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Jobs was against dogma. It’s a changing world and the perspective and input of the young is valuable. What exactly are you moving on to? Ubuntu? Windows? Behi

Jobs was against dogma. It’s a changing world and the perspective and input of the young is valuable. What exactly are you moving on to? Ubuntu? Windows? Behind macOS is the most valuable company in the world adding fixes, features and security patches. There isn’t any other computing solution today that can deliver what Apple does.

mfcl 4y ago
I don't use a single Apple product. What am I missing?
- what-imright 4y ago
  e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. but hey I’m jealous because you have so many pleasurable experiences to come. I suggest jumping in and buying the new iPhone 14. Go all in get the Pro Max. You’ll get a massive return on the investment. I’m a tech junkie, I’ve had it all. Doesn’t get better than Apple
  - inb4_cancelled 4y ago
    You didn't really answer the question.
    - what-imright 4y ago
      I did you just didn’t like the answer.
      - Bud 4y ago
        No, you failed to answer, then doubled down and hoped nobody would notice. We noticed.
        what-imright 4y ago
        my answer was everything - you miss the entire computing experience if you use windows or linux on desktop today or android on mobile. In 2022, if you aren’t using Apple you’re in the red. You might as well not have bothered. Windows is worse than nothing. Android is worse than nothing. Linux is awesome for servers, but the desktop experience isn’t quite there. I’ve used all the platforms. Windows and android are incompetent, poorly designed, serve the user LAST, poorly updated, insecure, spying on you, and annoying AF to use. Worse than nothing. Worse than no computer or phone at all.
        zeppelin101 4y ago
        Have you ever heard of something called "hyperbole"?
        what-imright 4y ago
        Just trying to help really. Using the wrong products has done a great deal of damage to me. Using windows instead of a nix back in the day blocked my progress. Android shares a number of windows like traits. Being a commercial imitation of an Apple product for instance. Or serving the user last. Or just being crap software full of bugs. If you can't listen, your punishment is to keep using imitation product. Harsh. But it is what it is.
        zeppelin101 4y ago
        For the record, I'm very familiar with most of the OSs you mentioned: Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Android (on a variety of devices). And I think the only fair statement is that they each have unique strengths and weaknesses. You can worship MacOS to high heavens, but it is also lacking in many ways and owning a MacBook comes with numerous downsides (as well as upsides), compared to a Windows laptop. The only OS I don't have much experience with is iOS. I've stayed with Android the whole time - largely with Samsung. A high end Samsung phone is an absolute powerhouse, while also looking pretty sleek, if I may say so. I personally think that iOS and iPhones are quite limiting in certain ways. But I would never knock on someone for using iOS. The OS and the phone look very nice and trendy, the whole experience is very well optimized and, at least in the U.S., you'll get certain social perks by having one. Even for older folks, it could be a great choice, because their grandkids will be able to fix most problems that could arise in their phones. Let me revisit a prior point about iPhones - they're not very customizable. On my Samsung, I have a number of customizations: a custom "launcher" ("Nova"), which enables me to tweak things like icon sizes, density, and many many other things (my favorite feature is to use a custom icon set). I could easily keep naming countless other aspects that Android allows me to customize, even if I only customize a few of them. The default experience of a Samsung phone is quite solid, other than maybe having a few too many Samsung-specific apps pre-installed (though at least I never buy through a carrier, so I don't have to worry about any of that bloat). But it's very trivial to nerf them by disabling them or even simply uninstalling them using "pm-uninstall" through ADB. For me, it takes maybe 20 minutes total to apply various tweaks I like to a brand new phone. I have them all written down neatly and they haven't changed much for a while, so applying those customizations is not bother for me at all. But for others? It would be an unimaginable punishment. Many people prefer to buy an iPhone not only for all the benefits I listed out earlier, but also because it is more restrictive. Because of this, you don't have to deal with any of the 'pain' of trying to decide what should be customized and whether you should do so in the first place. But would I judge anyone for taking either route: 1) a Samsung that you customize to a reasonable extent - without rooting or unlocking the bootloader - vs 2) an iPhone that is effectively at stock settings, other than the apps you've downloaded? No, I absolutely would not. Which brings me to my last point.. I think we live in amazing times in terms of technology (aside from the obvious issues related to privacy and social media, which are discussed at great lengths here and elsewhere). We have many choices in terms of hardware and software and our devices can do things we could hardly fathom a few decades ago. I rather arbitrarily chose to focus on smart phones in my rant, but I could have easily discussed laptops, desktops, servers, or some other type of device to make the same point. So I say, "Live and let live."
  - donedealomg 4y ago
  - ehvatum 4y ago
    What are the three things you like most about Mac OS?
- echelon 4y ago
  Remember 2000-2005 Microsoft that tried to lock you into Internet Explorer and was deeply into this thing called "trusted computing"? That's what you're missing. You're required to sign in for updates so they can track you. No software patches without monitoring, I guess. No way to remove iTunes or stop Safari from trying to take over again and again. Even if you don't want music to open that way. Steve Balmer would be proud. Remember 2005-8 when you tried Ubuntu for the first time and were wowed with Compiz Fusion compared to the drab Windows XP/Vista/etc window management? That's the feeling you get every time you step away from MacOs finder and the atrocious Mac window manager. You shouldn't need a 3rd party plugin to manage window placement. It shouldn't be difficult to navigate to a directory via a path or run a program or have the file browser automatically resize its icon view. But that's Mac.
  - kogepathic 4y ago
    > Also you're required to sign in for updates so they can track you. No software patches without monitoring. This hasn't been my experience. macOS still incessantly bothers you about OS updates even if you decline signing into an Apple account during first-boot, and you can download major release updaters independently from the Mac Store (e.g. using the script from OSX-KVM). [1] https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM
  - astrange 4y ago
    Since iTunes doesn’t exist anymore, I guess there’s no way to not remove iTunes.
  - gcanyon 4y ago
    > It shouldn't be difficult to navigate to a directory via a path Command-Shift-G my friend. > or run a program Spotlight? (Command-space) Or Mission Control? (Control-space for me, but I think I customized that) > have the file browser automatically resize its icon view You want a window to automatically make the icons bigger if you resize the window to be bigger? No idea how to make that happen.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    > You shouldn't need a 3rd party plugin to manage window placement. If it’s a feature you want, and there are multiple ways of handling it, why not go with a third party app with a windows placement scheme that works for you? I do. >It shouldn't be difficult to navigate to a directory via a path or run a program It’s not. I bet I can run any program on my Mac in 6 keystrokes or less. I easily navigate via paths. >have the file browser automatically resize its icon view. Personally this sounds like an extreme edge case preference to me. I would hate this behavior
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  nothing. you're probably saving a lot of money, something objectively true. fwiw safari is the no 1 worst browser i have ever used, as a developer. it's hot garbage. not the renderer, the browser itself and its dev tools. plus you need an apple account and a 10 trillion gb xcode install just to port your chrome extension to safari, what a joke. and every couple of years apple decides to drop backwards compatibility for X number of products/services you've been happily using because they need to sell new machines or something.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Yes, Safari is piss-poor for 2022.
    - ricardobayes 4y ago
      Seriously, how hard is it to implement look-behind regexes? If you have even one in your code, the page will crash in Safari. https://caniuse.com/js-regexp-lookbehind https://caniuse.com/js-regexp-lookbehind
1-6 4y ago
That’s the problem with the current state of their OS, it attempts to do too many things without regard to simplicity. I could name a few things MacOS could do without.
runjake 4y ago
I agree with everything you say. I cling to macOS while trying to migrate back to Linux. To Pop!_OS or some other suitable Linux, but for the past couple years it’s been Pop.
linguae 4y ago
I moved on to Windows 10 and FreeBSD after many years on the Mac (I refused to upgrade my Macs beyond Mojave), but this is an interim solution for me since neither Windows 10 nor existing FOSS desktops match even Mac OS X Tiger when it comes to the user experience. My long-term solution is building my own desktop environment that is inspired by the classic Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, but also takes ideas from OpenDoc, Smalltalk environments, the Symbolics Genera Lisp machine OS, and Plan 9 (itself influenced by Project Oberon when it comes to the GUI) to form an environment that encourages flexible, programmable tools built from smaller components but can be arranged to create complete software solutions, kind of like how a painter arranges colors and tools. Unfortunately I’m still early in the design phase and I have no code to share, and this is also a side project since I work full-time as a researcher and thus I can’t devote my full time to this, but I hope that by 2024 I’ll have an early version working and released. I am inspired by the vision of personal computing pioneers like Alan Kay, and I hate to see personal computing being transformed from user empowerment to platforms for selling services and serving ads to a captive audience.
- lrem 4y ago
  I've also moved on... But unless someone out there gets their hands on a CPU comparable with M2, what would be the point of not upgrading back to a Mac? It's not like Windows is a significantly better experience (gee, the menu item search is such an obvious and necessary thing, is that covered by a valid patent?!)
- chongli 4y ago
  That sounds amazing! Can you build it on top of Linux so I can run it on Asahi Linux on a MacBook? I refuse to use a laptop that isn’t running an Apple M-series chip now. Intel/AMD have a long, long way to go to catch up and they don’t seem to have any interest in doing so.
- ericd 4y ago
  That sounds amazing, please do a show hn when you decide to release it, I’d love to use something that’s closer to classic Mac OS HIG.
- 4y ago
kitsunesoba 4y ago
I can't see Linux (or other GNU-desktop-nixlike) becoming a full-time macOS replacement for me because no DE works the way I'd like it to. You've got KDE (Windowslike), GNOME (what if iPadOS were adapted into a desktop OS), XFCE (middle ground between Windows and Classic Mac OS), and Cinnamon (Classic Windowslike), and Pantheon (what if iPadOS looked like Mac OS X Mavericks). None that are an obvious choice for someone who prefers a Mac-like setup. RavynOS/airyx/etc has been posted here a few times but is a long way away from being usable. I've considered just building a true maclike DE myself but the process of getting a garden variety traditional floating window manager for Wayland set up makes my head spin, even with things like wl-roots existing. It doesn't feel the least bit accessible to someone used to building consumer-facing native desktop/mobile apps.
- teddyh 4y ago
  > no DE works the way I'd like it to How come macOS magically just happened to work the way you liked it to? Answer: It didn’t, you just adjusted yourself to use macOS, but now you’ve ossified and think everything not what you grew up with is unnatural.
  - esarbe 4y ago
    "Intuitive" is just a code word for "familiar". The only intuitive interface is the nipple. And even grasping that interface can be a difficult task for a baby. (After reading that, I have to append; no pun intended.)
- russnes 4y ago
  Maybe someone should make a Linux distro with a DE preconfigured to work "the Mac way", kind of like Linux Mint is preconfigured to be "the Windows way".
  - petepete 4y ago
    There's hello and ravynos that fit in this category, but they're BSD based. https://hellosystem.github.io/ https://hellosystem.github.io/ https://ravynos.com/ https://ravynos.com/

mfcl 4y ago

I don't use a single Apple product. What am I missing?

what-imright 4y ago
e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. but hey I’m jealous because you have so many pleasurable experiences to come. I suggest jumping in and buying the new iPhone 14. Go all in get the Pro Max. You’ll get a massive return on the investment. I’m a tech junkie, I’ve had it all. Doesn’t get better than Apple
- inb4_cancelled 4y ago
  You didn't really answer the question.
  - what-imright 4y ago
    I did you just didn’t like the answer.
    - Bud 4y ago
      No, you failed to answer, then doubled down and hoped nobody would notice. We noticed.
      - what-imright 4y ago
        my answer was everything - you miss the entire computing experience if you use windows or linux on desktop today or android on mobile. In 2022, if you aren’t using Apple you’re in the red. You might as well not have bothered. Windows is worse than nothing. Android is worse than nothing. Linux is awesome for servers, but the desktop experience isn’t quite there. I’ve used all the platforms. Windows and android are incompetent, poorly designed, serve the user LAST, poorly updated, insecure, spying on you, and annoying AF to use. Worse than nothing. Worse than no computer or phone at all.
        zeppelin101 4y ago
        Have you ever heard of something called "hyperbole"?
        what-imright 4y ago
        Just trying to help really. Using the wrong products has done a great deal of damage to me. Using windows instead of a nix back in the day blocked my progress. Android shares a number of windows like traits. Being a commercial imitation of an Apple product for instance. Or serving the user last. Or just being crap software full of bugs. If you can't listen, your punishment is to keep using imitation product. Harsh. But it is what it is.
        zeppelin101 4y ago
        For the record, I'm very familiar with most of the OSs you mentioned: Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Android (on a variety of devices). And I think the only fair statement is that they each have unique strengths and weaknesses. You can worship MacOS to high heavens, but it is also lacking in many ways and owning a MacBook comes with numerous downsides (as well as upsides), compared to a Windows laptop. The only OS I don't have much experience with is iOS. I've stayed with Android the whole time - largely with Samsung. A high end Samsung phone is an absolute powerhouse, while also looking pretty sleek, if I may say so. I personally think that iOS and iPhones are quite limiting in certain ways. But I would never knock on someone for using iOS. The OS and the phone look very nice and trendy, the whole experience is very well optimized and, at least in the U.S., you'll get certain social perks by having one. Even for older folks, it could be a great choice, because their grandkids will be able to fix most problems that could arise in their phones. Let me revisit a prior point about iPhones - they're not very customizable. On my Samsung, I have a number of customizations: a custom "launcher" ("Nova"), which enables me to tweak things like icon sizes, density, and many many other things (my favorite feature is to use a custom icon set). I could easily keep naming countless other aspects that Android allows me to customize, even if I only customize a few of them. The default experience of a Samsung phone is quite solid, other than maybe having a few too many Samsung-specific apps pre-installed (though at least I never buy through a carrier, so I don't have to worry about any of that bloat). But it's very trivial to nerf them by disabling them or even simply uninstalling them using "pm-uninstall" through ADB. For me, it takes maybe 20 minutes total to apply various tweaks I like to a brand new phone. I have them all written down neatly and they haven't changed much for a while, so applying those customizations is not bother for me at all. But for others? It would be an unimaginable punishment. Many people prefer to buy an iPhone not only for all the benefits I listed out earlier, but also because it is more restrictive. Because of this, you don't have to deal with any of the 'pain' of trying to decide what should be customized and whether you should do so in the first place. But would I judge anyone for taking either route: 1) a Samsung that you customize to a reasonable extent - without rooting or unlocking the bootloader - vs 2) an iPhone that is effectively at stock settings, other than the apps you've downloaded? No, I absolutely would not. Which brings me to my last point.. I think we live in amazing times in terms of technology (aside from the obvious issues related to privacy and social media, which are discussed at great lengths here and elsewhere). We have many choices in terms of hardware and software and our devices can do things we could hardly fathom a few decades ago. I rather arbitrarily chose to focus on smart phones in my rant, but I could have easily discussed laptops, desktops, servers, or some other type of device to make the same point. So I say, "Live and let live."
- donedealomg 4y ago
- ehvatum 4y ago
  What are the three things you like most about Mac OS?
echelon 4y ago
Remember 2000-2005 Microsoft that tried to lock you into Internet Explorer and was deeply into this thing called "trusted computing"? That's what you're missing. You're required to sign in for updates so they can track you. No software patches without monitoring, I guess. No way to remove iTunes or stop Safari from trying to take over again and again. Even if you don't want music to open that way. Steve Balmer would be proud. Remember 2005-8 when you tried Ubuntu for the first time and were wowed with Compiz Fusion compared to the drab Windows XP/Vista/etc window management? That's the feeling you get every time you step away from MacOs finder and the atrocious Mac window manager. You shouldn't need a 3rd party plugin to manage window placement. It shouldn't be difficult to navigate to a directory via a path or run a program or have the file browser automatically resize its icon view. But that's Mac.
- kogepathic 4y ago
  > Also you're required to sign in for updates so they can track you. No software patches without monitoring. This hasn't been my experience. macOS still incessantly bothers you about OS updates even if you decline signing into an Apple account during first-boot, and you can download major release updaters independently from the Mac Store (e.g. using the script from OSX-KVM). [1] https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM
- astrange 4y ago
  Since iTunes doesn’t exist anymore, I guess there’s no way to not remove iTunes.
- gcanyon 4y ago
  > It shouldn't be difficult to navigate to a directory via a path Command-Shift-G my friend. > or run a program Spotlight? (Command-space) Or Mission Control? (Control-space for me, but I think I customized that) > have the file browser automatically resize its icon view You want a window to automatically make the icons bigger if you resize the window to be bigger? No idea how to make that happen.
- kcplate 4y ago
  > You shouldn't need a 3rd party plugin to manage window placement. If it’s a feature you want, and there are multiple ways of handling it, why not go with a third party app with a windows placement scheme that works for you? I do. >It shouldn't be difficult to navigate to a directory via a path or run a program It’s not. I bet I can run any program on my Mac in 6 keystrokes or less. I easily navigate via paths. >have the file browser automatically resize its icon view. Personally this sounds like an extreme edge case preference to me. I would hate this behavior
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
nothing. you're probably saving a lot of money, something objectively true. fwiw safari is the no 1 worst browser i have ever used, as a developer. it's hot garbage. not the renderer, the browser itself and its dev tools. plus you need an apple account and a 10 trillion gb xcode install just to port your chrome extension to safari, what a joke. and every couple of years apple decides to drop backwards compatibility for X number of products/services you've been happily using because they need to sell new machines or something.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Yes, Safari is piss-poor for 2022.
  - ricardobayes 4y ago
    Seriously, how hard is it to implement look-behind regexes? If you have even one in your code, the page will crash in Safari. https://caniuse.com/js-regexp-lookbehind https://caniuse.com/js-regexp-lookbehind

1-6 4y ago

That’s the problem with the current state of their OS, it attempts to do too many things without regard to simplicity. I could name a few things MacOS could do without.

runjake 4y ago

I agree with everything you say. I cling to macOS while trying to migrate back to Linux. To Pop!_OS or some other suitable Linux, but for the past couple years it’s been Pop.

linguae 4y ago

I moved on to Windows 10 and FreeBSD after many years on the Mac (I refused to upgrade my Macs beyond Mojave), but this is an interim solution for me since neither Windows 10 nor existing FOSS desktops match even Mac OS X Tiger when it comes to the user experience. My long-term solution is building my own desktop environment that is inspired by the classic Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, but also takes ideas from OpenDoc, Smalltalk environments, the Symbolics Genera Lisp machine OS, and Plan 9 (itself influenced by Project Oberon when it comes to the GUI) to form an environment that encourages flexible, programmable tools built from smaller components but can be arranged to create complete software solutions, kind of like how a painter arranges colors and tools. Unfortunately I’m still early in the design phase and I have no code to share, and this is also a side project since I work full-time as a researcher and thus I can’t devote my full time to this, but I hope that by 2024 I’ll have an early version working and released. I am inspired by the vision of personal computing pioneers like Alan Kay, and I hate to see personal computing being transformed from user empowerment to platforms for selling services and serving ads to a captive audience.

lrem 4y ago
I've also moved on... But unless someone out there gets their hands on a CPU comparable with M2, what would be the point of not upgrading back to a Mac? It's not like Windows is a significantly better experience (gee, the menu item search is such an obvious and necessary thing, is that covered by a valid patent?!)
chongli 4y ago
That sounds amazing! Can you build it on top of Linux so I can run it on Asahi Linux on a MacBook? I refuse to use a laptop that isn’t running an Apple M-series chip now. Intel/AMD have a long, long way to go to catch up and they don’t seem to have any interest in doing so.
ericd 4y ago
That sounds amazing, please do a show hn when you decide to release it, I’d love to use something that’s closer to classic Mac OS HIG.
4y ago

kitsunesoba 4y ago

I can't see Linux (or other GNU-desktop-nixlike) becoming a full-time macOS replacement for me because no DE works the way I'd like it to. You've got KDE (Windowslike), GNOME (what if iPadOS were adapted into a desktop OS), XFCE (middle ground between Windows and Classic Mac OS), and Cinnamon (Classic Windowslike), and Pantheon (what if iPadOS looked like Mac OS X Mavericks). None that are an obvious choice for someone who prefers a Mac-like setup. RavynOS/airyx/etc has been posted here a few times but is a long way away from being usable. I've considered just building a true maclike DE myself but the process of getting a garden variety traditional floating window manager for Wayland set up makes my head spin, even with things like wl-roots existing. It doesn't feel the least bit accessible to someone used to building consumer-facing native desktop/mobile apps.

teddyh 4y ago
> no DE works the way I'd like it to How come macOS magically just happened to work the way you liked it to? Answer: It didn’t, you just adjusted yourself to use macOS, but now you’ve ossified and think everything not what you grew up with is unnatural.
- esarbe 4y ago
  "Intuitive" is just a code word for "familiar". The only intuitive interface is the nipple. And even grasping that interface can be a difficult task for a baby. (After reading that, I have to append; no pun intended.)
russnes 4y ago
Maybe someone should make a Linux distro with a DE preconfigured to work "the Mac way", kind of like Linux Mint is preconfigured to be "the Windows way".
- petepete 4y ago
  There's hello and ravynos that fit in this category, but they're BSD based. https://hellosystem.github.io/ https://hellosystem.github.io/ https://ravynos.com/ https://ravynos.com/