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>you use what they give you, how they give it to you, using their workflows, barely customizing anything. Apple products are supposed to be revered the world ov
by lbrito 5y ago
>you use what they give you, how they give it to you, using their workflows, barely customizing anything. Apple products are supposed to be revered the world over as the pinnacle of design, used by artists, engineers, professionals, and creators. Why do I feel like there are training wheels on a machine I use for productivity?
Gosh, this is exactly how I felt in a similar situation. Really hit the nail on the head.
I've used Linux for a long time, and for a while I was kindly forced to use a Mac (got a Linux laptop last week). It was a painful experience that took a heavy toll on my productivity.
My impression is that Mac has so many idiossincrasies that fans just assume are "intuitive" while they're really not - they've just been used to it for a long time. Personally I hated, hated the usability. Can't stress it enough, it absolutely sucked. Never again!
Also the benefits compared to non-Macs are diminishing over time. You can get great hardware and battery life with system76 for instance.
- imwillofficial 5y ago“You can get great hardware and battery life with system76 for instance.” The build quality of these two platforms is nowhere, and I mean nowhere close. Apples (heh) and oranges. I’m rooting for system76, but they have a long way to go.
- lbrito 5y agoAbsolutely agree. Build quality is meh, not even good. But the battery is seriously good. Like 10+ hours good.
- lolpython 5y agoWhich model is that? My 2 year old System76 Galago Pro gets 1 hour of battery life.
- lbrito 5y agoThis guy here: https://system76.com/laptops/lemur https://system76.com/laptops/lemur >Up to 14 hours of battery life per charge I routinely get over 10 hours.
- count 5y ago10+ hours isn't 'seriously' good anymore. I routinely can get 18-20 hours on my M1 MacBook Pro.
- Lio 5y agoWhilst that's true I dream of getting 10 hours battery life on my XPS 13 Dev Edition (9370). I really miss all day usage that I had on my last Mac. If System76 can provide that again I think I could live with lower build quality.
- sitzkrieg 5y agothey are cheap clevo laptops at a huge markup
- nativeit 5y agoI just spec'd out the System 76 Galago Pro to match that of the Clevo equivalent that's linked elsewhere in this thread (L143MU), and the System 76 came to $1032, while the Clevo is listed at €1,026.90 (or $1,116.89), so when you say "huge markup" it must be in reference to something else. That said, I don't have any real skin in this game.
- imwillofficial 5y agoThey don’t pay retail. Perhaps they have a slightly less high of a markup than the OEM. I have no idea whatsoever.
- sitzkrieg 5y agowell to be fair, i did the same exercise before buying a system76 a few years back and the difference was a bit more even with oem consideration so thats good to know. the build quality is very cheapish feeling and it fell apart pretty quickly and i regretted not just getting a lenovo or xps or something but it was nice to support their efforts
- rd07 5y agoI have not used any System76 laptop, but how is its build quality to a Thinkpad?
- replygirl 5y agosystem76? sounds cool can it run excel and apple music?
- lbrito 5y agoI guess? System76 makes laptops. They come with their own Linux distribution called PopOS.
- pram 5y agoSystem76 doesn’t make laptops they just resell the same Clevos a hundred other places do: https://clevo-computer.com/en/laptops-configurator/purpose/business-and-office-solutions/6532/clevo-l142mu-intel-core-11th-gen.-tiger-lake-intel-iris-xe-graphics-metal-chassis-mil-std-810g?c=841 https://clevo-computer.com/en/laptops-configurator/purpose/b...
- Lio 5y agoI believe the one value add they do provide is that they choose their components to work well with Linux and test to make sure that's the case.
- anhner 5y agoAh yes, apple music, the pinnacle of computing and benchmark by which to judge all professional-level personal computers.
- throwmeariver1 5y agoI don't like what you like...
- replygirl 5y agoalright how about framer
- approxim8ion 5y agoanything with a browser can run apple music.
- scns 5y agoAs a Linux user of 15 years now, i look forward to beeing challenged by using a Mac, since for me energy efficiency is more important than personal comfort.
- lbrito 5y agoHow does energy efficiency matter here? Or rather, why are you implying that a Mac might be more energy efficient, and enough to matter? Geniuenly curious.
- scns 5y agoM1 coming secong at 10 watts shortly after a Ryzen at several times that? Check out the reviews on anandtech.
- NoraCodes 5y agoThere is nothing inherent about having a bad window manager that makes it more power efficient; Apple could implement a better desktop environment and still have low power use.
- alimov 5y agoYou could also install a window manager such as rectangle or magnet if window management is a big deal for you. People switching OSs expect some things to roll over and then forget that they can google for potential solutions when things don’t work the way they expect/want.
- NoraCodes 5y agoI, like the author of this essay, was prevented from doing such things by my employer when I used a Mac for work. I do also want to point out that such suggestions - "just install and configure [some software] which will solve your problem" - are generally rejected when I point them out to people who are having a hard time getting started with free desktops. The KDE or GNOME environment are expected to be perfect at installation, but Windows and Mac OS are afforded more leniency. It's a double standard.
- thanatos519 5y ago"Training wheels" is my favourite description of the macOS GUI!
- rbanffy 5y agoI actually appreciate the simplicity. Being stuck on Windows for the past couple months I say the best analogy for its window management would be “square training wheels”. Or rectangular, as square ones would have a single cadence.
- brimble 5y agoWhat are people doing with their computers that a Mac is so stifling? I'm late to the Mac game, have been on it for about a decade, and was a 15-year Windows and Linux desktop user before that. Still, I don't even know what it might be.
- sofixa 5y agoDocker Desktop is relatively bad compared to native docker on Linux. If you spend your day doing that macOS is very stifling. Or if you want to change a keyboard shortcut Apple don't allow you to, like cmt+tab.
- brimble 5y agoAh—I've done a lot of Docker on Mac, but just with the command line tools, so I don't know how Docker Desktop is (on any platform). > Or if you want to change a keyboard shortcut Apple don't allow you to, like cmt+tab. The only keyboard customization I do is something that Mac makes at least as easy as Linux (use Caps Lock as an extra control) but I bet it is frustrating if you want to customize stuff outside the cases that they explicitly support remapping. That makes sense.
- sofixa 5y agoTo run Docker on macOS you need Docker Desktop or any of the alternatives. The docker CLI is really slow compared to native, at least with Docker Desktop, and i Rancher Desktop failed installing.
- ryukafalz 5y agoThe options for package management on macOS aren’t great in my experience, coming from using Linux on all my personal machines. Homebrew exists but it always feels bolted on and I’ve had things break in interesting ways using it. Nix might be better, I don’t have much experience using it on macOS. Also, tiling window managers.
- webmobdev 5y ago
- darkteflon 5y agoCannot at all relate to this perspective. If you like PopOS, that’s great. But this nonsense about Mac fans being blinded by their love of the brand is the edgelord meme that will not die. MacOS is fine. PopOS is fine. Windows is fine. They each ask you to adopt a UI paradigm because how could they not. It’s natural that transitioning between them is costly. Every time I see comments like this I’m reminded of this great quote: “The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned.”
- smoldesu 5y ago> “The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned.” At least IBM took this to heart.
- bobsil1 5y agoHmm, I was using my ThinkPad with the wrong body part
- lbrito 5y ago>nonsense about Mac fans being blinded by their love of the brand is the edgelord meme that will not die. Thank you for the completely unemotional comment that totally does not add to the notion I was alluding to that some fans are a bit sensitive about criticism. Joking aside, our points are basically the same. I totally agree that nothing we create is intuitive "by definition"; that's my whole point. I would never claim that Linux or anything else is intuitive "by definition", and yet I see a lot of Mac fans claiming that. It might be perception bias, but I think not. My first contact with a Mac was some 10 years ago. I struggled to turn it on -- contrary to _all other similar devices_, on the Mac the power button was very faintly beveled, and tucked in an invisible corner on the back of the screen (it was a desktop). I get that people might like this, totally fine. I just don't accept that this is intuitive design.
- ricardobeat 5y agoSee, Mac users rarely turn the device off. It can stay on for months without issue. Laptops can sleep for weeks before they run out of power. The power button is more like a reset switch, and doesn't need to be front and center. A lot of these first impressions are just that, first impressions, and can be quite different from feedback coming from daily users.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]