7 ms·

I have to think that if you want this level of insight and control over your system, you're going to be less frustrated by not using MacOS at all and switching

I have to think that if you want this level of insight and control over your system, you're going to be less frustrated by not using MacOS at all and switching to Linux or a BSD. Macs are appliances, like a fridge. When your fridge breaks, you don't look at the logs and try to diagnose it yourself, you take it to a repair shop. Apple has been pretty clear they really don't want you poking around on their systems.

herpdyderp 3y ago
I’ve been debugging and fixing my Macs on my own (well, with internet help of course) for 20 years. They’re still more flexible than windows imo.
- willdr 3y ago
  More flexible than Windows isn't exactly a compliment.
  - hackmiester 3y ago
    Seriously - this dichotomy is absurd. My workplace has been RHEL for 20 years and has quietly side stepped all of this nonsense. Yes, even after the acquisition.
    - jftuga 3y ago
      What laptops do they issue out to engineers? What issues do you run across?
      - skydhash 3y ago
        The way I use my laptop (plugged and always attached to a monitor, keyboard and external mouse), a desktop would be the most appropriate choice. And no, I don't want to work at coffee shop and a smaller, lighter, cheaper laptop could do if I wanted to be mobile around the house (WFH).
      - hackmiester 3y ago
        We run Dell Latitude, Precision, and sometimes XPS (though I hate those). Pretty much no issues. Dell would rather us run Ubuntu it seems, but it's close enough that RHEL tends to work fine.
- jabbany 3y ago
  Can you get macos to stop dropping .ds_stores all over the place? (I really do want to know) Because you can get Windows to never drop thumbs.dbs without much hassle.
  - gabeio 3y ago
    > Can you get macos to stop dropping .ds_stores all over the place? (I really do want to know) You can prevent it from dropping them on network drives (SMB stores): https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208209 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208209
    - jabbany 3y ago
      I know about this. Unfortunately it is in no way sufficient. I want it to stop dropping these _anywhere_, and I'd be more than happy to give up thumbnail functionality for this. However, afaik the "easiest" way to do this is apparently to bind a hook to listen to all file system writes by everything and then sweep up the junk whenever it is detected...
  - sillysaurusx 3y ago
    Haha. The only way I found was to mount a read only file system. The ds store has to be one of the silliest design decisions. But say la vee.
    - keyle 3y ago
      "C'est la vie"
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  That's definitely an aspect that got worse during these 20 years though, and Apple has no incentives to reverse the trend. If anything, there C* suite explicitly advocates for a more iOS like model all across the board. Parent's comparison point was linux, but I'd argue current macos isn't that far from current windows.
mpalmer 3y ago
Pity the IT teams who are forced to administer these circumspect fridges because employees won't use Linux.
- jasonjayr 3y ago
  "Continuing to use the apple fridges requires a subscription to applecare to fix and diagnose any problems we previously could fix, the TCO of this hardware is now higher...."
- dangus 3y ago
  This is hilarious. The idea that the typical IT admin wishes that Linda in Marketing would use Linux is so divorced from reality. IT just wants a fleet of systems that are easy to automatically deploy, patch, and restrict dangerous actions on. The easier they are for the lowest common denominator employee to use, the fewer tickets get opened. The idea that your IT team will ever waste their time crawling through your local system logs is unrealistic. I’m not saying the log shouldn’t be there or shouldn’t function properly, I just think that macOS being commercial and popular makes it very easy to administer compared to a Linux desktop. You just buy off the shelf products like Jamf and click a few buttons and that’s about it, voila, you have a managed fleet. The architectural elegance of the system is secondary to the amount of labor cost it saves. You can even order a computer directly from Apple shipped to your employee’s house and have it zero touch provisioned. I’d love to see a Linux laptop with that capability (really, I would love to see it).
  - mberning 3y ago
    Not sure why you are downvoted, because this is spot on. You can tell many people on HN nave never worked in an enterprise environment. As a developer I would love to have a Linux laptop, but a Mac is as close as I can get. Companies do not have the resources or wherewithal to manage and secure 3 or more disparate desktop platforms.
  - pknomad 3y ago
    I worked as a CPE before moving onto SRE and this is spot on. Jamf and others like Kandji are excellent tools for deploying, configuring, and erasing the device at scale and same thing for InTune for windows. There’s no equivalent for Linuxes other than agent based CMs like Puppet or Chef and those tools don’t deliver the same features as the tools that are offered for windows and macOS.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
NewJazz 3y ago
When your fridge breaks, you don't look at the logs and try to diagnose it yourself, you take it to a repair shop. Well... Won't the repair person want to look at the logs??
- tomxor 3y ago
  No they just check the "water damage" sensors regardless of the problem and then tell you the price of changing the bottom bit, the top bit, and the price of a new machine, which are conveniently all the same price. [edit] Aha, touched a predictably sore Apple spot there I see.
user3939382 3y ago
> their systems It’s my system.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- walteweiss 3y ago
  It’s yours only when it’s a free system, you know. Otherwise it’s precisely their system.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cjensen 3y ago
My last fridge literally had the ability to press some buttons to get error information as an encoded sound. An app is used to decode the audio to obtain something that can be read. Sadly it was a break in a component that cannot be swapped out. I've fixed appliances, and the best source of information about what is wrong is usually the microcontroller. Sometimes it's just a hex error code, and that's enough. A firehose of text like MacOS currently produces is unusable.
mdekkers 3y ago
> Apple has been pretty clear they really don't want you poking around on their systems. Sorry, _Who’s_ system? Apple can do with their systems whatever they want, but mine is mine, not Apple’s
- Condition1952 3y ago
  it’s not yours, it’s granted to you under a license
walteweiss 3y ago
Oh, I find it beautiful that it’s ‘their system.’ When on a free system like Linux, *BSDs it’s your system.
aequitas 3y ago
> When your fridge breaks, you don't look at the logs and try to diagnose it yourself, you take it to a repair shop. I for one welcome the ability to troubleshoot and fix the devices I’m using. Unless it’s still in warranty (but maybe even then) I do want to look at logs or diagnose the problems. Order the replacement part online and have it running again. There’s no reason I must rely on someone else to do something I could and should be able to do myself.
duped 3y ago
Some people can and do fix their own appliances, so that's a terrible analogy

herpdyderp 3y ago

I’ve been debugging and fixing my Macs on my own (well, with internet help of course) for 20 years. They’re still more flexible than windows imo.

willdr 3y ago
More flexible than Windows isn't exactly a compliment.
- hackmiester 3y ago
  Seriously - this dichotomy is absurd. My workplace has been RHEL for 20 years and has quietly side stepped all of this nonsense. Yes, even after the acquisition.
  - jftuga 3y ago
    What laptops do they issue out to engineers? What issues do you run across?
    - skydhash 3y ago
      The way I use my laptop (plugged and always attached to a monitor, keyboard and external mouse), a desktop would be the most appropriate choice. And no, I don't want to work at coffee shop and a smaller, lighter, cheaper laptop could do if I wanted to be mobile around the house (WFH).
    - hackmiester 3y ago
      We run Dell Latitude, Precision, and sometimes XPS (though I hate those). Pretty much no issues. Dell would rather us run Ubuntu it seems, but it's close enough that RHEL tends to work fine.
jabbany 3y ago
Can you get macos to stop dropping .ds_stores all over the place? (I really do want to know) Because you can get Windows to never drop thumbs.dbs without much hassle.
- gabeio 3y ago
  > Can you get macos to stop dropping .ds_stores all over the place? (I really do want to know) You can prevent it from dropping them on network drives (SMB stores): https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208209 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208209
  - jabbany 3y ago
    I know about this. Unfortunately it is in no way sufficient. I want it to stop dropping these _anywhere_, and I'd be more than happy to give up thumbnail functionality for this. However, afaik the "easiest" way to do this is apparently to bind a hook to listen to all file system writes by everything and then sweep up the junk whenever it is detected...
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  Haha. The only way I found was to mount a read only file system. The ds store has to be one of the silliest design decisions. But say la vee.
  - keyle 3y ago
    "C'est la vie"
makeitdouble 3y ago
That's definitely an aspect that got worse during these 20 years though, and Apple has no incentives to reverse the trend. If anything, there C* suite explicitly advocates for a more iOS like model all across the board. Parent's comparison point was linux, but I'd argue current macos isn't that far from current windows.

mpalmer 3y ago

Pity the IT teams who are forced to administer these circumspect fridges because employees won't use Linux.

jasonjayr 3y ago
"Continuing to use the apple fridges requires a subscription to applecare to fix and diagnose any problems we previously could fix, the TCO of this hardware is now higher...."
dangus 3y ago
This is hilarious. The idea that the typical IT admin wishes that Linda in Marketing would use Linux is so divorced from reality. IT just wants a fleet of systems that are easy to automatically deploy, patch, and restrict dangerous actions on. The easier they are for the lowest common denominator employee to use, the fewer tickets get opened. The idea that your IT team will ever waste their time crawling through your local system logs is unrealistic. I’m not saying the log shouldn’t be there or shouldn’t function properly, I just think that macOS being commercial and popular makes it very easy to administer compared to a Linux desktop. You just buy off the shelf products like Jamf and click a few buttons and that’s about it, voila, you have a managed fleet. The architectural elegance of the system is secondary to the amount of labor cost it saves. You can even order a computer directly from Apple shipped to your employee’s house and have it zero touch provisioned. I’d love to see a Linux laptop with that capability (really, I would love to see it).
- mberning 3y ago
  Not sure why you are downvoted, because this is spot on. You can tell many people on HN nave never worked in an enterprise environment. As a developer I would love to have a Linux laptop, but a Mac is as close as I can get. Companies do not have the resources or wherewithal to manage and secure 3 or more disparate desktop platforms.
- pknomad 3y ago
  I worked as a CPE before moving onto SRE and this is spot on. Jamf and others like Kandji are excellent tools for deploying, configuring, and erasing the device at scale and same thing for InTune for windows. There’s no equivalent for Linuxes other than agent based CMs like Puppet or Chef and those tools don’t deliver the same features as the tools that are offered for windows and macOS.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

NewJazz 3y ago

When your fridge breaks, you don't look at the logs and try to diagnose it yourself, you take it to a repair shop. Well... Won't the repair person want to look at the logs??

tomxor 3y ago
No they just check the "water damage" sensors regardless of the problem and then tell you the price of changing the bottom bit, the top bit, and the price of a new machine, which are conveniently all the same price. [edit] Aha, touched a predictably sore Apple spot there I see.

user3939382 3y ago

> their systems It’s my system.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
walteweiss 3y ago
It’s yours only when it’s a free system, you know. Otherwise it’s precisely their system.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cjensen 3y ago

My last fridge literally had the ability to press some buttons to get error information as an encoded sound. An app is used to decode the audio to obtain something that can be read. Sadly it was a break in a component that cannot be swapped out. I've fixed appliances, and the best source of information about what is wrong is usually the microcontroller. Sometimes it's just a hex error code, and that's enough. A firehose of text like MacOS currently produces is unusable.

mdekkers 3y ago

> Apple has been pretty clear they really don't want you poking around on their systems. Sorry, _Who’s_ system? Apple can do with their systems whatever they want, but mine is mine, not Apple’s

Condition1952 3y ago
it’s not yours, it’s granted to you under a license

walteweiss 3y ago

Oh, I find it beautiful that it’s ‘their system.’ When on a free system like Linux, *BSDs it’s your system.

aequitas 3y ago

> When your fridge breaks, you don't look at the logs and try to diagnose it yourself, you take it to a repair shop. I for one welcome the ability to troubleshoot and fix the devices I’m using. Unless it’s still in warranty (but maybe even then) I do want to look at logs or diagnose the problems. Order the replacement part online and have it running again. There’s no reason I must rely on someone else to do something I could and should be able to do myself.

duped 3y ago

Some people can and do fix their own appliances, so that's a terrible analogy