6 ms·

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 l

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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
    If it's not working, you're obviously using it wrong.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- sircastor 4y ago
  I've had work machines running stock Ubuntu, getting Canonical recommended updates totally fail to boot. Cue a day or so of trying to read instructions on my phone on how to roll-back the kernel, or simply reinstall Ubuntu over the existing installation so I could just get back to work. It's the reason I didn't move to Linux at home when Mac laptops were getting so awful a few years ago.
- marlowe221 4y ago
  I don't know what I have to do to get the sublime desktop experience that macOS is famous for... My work-issued Macbook Pro regularly forgets which monitor (my external monitor or the built-in display) is the primary monitor and moves the dock and task bar between them seemingly at random. My mouse sensitivity is cranked all the way up but my mouse still feels like it's mired in tar compared to my Windows and Linux machines. The dock is always in the way. I can hide it when a window approaches/overlaps it, but it often takes multiple swipes with the mouse to get it to reappear. Completely removing the dock (which would be my preference) does not seem to be an option. I was able to move it to the left side of the screen, which is better - why take up so much valuable vertical screen real estate with a top bar and a dock on the bottom??? So... I don't know. I'm not seeing it personally. For me Gnome, KDE, Windows 10, and Windows all provide a better GUI desktop experience than macOS.
  - Klonoar 4y ago
    If you want to “get rid” of the dock, there’s an unconventional trick for this I use: you can set a much longer hover timer via defaults in terminal. I set mine to around 40 seconds. I haven’t seen my dock a year or so. Note I’ve not jumped to Monterey yet so this is untested there.
  - skydhash 4y ago
    > but my mouse still feels like it's mired in tar I think you need to increase the tracking speed in "Mouse" preferences. Mine is about 75% and I can move across a 1440px screen with just a small flick.
  - adamomada 4y ago
    The three finger swipe up (“mission control”) reveals the hidden dock if you need to see it or use it
danmur 4y ago
I must not be taxing my Linux computers enough :)
epapsiou 4y ago
Stability ???? Ubuntu is far more stable. Have never had issues wrt stability. I have had issues with support as in some software do not work on linux (Turbo Tax , Games etc) but never in stability. Have been using linux desktops since 2010
- baby 4y ago
  Just had a coworker who had to wipe out his laptop to upgrade ubuntu version. Literally never happened to me on mac
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    I haven't used Windows since 2005, so my opinion might be unwarranted, but I've been upgrading my home Linux distro since sometime before 2010 without a clean wipe. During that time I've heard of so many Windows "fix it by reinstalling" stories that I wonder if that is simply the default first step in Windows troubleshooting. After turning it off and back on, of course.
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      To be fair. There’s a bunch of issues around upgrading to 22.04 because of snaps…
      - dotancohen 4y ago
        Terrific, thank you. That is to be the project this coming weekend, though I wasn't expecting problems.
  - dosethree 4y ago
    in the old days I would format before upgrading osx. if you use a bunch of developer tools, they would often break with osx versions. remember macports? wiping every year or so isn’t a big deal when everything is in the cloud. haven’t needed to in years, though
  - aulin 4y ago
baby 4y ago
And airdrop. I could never live without airdrop again. It’s really annoying actually as I want to try the folding phones from samsung but they don’t have airdrop…
- dotancohen 4y ago
  I'm not familiar with AirDrop, but KDE Connect can easily send files between the desktop and and Android phone.
jason0597 4y ago
> In return you get stability Does that imply that Linux is not stable? I've had my Arch installation for a full year and it has never broken down on me. No package has ever broken, and updates are always smooth thanks to pacman. Meanwhile, I can recall a handful of instances where bugs slipped into the macOS userspace in the last year (and made it to the front page of Hacker News)
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > Does that imply that Linux is not stable? I think I've almost never seen someone connect to a projector from Linux without some kind of glitch along the way.
  - ars 4y ago
    I have to reboot my Mac machine every couple days because it forgets that the external monitor exists if you disconnect it and try to reconnect it. My Linux machine on the other hand has never even once done that.
- brimble 4y ago
  > Does that imply that Linux is not stable? The desktop environment is not, no. Various applications one is likely to run on it are not, compared to some closed-source alternatives, including those provided on macOS. Heavy Linux on the Desktop user for about 10 years, here (~2001-2011). I still try it periodically. I see a lot more bad glitches, X/Wayland crashes (may as well be a whole system crash, on a desktop), and application crashes, on Linux than elsewhere. I find it's most stable when I build up from something minimal and hand-configure everything, but I just don't have time for that anymore, and stopped finding it entertaining years ago.
  - silon42 4y ago
    Personally, I'd have to spend as much or more time tweaking the mac (finding helper apps) to work the way I want (starting with Ctrl/Alt swap, and then reconfiguring the broken apps).
- 4y ago
tobbe2064 4y ago
I am currently using M1 at work and it sucks Ass. The two main painpoints are the unpredicble window manager and the keyboard layout. WM: 1. There is no deterministict layouts available 2. You can not tab between windows of the same application, (problematic if you use multiple chrome profiles) 3. Switching to a window USUALLY opens the wrong one. In my case, I somehow always endup in VS Code when tabbing to Teams 4. Switching between workspaces (or maximized windows if) sometimes causes the computer to hang. The second painpoint is the keyboard layout, which also sucks ass; 1. ~|"@, are all in the wrong places. 2. Some idiot decided to prioritice control keys ahead of functions keys, so I have to press fn to use standard debugging keys. My i3/arch setup is far more reliable and ergonomic.
- bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
  Point 2 is handled with cmd` (backtick). The fn keys thing is a setting

rich_sasha 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
  If it's not working, you're obviously using it wrong.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
sircastor 4y ago
I've had work machines running stock Ubuntu, getting Canonical recommended updates totally fail to boot. Cue a day or so of trying to read instructions on my phone on how to roll-back the kernel, or simply reinstall Ubuntu over the existing installation so I could just get back to work. It's the reason I didn't move to Linux at home when Mac laptops were getting so awful a few years ago.
marlowe221 4y ago
I don't know what I have to do to get the sublime desktop experience that macOS is famous for... My work-issued Macbook Pro regularly forgets which monitor (my external monitor or the built-in display) is the primary monitor and moves the dock and task bar between them seemingly at random. My mouse sensitivity is cranked all the way up but my mouse still feels like it's mired in tar compared to my Windows and Linux machines. The dock is always in the way. I can hide it when a window approaches/overlaps it, but it often takes multiple swipes with the mouse to get it to reappear. Completely removing the dock (which would be my preference) does not seem to be an option. I was able to move it to the left side of the screen, which is better - why take up so much valuable vertical screen real estate with a top bar and a dock on the bottom??? So... I don't know. I'm not seeing it personally. For me Gnome, KDE, Windows 10, and Windows all provide a better GUI desktop experience than macOS.
- Klonoar 4y ago
  If you want to “get rid” of the dock, there’s an unconventional trick for this I use: you can set a much longer hover timer via defaults in terminal. I set mine to around 40 seconds. I haven’t seen my dock a year or so. Note I’ve not jumped to Monterey yet so this is untested there.
- skydhash 4y ago
  > but my mouse still feels like it's mired in tar I think you need to increase the tracking speed in "Mouse" preferences. Mine is about 75% and I can move across a 1440px screen with just a small flick.
- adamomada 4y ago
  The three finger swipe up (“mission control”) reveals the hidden dock if you need to see it or use it

danmur 4y ago

I must not be taxing my Linux computers enough :)

epapsiou 4y ago

Stability ???? Ubuntu is far more stable. Have never had issues wrt stability. I have had issues with support as in some software do not work on linux (Turbo Tax , Games etc) but never in stability. Have been using linux desktops since 2010

baby 4y ago
Just had a coworker who had to wipe out his laptop to upgrade ubuntu version. Literally never happened to me on mac
- dotancohen 4y ago
  I haven't used Windows since 2005, so my opinion might be unwarranted, but I've been upgrading my home Linux distro since sometime before 2010 without a clean wipe. During that time I've heard of so many Windows "fix it by reinstalling" stories that I wonder if that is simply the default first step in Windows troubleshooting. After turning it off and back on, of course.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    To be fair. There’s a bunch of issues around upgrading to 22.04 because of snaps…
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      Terrific, thank you. That is to be the project this coming weekend, though I wasn't expecting problems.
- dosethree 4y ago
  in the old days I would format before upgrading osx. if you use a bunch of developer tools, they would often break with osx versions. remember macports? wiping every year or so isn’t a big deal when everything is in the cloud. haven’t needed to in years, though
- aulin 4y ago

baby 4y ago

And airdrop. I could never live without airdrop again. It’s really annoying actually as I want to try the folding phones from samsung but they don’t have airdrop…

dotancohen 4y ago
I'm not familiar with AirDrop, but KDE Connect can easily send files between the desktop and and Android phone.

jason0597 4y ago

> In return you get stability Does that imply that Linux is not stable? I've had my Arch installation for a full year and it has never broken down on me. No package has ever broken, and updates are always smooth thanks to pacman. Meanwhile, I can recall a handful of instances where bugs slipped into the macOS userspace in the last year (and made it to the front page of Hacker News)

chrisseaton 4y ago
> Does that imply that Linux is not stable? I think I've almost never seen someone connect to a projector from Linux without some kind of glitch along the way.
- ars 4y ago
  I have to reboot my Mac machine every couple days because it forgets that the external monitor exists if you disconnect it and try to reconnect it. My Linux machine on the other hand has never even once done that.
brimble 4y ago
> Does that imply that Linux is not stable? The desktop environment is not, no. Various applications one is likely to run on it are not, compared to some closed-source alternatives, including those provided on macOS. Heavy Linux on the Desktop user for about 10 years, here (~2001-2011). I still try it periodically. I see a lot more bad glitches, X/Wayland crashes (may as well be a whole system crash, on a desktop), and application crashes, on Linux than elsewhere. I find it's most stable when I build up from something minimal and hand-configure everything, but I just don't have time for that anymore, and stopped finding it entertaining years ago.
- silon42 4y ago
  Personally, I'd have to spend as much or more time tweaking the mac (finding helper apps) to work the way I want (starting with Ctrl/Alt swap, and then reconfiguring the broken apps).
4y ago

tobbe2064 4y ago

I am currently using M1 at work and it sucks Ass. The two main painpoints are the unpredicble window manager and the keyboard layout. WM: 1. There is no deterministict layouts available 2. You can not tab between windows of the same application, (problematic if you use multiple chrome profiles) 3. Switching to a window USUALLY opens the wrong one. In my case, I somehow always endup in VS Code when tabbing to Teams 4. Switching between workspaces (or maximized windows if) sometimes causes the computer to hang. The second painpoint is the keyboard layout, which also sucks ass; 1. ~|"@, are all in the wrong places. 2. Some idiot decided to prioritice control keys ahead of functions keys, so I have to press fn to use standard debugging keys. My i3/arch setup is far more reliable and ergonomic.

bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
Point 2 is handled with cmd` (backtick). The fn keys thing is a setting