Because Time Machine does just that, and I’d really like to find the Windows equivalent.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    There are two backup solutions on windows, 'windows 7 backup' (yes, wtf) allows you to make exact copy and clone it. There are also paid solution. File history is for all your files, but it is amazing at it. You can roll back to a particular version from particular date
  - hiyer 5y ago
    Probably an unpopular opinion, but I actually prefer to start from (nearly) scratch on a new machine as it gets rid of all the accumulated cruft. I use github + stow for my dotfiles, firefox sync for syncing browser history, bookmarks, etc and rclone + backblaze for backing up whatever is important enough. Beyond that, I don't care if I lose anything on the old machine.
    - greggman3 5y ago
      Same. Every time I've tried copying stuff to a new machine via Time Machine the new machine feels unstable. There's so much stuff in ~/Library/Application Support type places that really shouldn't be copied so I just start the new machine empty and copy a few folders over (Documents, .ssh)
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      I don't like it but it does still feel good to start fresh. I do it in linux as well.
  - 5y ago
dep_b 5y ago
> There's FLStudio (or Bitwig, or Reaper) to match Apple's Logic Plenty arguments against Logic, but these three are not in the same league.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  For some workflows, Logic simply cannot do what Live or Bitwig or FLStudio do. For other workflows, Reaper and Logic can do things that are essentially impossible in Live/Bitwig/FL Studio. There's no best DAW for everyone, only best-DAW-for-the-workflow-you're-using-today. Sometimes that's Logic, sometimes it's not.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    Examples of what can't be done in Logic and what can?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      Not in logic: follow actions for clip launching. Not in live: logic's environment (you could do this in an M4L object, but not live itself)
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Can't speak for the latter two but FL 20 absolutely steps up to Logic. And they keep adding stuff to it, for free. My license from like 2005 is still valid.
stuartd 5y ago
Backblaze is great, but it’s not a replacement for time machine (and I use both). Being able to buy a new Mac and make it into an exact copy of the old Mac by using time machine is amazing - I’ve done it a few times over the years, and it still impresses me every time. Plus I have time machine backups from 2011 which I occasionally browse to see what my kids were up to then.
- jonpurdy 5y ago
  I found out the hard way that Backblaze, despite their claims of "...automatically back up all your files including documents, photos, music, movies, and more. It’s that easy.", do not back up .dmg files (among others) by default. Which seems to be a huge omission considering the numerous use cases outside of just application installers.
  - ehutch79 5y ago
    I'm going ot go out on a limb and say that for the majority of users, any dmg they have is a software installer they could easily redownload. so a waste to backup
    - brink 5y ago
      I'm surprised that backblaze doesn't checksum the files on the user's computer to see if they already have it on their servers to avoid duplicate uploads.
      - macintux 5y ago
        The first time that backfires, though…
      - odux 5y ago
        They apparently do but only within a users computer (or account, I don't remember). I would be pretty uncomfortable they comparing my files checksum to a master list of sorts
beezischillin 5y ago
My personal preference for a DAW is Studio One, it’s lovely. I like the efficient UI and it has all the features I ever wanted. One of the sad ironies of my life is that once I switched to macOS and could’ve avoided all the annoyances and instabilities I’ve had with audio on Windows, I just never felt like making music again. Life is like that sometimes. :)
abandonliberty 5y ago
Bitwarden. Open source, independently auditable password manager. For something this important, it should be no other way.
- oneplane 5y ago
  On the other hand, having as many users as possible use any password manager at all is an immense challenge as-is. It really doesn't matter what gets them using one as long as they do. If an OS-native one happens to have the lowest friction, so be it. For everyone else, sure, there might be 100 people in the world that will actually audit their open source password managers. But that isn't exactly moving the rest of the industry forward (be it from the engineering perspective or the user perspective). In this case, (almost) perfect is the enemy of good.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Ah, shoot. It's too late for me to edit my original post but this is what I meant to mention. Bitlocker is Windows' FDE solution
oneplane 5y ago
> "Personally I am tired of using tech designed for and by managers and SWE's gunning for promotion and not personal empowerment or passion for personal computing" Unless you have spoken to all managers and SWEs I doubt you can make such a blanket statement about the immense workforces at Microsoft, Google and Apple. Sure, one could argue that Microsoft is profit-driven, Google might be marketshare-driven and Apple might be UX-driven, and all of those could be true (or at least true for a major subset of both the engineers and the targeted user group). But it would be a guess at best and not helpful to your personal situation or anyone else's.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  How could you possibly interpret this new world of digital sharecropping ("cloud computing") as empowering? Where is the passion for 'personal computing' when nearly everything personal about it is delegated to the cloud? Personal computing is a box under your desk or in your pocket beefy and smart enough to solve your problems without checking in with daddy warbucks and the mothership. Nearly everything about modern cloud computing is the opposite... it disempowers individuals and creates an unhealthy relationship with things that are out of the users control. How many peoples' livelihoods have been messed up because FANG decided to lock them out for some reason or another? How many articles have been posted to HN and elsewhere begging for a FANG employee to come along and fix their problem because there is no other option? The server in my closet or at my datacenter isn't going to lock me out because I pissed off Google.
  - etchalon 5y ago
    There's literally nothing stoping you from working exactly the same way as before the "cloud" was a thing. You just ignore the cloud features.
    - llampx 5y ago
      There are dark UX patterns pushing users towards the cloud services and/or making the old way harder to use.
    - 5y ago
egypturnash 5y ago
Backblaze+others to match Time Machine BB complements TM for me; it's super useful to have a local versioned backup that's updated every time I dock my laptop with the desk, and is also invisibly supplemented by a versioned backup of changes I've made that the OS maintains on unused space on the laptop's drive. Works even if I'm sitting at a cafe with all the radios turned off to get maximum life out of the battery. Backblaze? Backblaze is there for in case my house burns down and I leave with nothing but the clothes on my back.

monkeyfacebag 5y ago

Of course I agree with your point that there are many options when it comes to switching. I tried, but clearly failed, to imply this very point. For me, after consideration of my requirements and tolerances, Apple seemed like the best fit, but I wouldn’t suggest that it has any kind of broader implication for the state of various software ecosystems. Suffice to say I think all of the software in your list is pretty great and I chose what I chose for reasons that are wholly mine!

phire 5y ago

There is no windows for phones (anymore). If you aren't using an apple phone, you are pretty much forced to use google's android (or one of the various linux phones with little financial backing) Windows/Android can be considered a natural pair, Microsoft seem to think so. Personally use Linux/Android pair, and I've been vaguely considering switching to an iphone to avoid Google.

tomc1985 5y ago
Windows/iPhone isn't a bad pair either, provided you're not drinking the cloud services koolaid
- phire 5y ago
  Or if you want to do any form of app development.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    If I ever wanted to get into iOS development I'd probably purchase a cheap Macbook Air for the bare minimum of stuff and use one of the multiplatform SDKs that can produce iOS builds alongside every other platform
- schraeds 5y ago
  How do they integrate at all? Windows has ability to link to a android phone to view texts, place calls etc, but no such link exists for iPhones and Windows.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

dundercoder 5y ago

+1 for Reaper. Fast and fantastic piece of software. I switched from ProTools and have never looked back.

runjake 5y ago

+1. File History is the Time Machine equivalent for Windows. It works great. It should be used in concert with an offsite backup service like Backblaze.

stuartd 5y ago
Does that allow you to set up a new PC as an exact copy of the old one? Because Time Machine does just that, and I’d really like to find the Windows equivalent.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  There are two backup solutions on windows, 'windows 7 backup' (yes, wtf) allows you to make exact copy and clone it. There are also paid solution. File history is for all your files, but it is amazing at it. You can roll back to a particular version from particular date
- hiyer 5y ago
  Probably an unpopular opinion, but I actually prefer to start from (nearly) scratch on a new machine as it gets rid of all the accumulated cruft. I use github + stow for my dotfiles, firefox sync for syncing browser history, bookmarks, etc and rclone + backblaze for backing up whatever is important enough. Beyond that, I don't care if I lose anything on the old machine.
  - greggman3 5y ago
    Same. Every time I've tried copying stuff to a new machine via Time Machine the new machine feels unstable. There's so much stuff in ~/Library/Application Support type places that really shouldn't be copied so I just start the new machine empty and copy a few folders over (Documents, .ssh)
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    I don't like it but it does still feel good to start fresh. I do it in linux as well.
- 5y ago

dep_b 5y ago

> There's FLStudio (or Bitwig, or Reaper) to match Apple's Logic Plenty arguments against Logic, but these three are not in the same league.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
For some workflows, Logic simply cannot do what Live or Bitwig or FLStudio do. For other workflows, Reaper and Logic can do things that are essentially impossible in Live/Bitwig/FL Studio. There's no best DAW for everyone, only best-DAW-for-the-workflow-you're-using-today. Sometimes that's Logic, sometimes it's not.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  Examples of what can't be done in Logic and what can?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Not in logic: follow actions for clip launching. Not in live: logic's environment (you could do this in an M4L object, but not live itself)
tomc1985 5y ago
Can't speak for the latter two but FL 20 absolutely steps up to Logic. And they keep adding stuff to it, for free. My license from like 2005 is still valid.

stuartd 5y ago

Backblaze is great, but it’s not a replacement for time machine (and I use both). Being able to buy a new Mac and make it into an exact copy of the old Mac by using time machine is amazing - I’ve done it a few times over the years, and it still impresses me every time. Plus I have time machine backups from 2011 which I occasionally browse to see what my kids were up to then.

jonpurdy 5y ago
I found out the hard way that Backblaze, despite their claims of "...automatically back up all your files including documents, photos, music, movies, and more. It’s that easy.", do not back up .dmg files (among others) by default. Which seems to be a huge omission considering the numerous use cases outside of just application installers.
- ehutch79 5y ago
  I'm going ot go out on a limb and say that for the majority of users, any dmg they have is a software installer they could easily redownload. so a waste to backup
  - brink 5y ago
    I'm surprised that backblaze doesn't checksum the files on the user's computer to see if they already have it on their servers to avoid duplicate uploads.
    - macintux 5y ago
      The first time that backfires, though…
    - odux 5y ago
      They apparently do but only within a users computer (or account, I don't remember). I would be pretty uncomfortable they comparing my files checksum to a master list of sorts

beezischillin 5y ago

My personal preference for a DAW is Studio One, it’s lovely. I like the efficient UI and it has all the features I ever wanted. One of the sad ironies of my life is that once I switched to macOS and could’ve avoided all the annoyances and instabilities I’ve had with audio on Windows, I just never felt like making music again. Life is like that sometimes. :)

abandonliberty 5y ago

Bitwarden. Open source, independently auditable password manager. For something this important, it should be no other way.

oneplane 5y ago
On the other hand, having as many users as possible use any password manager at all is an immense challenge as-is. It really doesn't matter what gets them using one as long as they do. If an OS-native one happens to have the lowest friction, so be it. For everyone else, sure, there might be 100 people in the world that will actually audit their open source password managers. But that isn't exactly moving the rest of the industry forward (be it from the engineering perspective or the user perspective). In this case, (almost) perfect is the enemy of good.
tomc1985 5y ago
Ah, shoot. It's too late for me to edit my original post but this is what I meant to mention. Bitlocker is Windows' FDE solution

oneplane 5y ago

> "Personally I am tired of using tech designed for and by managers and SWE's gunning for promotion and not personal empowerment or passion for personal computing" Unless you have spoken to all managers and SWEs I doubt you can make such a blanket statement about the immense workforces at Microsoft, Google and Apple. Sure, one could argue that Microsoft is profit-driven, Google might be marketshare-driven and Apple might be UX-driven, and all of those could be true (or at least true for a major subset of both the engineers and the targeted user group). But it would be a guess at best and not helpful to your personal situation or anyone else's.

tomc1985 5y ago
How could you possibly interpret this new world of digital sharecropping ("cloud computing") as empowering? Where is the passion for 'personal computing' when nearly everything personal about it is delegated to the cloud? Personal computing is a box under your desk or in your pocket beefy and smart enough to solve your problems without checking in with daddy warbucks and the mothership. Nearly everything about modern cloud computing is the opposite... it disempowers individuals and creates an unhealthy relationship with things that are out of the users control. How many peoples' livelihoods have been messed up because FANG decided to lock them out for some reason or another? How many articles have been posted to HN and elsewhere begging for a FANG employee to come along and fix their problem because there is no other option? The server in my closet or at my datacenter isn't going to lock me out because I pissed off Google.
- etchalon 5y ago
  There's literally nothing stoping you from working exactly the same way as before the "cloud" was a thing. You just ignore the cloud features.
  - llampx 5y ago
    There are dark UX patterns pushing users towards the cloud services and/or making the old way harder to use.
  - 5y ago

egypturnash 5y ago

Backblaze+others to match Time Machine BB complements TM for me; it's super useful to have a local versioned backup that's updated every time I dock my laptop with the desk, and is also invisibly supplemented by a versioned backup of changes I've made that the OS maintains on unused space on the laptop's drive. Works even if I'm sitting at a cafe with all the radios turned off to get maximum life out of the battery. Backblaze? Backblaze is there for in case my house burns down and I leave with nothing but the clothes on my back.