6 ms·

All of these are minor features. Mac just works and apps look gorgeous. I love my Arch, but even the simplest Linux distro requires more work than a mac. Even g

by CSDude 4y ago

All of these are minor features. Mac just works and apps look gorgeous. I love my Arch, but even the simplest Linux distro requires more work than a mac. Even getting an equivalent font rendering is hard. Even the most Linux compatible Dells and Thinkpads have issues that made me frustrated often. I love any Linux package manager and window manager over Mac, but random issues that require tweaking is a lot.

NayamAmarshe 4y ago
> just works and apps look gorgeous. I've had mostly the same experience on ZorinOS. It just works, never crashed on me, never made me spend hours fixing some weird bug. All my hardware is fortunately well supported. But yeah, I'd give MacOS more scores on the UI design. > getting an equivalent font rendering is hard I haven't had any such issues and I don't use Arch because ZorinOS provides me everything out of the box.
bee_rider 4y ago
Inconsistent shortcut keys doesn’t look like a minor issue to me. It was a long list anyway, having that many “minor issues” is a major issue.
- twblalock 4y ago
  No, it’s really a sign that someone has built a very picky, idiosyncratic workflow and is unwilling to adapt to other systems. This isn’t a complaint about Macs. It’s a complaint about anything that doesn’t exactly match what the user already has.
  - hnlmorg 4y ago
    Why should they have to adapt though. Computers are supposed to work for us, not the other way around. The issue with macs is that it’s very difficult to adapt it to suit any preferences one might have in their own workflow. I’m not someone who spends much time configuring computers but as much as I will argue in favour of sane defaults, sometimes things do just boil down to personal preference. Apple make it very difficult to change things. (Microsoft, unfortunately, seem to be taking inspiration from Apple too).
    - appleiigs 4y ago
      It's easy to change Mac to your preferences. I have Alfred.app for key mapping, custom search. HazeOver.app to dim background windows. Alt-tab.app for window switching (making it look like Windows 10). NightOwl.app to switch to dark mode on a schedule. Karabiner.app, SensibleSideButtons.app, and the list goes on for me. If a person is that sensitive to workflow, neither standard Mac or Linux will suffice. I find Linux to be more difficult to customize because everyone is using different desktop distros which i think causes these types of apps to be buggy.
      - bombolo 4y ago
        > It's easy to change Mac to your preferences. I don't think it's easy… you need to somehow magically know about this undocumented "alfred", hope it isn't malware, download it. On plasma I open systemsettings, I search "shortcuts" and I can change all of the KDE ones in one place. I think having it already there is easier than downloading unknown undocumented app. But just my opinion. > I find Linux to be more difficult to customize because everyone is using different desktop distros which i think causes these types of apps to be buggy. Sure, server stuff is hard, but desktop is much more limited.
      - hnlmorg 4y ago
        > It's easy to change Mac to your preferences. Every solution you’ve posted there is a 3rd party application outside of macOS. Which really just proves my point. If you have to resort to undocumented hacks to make changing basic things “easy” then it isn’t easy. Whereas KDE (for example) provides all of that in its base install. You can roll with the defaults, which are pretty sane, or you can change them to suit your preferences. > If a person is that sensitive to workflow, neither standard Mac or Linux will suffice. That’s a pretty absurd conclusion. We aren’t talking about computer illiterate people here. We are talking about skilled IT professionals having personal occasional preferences that differ from what the defaults are. To quote Monty Python: We are all individuals. > I find Linux to be more difficult to customize because everyone is using different desktop distros which i think causes these types of apps to be buggy. The fact that everyone can run different desktop distros is further proof that Linux is easy to customise! There’s absolutely nothing wrong with preferring macOS. If that’s what you find better to use then good for you. But it’s a really large stretch to argue that Macs are more customisable or easier to customise than Linux systems.
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  Shortcuts are actually pretty consistent on macOS. In text fields, the Control-<char> and Option/Meta-<char> bindings mostly correspond to emacs keybindings, as is the default for most shells as well in the terminal. C-a/e for going to the beginning/end of a line, for instance. All the CUI-style bindings like Windows' and Linux's Control-c for copy are done using Command instead. It's a change, sure, but a minor one that also deconflicts many bindings. How do you copy in the terminal on Windows and Linux? If it's C-c, how do you send sigint? How do you select all in a terminal if C-a defaults to going to the start of a line? Most of the remaining inconsistencies or confusing bindings (Cmd-y for history in Safari) are a consequence of too many bindings. Cmd-h is already taken for hiding the current application and is a useful mnemonic across many applications, whereas Cmd-h[istory] is useful for a limited number of applications, and it would be inconsistent for those applications to override the system default.
ulimn 4y ago
> font rendering At least on Linux I can have crystal clear (looking) font on my 2K 27" monitor. On MacOS it looks blurry because they expect you to buy a higher DPI monitor - there's no subpixel rendering. If you want to share your monitor with your gaming PC as well (and you don't want to spend thousands on video card and monitor), you are left with subpar fonts on your MacOS.
- chess_buster 4y ago
  Unless they are bitmap fonts they certainly wont look crystal clear to me.
smoldesu 4y ago
> Mac just works This still unfortunately depends on what you're using it for. If development is your main use-case, MacOS will most certainly not work. It's absolutely dumbfounding how many darwin-specific bugs exist in common software (especially in the age of M1), but the real problems simply come from setting up a decent dev environment. Shopping around to customize MacOS in the way I like it is much more time-consuming than cloning my Nix dotfiles and building an environment from scratch. It's still possible to use a Mac as a development machine, but the edges around it have gotten really sharp. Most of the Mac devs I know are writing code in a Linux VM, these days.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > If development is your main use-case, MacOS will most certainly not work. To quote Big Lebowski, "that's just, like, your opinion, man". I've used MacOS for development since 2008. PHP, Erlang, JS/TS, Python, Java, C#... It certainly does work. Almost every[1] dev conference you go to you see people on MacBooks (a tiny percentage running Linux on them). Often the majority of people will be on MacBooks. > Most of the Mac devs I know are writing code in a Linux VM, these days. I have the exact opposite experience. [1] Well, it's an exaggeration and bias of course, but...
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    If your primary use-case is delivering developer conferences, Macbooks are a pretty compelling option. Linux multimedia has been comparatively quite bad, and at least you reserve the right to complain when a Macbook breaks last-minute. For pure development stuff, though? You're torturing yourself on MacOS. For every pretty menubar you enjoy, there's a dead POSIX zombie underneath your floorboard or an encroaching platform limitation coming from the top-down. Then you have to deal with the fact that MacOS is by-far the least stable software target of the Big Three OSes, and managing your libaries/software without third-party software is a nightmare. By the time you install all your package managers, Emacs/Vim plugins, browser-of-choice, three or four versions of bash and Git, Via Xcode, most people ask themselves why there isn't a better way. Ultimately everyone's experience is anecdotal, but survey says that developers are turning over a GNU leaf...
sofixa 4y ago
> Mac just works Nope it bloody doesn't. The amount of missing features (why can't the scroll direction be different between touchpad and mouse? Why is there no native window management?), stupid bugs and simply undebuggable issues ("A USB device is consuming too much power, it has been disabled"... Which device, they all still work?? Or iPad screen sharing not working without any indication why, or the device refusing to go to sleep when connected to an external monitor that also charges, etc. etc.) just doesn't fit the "just works" bill. Some things work very well, many others don't or do but with subpar UX.
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  There is no driver debugging, no GRUB script editing with heart trepidation. No recovery drive on speed dial. No monkeying around LD_LIB_PRELOAD, no head scratching around arcane path conflicts. Yes some features are missing and hard to add, but it's like a car with a lacklustre stereo. IME the Linux cae can't run for more than 100km without something breaking.
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    I ran Linux for four years. I spent a night getting it setup. Didn’t diddle with it except for major OS upgrades… and even that was, at most, a morning. The only issues I ran into was internal docs that assumed you were running OS X and those I could usually skip because on my machine it “just worked” like prod.
  - diffeomorphism 4y ago
    I have used linux for about 20 years or so and have no clue what you are talking about.
  - Shorel 4y ago
    I don't think I have needed to do the things you describe in about 15 years. In fact, I don't remember ever needing to use LD_LIB_PRELOAD. Or driver debugging. Linux is not perfect, my current laptop did not work perfectly until Ubuntu 22.04. But your description of things is way hyperbolic.
msla 4y ago
> Mac just works I don't think Macs can claim that anymore, if they ever could: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/12/27/ventura-issues/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/12/27/ventura-issues/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34155875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34155875 I get that it was a great bit of marketing, and it's become a fossilized idea in many people's heads, but I've never had the kind of bizarre failures in Linux that the article and the comments talk about regarding modern macOS. > and apps look gorgeous. This is a matter of taste. I dislike the Mac UI and the fact Macs only have one UI is one dealbreaker out of many.
lelanthran 4y ago
> Mac just works and apps look gorgeous. Not for me - it still feels like, UXwise, it's stuck in the earl 2000s. We're in 2022, and no window snapping? Randomly rearranging workspaces/desktops? Forgetting which apps are on which monitor whenever it goes to sleep? Inconsistent shortcuts + lack of used-defined global shortcut assignment? Inability to set mouse acceleration? Just how low are your expectations?
- laserlight 4y ago
  > lack of user-defined global shortcut assignment? Can't you do this from System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts? I know third-party apps are not as good as native support, but here are my recommendations in case anyone is interested. Both worth their price. > no window snapping? I've been a happy Divvy [0] user for years. > Inability to set mouse acceleration? BetterTouchTool [1] can customize mouse acceleration beyond what user can do in System Preferences. [0] Divvy. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/divvy-window-manager/id413857545?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/divvy-window-manager/id4138575... [1] BetterTouchTool. https://folivora.ai https://folivora.ai
- cokeandpepsi 4y ago
  I dislike it too but tbh, I'm single and not using a mac is a big turnoff for some women so I'll be avoiding linux and windows until I get married
- kcartlidge 4y ago
  I just upvoted you. From my M1 Air.

by CSDude 4y ago

NayamAmarshe 4y ago

> just works and apps look gorgeous. I've had mostly the same experience on ZorinOS. It just works, never crashed on me, never made me spend hours fixing some weird bug. All my hardware is fortunately well supported. But yeah, I'd give MacOS more scores on the UI design. > getting an equivalent font rendering is hard I haven't had any such issues and I don't use Arch because ZorinOS provides me everything out of the box.

bee_rider 4y ago

Inconsistent shortcut keys doesn’t look like a minor issue to me. It was a long list anyway, having that many “minor issues” is a major issue.

twblalock 4y ago
No, it’s really a sign that someone has built a very picky, idiosyncratic workflow and is unwilling to adapt to other systems. This isn’t a complaint about Macs. It’s a complaint about anything that doesn’t exactly match what the user already has.
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  Why should they have to adapt though. Computers are supposed to work for us, not the other way around. The issue with macs is that it’s very difficult to adapt it to suit any preferences one might have in their own workflow. I’m not someone who spends much time configuring computers but as much as I will argue in favour of sane defaults, sometimes things do just boil down to personal preference. Apple make it very difficult to change things. (Microsoft, unfortunately, seem to be taking inspiration from Apple too).
  - appleiigs 4y ago
    It's easy to change Mac to your preferences. I have Alfred.app for key mapping, custom search. HazeOver.app to dim background windows. Alt-tab.app for window switching (making it look like Windows 10). NightOwl.app to switch to dark mode on a schedule. Karabiner.app, SensibleSideButtons.app, and the list goes on for me. If a person is that sensitive to workflow, neither standard Mac or Linux will suffice. I find Linux to be more difficult to customize because everyone is using different desktop distros which i think causes these types of apps to be buggy.
    - bombolo 4y ago
      > It's easy to change Mac to your preferences. I don't think it's easy… you need to somehow magically know about this undocumented "alfred", hope it isn't malware, download it. On plasma I open systemsettings, I search "shortcuts" and I can change all of the KDE ones in one place. I think having it already there is easier than downloading unknown undocumented app. But just my opinion. > I find Linux to be more difficult to customize because everyone is using different desktop distros which i think causes these types of apps to be buggy. Sure, server stuff is hard, but desktop is much more limited.
    - hnlmorg 4y ago
      > It's easy to change Mac to your preferences. Every solution you’ve posted there is a 3rd party application outside of macOS. Which really just proves my point. If you have to resort to undocumented hacks to make changing basic things “easy” then it isn’t easy. Whereas KDE (for example) provides all of that in its base install. You can roll with the defaults, which are pretty sane, or you can change them to suit your preferences. > If a person is that sensitive to workflow, neither standard Mac or Linux will suffice. That’s a pretty absurd conclusion. We aren’t talking about computer illiterate people here. We are talking about skilled IT professionals having personal occasional preferences that differ from what the defaults are. To quote Monty Python: We are all individuals. > I find Linux to be more difficult to customize because everyone is using different desktop distros which i think causes these types of apps to be buggy. The fact that everyone can run different desktop distros is further proof that Linux is easy to customise! There’s absolutely nothing wrong with preferring macOS. If that’s what you find better to use then good for you. But it’s a really large stretch to argue that Macs are more customisable or easier to customise than Linux systems.
Jtsummers 4y ago
Shortcuts are actually pretty consistent on macOS. In text fields, the Control-<char> and Option/Meta-<char> bindings mostly correspond to emacs keybindings, as is the default for most shells as well in the terminal. C-a/e for going to the beginning/end of a line, for instance. All the CUI-style bindings like Windows' and Linux's Control-c for copy are done using Command instead. It's a change, sure, but a minor one that also deconflicts many bindings. How do you copy in the terminal on Windows and Linux? If it's C-c, how do you send sigint? How do you select all in a terminal if C-a defaults to going to the start of a line? Most of the remaining inconsistencies or confusing bindings (Cmd-y for history in Safari) are a consequence of too many bindings. Cmd-h is already taken for hiding the current application and is a useful mnemonic across many applications, whereas Cmd-h[istory] is useful for a limited number of applications, and it would be inconsistent for those applications to override the system default.

ulimn 4y ago

> font rendering At least on Linux I can have crystal clear (looking) font on my 2K 27" monitor. On MacOS it looks blurry because they expect you to buy a higher DPI monitor - there's no subpixel rendering. If you want to share your monitor with your gaming PC as well (and you don't want to spend thousands on video card and monitor), you are left with subpar fonts on your MacOS.

chess_buster 4y ago
Unless they are bitmap fonts they certainly wont look crystal clear to me.

smoldesu 4y ago

> Mac just works This still unfortunately depends on what you're using it for. If development is your main use-case, MacOS will most certainly not work. It's absolutely dumbfounding how many darwin-specific bugs exist in common software (especially in the age of M1), but the real problems simply come from setting up a decent dev environment. Shopping around to customize MacOS in the way I like it is much more time-consuming than cloning my Nix dotfiles and building an environment from scratch. It's still possible to use a Mac as a development machine, but the edges around it have gotten really sharp. Most of the Mac devs I know are writing code in a Linux VM, these days.

dmitriid 4y ago
> If development is your main use-case, MacOS will most certainly not work. To quote Big Lebowski, "that's just, like, your opinion, man". I've used MacOS for development since 2008. PHP, Erlang, JS/TS, Python, Java, C#... It certainly does work. Almost every[1] dev conference you go to you see people on MacBooks (a tiny percentage running Linux on them). Often the majority of people will be on MacBooks. > Most of the Mac devs I know are writing code in a Linux VM, these days. I have the exact opposite experience. [1] Well, it's an exaggeration and bias of course, but...
- smoldesu 4y ago
  If your primary use-case is delivering developer conferences, Macbooks are a pretty compelling option. Linux multimedia has been comparatively quite bad, and at least you reserve the right to complain when a Macbook breaks last-minute. For pure development stuff, though? You're torturing yourself on MacOS. For every pretty menubar you enjoy, there's a dead POSIX zombie underneath your floorboard or an encroaching platform limitation coming from the top-down. Then you have to deal with the fact that MacOS is by-far the least stable software target of the Big Three OSes, and managing your libaries/software without third-party software is a nightmare. By the time you install all your package managers, Emacs/Vim plugins, browser-of-choice, three or four versions of bash and Git, Via Xcode, most people ask themselves why there isn't a better way. Ultimately everyone's experience is anecdotal, but survey says that developers are turning over a GNU leaf...

sofixa 4y ago

> Mac just works Nope it bloody doesn't. The amount of missing features (why can't the scroll direction be different between touchpad and mouse? Why is there no native window management?), stupid bugs and simply undebuggable issues ("A USB device is consuming too much power, it has been disabled"... Which device, they all still work?? Or iPad screen sharing not working without any indication why, or the device refusing to go to sleep when connected to an external monitor that also charges, etc. etc.) just doesn't fit the "just works" bill. Some things work very well, many others don't or do but with subpar UX.

rich_sasha 4y ago
There is no driver debugging, no GRUB script editing with heart trepidation. No recovery drive on speed dial. No monkeying around LD_LIB_PRELOAD, no head scratching around arcane path conflicts. Yes some features are missing and hard to add, but it's like a car with a lacklustre stereo. IME the Linux cae can't run for more than 100km without something breaking.
- withinboredom 4y ago
  I ran Linux for four years. I spent a night getting it setup. Didn’t diddle with it except for major OS upgrades… and even that was, at most, a morning. The only issues I ran into was internal docs that assumed you were running OS X and those I could usually skip because on my machine it “just worked” like prod.
- diffeomorphism 4y ago
  I have used linux for about 20 years or so and have no clue what you are talking about.
- Shorel 4y ago
  I don't think I have needed to do the things you describe in about 15 years. In fact, I don't remember ever needing to use LD_LIB_PRELOAD. Or driver debugging. Linux is not perfect, my current laptop did not work perfectly until Ubuntu 22.04. But your description of things is way hyperbolic.

msla 4y ago

> Mac just works I don't think Macs can claim that anymore, if they ever could: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/12/27/ventura-issues/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/12/27/ventura-issues/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34155875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34155875 I get that it was a great bit of marketing, and it's become a fossilized idea in many people's heads, but I've never had the kind of bizarre failures in Linux that the article and the comments talk about regarding modern macOS. > and apps look gorgeous. This is a matter of taste. I dislike the Mac UI and the fact Macs only have one UI is one dealbreaker out of many.

lelanthran 4y ago

> Mac just works and apps look gorgeous. Not for me - it still feels like, UXwise, it's stuck in the earl 2000s. We're in 2022, and no window snapping? Randomly rearranging workspaces/desktops? Forgetting which apps are on which monitor whenever it goes to sleep? Inconsistent shortcuts + lack of used-defined global shortcut assignment? Inability to set mouse acceleration? Just how low are your expectations?

laserlight 4y ago
> lack of user-defined global shortcut assignment? Can't you do this from System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts? I know third-party apps are not as good as native support, but here are my recommendations in case anyone is interested. Both worth their price. > no window snapping? I've been a happy Divvy [0] user for years. > Inability to set mouse acceleration? BetterTouchTool [1] can customize mouse acceleration beyond what user can do in System Preferences. [0] Divvy. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/divvy-window-manager/id413857545?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/divvy-window-manager/id4138575... [1] BetterTouchTool. https://folivora.ai https://folivora.ai
cokeandpepsi 4y ago
I dislike it too but tbh, I'm single and not using a mac is a big turnoff for some women so I'll be avoiding linux and windows until I get married
kcartlidge 4y ago
I just upvoted you. From my M1 Air.