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Linux desktop is great now because OSes have stagnated and its easier to catch up. Mac was as good in 2010, 10 years ago. I do believe that its at least partly

Linux desktop is great now because OSes have stagnated and its easier to catch up. Mac was as good in 2010, 10 years ago. I do believe that its at least partly because Apple had the money to hire and support teams full of talented people working hard. I see the same pattern in Firefox. Back when Chrome launched, and for years after, it was miles ahead of firefox and IE. Anyways, if money is a problem then just work for free lol. Easy solve. Why do you care about Vulkan on Apple anyways? Seems like you were a Mac user.. if i had to guess you used Mac for many years and switched recently, now that Linux desktop has become viable. Why did you not use linux 10 years ago too? The money you paid to Apple only causes problems right? If money is the root of evil you should work for free contributing to the FOSS you believe in and find some other way to pay the rent. But I guess money is the root of evil only when you're paying, not when you're getting paid.

smoldesu 5y ago
> Linux desktop is great now because OSes have stagnated and its easier to catch up. The Linux desktop was fine, arguably since GTK2 was popularized. The software selection was a little sparse, but I genuinely liked it more than the Aqua UI at the time. (as well as... whatever Windows 7 was doing. Aero?) > Mac was as good in 2010, 10 years ago. I do believe that its at least partly because Apple had the money to hire and support excellent teams full of brilliant people. Maybe so, but I seldom really saw it pay off. Things definitely looked prettier on MacOS, but I was often frustrated by things that should "just work" like Time Machine and Safari, so I really spent the majority of my time on MacOS looking for alternatives to Apple's own software. Whatever lead they had in 2010 has been greatly diminished though, especially since Big Sur's release. I just can't even fathom using their new UI... > Anyways, if money is a problem then just work for free lol. I suppose I do, if you count open source contributions. >Why do you care about Vulkan on Apple anyways? It's nice. DXVK is very powerful, and not being able to use it on my Macbook kinda makes it a no-go for regular use. You can argue that it "doesn't matter" and try to trivialize my desires as much as you want, but it's Apple's move. My Windows machines had it, my Linux devices have it, Apple is the only one left who doesn't. > Seems like you were a Mac user.. if i had to guess you used Mac for many years and switched recently, now that Linux desktop has become viable. I used to use Windows for gaming and my Mac for programming, but once Proton got good enough I figured it was time to retire them both. Windows and MacOS were starting to get too slow to daily-drive, and my Mac wouldn't even run Mojave without idling above 50c. Plus, Apple's software quality has taken a complete nosedive in recent years. Sierra was the first step in a pretty questionable direction, and everything running Catalina and beyond is completely foreign to me. Plus, the little things like package management and process handling started to get increasingly difficult, to the point that it was actively making it harder for me to do my job. Safari's endless popup notifications drove me up the wall while I was happily using Chrome, and having to blow hundreds of gigs just to use little utilities like Xcode finally pushed me over the edge. I couldn't buy a machine with upgradable memory or even accessible storage. Modern Macs are about as repairable as a cellphone, which I find abhorrent. > Why did you not use linux 10 years ago too? I did, I've had an x201 for about a decade that's happily served as a media server and a Nextcloud/Syncthing host for quite a while now. On desktop, it was mostly down to a lack of software: there was a period where you couldn't run everything you wanted unless you had both Windows and Mac, but nowadays the holdouts have mostly given up. I've got Slack, VS Code, Discord, Steam, Spotify, and pretty much anything from Windows that I really cared about like Ableton Live. Plus, I can plug in any GPU that I want and expect it to work fairly well on Linux, which is definitely not the case for MacOS. Really not ideal for the times that I'm playing with AI or CUDA acceleration. Running Linux virtualized was a pretty good solution for a while, but with QEMU I can run Windows and MacOS with baremetal performance. This isn't intended to dunk on MacOS, as much as it might seem like it (and as much as people insist that I do). I still think Mojave is one of the best OSes you can use these days, especially if you're not an enthusiast. My demands outgrew MacOS though, and Apple's demands offended me. Switching to Linux made perfect sense for my workflow, and it went smoother than I expected on the desktop. My overall point is that money is nice, but it won't buy you software freedom. You could have all the money in the world, and Apple wouldn't let you audit their source code or plug in an Nvidia graphics card. Instead of fighting them at every corner, I've given up, and I'm happier than I've ever been.
- zaptheimpaler 5y ago
  I won't argue against the complaints you have with Mac, i have some of the same and many others do. I just think there genuinely IS a tension between open source/software freedom and great software. For an example, read about the recent case of Streamlabs. They stole the OBS code and rebranded it a little, copied the webpage down to the layout, but did not disclose any of that. They made tons of money and got acquired by Logitech. The people there successfully used the fact that OBS open sourced everything to steal their work and got rich off it. If Apple open sources their entire OS, why wouldn't the same thing happen? If that did happen, who pays for all the maintenance and new features on Mac? just recently I found a certain Mac OS app that sells pretty well. On decompiling it I found it was just an old open source command line utility, the dev literally threw in the binary and packaged it into an app. This was not disclosed anywhere of course. I've seen many, many examples of this across SaaS and other products - they take some free code, do nothing but repackage it and brand it, keep the profit and give nothing back to the creators. I would love if MacOS was open source and I could fix any OS/software when i hit a use case it doesn't solve well for me. If there was in theory a way to open source code without letting cheaters use it that would be great. But if piracy is easy then people default to it. No one paid for WinRAR back in the day and if we just let that model continue, 80% of the IT industry today wouldn't exist. Like i just see the entire ecosystem and industry with all the amazing technology we have now compared to the 90s was born partly because we found ways to charge for stuff and cut out freeloaders. No one on HN asks for a lower salary and we get these salaries _because_ these models prevent theft. So closed source is a compromise to a tough problem - im okay with that. I think the huge leaps sometimes take a LOT of money to build - say Apple designing and researching and paying to manufacture touchscreens for a decade before ever selling the first iPhone, or Amazon buying a billion servers to build the cloud, and I don't know if they would exist if they never got paid for the stuff they built.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    I'm not arguing for Apple to open-source their OS, I just want them to make something that's truly better than Linux/Windows for once. They have an unconscionable amount of money, and they do nearly nothing with it. My original argument was having more money doesn't neccesarily build better software, and MacOS is a prime example of that. A few notes though: > If that did happen, who pays for all the maintenance and new features on Mac? This is probably the last thing I'd worry about if MacOS was open source. As it stands today, Apple basically "maintains" the Mach kernel by strapping BSD patches onto the XNU kernel and praying nothing breaks, if the community maintained it we probably wouldn't need to wait months for new iterative versions to come out and fix relatively simple issues. > I've seen many, many examples of this across SaaS and other products - they take some free code, do nothing but repackage it and brand it, keep the profit and give nothing back to the creators. And that's fine. That free software is intended to support other people, and it's why there are distinctions between GPL and BSD licensing. When you write open-source software, imagining such a "worst case" scenario is the first things developers do, and they choose their license accordingly. In the Streamlabs example you brought up, the community rightfully called them out for being a ripoff of OBS, and encouraged people to go use the free version instead. Like I said earlier, "money is the problem, not the solution." > No one paid for WinRAR back in the day and if we just let that model continue, 80% of the awesome software today wouldn't exist. People didn't pay for WinRAR because 1. It didn't force you to. 2. There were several free alternatives, like 7ZIP. As you've mentioned earlier, the majority of "awesome software today" is really just free software strapped together with twine and bubblegum. 80% of SaaSes these days are simply frontends to software that could absolutely run locally. Even SaaSes don't see the end-user as an important asset, since the "new hotness" is moving on to B2B sales and bootstrapping directly onto another successful company like a parasite. Whether or not you consider this to be the utopian world of proprietary software is up to you, but I certainly appreciate things better in the FOSS world.

smoldesu 5y ago

> Linux desktop is great now because OSes have stagnated and its easier to catch up. The Linux desktop was fine, arguably since GTK2 was popularized. The software selection was a little sparse, but I genuinely liked it more than the Aqua UI at the time. (as well as... whatever Windows 7 was doing. Aero?) > Mac was as good in 2010, 10 years ago. I do believe that its at least partly because Apple had the money to hire and support excellent teams full of brilliant people. Maybe so, but I seldom really saw it pay off. Things definitely looked prettier on MacOS, but I was often frustrated by things that should "just work" like Time Machine and Safari, so I really spent the majority of my time on MacOS looking for alternatives to Apple's own software. Whatever lead they had in 2010 has been greatly diminished though, especially since Big Sur's release. I just can't even fathom using their new UI... > Anyways, if money is a problem then just work for free lol. I suppose I do, if you count open source contributions. >Why do you care about Vulkan on Apple anyways? It's nice. DXVK is very powerful, and not being able to use it on my Macbook kinda makes it a no-go for regular use. You can argue that it "doesn't matter" and try to trivialize my desires as much as you want, but it's Apple's move. My Windows machines had it, my Linux devices have it, Apple is the only one left who doesn't. > Seems like you were a Mac user.. if i had to guess you used Mac for many years and switched recently, now that Linux desktop has become viable. I used to use Windows for gaming and my Mac for programming, but once Proton got good enough I figured it was time to retire them both. Windows and MacOS were starting to get too slow to daily-drive, and my Mac wouldn't even run Mojave without idling above 50c. Plus, Apple's software quality has taken a complete nosedive in recent years. Sierra was the first step in a pretty questionable direction, and everything running Catalina and beyond is completely foreign to me. Plus, the little things like package management and process handling started to get increasingly difficult, to the point that it was actively making it harder for me to do my job. Safari's endless popup notifications drove me up the wall while I was happily using Chrome, and having to blow hundreds of gigs just to use little utilities like Xcode finally pushed me over the edge. I couldn't buy a machine with upgradable memory or even accessible storage. Modern Macs are about as repairable as a cellphone, which I find abhorrent. > Why did you not use linux 10 years ago too? I did, I've had an x201 for about a decade that's happily served as a media server and a Nextcloud/Syncthing host for quite a while now. On desktop, it was mostly down to a lack of software: there was a period where you couldn't run everything you wanted unless you had both Windows and Mac, but nowadays the holdouts have mostly given up. I've got Slack, VS Code, Discord, Steam, Spotify, and pretty much anything from Windows that I really cared about like Ableton Live. Plus, I can plug in any GPU that I want and expect it to work fairly well on Linux, which is definitely not the case for MacOS. Really not ideal for the times that I'm playing with AI or CUDA acceleration. Running Linux virtualized was a pretty good solution for a while, but with QEMU I can run Windows and MacOS with baremetal performance. This isn't intended to dunk on MacOS, as much as it might seem like it (and as much as people insist that I do). I still think Mojave is one of the best OSes you can use these days, especially if you're not an enthusiast. My demands outgrew MacOS though, and Apple's demands offended me. Switching to Linux made perfect sense for my workflow, and it went smoother than I expected on the desktop. My overall point is that money is nice, but it won't buy you software freedom. You could have all the money in the world, and Apple wouldn't let you audit their source code or plug in an Nvidia graphics card. Instead of fighting them at every corner, I've given up, and I'm happier than I've ever been.

zaptheimpaler 5y ago
I won't argue against the complaints you have with Mac, i have some of the same and many others do. I just think there genuinely IS a tension between open source/software freedom and great software. For an example, read about the recent case of Streamlabs. They stole the OBS code and rebranded it a little, copied the webpage down to the layout, but did not disclose any of that. They made tons of money and got acquired by Logitech. The people there successfully used the fact that OBS open sourced everything to steal their work and got rich off it. If Apple open sources their entire OS, why wouldn't the same thing happen? If that did happen, who pays for all the maintenance and new features on Mac? just recently I found a certain Mac OS app that sells pretty well. On decompiling it I found it was just an old open source command line utility, the dev literally threw in the binary and packaged it into an app. This was not disclosed anywhere of course. I've seen many, many examples of this across SaaS and other products - they take some free code, do nothing but repackage it and brand it, keep the profit and give nothing back to the creators. I would love if MacOS was open source and I could fix any OS/software when i hit a use case it doesn't solve well for me. If there was in theory a way to open source code without letting cheaters use it that would be great. But if piracy is easy then people default to it. No one paid for WinRAR back in the day and if we just let that model continue, 80% of the IT industry today wouldn't exist. Like i just see the entire ecosystem and industry with all the amazing technology we have now compared to the 90s was born partly because we found ways to charge for stuff and cut out freeloaders. No one on HN asks for a lower salary and we get these salaries _because_ these models prevent theft. So closed source is a compromise to a tough problem - im okay with that. I think the huge leaps sometimes take a LOT of money to build - say Apple designing and researching and paying to manufacture touchscreens for a decade before ever selling the first iPhone, or Amazon buying a billion servers to build the cloud, and I don't know if they would exist if they never got paid for the stuff they built.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  I'm not arguing for Apple to open-source their OS, I just want them to make something that's truly better than Linux/Windows for once. They have an unconscionable amount of money, and they do nearly nothing with it. My original argument was having more money doesn't neccesarily build better software, and MacOS is a prime example of that. A few notes though: > If that did happen, who pays for all the maintenance and new features on Mac? This is probably the last thing I'd worry about if MacOS was open source. As it stands today, Apple basically "maintains" the Mach kernel by strapping BSD patches onto the XNU kernel and praying nothing breaks, if the community maintained it we probably wouldn't need to wait months for new iterative versions to come out and fix relatively simple issues. > I've seen many, many examples of this across SaaS and other products - they take some free code, do nothing but repackage it and brand it, keep the profit and give nothing back to the creators. And that's fine. That free software is intended to support other people, and it's why there are distinctions between GPL and BSD licensing. When you write open-source software, imagining such a "worst case" scenario is the first things developers do, and they choose their license accordingly. In the Streamlabs example you brought up, the community rightfully called them out for being a ripoff of OBS, and encouraged people to go use the free version instead. Like I said earlier, "money is the problem, not the solution." > No one paid for WinRAR back in the day and if we just let that model continue, 80% of the awesome software today wouldn't exist. People didn't pay for WinRAR because 1. It didn't force you to. 2. There were several free alternatives, like 7ZIP. As you've mentioned earlier, the majority of "awesome software today" is really just free software strapped together with twine and bubblegum. 80% of SaaSes these days are simply frontends to software that could absolutely run locally. Even SaaSes don't see the end-user as an important asset, since the "new hotness" is moving on to B2B sales and bootstrapping directly onto another successful company like a parasite. Whether or not you consider this to be the utopian world of proprietary software is up to you, but I certainly appreciate things better in the FOSS world.