31 ms·

Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)

• slowmotiony 5y ago
  I remember I used to be able to force-quit an app by two-finger tapping on the red "close" button. Then suddenly after some update, the feature is gone. I hate when they change shit for no reason and dont think for a second about breaking peoples workflow.
  • tinus_hn 5y ago
    The Apple line of thinking probably is that force closing apps shouldn’t be a part of peoples workflow.
    • GekkePrutser 5y ago
      The line of thinking that they decide what should be part of my workflow is exactly what bothers me so much about macOS. For me it's also ingrained Command-Q into my brain to close an app. Especially because even before this change apps often didn't close when you closed the last window. It's always been like that. Only some apps like System Preferences do it.
    • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      Well my thinking is that homelessness shouldn't be a thong in a first world country, and but this'solution' is like making homelessness illegal and declaring that you solved the problem. Clearly the appropriate solution would be to somehow make sure that I never need to force close the application, but the damn thing won't even let me restart if some app has hung (I am looking at you MS teams!)
    • Klonoar 5y ago
      They explicitly keep the Apple icon menu entry for this, so they’re not hiding it from people. I’d put more money on people on Touchpad devices force quitting more often than anticipated, so they removed it.
• jewbot 5y ago
  half of these are solved by BetterTouchTool fyi
  • idontwantthis 5y ago
    Can BTT do always on top?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ostenning 5y ago
  People who run macOS: Use the Rectangle app. It allows beautifully snapping windows to half or a quarter of the screen, and more. Which I switched from Arch back to macOS this was the first I downloaded to improve productivity.
• ivanche 5y ago
  At least changing mouse button order (and much more complex keyboard modifications such as remapping keys, assigning different commands to F keys, making a hyper key, turning on super-duper mode etc.) is possible with Karabiner Elements.
• ilikejam 5y ago
  I'd pay good money for an 'Always on top' window option on mac.
  • breakfastduck 5y ago
    Number 1 priority feature I'd ask for if I could get 1 free guaranteed feature request into next version of macOS. So many ways on windows / linux.
  • enriquto 5y ago
    Can't you just use a different window manager?
    • guerrilla 5y ago
      On MacOS?
    • capableweb 5y ago
      > I'd pay good money for an X option on mac. > Can't you just use a different X? Lol, this is Apple we're talking about, the company famous for not allowing people to customize things to their own liking (for better or worse).
      • enriquto 5y ago
        I understand, and even appreciate, that they don't let too much customization on their default programs. But why can't you run a different program? It makes no sense.
        • capableweb 5y ago
          The window manager is definitely a "default program" that is probably tightly integrated in various points of the OS. AFAIK, you can't even use the OS without having Finder running (not the actual window "Finder" but the process) as it's also involved in lots of things, like the desktop and such.
• togaen 5y ago
  Surely there are more meaningful things to spend time thinking about.
  • raspyberr 5y ago
    Surely you and I could've done something better than writing these comments?
• armitage 5y ago
• kristianp 5y ago
  The only one that sounds painful to me is being unable to access files on an Android device. I know some will disagree...
  • capableweb 5y ago
    As I've started to move my collection of music from Spotify to downloading FLAC from Bandcamp, I found that libimobiledevice + ifuse (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/IOS https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/IOS) seems to do the job good enough. Only thing that took some time to figure out is that I need to move the music files into a directory specific for the application I use (VOX) rather than the general "Music" directory, as it seems files are not shared between applications and the music app doesn't have any directory exposed for me to put them in. I'd love to be able to just plug the damn phone into USB and transferring files like a normal person though, but Apple doesn't seem to want to play that game, sadly...
  • disruptiveink 5y ago
    This is really the only issue from that post that I would really like on macOS. SSH mounting as well, potentially. The rest are annoyances that while I believe are very important to the author, they feel rather irrelevant to me. Right now, Android File Transfer of macOS is so bad I basically just use adb for everything.
    • volume 5y ago
      what about sshfs? brew install sshfs
  • nyanpasu64 5y ago
    In my experience, Android MTP worked semi-reliably on Windows (I'd often encounter "ghost files" which couldn't be renamed or accessed, since MTP and Android's media cache desynced from the underlying Linux filesystem), and often failed entirely on Linux (trying to open the phone hung or caused the Linux MTP daemon to crash immediately or after some time). I much prefer adb push/pull, which has always been rock-solid as long as adb can see your phone.
• david-cako 5y ago
  pointy elbows, doesn't work underwater. can't map the magsafe port to left mouse button.
  • jacobmischka 5y ago
    Yikes, one must be deeply suffering from Stockholm syndrome to think that wanting to do things differently makes someone unreasonable.
    • DocTomoe 5y ago
      Which is ironic coming from acolytes of a sect that once used 'think differently' as a mantra.
• IshKebab 5y ago
  Some things in that list are pretty silly (can you really blame Apple for not letting you swap the mouse button order or have the insane focus-follows-mouse option?) Here are some others anyway: * Record system audio. * Control HDMI audio volume (have to use Proxy Audio Driver which is somewhat buggy). * Set mouse acceleration (you used to be able to but they removed the option and now you can only set sensitivity). * Disable scroll wheel acceleration (needs a paid third party app).
  • nightfly 5y ago
    > can you really blame Apple for not letting you swap the mouse button order Why not? > Or have the insane focus-follows-mouse option On Linux where your application menus are (usually) part of the window it works great.
  • xvilka 5y ago
    It also can't control external DAC volume while it's possible in Linux or Windows.
  • q3k 5y ago
    > the insane focus-follows-mouse option Is it that hard to believe some people prefer this behaviour?
    • bigiain 5y ago
      > Is it that hard to believe some people prefer this behaviour? Not at all. But it's also really easy to see that giving someone used to one of those behaviours the opposite one - would make them unhappy.
      • ryukafalz 5y ago
        Which is why it’s good that this is configurable in Linux :)
    • IshKebab 5y ago
      Yes!
• _joel 5y ago
  Things I can do on MacOS which I can't on Ubuntu: Run Logic X and all the AU's.
  • q3k 5y ago
    There's always going to be software that supports some platforms but not others. For example, in the EDA world it's very common to have Linux/Windows support but not macOS support (eg.: Intel Quartus, Xilinx Vivado, Cadence Virtuoso and others, Mentor Graphics Calibre and others, ...).
    • _joel 5y ago
      Of course! We all have differing requirements :) They're important to me, moreso than what's in the OP's list.
  • input_sh 5y ago
    Things you can't do on Ubuntu: run Apple's app? Seems a bit disingenuous.
    • _joel 5y ago
      It was more to the point that's the only thing keeping me on MacOS vs Linux (I'd be on debian, not ubuntu) on my daily driver. Maybe one day.. https://www.darlinghq.org/ https://www.darlinghq.org/ :D
• smackeyacky 5y ago
  Add: run a docker container without an entire VM.
  • WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
    Yes, this is a big one. I run full system containers on my Linux boxen with systemd-nspawn, and on macOS, with their system level protections, I suspect even chroots would be too much to ask. (Maybe it's possible, I just haven't had that many disposable hours to check just how much pain it would be for quite a while.)
  • AlexSW 5y ago
    Not sure whether you know something I don't but I'm not aware of any VM when I'm running Docker containers directly on my Mac?
    • dpatterbee 5y ago
      You might not be aware, but docker desktop is running a linux VM under the hood.
    • idontwantthis 5y ago
      Docker machine uses qemu to make a Linux VM to run docker containers in.
      • silviot 5y ago
        And then does magic when you want to expose a volume from your macos host to your docker container. And that magic can slow down things. They improved things recently though [1] [1] https://www.docker.com/blog/speed-boost-achievement-unlocked-on-docker-desktop-4-6-for-mac/ https://www.docker.com/blog/speed-boost-achievement-unlocked...
    • smackeyacky 5y ago
      OSX is a distant third for a developer who is deploying docker containers. Microsoft and WSL2 are trying, but nothing beats a linux distribution for that.
• sirjaz 5y ago
  You could get all those features and more in Windows, plus you have wsl2 :)
  • rufugee 5y ago
    And you'd have...Windows. That's a LOT of baggage IMHO.
  • froh42 5y ago
    Yep. WSL and WSL2 are great. I used Windows with WSL, upgrade to WSL2 then noticed I don't need the "Windows" part of the system anymore and WSL2 cross-boundary file access is slow, so I deleted Windows and finally installed Linux again on my work laptop. (Used Linux up to 2007, bought a Mac, another Mac, switched to Windows after Apple locked down the system because "Windows has WSL, so I can do my work stuff" and switched back to Linux due to a slow Filesystem under Windows - for my use case). The only thing that pisses me off, is that the MS-Teams client for Linux is roughly 5 decades behind the Windows client, feature and stability-wise. (And still have Windows on my private laptop for Fusion360 and games)
  • 29athrowaway 5y ago
    If I wanted a duct-taped inconsistent UI, with advertising, "telemetry", forced updates when I am in the middle of something important, 30 min software installations and being the target of most existing malware on planet Earth and spending 10 min to copy a file, by all means I would use Windows. With Windows, put simply, you don't own your computer. I haven't used Windows in over a decade and cannot be happier about it. Windows at this point is a games console for keyboard and mouse games. Nobody uses Windows for anything serious, except old ATMs running Windows 95 and airports that want to embarrass themselves with blue screens of death. Most of the stuff on Azure including Azure itself is Linux based. Also, I hate Hungarian notation.
  • ketzu 5y ago
    While I like windows, I don't think it has native "always on top" support.
    • 5y ago
• uuyi 5y ago
  These are all fairly trivial. There's a much larger list of things that Ubuntu says it can do but does such a bad job of it that I can't use it. Oh and Lightroom, Pixelmator and Excel don't work on Ubuntu.
  • samizdis 5y ago
    Trivial to you, and many people, perhaps. But this user is citing problems such as being able to read the menu, and to accommodate for RSI. So in this user's case, these things are sort of blockers.
    • uuyi 5y ago
      I don't think the user is aware that you can change the entire display scale for readability if you need to. There are also numerous mouse button remapping utilities out there.
  • art4ur 5y ago
    Depends on the user. Running Lightroom, Pixelmator and Excel are trivial to me because that's not my workflow.
• mr_ploppy 5y ago
  I really hate window snapping, it drives me insane on the Ubuntu box I have to use at work. I'm sure I can turn if off, but I'm incredibly lazy.
  • Zardoz84 5y ago
    Try KDE/Plasma or XFCE
    • mr_ploppy 5y ago
      Thanks, I will.
• yalogin 5y ago
  I like this post. For the first time someone actually provided a list of things and more so jumped right into them! Most of the apple posts go into a long philosophy rant about walled gardens and other bs. Glad to see a legit list and they have a legit point.
  • edent 5y ago
    Thank you - it's nice to receive feedback like this.
  • rossvor 5y ago
    Exactly, both informative for MacOS users and those who never used it. MacOS users can quickly scan and think yeah I don't care about this feature, or think huh this is something that could be useful and maybe I should look for a 3rd party app which has this. Those considering switching to MacOS can compare to their existing environment and have a greater picture of what possible pain points to expect. I would like to see more of posts like this for all Desktop environments. Like things you can do in MacOS but not in default Ubuntu setup.
    • rodelrod 5y ago
      This list is personal and far from exhaustive (which is fine). If I quickly scanned looking for things I care about, I'd find very little. However, as a Linux user I could very quickly come up with an equally long list of things that I do care about and that does not overlap much with this one. I think the larger point is: in Linux, some things are complicated but most things are possible. On Mac and Windows, some things are easier but many things are impossible. So there's definitely a tradeoff. But since I have to use this tool for the majority of my waking hours in order to make a living, the ROI from taking a bit longer to solve an issue and then having it solved virtually forever makes Linux a better proposition IMHO.
      • pastacacioepepe 5y ago
        Why do we need a trade off between stability and control? I'd argue we could have both if not for commercial reasons. Apple deliberately chooses to limit control, Microsoft too. With all the resources they have, you really think they couldn't give you more control without sacrificing stability?
• carlosrg 5y ago
  There’s an option in Accessibility to make the menu bar and other menus font larger.
• dredmorbius 5y ago
  Way back when (2006), chromatic posted a "switching back" article at O'Reilly Radar. Sixteen years (!!!) later, it still holds a great deal of truth. You'll have to dig it up on the Internet Archive though. Focus-follows-mouse, UI customisability, package management, second-hand citizen status of Linux apps, and a few others. It's also interesting to see what has appeared as supported / possible, on both operating systems. https://web.archive.org/web/20060613222321/http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/06/01/switching-back.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060613222321/http://www.linuxd... Page 2: https://web.archive.org/web/20060613222321/http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/06/01/switching-back.html?page=2 https://web.archive.org/web/20060613222321/http://www.linuxd... Page 3: https://web.archive.org/web/20060613222321/http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/06/01/switching-back.html?page=3 https://web.archive.org/web/20060613222321/http://www.linuxd... Page 4: https://web.archive.org/web/20060613222321/http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/06/01/switching-back.html?page=4 https://web.archive.org/web/20060613222321/http://www.linuxd... Best I can tell, that was never actually discussed on HN.
• saagarjha 5y ago
  > Focus Follow Mouse > I have multiple screens and multiple windows. I want to be able to hover over a new one and start interacting with it without clicking. Having attempted to implement this once, doing this is nontrivial. If you try to focus anything under your mouse then you can end up changing the selection state of tables and controls, which is generally undesirable.
  • Reason077 5y ago
    Have you tried AutoRaise? https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise
    • mnw21cam 5y ago
      That's something different. I don't see why so many different OSes have a problem with a window that is not raised having focus.
  • tomsmeding 5y ago
    This is about _window_ focus, not focus on individual controls within a window. The former is useful (I tried GNOME for a while but went back to i3 for, among other things, this reason), but the latter is (as you found out) probably not a good idea.
    • saagarjha 5y ago
      They are one and the same, because when you are interacting with a window you are actually interacting with controls inside the window. It is easy to forward cursor events to the target window (hover and scroll already do this, FWIW) but when you want to say type something you'll need to focus the text element under the cursor before you can just blast key events to that application. Doing this in a way that feels intuitive is non-trivial. If you go the simple route and focus every control (so you can do things like tab between them) you run into the issue of the mouse activating some of them as you go over the element and giving it focus–for example, if you do it on a window sidebar, you'll switch between the tabs. I didn't get a chance to really thing about it, but I was thinking of just giving text elements focus and considering it to be good enough; but there are still challenges there: should you be able to focus on a search field (which might blow away the current context and replace it with a "searching" screen)? How should I handle keyboard shortcuts?
• emendation 5y ago
  KDE Connect/GS Connect is invaluable to me on Linux. It can just do _so much_.
  • nyanpasu64 5y ago
    KDE Connect almost works on Windows, but spawns background D-Bus processes (nitpick) and crashes on sleep-wake (near-dealbreaker). I hope to someday diagnose and fix the problem, but even building KDE Connect is a nonstandard process involving using Craft to install libraries and build the program (rather than building from an IDE directly).
• nicoburns 5y ago
  My biggest bug bears with macOS: - No way to fullscreen a window without moving it into a separate workspace. All a new workspace achieves is making it difficult for me to switch between this app and my other apps! (individual apps can implement this, and some like VLC do, but most apps don't) - No native support for containerisation. Containers/Docker are a great technology, but even on my M1 mac where literally everything else is super speedy, they're really slow.
  • larusso 5y ago
    > No way to fullscreen a window without moving it into a separate workspace. All When you hold ALT while clicking the maximize button it should work. There used to be a setting for this when they introduced it.
    • nik736 5y ago
      Thanks for that! Option key words perfectly.
    • nottorp 5y ago
      View -> Enter full screen?
      • tgv 5y ago
        Or simply the third button on the top left of nearly every window?
        • GlassKingdom 5y ago
          No, that hides the menu bar.
          • Veen 5y ago
            You can stop it hiding the menu bar in full screen. System Preferences -> Dock and Menu Bar -> Automatically Hide and Show Menu Bar in Full Screen (at the bottom of the window).
• jzellis 5y ago
  You forgot "spend three days trying to get a Bluetooth keyboard to pair at boot every time". :-D I love Ubuntu and I use it with Cinnamon desktop on the daily alongside my Mac, and I love the customizability, but I also like just being able to turn on my laptop and do stuff without having to fiddle with a terminal unless I want to, or install a new app by just downloading a thing and clicking on it and agreeing that, yes, I'm trying to do this thing. And that's just not quite there with Ubuntu yet. (Also, trying to do music stuff is mostly a nightmare of JACK and Alsa headaches. I can write generative music code in at least two languages, but I just wanna plug my guitar in and record things and use plug-ins without having to recompile shit.) There's places for both. Use whatever works for you.
  • q3k 5y ago
    For realtime audio, Pipewire basically solves this problem on Linux. It appears as JACK, Pulse and ALSA to client programs and allows seamless interop between all of them. It's slowly landing in mainstream Linux distros as the default audio solution. This means that without any special setup, both real-time audio software (which uses JACK) and 'normal' software (Pulse, ALSA) can co-operate on a single system with a single digital patchbay between all of them and the system output devices (including Bluetooth audio devices).
  • as1mov 5y ago
    I use a pair of BT headphones (paired to 2 devices) and a keyboard. Both have worked without a hitch since day one on Ubuntu Mate. Funny enough, it's the only device I own that will work with my prehistoric HP printer from 2005 without any hacks. Newer versions of Windows don't work with it (I probably need to fish out the CD with the drivers), MacOS never did.
    • rbut 5y ago
      I can echo the HP printer comment, mines a printer/scanner. Every time I print or scan on Ubuntu I'm expecting it to not work, as that was my experience on macOS, but it works flawlessly. On macOS the driver was abandoned 6 OS versions back, and I had to do some pkg command line trickery running as root just to get the thing to install.
• Aardwolf 5y ago
  How about middle click paste?
  • SXX 5y ago
    From personal experience - after a year on macOS you simply forget about such handy bits Linux has.
• Reason077 5y ago
  > "I find the menu bar at the top too small. The only way to do this on MacOS is to lower the resolution of the entire screen!" System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Display -> Menu bar size (This doesn't let you change the menu bar to a different font, but it does make the whole menu bar including the font bigger, without changing the screen resolution, which seems to be what the author wants?)
  • edent 5y ago
    Have you tried it recently? The difference it makes is - at least on my Mac - only a couple of pixels. The "large" size is hardly bigger than the regular one.
• hk1337 5y ago
  > If I stick a USB cable between my phone and Linux laptop, I can see the Android files on my laptop. I can open them, move them around, etc. On a Mac I need to install some shonky 3rd party software which rarely works. You didn’t used to have to do that in macOS? I remember plugging in my android phone and it mounting my memory card. Is OP referring to accessing something else? > Mount an SSH or NFS drive > In Ubuntu, I get a nice little GUI for picking network shares. Impossible on Mac. I’m a little curious what the difference is between macOS and Linux here. There’s definitely a lot of legitimate points here and a few questions on others.
  • Haydos585x2 5y ago
    They're referring to Android File Transfer, which I agree is a shoddy piece of third party software.
    • hk1337 5y ago
      Kind of like the app you had to use to side load apps and do android development back when it first started?
  • Chernobog 5y ago
    The keyword here is "MTP device". Some phones mount as mass storage device and works out of the box, but MTP requires extra software/drivers.
    • hk1337 5y ago
      What’s the difference? Do you get full access to the phone file system when it’s mounted as a MTP device?
      • deaddodo 5y ago
        Mass Storage devices are attached as block devices. MTP devices are attached as file devices. As long as the OS understands the filesystem on a block device, it can mount it. For file devices, it needs to speak the protocol (in this case MTP). MTP is similar to how Apple handles attaching of its devices, just a different protocol. Mass devices can be easily corrupted and have to be unmounted from the current device. MTP can stay mounted and accessible by the mounting OS and source device simultaneously and are much more difficult to corrupt. It also allows the host device more security and control over what the guest can do.
• sgt 5y ago
  Try the other way around. Much longer list, I guarantee you.
  • edent 5y ago
    I would be delighted to read your blog post on it.
  • headsoup 5y ago
    Go on then, you start
    • sgt 5y ago
      No need, you can just go read on https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.t...
      • DocTomoe 5y ago
        After a quick scan, that list is full of stuff that either has never been an issue with me (who has been a Linux desktop user since 2002) or is actually an advantage of the ecosystem (and won't be a problem for people not continuously distro-hopping, e.g. "desktop users"). Some even seem like wilful lies (e.g. the one about Windows and Mac allowing you to 'configure everything via the GUI'). In short, it's FUD, and the author is not honest in his assessment. As such, the article is without merit. So, what can you not do on Linux that you can do on Mac?
        • itvision 5y ago
          > Some even seem like wilful lies (e.g. the one about Windows and Mac allowing you to 'configure everything via the GUI'). That's true excluding registry hacks 99.9% of people couldn't care less about. In Linux on the other hand a TON of things do require using console. > In short, it's FUD, and the author is not honest in his assessment. I've heard this assessment from rabid Linux fanatics before. However "FUD" is more likely your assessment of the article because it's as factual as it can be considering I've been using Linux as my primary OS for 25 years now. > As such, the article is without merit. Well, you've spent 10 seconds reading it, so your comment is without merit. > So, what can you not do on Linux that you can do on Mac? No clue, I've never used MacOS to a large extent (excluding wasting 3 days trying to install Windows next to it which I succeeded but I hated every second of that experience considering I had to even use BIOS loader hacks to make Windows work), the article is not about an Apple OS either. There's no way I'll ever do that again. Apple hardware is meant for Apple software, period. Using anything else is a never ending source of pain.
• tambourine_man 5y ago
  >I've never "got" the appeal of a Mac It’s hard to keep reading when this is the first sentence. You can’t really criticize something you admittedly haven’t “got”. I had the opposite experience almost 40 years ago with the classic Mac and 20 years ago with Mac OS X. The appeal was obvious and instant. The only thing I can relate to from the post is that I wish Apple added native support for FUSE.
• boesboes 5y ago
  very true, macos is shit for cusomization & the window manager is always fighting me. I am actively paying for the development of Asahi so I can run a more customizable/less bloaty OS on my M1. ngl, I'd use windows on it if I had too. Luckily macos is available ;) That being said, I've tied using a pure linux system for my work. I gave up when I couldn't get a somewhat current ruby version installed withing 30 minutes. The grass is a vague yellow on all sides if you ask me.
• dotancohen 5y ago
  I had to use a Mac at work some time ago. Here's my list: * Cannot drag to copy, middle-click to paste. * No way to disable sticky keys lock. * No way to set ESC as Caps Lock. * No way to set a keyboard shortcut for each specific language. (I use five) * Alt-tab to an _Application_, not a _Window_. How many times will I Alt-Tab to.... nothing! * Return from sleep will rearrange the order of the connected monitors, even though they have not been disconnected, if the laptop lid is not opened.
  • tom_ 5y ago
    To remap keys, you may be able to use hidutil. For example, to remap the Application key to right-hand Command: hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000065,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x7000000e7}]} See https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2450/_index.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2450...
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • Reason077 5y ago
    > "No way to set ESC as Caps Lock." Huh? System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys -> Caps Lock Key
    • Hamuko 5y ago
      If it's about making the physical Esc key function as a Caps Lock, that's not an option in the modifier keys. If it's about making the physical Caps Lock key work as an Esc, then that's possible.
      • Reason077 5y ago
        Oh, yes you're correct. Strange that they let you do it one way but not the other.
• lwkl 5y ago
  I totally get why you would want these features. But why not just use Ubuntu if you want them? No OS should try to emulate everything that other Operating Systems do well. You can‘t make a highly opinionated OS like macOS highly customizable without compromising the initial vision. The same is true the other way around. MacOS allows for a surprising customizability through third-party apps and I personally think this is a great solution. It hides the complexity in a way that makes it invisible to users that would be confused by additional option and allows them to get customization as an app that is supported by a third-party dev. I personally think Windows is what you get if you want to be macOS and Linux. I‘m financing my studies by supporting MS365 instances and I don‘t think it works all too well. While I like the new scripting capabilities, the UI definitely got more confusing since the Windows 7 days. TLDR: I personally believe diversity is good for the OS market, not every OS has to accommodate every type of user.
  • edent 5y ago
    > I totally get why you would want these features. But why not just use Ubuntu if you want them? Because, as I say in the post, I have to use one for work. I agree that diversity is good but there are some things - like basic accessibility - which should be non-negotiable. And they certainly shouldn't be paid-for addons.
    • latexr 5y ago
      > there are some things - like basic accessibility - which should be non-negotiable. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to criticise Apple, but I disagree that lack of accessibility options is one of them. They natively support tons of accessibility features, and as far as I’m aware people with disabilities often choose Apple products precisely because they excel at it.
      • projektfu 5y ago
        This was interesting. I was recently setting up a mac with Catalina preinstalled and no working monitor so I got the opportunity to use voiceover. It isn't very helpful to someone who hasn't been using it forever. Some issues: 1. Doesn't describe the screen well. Either "you are on a button" or will read everything with no positional context. 2. Doesn't tell you when the screen changes. You press "continue" and it says "you are on a button" 3. When you try to move through the list of wifi SSNs it jumps to the password entry every time you move without telling you which one was selected. 4. The default speed, 50%, is stupid fast. I had to look up how to change the speed. 5. The tutorial was hard to understand and I had to look up the online documentation to get an idea of how it works. The accessibility of that site seems pretty low but luckily I actually am visual. https://support.apple.com/guide/voiceover/use-voiceover-utility-vo28017/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/voiceover/use-voiceover-util...
• throwaway-PII 5y ago
  I just hate being told "no" by a piece of software that I paid for.
• rwmj 5y ago
  With the caveat that I've not used it, it seems the wonderful sshfs is available for macOS, which should solve the mounting files over SSH thing.
• toomanydoubts 5y ago
  The one that bugs me the most is the fact you can't disable the transition delay of 300ms when switching workspaces. Such a basic thing, but the number one reason I won't buy a Mac today.
  • lmohseni 5y ago
    There’s an option for this under System Prefs > Accessibility > Reduce Motion
    • wildrhythms 5y ago
      It seems like this would work, but unfortunately it just replaces the "slide" animation with a crossfade that takes the same amount of time.
• SXX 5y ago
  I'll add some to the list: - Control external monitor sound volume. There are buggy paid and open source solutions, but they all trigger all kind of bugs with sound and macOS itself. - Capture game audio with OBS together with microphone input. - Being able to wait for files to copy and work Finder at the same time. Yeah I could find replacement for Finder, but why the hell? - Use Valve Proton. Yeah, Linux is great to play games now. And yeah PulseAudio is just so much better than everything macOS can offer. PS: Yeah I'm currently on Mac because M1 is amazing and I left my Linux desktop at home due to unexpected immigration. Still I really wish to come back to use Linux as soon as I have option to.
  • lloeki 5y ago
    control external monitor sound: if your monitor supports DCC, MonitorControl is FOSS and allows direct control. Also, see below. capture sound: there's a flury of apps that allow you to do that, Rogue Amoeba has a couple that go from simple to very advanced audio routing. This audio routing also allows you to set the output volume (so, indirectly volume sent to a monitor) using the standard macOS controls. > And yeah PulseAudio is just so much better than everything macOS can offer. Someone has never dug into Audio Midi Setup, which can do a bunch of nice things already, including creating aggregated audio inputs and outputs.
    • GlassKingdom 5y ago
      Having to install an app to control volume does seem like something from the early 1990s (and I’m a mac guy).
      • lloeki 5y ago
        It's annoying that Apple doesn't implement DDC control alright (neither volume nor brightness). I'm just trying to be helpful and point to solutions that I use daily for these use cases, not making a case, barely pointing out that things claimed to be impossible are not (and not argumentatively, only because folks may stop at that and have to endure something when there are solutions that would fit their use case)
• elurg 5y ago
  I recently bought a laptop which came with Windows 10 preinstalled and I was shocked to find that not only does Ubuntu feel much faster but it has better support for Intel Xe graphics hardware. Windows frequently with 4K HDMI plugged in, the "System" process gets stuck at 10% and machine becomes unusable.
• palotasb 5y ago
  > Window snapping Not built-in, but the open source https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/ supports window snapping by mouse and via shortcuts.
  • freetime2 5y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion. This is one of the things that I find most annoying about MacOS. I had been using a paid closed-source plugin, but like the idea of switching to something open source.
  • swah 5y ago
    Rectangle Pro is even faster/nicer...
    • jason0597 5y ago
      But you have to pay for it...
      • lsajdn872he 5y ago
        Check out Tiles, it's free and works great. https://freemacsoft.net/tiles/ https://freemacsoft.net/tiles/
      • swah 5y ago
        Yes, but I'm very ok with one-time purchases like this if I can afford them.
• montebicyclelo 5y ago
  Valid points in the article. Slightly related: I feel it's worth spreading the word about yabai [1], a tiling window manager for MacOs. I've been using it for >1 year, to get an i3 like experience, and find that it makes using MacOs very pleasant. Issues in the article are somewhat addressed: > Focus Follow Mouse Can do this with yabai > Always on top windows Can do this with yabai > Window snapping Can do this with yabai The way I use it: I have 9 desktops, and can switch between them via the keyboard (ctrl+<desktop_number>). Can move apps from one desktop to another via keyboard commands. Apps are automatically resized to fit. Can move apps around on screen via keyboard commands. [1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai
  • ryukafalz 5y ago
    I’ve not used yabai as I now have the option of using Linux for work, but I’d tried several tiling WMs for macOS a few years back and none that I tried handled adding/removing displays well. When you plug in an external display, do windows move over to it? And if you change the resolution on one display when doing so, do the windows resize as they should? It seemed at the time like their reliance on macOS’s accessibility settings to manage windows made them fairly limited.
    • montebicyclelo 5y ago
      I use an external display, but with mirroring on, so I can't answer your questions from experience. Looks like there is some support for external displays: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/discussions/238#discussioncomment-193401 https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/discussions/238#discuss.... > reliance on macOS’s accessibility settings to manage windows made them fairly limited I think that yabai goes a bit deeper than other MacOs WMs; it gets you to disable (or partially disable) MacOs's system integrity protection, so it can use the OS window manager directly.
  • zoom_enh4nce 5y ago
    This was my thought. Yabai totally changed my setup for the better.
  • 5y ago
• GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I have to agree on San Francisco, it's not a great font. It looks good on "retina" screens but it appears like it was designed to be less than optimal on non-retina displays. I've always assumed they just introduced it to get people to buy new machines. But I really hated the lack of customisation, and also the way that they change stuff around all the time, screwing with my muscle memory. macOS in the Tiger days was pretty perfect for me, but since then things have gone downhill. Now virtual desktops are no longer possible in a grid but only a line, expose has been replaced with Mission Control that doesn't work as well. The overall design is worse and every release they lock more configuration files down. Try to change sshd_config so you can only authenticate with private keys, not passwords - a very sane configuration that is widely recommended. macOS will revert it with every update. Anyway in the end I just decided I was done with it. I still use it for work but at home I moved to FreeBSD with KDE.. I love its customisation options <3
• nyanpasu64 5y ago
  - Debug apps which don't opt into debugging, using gdb/lldb, without disabling SIP. It's my computer, I should be root, I should be able to introspect how processes execute on it. Not being able to do so prevented me from debugging https://github.com/samschott/maestral/issues/597 https://github.com/samschott/maestral/issues/597, since I had to disable SIP, which required rebooting, which stopped the bug from happening. - Edit $PATH for IDEs launched from the Mac GUI (to add MacPorts/Homebrew-installed Ninja to Qt Creator's binary search $PATH). ~/.profile isn't evaluated at login time (only in terminals), /etc/paths doesn't work (forgot if it affected terminals, definitely doesn't affect GUI apps), and `launchctl setenv PATH` didn't work in my testing. - Install libraries like SDL systemwide in paths searched by default by build systems and runtimes, like on Linux. MacPorts installs to /opt/local, Homebrew on M1 installs to /opt/homebrew, neither of which is searched by build systems. I might try setting up developer environments using Nix at some point, but I haven't learned how to use Nix/nix-darwin beyond editing the set of global apps.
  • Klonoar 5y ago
    >- Debug apps which don't opt into debugging, using gdb/lldb, without disabling SIP. It's my computer, I should be root, I should be able to introspect how processes execute on it. Not being able to do so prevented me from debugging https://github.com/samschott/maestral/issues/597 https://github.com/samschott/maestral/issues/597, since I had to disable SIP, which required rebooting, which stopped the bug from happening. Another option is to re-sign the application with the entitlements necessary for debugging. e.g: https://gist.github.com/talaviram/1f21e141a137744c89e81b58f73e23c3 https://gist.github.com/talaviram/1f21e141a137744c89e81b58f7...
• fractalb 5y ago
  I couldn't find a way to stop/pause in the middle of a big file download from iCloud drive. The only thing I could do was to disconnect the wifi.
• blfr 5y ago
  As a decade+ loyal Linux and Android user I gotta go with "you're using it wrong" on the MTP point. You really should buy (get from your employer) an iPhone. They actually work together pretty well and when they're not at least you will be yelling at whatever Finder/iTunes interface, not a wonky 3rd party software made by some innocent dev who doesn't deserve the bad karma.
  • z_zetetic_z 5y ago
    What if he doesn't want to? IPhones have some pretty terrible UI issues too.
  • DocTomoe 5y ago
    My Android phones have had dual SIM for years, so I only have to carry around one device to access both work and private phone functionality. That's why I declined the provided iPhone, which only would have had one SIM slot. Apparently now Apple has arrived in the year 2012 with their new models - but by now, why would I switch?
• jbverschoor 5y ago
  Sure I'll bite.. You're talking about Ubuntu, but can you do everything with Ubuntu running KDE or any other WM/DE? You probably mean GNOME or Unity. Didn't they abandon Unity? I dunno what's current, and frankly I don't care! > Resize the system font. I find the menu bar at the top too small. The only way to do this on MacOS is to lower the resolution of the entire screen! - Accessibility -> Display -> Menu bar size > Change the system font. I know you like Helvetica San Francisco - but I find it a bit too thin to read. - Seems like you have to change the resolution of your monitor if everything is too small. It won't impact the rest, as applications can still use the native resolution if needed. > Focus Follow Mouse. I have multiple screens and multiple windows. I want to be able to hover over a new one and start interacting with it without clicking. - Fair, although scrolling does work. It's just it won't transfer focus. > Change my mouse button order. On Linux, this is a complex command-line incantation. On MacOS it is impossible. I use a vertical mouse and use my thumb to click. RSI FTW! - Mouse -> Primary mouse button: left/right. Or use tools > Read files from MTP devices. If I stick a USB cable between my phone and Linux laptop, I can see the Android files on my laptop. I can open them, move them around, etc. On a Mac I need to install some shonky 3rd party software which rarely works. - On Android you can set the type of connection when you plug it in (debug/dev/files). I guess that all depends on which Android you have? > Always on top windows. Sometimes I want to keep the calculator on screen while I type an email. Is that too much to ask? - There are tools for that or you can script it. Applications that really need it usually have it built in. > No way to remove UI elements. I don't want a notification icon in the top right of my screen. I prefer having the clock on the left. Trivial in Linux, static in MacOS. - Correct > Window snapping. On Ubuntu, I drag a window to the side or to a corner, and it snaps into position. Vital when using multiple windows at once. On Mac there's a half-hearted splitscreen view which only supports horizontal splitting. Useless on a vertical monitor. - There are tools for this. But yeah the splitscreen really sucks. > See tooltips. I can't see them on Mac when I have a larger cursor. Weird! - You found a minor UI issue > Mount an SSH or NFS drive. In Ubuntu, I get a nice little GUI for picking network shares. Impossible on Mac. - Sure. There are tools for it, but there's also a connect window. Not as nice though. > Wobbly Windows! Seriously MacOS. Where's the fun? - I dunno.. The genie effect?
  • quibono 5y ago
• lloeki 5y ago
  > Resize the system font I thought Accessibility settings had that, but: > I find the menu bar at the top too small. So not system font, menu bar size relative to the rest. Accessibility settings>Display>Menu bar size>Large > Focus Follow Mouse There used to be this, not sure if it works still: defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -bool false Otherwise apps like AutoRaise can achieve that. > Change my mouse button order USB Overdrive is a crazy good piece of software allowing that and more like full tracking speed and acceleration control, for any USB or Bluetooth input device (keyboards, mice, gamepads) either globally, per device, and/or per app.
  • thanatos519 5y ago
    > defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -bool false I've heard that ffm is available on Terminal. Cute, but I need it for every window and between apps.
    • lloeki 5y ago
      https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise then, as mentioned before. Although what you can't do (I think) is having (input) focus on a non-raised window, because that would break the focused-app-is-active-app-hence-menubar (because keyboard shortcuts) model imposed by the window manager.
• z_zetetic_z 5y ago
  Disabling acceleration on scroll wheels of 3rd party mice - Nope. Can you stand scrolling 1 pixel, 1 pixel, 1 pixel, 1/3 the whole screen? I can't. Want to use a 15 year old DSLR as a webcam over USB? Nope. I sent the MBP back. No way I'm putting up with that crap!
  • threeseed 5y ago
    > Disabling acceleration on scroll wheels of 3rd party mice That's an issue with your mouse software. > Want to use a 15 year old DSLR as a webcam over USB OBS Studio can help or Elgato Cam Link if your DSLR supports HDMI.
    • ryukafalz 5y ago
      Also have the same problem and my mouse doesn’t have its own software, it’s just a standard USB mouse. So in a way, sure, it’s a problem with my mouse software. The stock one. :)
    • z_zetetic_z 5y ago
      Sounds like "You are holding it wrong" Err, what software? I can set scroll wheel acceleration on ubuntu, with no additional software. Using HDMI on my camera has a lower resolution output than USB, plus it has an overlay. Again on Ubuntu, USB just works.
• bodge5000 5y ago
  Seems like the obvious tradeoffs you'd expect, mostly lack of control/ability to change things, which I'd expect of MacOS. In return you get stability, Apples locked down approach means the OS is far more predictable. Linux in my view takes the reverse approach, you lose stability relative to MacOS in exchange for complete control. Historically Windows has sat somewhere in the middle, though in recent years with all the telemetry and bloat has made it a hard sell in any area other than legacy compatibility (which is a shame, because that middle option is desperately needed by a lot of people, but I dont think its as indestructible as Microsoft seems to think). Though I haven't used MacOS in a very long time so I could be wrong.
  • rich_sasha 5y ago
    My personal laptop is a mac os, and agree with some of the criticism. However, stability-wise, it has been rock-solid. I also manage my own Ubuntu desktop for work, and had to reinstall the system 3 times from scratch because it magically stopped working. In the end it turned out to be something with a new kernel, but it took me, dunno, 2 days to debug.
    • bodge5000 5y ago
      > However, stability-wise, it has been rock-solid. Oh sorry, might not have been very clear, thats what I meant. As I say I haven't used MacOS in a while, but in my eyes its always been the strongest choice in terms of stability, with the tradeoff being control and to an extent (depending on what your doing with it) compatibility. Windows seems to specialise in compatibility, Linux in control (I prefer saying that than customisation, which in my view makes light of it) and MacOS in stability.
    • somebehemoth 5y ago
      People that don’t know how to use and maintain Linux should not be the metric for Linux stability. Linux will let you shoot yourself in the foot. That is not a Linux problem, PEBKAC.
      • phist_mcgee 5y ago
• dilawar 5y ago
  > Read files from MTP devices > > If I stick a USB cable between my phone and Linux laptop, I can see the Android files on my laptop. I can open them, move them around, etc. On a Mac I need to install some shonky 3rd party software which rarely works. https://github.com/ganeshrvel/openmtp https://github.com/ganeshrvel/openmtp
  • vondro 5y ago
    Thanks for the tip. While the plugin from Google never failed for me during file transfer, it's incredibly limited! I was very surprised that that is absolutely NO macOS-Android compatibility out-of-the-box when I got a Mac recently.
  • Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
    Helpful tip for anyone with Android phone and macOS. I found that app will choke or crash if it is accessing folder with over 500+ photos. Create a new folder outside of that photo folder. Then use the Android file manager to transfer or copy the photos you want to the new folder. Connect it to macOS and you will be able to grab the photos from the phone to macOS without crashing.
• thenoblesunfish 5y ago
  Most of the criticisms here are about the fact that the UI is more customizable on Ubuntu - fair enough, but I can't help but feel that the implication is being made that this is better. I think it's pretty clear that macOS is trying to give you less options (there are, after all, lots of hidden options), but in a considered enough way that almost all users will be happy to have their lives simplified. I move back and forth between macOS and Ubuntu, and think the combination is wonderful. It keeps me honest in terms of which tools and workflows are actually portable, and makes me appreciate the things each system does better.
  • ProAm 5y ago
    A customizable UI is the first point of contact for usability and productivity. There isnt a reason to not provide these, stability is not an excuse especially when a lot of the answers in this thread are to install a 3rd party utility to accomplish them. Window tiling and mouse button customization are easy and safe.
    • Klonoar 5y ago
      I would argue that the massive company doing usability studies is the first point of contact for… usability. Most people legitimately do not give a single shit about changing this stuff themselves - hell, once they enter Chrome many seem seem to forget the rest of the OS even exists these days.
• sseagull 5y ago
  Since we are all airing grievances - how about the ability to set different scroll directions for the touchpad and a mouse. I dunno, I guess my brain is just wired differently from what apple expects.
  • _benj 5y ago
    It might or might not be what you are looking for but it’s possible to charge the scrolling direction on the trackpad preferences. It’s defaulted to “natural” something and it’s literally the first setting I change when I reinstall macOS
    • sseagull 5y ago
      Ah sorry, I wasn’t clear. Setting the scroll direction there also changes the direction of the scroll wheel on a mouse. I don’t have a mac near me but when I did, I could not get them set to be the way I wanted.
      • fretn 5y ago
        this tool might solve this problem: https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/ https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/
  • dsego 5y ago
    This is such a glaring omission, but I guess they don't sell a mouse with scroll-wheel so they don't care. Luckily there are a few 3rd party apps that sit in the menu bar, I'm using Scroll Reverser.
  • stewx 5y ago
    I agree with you 100%. This software accomplishes that: https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/ https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/
  • sofixa 5y ago
    And the worst is that there's a toggle for each one, which changes the other. Since i only occasionally use the touchpad, it took me a few back and forths to realise that's what's happening and that i didn't misremember fixing the setting.
• rrdharan 5y ago
  Does focus follows mouse actually work on Wayland? https://www.google.com/search?q=focus+follows+mouse+wayland https://www.google.com/search?q=focus+follows+mouse+wayland was inconclusive.
• derbOac 5y ago
  Image copy and paste; has been the most frustrating thing going from Linux to Mac: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253299890 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253299890
• yodelshady 5y ago
  > Read MTP devices > Mount an SSH or NFS drive I know fanboy debates are tiresome, but... I really do struggle to comprehend taking a device that can't do these things seriously as a computer. As a toy yes, or as a specialised tool for video or audio rendering, which... fair enough. But moving bytes is something any general purpose computing device should be good at. It's almost something you have to actively design out. It's certainly a deliberate, non-budget-constrained choice from Cupertino to be bad at this. Crap like "should Apple be [scanning for CSAM | scanning for copyright | scanning for anti-CCP | whatever I've almost stopped caring ] before uploading to iCloud?" exists primarily because the devices are so bad at moving bytes around without relying on iCloud.
  • martopix 5y ago
    You can use osxfuse to mount ssh filesystems on Mac.
    • danmur 5y ago
      > or require adding unsupported 3rd party software Not just unsupported, I think you need a kernel extension?
      • protomyth 5y ago
        No, heck, there are apps like Mountain Duck that do it fine. I should know, that's how we did share drives for offsite staff during Covid. There are plenty of free apps, I just went with a non-free option. Comparing a stock Mac OS to a Linux distribution with packages installed is pretty shady.
  • freedom2099 5y ago
    Actually it is very easy to mount nfs drive on Mac… i don’t see why the post author has problems! I do it daily…
  • petercooper 5y ago
    I'd not heard of MTP before, so looked it up: "MTP is part of the "Windows Media" framework and thus closely related to Windows Media Player." I wonder, can Windows natively work with APFS volumes..? I know with extra software it can, but then with extra software macOS can do all the things in the blog post too. There is at least one thing I can do on macOS though that I can't on Ubuntu: run the latest version of Photoshop in a stable manner.
• nobeh 5y ago
  The font configuration is a big surprise to me while I could find solutions or workarounds for other stuff. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31146370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31146370
• _8j50 5y ago
  Oh, there is a lot more you can't do on MacOS. Things I can do on MacOS: - Edit any document or video within minutues of installation - Use sed/awk/find/grep on any documents or text like with Ubuntu Linux desktop tries too much to be like macos making it even worse. Every time I have to remove avahi, cups and like 10 other things which breaks the whole damn thing and I have to figure out how to unbreak it then get rid of shitty networkmanager so I can write a systemd unit to get thr network to do what I want and avoid my dns resolvers being replaced and edit grub2 config at least 3 times to get it to actually take so the interface names are not e9xnfhsjfkszhfj02 but just eth0 and then spend half a day to get secure boot working. And then I have to find the apps I want to use and block a weekend aside to set them up. I use mac to just get things done, I use linux for control and to get them done the way I want.
  • recuter 5y ago
    > Use sed/awk/find/grep on any documents or text like with Ubuntu fd, rg, and vim work just fine on the Mac.. Bundled sed is the bsd variant, but you can bring whichever flavor of these you want, I'm very confused by your comment.
  • MarcellusDrum 5y ago
    > Linux desktop tries too much to be like macos I think using "Linux" here isn't accurate. ElementaryOS? Definitely. But default KDE Plasma for example does not attempt to look like MacOS at all, same as Cinnamon, which by default resembles Windows to an extent.
    • _8j50 5y ago
      I meant with services and philosophy not just and look and feel. You can make kde look like macos if you want as well for appearance.
  • viraptor 5y ago
    > Every time I have to remove avahi, cups and like 10 other things which breaks the whole damn thing I don't get it. You're removing services manually and complain it breaks your system. Why remove them then? (For extra irony, avahi is there to support Apple's Bonjour and cups belongs to Apple - I don't expect you're turning those off on your MacOs, right?)
• cosmiccatnap 5y ago
  It's interesting to me that these concerns are ancient it seems and yet apple has no interest in addressing them. They seems to have their own philosophy about what people use their OS for and it's sad because it drags down a good platform. Having switched to macOS for work like most people it feels like having the Ferrari of laptops but the Fischer Price of operating systems.
• cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  I'm not a MacOS user but I recall using early versions of OS X finder for connecting to SSH shares, like early 2000s. Did they remove this feature?
  • BruceEel 5y ago
    FTPS yes, no SFTP in macOS 11.6 as far as I can tell. It's possible to add it though, as 3rd party apps can 'hook' this feature.
• bitmuncher 5y ago
  You can change the menu bar size under "Accessibility -> Display" to "large". You should be able to mount a NFS share on login by mounting it, go to the login items settings of your user and add the mount there. For your mouse: Ask your vendor to provide a driver for macOS. This is a usual problem with a lot of hardware. A lot of vendors don't provide a driver for macOS.
• mistertester 5y ago
  Before using a Mac I was told how glorious it was and a feat of engineering. Reality is that the Mac and associated products are not as perfect as Apple fans make it out to be. The window manager on Mac makes me want to scream. Navigating the file system in Finder is not intuitive and don't get me started on the Magic Mouse and it's charging port...
  • gramie 5y ago
    I work on a Macbook, play games on a Windows machine, carry around a Chromebook, and use Linux in various places (web hosting, WSL, etc.). I agree that the Mac is a nice machine but not everything is intuitive. When I had a PowerMac, every time I needed to burn a CD/DVD I had to look up the steps. Dragging a window from one monitor to the other often doesn't display the window, and if a window is full-screen, Option-Tab won't bring any other windows on top of it. The hardware is nice, and generally high quality, but my battery started to bulge and the repair (replace keyboard and new batter) was over $500. I like it, but I wouldn't turn up my nose at alternatives. Since most of my job is typing, and web browsing, almost anything short of a Commodore VIC-20 would be fine.
  • aeyes 5y ago
    Some more that I find rather annoying: - Login screen sometimes has US keyboard layout even when the language selector shows otherwise. - "Installing apps" where you drag them on the applications folder and you get no progress for that copy operation anywhere. - Permission changes, for example for camera and microphone access, require application restarts. - Photos application unable to handle even a small amount of pictures copied from my phone, crashes or freezes your machine. - Thumbnail size in file selection dialogs and even directly in Finder is completely useless.
    • ubermonkey 5y ago
      '"Installing apps" where you drag them on the applications folder and you get no progress for that copy operation anywhere.' What apps do you install that take so long that a progress bar would be useful? "- Photos application unable to handle even a small amount of pictures copied from my phone, crashes or freezes your machine." I have thousands of pictures in Photos, and it has never once frozen or crashed. Are you doing something unusual? "- Thumbnail size in file selection dialogs and even directly in Finder is completely useless." This is adjustable.
• janandonly 5y ago
  Here I was, all this time, being happy and fully content with my MacBook Air. How silly of me, I should have been upset and angry, and I did not even know it...
• vondro 5y ago
  Apart from written in the article, my 2 cents: - cannot invert scrolling just for mouse (I use normal mouse with wheel, not apple mouse) -> I have an app for that - cannot connect Mac to a low dpi screen (like 1080p) without macOS looking like crap On the other hand, macOS can run MS Office, or professional video and photo editing apps, which Linux cannot do. Alternatives exist, but are IMO worse.
  • tgv 5y ago
    IIRC, there's a horrible work-around for the first item: hook up a magic mouse, invert the direction, and then plug in your mouse.
    • vondro 5y ago
      Since I don't have (nor plan to have) Magic mouse, that's kinda expensive solution :) I use this instead: https://github.com/pilotmoon/Scroll-Reverser https://github.com/pilotmoon/Scroll-Reverser and it works well. Generally my preferred settings is like this: natural scrolling (ie. the mac default) for trackpad, but inversed (ie. linux/windows default) scrolling for mouse.
    • zuhsetaqi 5y ago
      So if you connect a Magic Mouse and change the scrolling direction for the mouse it DOESN'T change the scrolling direction of the Trackpad?
• nottorp 5y ago
  I wonder if the OP has switched from Windows to Linux initially. And did he write a piece complaining that everything isn't exactly how they're used to then? A lot of "i'd switch but" articles - in all directions - basically come down to "the destination doesn't work how i'm used to". Even though they're fundamentally as crappy in the background. When someone asks me why I use Mac OS as my main desktop I answer "it's the least annoying". There is no "best OS" available now.
  • everdrive 5y ago
    Well said. This is always part of why everyone will have different favorites. Different OSes have different pain points, and not everyone is trying to accomplish the same things with their computers.
  • unicornfinder 5y ago
    I think you've hit the nail on the head. I'm happily using Windows now but used a Mac before and it took a long time for me to realise that my complaints about Windows largely boiled down to "it doesn't do things in the way that I'm used to". With that said, whilst I do like macOS overall I always found it infuriating how on macOS applications could steal focus. Something I do appreciate on Windows is that focus stealing by and large isn't a thing.
    • nottorp 5y ago
      > With that said, whilst I do like macOS overall I always found it infuriating how on macOS applications could steal focus. Something I do appreciate on Windows is that focus stealing by and large isn't a thing. Interesting... I think the last time I used Windows everyone and their extended family stole focus all the time. But then I moved to Linux as my main desktop OS in like 1998... and to Mac OS in 2013.
    • kergonath 5y ago
      > Something I do appreciate on Windows is that focus stealing by and large isn't a thing. Interesting. Focus stealing really is annoying, but from my experience Windows is not really better.
• freedom2099 5y ago
  This post feels more a rant of Linux user that doesn’t know how to do things on Mac… Most of his remarks are completely possible with Mac. All he needs is a third party app (sometimes not even… nfs mount works out of the box)
• danmur 5y ago
  So much angst in this thread! I'm going to bed.
• GlassKingdom 5y ago
  I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve been using Mac for years and still don’t know how to make an application fullscreen like Windows does. The green button hides the menu bar, and alt clicking the green buttom makes the app bigger but doesn’t fill the whole screen. Either I am stupid or Mac is bad at discoverability.
  • nadinengland 5y ago
    To make it maximise the area in your current mac Space (i.e. not go "full screen" in a new Space) you can go: Mac Menu -> Window -> Zoom. I just usually double click the App's window bar and it stretches the same way.
  • bejd 5y ago
    Option + double click on the corner of the window (where your mouse changes to the diagonal resize arrow). I switched from Win10 to macOS recently and had to search the web to find this, so discoverability is certainly an issue. I suppose Apple would rather you just fullscreen a window than maximise a la Windows.
  • dsego 5y ago
    You can set it to not hide the menu bar in fullscren mode. By default it will show up when you move the mouse near the top of the screen. https://osxdaily.com/2022/03/17/keep-menu-bar-visible-mac-full-screen/ https://osxdaily.com/2022/03/17/keep-menu-bar-visible-mac-fu... rectangleapp.com enables the classic fullscreen with ctrl+opt+enter (or via snap to top).
• sylens 5y ago
  I'm always amazed at how many little third party utilities or programs people recommend downloading or buying just to bring the desktop experience on macOS up to parity with Linux (or even Windows!). The lack of snapping/tiling at this point is just a deliberately malicious decision. I can't fathom why they will not implement some version of this better than that half-hearted split screen view that requires a separate virtual desktop.
  • chrisseaton 5y ago
    In return, I'm amazed that people don't just use the software as it's designed. Why do people want to tweak like this? Like he wants to move the clock. Oh my god just leave it where it is and get on with your job. Lack of customisability gives us more stable software. And he wants his windows to wobble? What on earth is the point of that?
    • sseagull 5y ago
      Because people have different needs, expectations, and preferences. It’s part of what makes humans interesting. Computers should be made to serve people, not the other way around.
      • chrisseaton 5y ago
        I don't know - I'm a big fan of sensible defaults, lack of customisation (so lack of entropy) and just getting on and using it as designed, rather than trying to bend it to be something else. I'm not sure there can really be any reasonable requirement to move the clock. I think that's just being fussy. For every wacky feature or option someone wants, that has to be built, maintained, tested. Every boolean option you add doubles the state space of the application!! Less is more. This blog post is a set of requirements for a Homer car, not a sensible professional tool.
        • wara23arish 5y ago
          You believe moving the clock is a wacky feature? You can already move the macOS dock, so its not like it’s unheard of in that world. Sensible defaults are great, but after spending most of your day glued to a screen, you start noticing little improvements to your workflow. e.g. i dont want to turn my head all the way to the right to look at the clock (using external monitors) Thats not a big change, but I believe the sum of all those little changes add up
• workerdrone451 5y ago
  I don't use a Mac often (mainly Linux), but I do troubleshoot my significant other's. I'll add on my gripes: - SMB shares are wonky and will randomly disconnect with vague errors. - A large USB drive formatted with NTFS can't be mounted as read/write natively, you have to pay for a third party tool for that. - Mac's built in gatekeeper software is inferior to Windows Defender. While there's less malware available, the ones out there can cause havoc and don't get caught. - lastly, Mac restore process is not as easy as Windows, you can reset a Windows PC in a few clicks. Mac your manually nuking volumes, which for a newbie isn't really friendly.
  • Macha 5y ago
    My experience with SMB shares is that pretty much any client works ok with Samba, but only Windows is really reliable connecting to Windows over SMB.
    • hguant 5y ago
      The protocols on the wire are different than what's documented especially for older SMB servers - Windows "released documentation" on some of the protocols because they were being reversed, but the docs are flakey or incomplete. The actual transfer operations are pretty straightforward, but the negotiation steps are _very_ intricate and the Microsoft docs about the protocols are less than honest at times.
  • ubermonkey 5y ago
    "lastly, Mac restore process is not as easy as Windows, you can reset a Windows PC in a few clicks. Mac your manually nuking volumes, which for a newbie isn't really friendly. " This is not true. Macs had an in-place reinstall before Windows did, IIRC. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904
• denysvitali 5y ago
  - Sort folders before files
  • pledg 5y ago
    In Finder? This is possible.
    • denysvitali 5y ago
      Uhm, you're right. I'm confusing the issue with something else then.
• spicymaki 5y ago
  This is why I have a Mac and Linux/Windows dual boot systems at home. I realized each one of these systems have differences that will never be resolved. I can have my cake and eat it too, each machine fit for purpose.
• jason0597 5y ago
  I want to ask a question in good faith to macOS users recommending people to download (and a lot of times pay for!) 3rd party tools to improve userspace functionality on macOS: Why is this the norm? Downloading a 3rd party tool is one thing (I wouldn't have a huge problem if it was open source), but a lot of times these tools are closed source and require you to pay out of pocket! This would never ever fly in the Linux community. How come this is commonly accepted and never challenged? (A controversial viewpoint I thought about is maybe that macOS users on average make more money than Linux users and hence never think about this, but I don't want to put it forward as the definitive answer) EDIT: Perfect example I thought of is my friend asking me for help on how to reconfigure deep click (or Force Touch as it's called) to open new tabs in his browser, and I had a look around and the recommended way is to pay for BetterTouchTool [1]. No free way to do this that I could find. [1]: https://folivora.ai/ https://folivora.ai/
  • Klonoar 5y ago
    Man, I’ll counter your counterpoint: people deserve to charge for their work/time/support. Why on earth would I have an issue with a dev charging a few bucks for an app that does what I want? This is very normal behavior and Linux is the oddball.
• jp0d 5y ago
  To each to their own. It's quite evident that the author simply dislikes MacOS. Many of these problems if these can be labelled as such, aren't really serious issues for the majority of users. And in some cases it seems that the author is used to other operating systems and hasn't spent enough time on MacOS or isn't inclined to learn the differences. > I know you're going to be tempted to reply with "you're using it wrong" - but I'm not. This is how I like to use my computer. This part of the closing statement simply baffles me. I use both Linux and a Mac and I like both. In fact MacOS has spoilt me in many ways and I get frustrated when things don't work as nicely on Linux. But I still like both.
• ricardobayes 5y ago
  Interestingly, changing the mouse buttons is a built-in feature of Windows. We can all shit on Windows but they are king of accessibility.
• Macha 5y ago
  Number 1 for me is definitely "Control which audio device an app is playing to, without that app having to implement an internal picker"
  • Joeri 5y ago
    Can’t you do this with audio hijack?
    • Macha 5y ago
      What's audio hijack? Under Linux with pipewire or pulse its just a dropdown next to the application name in your OS volume mixer
      • ezfe 5y ago
        That's still something you have to install, or is pipewire/pulse included by default? If you have to install then it's the same as installing something like Audio Hijack on Mac.
        • Macha 5y ago
          No, Pulseaudio has been the standard audio system on Linux for most of the last decade. Pipewire is the standard one on some more cutting edge distros (i.e. Fedora). If your Linux install comes with a GUI, it will have one or the other.
• ubermonkey 5y ago
  My god, this kind of shit is tiresome.
• viraptor 5y ago
  Let me add: Use scrolling to adjust the volume or other sliders. This is so useful in KDE, but you can't do it on MacOs
• jbylund 5y ago
  As a new mac user (~4 weeks with new employer) my biggest N are: 1) inability to ask the window manager "which workspace/desktop am I on" - it also seems like this ability has been progressively removed with newer versions (judging from stackoverflow/askdifferent questions) - after some hacking I've found a workaround for this 2) clicking on a browser notification just brings me to _any_ window of the browser, not the one that sent the notification! - if anyone knows how to fix this please help me out 3) there's a delay on toggling caps lock that you can't disable without installing some small third party utility! it just feels super rude that they're essentially telling me that I didn't mean to press caps lock
  • boringg 5y ago
    Am I the only one who actually finds more desktop a drawback then a benefit? I clearly haven't mastered multiple desktops -- do you split between projects and just leave it there always? I haven't figured out how to best optimize that which I feel I am leaving real value on the table.
    • MivLives 5y ago
      I tend to only use multiple desktops when I'm on a single screen or working on the laptop directly. In that case it's sorta a task thing, one desktop is chat clients (Slack and/or Discord), one is my editor, another is the browser, and a third is for terminals (for git etc). I use Rectangle to handle moving windows around.
    • jbylund 5y ago
      I have a browser profile per workspace and git/aws/maybe some other env vars that are set up on a per workspace basis. To switching from project 1 to project 2 or personal I just click on the appropriate desktops in the status bar. Which reminds me, another missing thing is the ability to have desktops displayed in the status bar and click on the one you want to jump to.
    • SuperCuber 5y ago
      I use i3 (tiling window manager) basically as a maximize-by-default: I have everything either maximized or split vertically once. When I use more windows than that, I typically spread them between workspaces.
• lnxg33k1 5y ago
  The thing is... that MacOS works for "techies" because of that, limits are lack of configuration possibilities and lack of configuration possibilities are seen as user friendly, Mac OS for me as a Gentoo User day-to-day who see macOs only on company hardware is a limit, but it works, you accept the limits and you move on with your work, no matter if you are in the share of people who are not helped by it I mean I don't think it's wrong or good, I think it's limited and has its share of market within people who don't want to waste time reading manuals of being involved in software or systems, what I find upsetting every now and then is those cool people coming around communities and say "Why Linux can't be MacOS?" I think each system has it's target, all of them cover different needs, I really don't understand who uses something and wants something else to become like the something they use and not use the somethign they already use .. I wish someone had an explanation for this humanity trait for me
• chad_strategic 5y ago
  "Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu", the author forgot to mention that you have to pay ($$) not to be able to do those things...
• pacifika 5y ago
  I double click on the title bar and macOS maximises it. Not sure if that’s a third party handling it?
• karaterobot 5y ago
  The thing that astonished me when I moved to MacOS was how many odd choices they made in Finder. For example: * Not being able to easily rename a series of files (i.e. with `tab`). * How it defaults to searching the entire computer rather than the current folder. * The unintuitive way that moving files works (i.e. you can't just cmd-x, cmd-v, like everywhere else, you have to copy it, then opt-cmd-v). I recognize that posting this invites someone to tell me I'm doin' it wrong, and there's actually a better way to do these things. I welcome that!
• subjectsigma 5y ago
  If these things are deal breakers for the author, fine, that's his/her decision and they can do what they want. If the author is arguing that these are deal breakers for the average person, they are ignorant or delusional.
• tristor 5y ago
  2 of these 3 things, I have done multiple times on a Mac. Mounting NFS is natively supported in macOS and has been for nearly a decade. Mounting SSH is supported by 3rd-party tools, yes, but they're the same cross-platform 3rd-party tool you'd use in Linux... sshfs, which is built on top of FUSE, which is something you can install on a Mac and is not installed by default in most Linux distributions (although fair enough it's installed by default on Ubuntu). The only thing I wasn't familiar with is MTP, which is apparently a Windows-specific protocol that Microsoft forced into the USB standard in later versions, and as far as I know across decades of using Linux, BSD, Windows, and macOS across multiple computers on the same network with shared peripherals I've never even used this protocol. What's the complaint again? OS choice is mostly a personal preference. As far as I am personally concerned, FreeBSD is the best OS possible to use, and macOS is second best. But I don't write blog posts telling people that their preference is incapable of doing things my preference is capable of doing, and if I were to do so, I'd at least do my research first to make sure it was correct.
  • paradox_sphere 5y ago
    I created an HN account just to second this comment. I still can’t understand the thought processes that goes into similar blogs that like to trash one OS for another or another. If you like something, awesome! But making something else look bad because you didn’t like it does not make your thing any better.
    • 9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
      The article uses the phrase “objective fact” in the introduction which, to me, is a huge red flag, and it ultimately served as an accurate predictor of what was to follow. There are plenty of things to criticize in macOS, but the complaints in this piece were inane, inaccurate or overwhelmingly nit-picky.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • rsync 5y ago
    " ... sshfs, which is built on top of FUSE, which is something you can install on a Mac ..." I've given a lot of thought to ssh/sftp mount points (for obvious reasons) and the standard recipe (and support answer) at rsync.net has been FUSE/sshfs. I've even written a handful of scripts and one-liners to support my personal use of sshfs on my own machines, etc. But lately ... I've just switched to using "Mountain Duck" which does everything I want and is quick and easy and slick and professional. I forget what the license cost is, but it's worth it. The "official" FUSE for OSX and sshfs packages were getting old and came from odd sources (sshfs for mac is from 2014) and I don't think you can 'brew install' them, etc. Mountain Duck.
• ralphc 5y ago
  I miss wobbly windows. It's not something I have on all the time but they're fun. They were all the rage back in the mid 2000's, especially on Knoppix but I don't see any tutorials for doing it in modern Linuxes. Can anyone point me to one?
• skykooler 5y ago
  > Wobbly windows I miss back when you could do this in Linux. Ever since GNOME 3, compiz has become a piece of software that integrates poorly with the rest of the desktop and causes screen taring or straight-up driver crashes if you enable wobbly windows.
• hit8run 5y ago
  Good luck doing iOS development on a Linux machine. The Mac is a polished system that also offers very good proprietary software that is hard to find on Linux. I also sometimes feel tempted to switch but the integration with my iPhone, iPad, appletv and all the software I bought established a very nice vendor lock. Also if I was to run Linux I seriously wouldn’t know what PC to buy that comes close to a MacBookPro or any other m1 machine (I’m open to proposals).
• mrob 5y ago
  Some others I've noticed after using MacOS briefly: Disable font anti-aliasing and enable full hinting (essential to get sharp fonts without needing a slower and more expensive 4K monitor) Disable vsync (necessary for reducing latency to the absolute minimum when you don't care about tearing; requires Xorg) Disable window decorations (for a pseudo-fullscreen mode that leaves the panel visible) Disable mouse acceleration Disable mouse wheel acceleration Change mouse polling rate Set keyboard auto-repeat to arbitrary values (I use 72Hz auto-repeat with 200ms delay) Remap colors for compatibility with display hardware with non-standard black/white levels (I have a DVI to VGA converter that expects TV black level but computer white level) Send arbitrary DDC commands to the monitor (e.g. to change brightness) Disable and enable the mouse in software (to prevent accidentally waking from power saving with mouse movements) Switch virtual desktops by moving the mouse to the corner of the screen and then moving the mouse wheel (corners have infinite size for the purposes of Fitt's law, and mouse wheel inputs should only change presentation of data not the data itself, which means there's no danger from missing the corner, so this is the best way of quickly switching desktops by mouse). Disable all UI animations
• timcavel 5y ago
• larrik 5y ago
  I switched from Linux Mint desktop to an M1 Air last year. Performance-wise, the M1 is very impressive, probably feels about 80% as fast as my 6 year old desktop (that sounds like snark, but it isn't). Meanwhile, the battery life is insane (I've never brought the charger anywhere but my desk, and will often use it for a week out and about). I opted for the Magic Keyboard and Magic Touchpad, because I had a lot of trouble with everything else. I could not get a mouse setup that worked (I'm strictly no acceleration, and macOS's acceleration was literally making my arm ache). I switched because I stopped being a fulltime developer, my main machine was getting old (6 years), and macOS has good MS Office support. Overall I'd say I'm about 70% efficient vs on Linux, a bit less so when in active development. The mobility makes up for it, and efficiency just isn't as important to my day-to-day for now. Many of my gripes are listed elsewhere, but things like middle-click paste is something that is easy to write off but was actually a gigantic part of my process. Also, the fact that everything I want to tweak requires buying an app? I had to pay for an app in order to properly emulate middle clicks on the touchpad! That's bonkers! I'll leave this final tidbit though: On Linux: * Open Spotify * Press play button on keyboard * Spotify plays On Mac: * Open Spotify * Press play button on keyboard * Apple Music opens ??????
  • weakfish 5y ago
    I recommend linear mouse for acceleration - free and can also modify scroll behavior
  • haneul 5y ago
    defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1 Works on my M1 Max well enough to be satisfied with my mouse in SC2.
    • larrik 5y ago
      This simply hasn't worked for me in years. Haven't tried in about a year, though.
      • ghosty141 5y ago
• kbutler 5y ago
  Site down? archive.org has: https://web.archive.org/web/20220426103006/https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/04/things-i-cant-do-on-macos-which-i-can-do-on-ubuntu/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220426103006/https://shkspr.mo...
• reacharavindh 5y ago
  Thanks for the list and your thoughts. Now I know I’m not giving up much from using a Mac with MacOS instead of a linux desktop distro. Because, I don’t have the needs that you have. I need a computer that works without too much fiddling required for 80% of the way. When I shut the laptop lid, it should sustainably go to sleep, and when I open it up, it should let me work from where I left off instantly. It may be possible to do this with some linux distributions, but then I would either have to know some black magic or give up something else like have a decent battery life. I love and use Linux for all things serious _on_ _servers_! Desktop Linux has been a democratic tragedy of the commons. Too many chefs in the kitchen comes up with a meal that has too many flavours in a single dish.
• davidfstr 5y ago
  Several of the missing capabilities mentioned here can be done with 3rd party tools. * BetterSnapTool for window snapping and maximization (although I prefer Moom for better control). * Afloat to force a particular window to always be on top. * TinkerTool to mess with various other settings. Sure, these may not be “built-in” as first party capabilities, but Apple has a history of slowly bringing such capabilities into the OS over time. Flux (for altering screen tint at night time) became standard. So did TextExpander (for auto-expanding abbreviations).
• GlenTheMachine 5y ago
  Sigh. Things I can do on macOS that I can't do on Ubuntu: - Buy a laptop, plug it in to my corporate network, and get to work in fifteen minutes. - Buy a laptop, hand it to a non-programmer, and rest easy knowing they will never ever ever need to open the terminal - use a CAC - get more than eight hours of battery life on a laptop
• rsync 5y ago
  I thought focusfollowsmouse was now available inside accessibility settings menu ? That is, without any third party additions, I was under the impression you could achieve FFM by enabling a very particular setting inside the accessibility menu in system settings. I can't test this because I don't have a modern enough OSX running in my office but I swear I saw this as of High Sierra or something. Am I making this up ?
  • Klonoar 5y ago
    Oh, wow. I thought I was going crazy but this comment makes me think maybe not. When I was skimming this thread last night I was positive this was an option at one point but when I went into System Preferences to look I could no longer find it. Was making me lose my mind. Or maybe we’re at a Berenstein/Berenstain situation here.
    • rsync 5y ago
      Well, again, I cannot look as I do not have any OSX running later than El Capitan ... but if anyone wants to poke around accessibility settings and look ...
      • ask_b123 5y ago
        I couldn't find the option but I did find out that I could right click by smiling, among other things. EDIT: Although I have to admit that I'm not sure what focus-follows-mouse means. Do the windows come to the foreground when hovering over then?
• spicybright 5y ago
  > Change my mouse button order Wow, this one actually surprised me quite a bit. Apple makes some of the best accessibility tools (imo), but I just did a dive in the settings and couldn't find anything! Alternatives have been mentioned here, but I use https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/ https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/ for stuff like this typically. It takes a bit of setup, but it's an extremely flexible and solid tool so far for me. It exposes a lot on a lower level which makes it feel more stable in general.
• natch 5y ago
  Things I can’t do on my Ubuntu machine: - play audio - record audio - anything that relies on the above The author mentioned a common retort which is “you’re doing it wrong”… well in my case I most definitely am doing it wrong. I don’t know how, exactly, but no doubt. But point is with macOS I can do nothing and it still just works. Who knows what I would have to do to get my Ubuntu machine to work. And it might be the machine, not the OS. Another reason bundling the machine and the OS together such that they just work is a good idea. I’ll take working audio over any of the author’s examples any day. And if your audio works on Ubuntu, great! That just doesn’t help me though. So Mac it is, as far as audio is concerned.
  • smoldesu 5y ago
    Pipewire has mostly fixed Linux audio, once it's fully adopted I expect these concerns to go away. I'll agree though, even as a Linux user: audio sucks. For the past 20 years there's been like 3 different audio standards, each with their own advantages/flaws and nobody settled on one that we'd just all use. That's why pipewire exists: you can now mix-and-match between all of these systems and get a CoreAudio-like experience out-of-the-box. It's very nice, and I can genuinely not think of a single use-case that couldn't be served by it. You wanna screenrecord while recording from YouTube into your DAW while playing a game and livestreaming it all at the same time? PipeWire has you covered. The real shame is window servers. Both xorg and Wayland are some of the worst software I've ever used, and neither of them even come close to Quartz on MacOS. It's the main thing that keeps Linux feeling like a server OS running desktop software; neither of these solutions are complete or stable. There's no replacement for them either, Wayland took more than 10 years to build and it's still awful and works on a small handful of software. Desktop Linux will always be a niche experience. As someone who fits into that niche, I absolutely love it, but I'm not mad or confused when people say they simply don't like it; I get it, I really do.
• divan 5y ago
  I switched from Linux to MacOS around 14 years ago. With Linux it's not only that I could change everything (system font, acceleration of the mouse pointer etc), but I literally HAD to do it. First days after buying new laptop and installing Linux I had to spend of configuring everything – from mouse pointers to Google calendar integration, often with obscure command line or config setups. That was fun. Until I bought first Macbook Air and discovered that I don't need to reconfigure everything anymore. Touchpad had just perfect speed/acceleration of the pointer. Mail/calendar/contacts was syncing out of the box. Fonts were awesome. Screens and external montiors just worked. Wifi just worked. Hybernation/sleep just worked. So this is true on Linux you can configure way more than on MacOS. But the reason behind it is what keeping me with Macbooks all these years.
  • spacexsucks 5y ago
    14 years? I tried cars in 1950 thy were hand crank drove like boats. Imgave up on cars.
  • kcplate 5y ago
    Similar experience here. My macos (actually pretty much all my apple devices just work). Could it be better? Sure, in some cases…but does it work well enough…definitely. I watch other folks spend hours and days tweaking up a new machine. For me, I could swap out my Mac in less than an hour and likely have an identical user experience. That to me has more value than hyper levels of control.
  • zdragnar 5y ago
    The last 14 years have seen a lot of changes to linux desktops and window managers. There are several high quality options that require very little to no configuration to have a pleasant experience. Hardware wise, things are a bit mixed. I'm writing this from an LG gram that runs perfectly out of the box- screen, wifi, sleep, everything Just Works. The battery life is fantastic. The only real configuration that I've done is the same configuration I would do on a mac anyway via karabiner / hammerspoon.
    • xtracto 5y ago
• kcplate 5y ago
  The nice thing about this post is that it seemed to stay away from the standard “Macs suck because they don’t do this…” start a flame war vibe that a lot of these types of commentary’s delve into. The author specifically said: > This is how I like to use my computer. And it is clear that the MacBook isn't my computer - it is Apple's. For me its the old adage - I can hammer a nail into a piece of wood with a screwdriver, but a hammer might do the job a lot better. If your company is providing you a screwdriver to use as a hammer, thats a problem. I kind of wish tech would operate more like the trades—where the tradespeople provide/manage their own toolbox and tools. BYOD has its benefits. Its unfortunately that a lot of companies tend to disallow it.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• caycep 5y ago
  the thing about ubuntu desktop.... it arguably runs the best on VMWare Fusion
• krnlpnc 5y ago
  Things I can't do on Ubuntu which I can do on macOS: Close lid to suspend
• robotburrito 5y ago
  For me I love GNU/Linux, but it seems I miss the things my Mac has when I'm on it, and when I'm on my Mac I miss some of the things my GNU/Linux box can do. Once mobile comes into play, it's literally not even a contest anymore, I gave up on trying to have a mobile experience as good as Mac.
• xrd 5y ago
  One thing I cannot live without is the ease at which you can setup network interfaces on Linux. For example, with docker compose I can add this snippet: networks: vpcbr: driver: bridge ipam: config: - subnet: 10.20.0.0/16 gateway: 10.20.0.1 And, then each service can use something like this: networks: vpcbr: ipv4_address: 10.20.0.6 docker-compose up creates the network, and I can seamlessly access my services by a private IP address VPC. It's so powerful for testing real-world services where you need to have cookies created on the right IP address that is a different one from the auth server, etc. With OSX I have to use things like 127.0.0.1 and 127.0.0.2, but my docker compose file isn't aware of it, and it is very hacky. Linux networking supporting is phenomenal and so flexible.
• Hnrobert42 5y ago
  The article and this discussion are reasonable and interesting, but the whole thing feels as absurd as: Things I can’t do with my luxury sedan that I can do with my old pickup truck.
• rubinlinux 5y ago
  I got introduced to focus-follows-mouse mode when it was the default on some X11 unix system I used years ago. I have been using linux as a workstation for decades with this feature, and loosing it is the biggest barrier to my using a Mac or Windows machine for anything serious. (For a few years you could feasibly enable this in windows, but it doesn't work well enough to use anymore.) It saddens me that there are so many cases where the 'better' way to do things gets lost in the noise of the beginner-friendly masses, and can't be standard because people aren't used to it. Another example of this is electric vehicles and one-pedal driving. Only a few EVs (BMW i3, for example) allow you to mainly drive with the accelerator, where releasing it slows the car to a stop, without use of brakes. A lot of our electronics suffer from this too. You notice it sometimes if you compare electronics sold in Japan to those sold in the US. The market here is seen to not support 'too many' buttons and features so we get a dumbed down version.
  • recursive 5y ago
    > You notice it sometimes if you compare electronics sold in Japan to those sold in the US. The market here is seen to not support 'too many' buttons and features so we get a dumbed down version. I'm assuming "here" is USA. I don't know much about what's sold in Japan, but I feel like most gadgets still have way too many buttons. I'd wager that most microwave users don't know what most of the buttons on a microwave do. I certainly don't. I'd love to get one with a more streamlined UI, but they're hard to find. Remote controls are similar. I'm kind of scared to imagine what a Japanese microwave might look like.
  • digisign 5y ago
    I use a thing called AutoRaise on the work Mac, seems to work well with barrier (synergy).
• JoeJonathan 5y ago
  These threads are so boring.
• asmr 5y ago
  Using macOS is for a certain kind of experience. it's like fast food, they want basically every use to have the same experience indeterminate of skill level. also, cyberduck is pretty amazing for ftp/sshfs and so on.
• digisign 5y ago
  How about, turn off the icloud and telemetry daemons I don't want?! Can't be done, boot volume is read-only! Little snitch is a thing thankfully, but it is still nagging me for $49 dollars and will probably have to give them my PII to pay for it.
• st3fan 5y ago
  I think a "Things I can't do on Ubuntu which I can do on macOS" article would also be fun.
• mmcnl 5y ago
  Window management in macOS is from the stone ages. Maximizing has unpredictable behavior. Windows sometime fill the screen, sometimes not. Window snapping is absent. It works so frictionless in both Windows and Gnome: just drag the window to the left or right, and it automatically snaps with a satisfying animation. I don't get it, this is basic stuff. Not advanced stuff.
• pleb_nz 5y ago
  I recently went from fedora to Mac and as much as I am happy with hardware, and Im ok with macOS, I really do miss the Linux environment and the workflows. Maybe I need to give macOS more time, but to me, it doesn't feel as easy to navigate and configure.
• flaxton 5y ago
  I've been using Linux for more than 20 years. For many years it was my primary computer platform, until I moved to the Mac. I recently put the latest Ubuntu LTS Linux on a spare laptop, as I needed a laptop. Sure, it was fun configuring everything for a day or so. But then it started to grind me down, as Linux always seem to do (for a personal computer - it's fantastic on servers). Then I had a new, big project come in and bought a new MacBook Pro 13" with the M1 chip. Wow. I have never had a computer anywhere near as nice as this. Very fast. Light. Days of battery. Screen is fantastic. Best keyboard I've ever used. Best trackpad I've ever used by far. Never gets hot, barely warm, fan rarely comes on. I can do things like extend my screen to my iPad Pro 12.9" OR use Universal Control to control both from either keyboard/mouse/trackpad. It has the Touchpad, which I'm undecided about but mostly like. I work on Linux servers all the time, and the free/open source iTerm2 is a really really good terminal app. It's BSD Unix under the hood, so most Linux commands also work here, and there's Homebrew to install whatever you like. And the productivity apps are fantastic, many of which only exist on the Apple platforms, like Omnifocus. So yes, I like Linux, but I'm so much more productive using a Mac these days. So I don't really get where the OP is coming from. Like window tracking - yes, I've used that on Linux but I actually find it equally annoying. If it's on, I don't like it. If it's off, I sometimes miss it ;-)