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To people commenting how "well if you install Linux the right way on the right hardware like this here purpose-built laptop, it also 'just works'", what the OP

To people commenting how "well if you install Linux the right way on the right hardware like this here purpose-built laptop, it also 'just works'", what the OP is trying to underline isn't just the technical aspect of the OS booting flawlessly and recognizing its periphery, but also the whole experience that comes after. One special part of this, which is easily overseen, is the fact that Apple has poured hundreds of thousands of man-hours and millions upon millions of dollars into HIG (human interface guidelines) studies, which is something no other vendor has bothered themselves with.

hans1729 5y ago
Highjacking your comment to add a functional answer to ops question: because the reward incentives in open source environments are simply not aligned with the required workload. Prove me wrong, go coordinate a deep ux-strategy in git issues, let's see how far you get until you grasp the absurdity of the idea.
- throwaway82652 5y ago
  You can actually do it (and some projects have managed to do so) but it requires having really good fundraising and admin staff and organizational support. Most people in open source with a couple of random projects on github aren't good at that. And if you were a capable and well-connected individual who can consistently solve the funding problems, a lot of companies would be lining up to hire you and I doubt you'd be wasting your time with a bunch of volunteers moonlighting on hobby projects.
raverbashing 5y ago
> One special part of this, which is easily overseen, is the fact that Apple has: - vertically integrated and sells a very narrow selection of hardware That's 90% of the "just works". The UX/UI part is the other 90% (yes the math is right) And to be fair, MacOS is full of weird UX quirks, and sometimes it does not work. But they have the best trackpads, very good usability (and it's not just Cargo Culting) that goes beyond the surface The limited hardware helps with ACPI/UEFI and most of the general issues around Power/sleeping etc.
- daneel_w 5y ago
  >"- vertically integrated and sells a very narrow selection of hardware" Or maybe this really is just the 10%, as we will both agree that this part is also true for every single Windows PC laptop OEM - Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer etc.
  - danaris 5y ago
    That's....not even remotely true. First of all, they are by definition not vertically integrated, because the same company doesn't create the hardware and the OS. Second of all, have you actually compared the selection of hardware between Apple and any of these brands? I'll admit it's been a little while since I tried to give someone recommendations on a Windows machine, but the selection is just dizzying, and not in a helpful "here are all the different possible variables you could configure, and here are the possible values for them" way. They have (or, as I said, had) multiple different named lines within each product category, and several models within each line, and then each model has different possible configurations. And unless you're the kind of person who has already studied the components enough to be able to build your own computer, you're not going to be able to easily tell, "Which of these actually has the most of the things I am looking for?" Meanwhile, Apple's product lines aren't quite as simple as they once were, but they're still very straightforward. It's generally quite clear what the tradeoffs are when you're comparing between any give pair of devices in their lineup.
    - daneel_w 5y ago
      >First of all, they are by definition not vertically integrated, because the same company doesn't create the hardware and the OS. What matters is that they put the combined product through mostly the same testing. While the PC OEMs have only some to say about Windows' direction, they have the same experience picking components and integrating for Windows as Apple has for macOS.
      - danaris 5y ago
        That's still missing the point. Apple isn't just "picking components and integrating". They make the whole thing from scratch to work together.
deng 5y ago
OP writes: > I am talking about a distro, that you don't have to configure anything for. A distro that handles things like external devices screen recording without weird glitches. I don't read this as a plea for better HIG? This is HN, so I'm assuming most of us live in the terminal anyway. I'll never understand why people prefer MacOS for development. From my experience, it is clearly worse in pretty much every respect (package management, container support, configurability, just to mention a few things).
- john_the_writer 5y ago
  Mostly because we have no viable option. Most work places want to have one device for all staff. So the IOS team and the Android team and Marketing and API and JS team, all need one common system. Windows is out for the Rails/Elixir team, and IOS team need Macs. Marketing and Sales teams could live in Windows or Mac's The only Venn diagram match is Mac. Low powered or high powered, Mac is the answer. Honestly... Package Management is really good for IOS/Rails/Android dev. I personally never use containers at work, and I don't change the configuration on my Mac. Out of the box, it works.
  - ddaalluu2 5y ago
    The ios being exclusive to MacOS is an Apple made problem though. So you're paying double in hardware cost because of some decision by Apple that no other platform may compile for ios.
    - upper_aardvark 5y ago
    - OrderlyTiamat 5y ago
      Which is rewarding them for their choice to put you into the situation in the first place. So in a way they're right to do it.
    - kcartlidge 5y ago
      > The ios being exclusive to MacOS is an Apple made problem though. So you're paying double in hardware cost ... You're right, it is. However knowing that doesn't change it. I don't believe that you're paying double the hardware cost though. To get a halfway decent non-Apple laptop you need to be paying close to the same price anyway. The current Macs (especially Apple Silicon ones) really are much better quality than virtually (perhaps literally) anything you can get for half their price.
Someone 5y ago
> HIG (human interface guidelines) studies, which is something no other vendor has bothered themselves with. Many platforms (including KDE and Gnome) have UI design guidelines. https://usabilitygeek.com/usability-user-experience-user-interface-guidelines-companies-2016/ https://usabilitygeek.com/usability-user-experience-user-int... lists some.
- moistly 5y ago
  Writing a guideline is not quite the same as investing several million in the development and testing of proven-effective design. Back in the day Apple did the right thing and rigorously tested its design hypotheses: there was a specific, fact-based reason behind each important gui design choice beyond “it looks good.” I say back in the day, because IMO Apple no longer makes purposeful UI design choices. For instance, the iOS browser window-closer in the shrunken-windows view of open tabs, has its close button on the right. Every other close button is on the left. Apple has lost the f’ing plot.
  - Someone 5y ago
    Sun did tons of research on Gnome usability. Microsoft did tons of research on MS Office, for example to design the ribbon. I also am not sure having that iOS button on the top right is bad. It’s inconsistent, yes, but when that screen opens, your finger is at the top right of the screen. Putting them in the top right corner moves them closest to your finger. I don’t know whether it is, but Fitt’s law predicts that’s the better choice.
    - moistly 5y ago
      I predict that my left thumb is closest to the top left window, which was the one I was viewing and thus most likely to want to close; and that the two-finger action of tapping the top-right show-mini-windows/topish-left close-window buttons - like it used to be — is a better Fitt. I’m confident that this latest UI change was someone’s busywork. Gotta look like your doing something. Thx for correction re: Gnome & ribbon.
    - 5y ago
raffraffraff 5y ago
Apple has also gone to lengths to make it difficult to run an alternative OS on their hardware. Like the Facetime camera on the 2015+ MacBook. (Fair dues to the person who got that working). One of my personal laptops is a 2015 MacBook Pro, and the camera driver is the only thing I had to manually screw around with. Everything else worked perfectly in every distro I threw at it.
- daneel_w 5y ago
  What was the issue with the webcam? I presume it's not a standard USB video device? Are you sure it's really only about making it harder to run other OSes on the hardware, and not because there was some actual feature gain from whatever the customization is? I know they have put effort into locking things down a lot with the newer models with the T2 chip, and while I don't agree with it it's obvious that there are real, actual security reasons for why they've done this, and not just being cheeky and petty-minded. "Everything else [but the webcam] worked perfectly in every distro I threw at it" really doesn't rhyme with "gone to lengths to make it difficult to run an alternative OS on their hardware" in my ears. Surely they could've done plenty more than just booby trap the webcam.
  - raffraffraff 5y ago
    I didn't say Apple has gone to extreme lengths. That would cost them a ton for little benefit. They got a 3rd party (Broadcom) to build the webcam and keep the spec a secret. Neither Broadcom nor Apple provide anything that would make it usable in another OS. I know they don't "have to", but I believe that buying a machine makes it mine, and I should be allowed to use it however I want. How many other manufacturers keep basic info a secret, and provide zero support in any alternative OS?

hans1729 5y ago

Highjacking your comment to add a functional answer to ops question: because the reward incentives in open source environments are simply not aligned with the required workload. Prove me wrong, go coordinate a deep ux-strategy in git issues, let's see how far you get until you grasp the absurdity of the idea.

throwaway82652 5y ago
You can actually do it (and some projects have managed to do so) but it requires having really good fundraising and admin staff and organizational support. Most people in open source with a couple of random projects on github aren't good at that. And if you were a capable and well-connected individual who can consistently solve the funding problems, a lot of companies would be lining up to hire you and I doubt you'd be wasting your time with a bunch of volunteers moonlighting on hobby projects.

raverbashing 5y ago

> One special part of this, which is easily overseen, is the fact that Apple has: - vertically integrated and sells a very narrow selection of hardware That's 90% of the "just works". The UX/UI part is the other 90% (yes the math is right) And to be fair, MacOS is full of weird UX quirks, and sometimes it does not work. But they have the best trackpads, very good usability (and it's not just Cargo Culting) that goes beyond the surface The limited hardware helps with ACPI/UEFI and most of the general issues around Power/sleeping etc.

daneel_w 5y ago
>"- vertically integrated and sells a very narrow selection of hardware" Or maybe this really is just the 10%, as we will both agree that this part is also true for every single Windows PC laptop OEM - Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer etc.
- danaris 5y ago
  That's....not even remotely true. First of all, they are by definition not vertically integrated, because the same company doesn't create the hardware and the OS. Second of all, have you actually compared the selection of hardware between Apple and any of these brands? I'll admit it's been a little while since I tried to give someone recommendations on a Windows machine, but the selection is just dizzying, and not in a helpful "here are all the different possible variables you could configure, and here are the possible values for them" way. They have (or, as I said, had) multiple different named lines within each product category, and several models within each line, and then each model has different possible configurations. And unless you're the kind of person who has already studied the components enough to be able to build your own computer, you're not going to be able to easily tell, "Which of these actually has the most of the things I am looking for?" Meanwhile, Apple's product lines aren't quite as simple as they once were, but they're still very straightforward. It's generally quite clear what the tradeoffs are when you're comparing between any give pair of devices in their lineup.
  - daneel_w 5y ago
    >First of all, they are by definition not vertically integrated, because the same company doesn't create the hardware and the OS. What matters is that they put the combined product through mostly the same testing. While the PC OEMs have only some to say about Windows' direction, they have the same experience picking components and integrating for Windows as Apple has for macOS.
    - danaris 5y ago
      That's still missing the point. Apple isn't just "picking components and integrating". They make the whole thing from scratch to work together.

deng 5y ago

OP writes: > I am talking about a distro, that you don't have to configure anything for. A distro that handles things like external devices screen recording without weird glitches. I don't read this as a plea for better HIG? This is HN, so I'm assuming most of us live in the terminal anyway. I'll never understand why people prefer MacOS for development. From my experience, it is clearly worse in pretty much every respect (package management, container support, configurability, just to mention a few things).

john_the_writer 5y ago
Mostly because we have no viable option. Most work places want to have one device for all staff. So the IOS team and the Android team and Marketing and API and JS team, all need one common system. Windows is out for the Rails/Elixir team, and IOS team need Macs. Marketing and Sales teams could live in Windows or Mac's The only Venn diagram match is Mac. Low powered or high powered, Mac is the answer. Honestly... Package Management is really good for IOS/Rails/Android dev. I personally never use containers at work, and I don't change the configuration on my Mac. Out of the box, it works.
- ddaalluu2 5y ago
  The ios being exclusive to MacOS is an Apple made problem though. So you're paying double in hardware cost because of some decision by Apple that no other platform may compile for ios.
  - upper_aardvark 5y ago
  - OrderlyTiamat 5y ago
    Which is rewarding them for their choice to put you into the situation in the first place. So in a way they're right to do it.
  - kcartlidge 5y ago
    > The ios being exclusive to MacOS is an Apple made problem though. So you're paying double in hardware cost ... You're right, it is. However knowing that doesn't change it. I don't believe that you're paying double the hardware cost though. To get a halfway decent non-Apple laptop you need to be paying close to the same price anyway. The current Macs (especially Apple Silicon ones) really are much better quality than virtually (perhaps literally) anything you can get for half their price.

Someone 5y ago

> HIG (human interface guidelines) studies, which is something no other vendor has bothered themselves with. Many platforms (including KDE and Gnome) have UI design guidelines. https://usabilitygeek.com/usability-user-experience-user-interface-guidelines-companies-2016/ https://usabilitygeek.com/usability-user-experience-user-int... lists some.

moistly 5y ago
Writing a guideline is not quite the same as investing several million in the development and testing of proven-effective design. Back in the day Apple did the right thing and rigorously tested its design hypotheses: there was a specific, fact-based reason behind each important gui design choice beyond “it looks good.” I say back in the day, because IMO Apple no longer makes purposeful UI design choices. For instance, the iOS browser window-closer in the shrunken-windows view of open tabs, has its close button on the right. Every other close button is on the left. Apple has lost the f’ing plot.
- Someone 5y ago
  Sun did tons of research on Gnome usability. Microsoft did tons of research on MS Office, for example to design the ribbon. I also am not sure having that iOS button on the top right is bad. It’s inconsistent, yes, but when that screen opens, your finger is at the top right of the screen. Putting them in the top right corner moves them closest to your finger. I don’t know whether it is, but Fitt’s law predicts that’s the better choice.
  - moistly 5y ago
    I predict that my left thumb is closest to the top left window, which was the one I was viewing and thus most likely to want to close; and that the two-finger action of tapping the top-right show-mini-windows/topish-left close-window buttons - like it used to be — is a better Fitt. I’m confident that this latest UI change was someone’s busywork. Gotta look like your doing something. Thx for correction re: Gnome & ribbon.
  - 5y ago

raffraffraff 5y ago

Apple has also gone to lengths to make it difficult to run an alternative OS on their hardware. Like the Facetime camera on the 2015+ MacBook. (Fair dues to the person who got that working). One of my personal laptops is a 2015 MacBook Pro, and the camera driver is the only thing I had to manually screw around with. Everything else worked perfectly in every distro I threw at it.

daneel_w 5y ago
What was the issue with the webcam? I presume it's not a standard USB video device? Are you sure it's really only about making it harder to run other OSes on the hardware, and not because there was some actual feature gain from whatever the customization is? I know they have put effort into locking things down a lot with the newer models with the T2 chip, and while I don't agree with it it's obvious that there are real, actual security reasons for why they've done this, and not just being cheeky and petty-minded. "Everything else [but the webcam] worked perfectly in every distro I threw at it" really doesn't rhyme with "gone to lengths to make it difficult to run an alternative OS on their hardware" in my ears. Surely they could've done plenty more than just booby trap the webcam.
- raffraffraff 5y ago
  I didn't say Apple has gone to extreme lengths. That would cost them a ton for little benefit. They got a 3rd party (Broadcom) to build the webcam and keep the spec a secret. Neither Broadcom nor Apple provide anything that would make it usable in another OS. I know they don't "have to", but I believe that buying a machine makes it mine, and I should be allowed to use it however I want. How many other manufacturers keep basic info a secret, and provide zero support in any alternative OS?