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Been saying this for as long as I’ve been using macOS: it is not a developer friendly OS and am close to the conclusion that this reputation is a psy-op. Yeah i

by baq 3y ago

Been saying this for as long as I’ve been using macOS: it is not a developer friendly OS and am close to the conclusion that this reputation is a psy-op. Yeah it’s pretty, it mostly works when the box is first turned on and the hardware is unmatched but macOS itself is actually subpar. QA seems second tier, things you’d except from other OSes like, I don’t know, using a third party second display are just bad experiences. Docker sucks, posix compatibility is technically there but isn’t really useful, the thing randomly loses network and only rebooting fixes it. I reboot my corporate Mac more often than I rebooted my windows enterprise laptop.

EthicalSimilar 3y ago
I’ve been using macOS as my primary development environment for the past ~4 years and have loved every minute of it. I haven’t run into any of the issues you’ve mentioned thankfully, and docker works absolutely fine for my use cases. I can’t see myself ever switching for any reason.
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  I've been using MacOS for about 5 years, as it is the machine issued by my workplace. And I hate it. It's so much worse than Linux that it's not even a joke. Hell, I think I would have preferred to work on Windows with WSL than this crap. The hardware is not even that good. I presume people like it because it looks slick and serves as a status symbol.
  - sneak 3y ago
    I didn’t realize you were joking until the second paragraph.
    - surgical_fire 3y ago
      The only joke here is people white-knighting for a manufacturer of luxury toys. How dare someone doesn't like a MBP?
  - culopatin 3y ago
    Please name a competitor with better laptop hardware (I assume your workplace provided you with a laptop). Things such as better screen, lower fan noise/computing power ratio, speaker quality, touchpad and battery life.
    - surgical_fire 3y ago
      > Please name a competitor with better laptop hardware (I assume your workplace provided you with a laptop). My workplace provides me with a MacBook yes. I honestly prefer using my 5 year old Dell G5. I absolutely hate MacBook screen. It's reflexive, whereas I very much favor the matte finish of basically every other manufacturer. Fan noise for me is essentially irrelevant. Not that my Dell makes that much noise anyway. I am normally listening to music while I work, and when gaming there's in game sound. Speaker quality is shit on either laptop. My cheap speaker/subwoofer set that is connected to the docking system is leagues better than the laptop speaker (that I never use anyway). Touchpad is... as bad as any other touchpad? I use a mouse for a reason. Battery life is the only thing a MacBook would have in its favor. Again, irrelevant. 99% of the time it is plugged into power. MacBook comes with a major downside of being tied to OSX however. This cannot be understated.
      - nerdix 3y ago
        You sound a lot like me. I think macOS has the worst window management of any major OS especially for power users. It's so bad that buying a half dozen third party apps to "fix" the UX disaster that is macOS has basically been normalized. I don't like any touchpad so even if a MacBook touchpad is better it's still just the best worst method for mouse input. I think Apple makes nice hardware though. But I also work docked basically 99% of the time and use it as a desktop replacement so many of the Apple hardware advantages are moot for me. I'm kind of shocked when I see people voluntarily working on a laptop undocked. Working with a crappy keyboard, a crappy touchpad, and a small screen is torture to me even if it's the best crappy keyboard, the best crappy touchpad, and the best small screen.
        surgical_fire 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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bzzzt 3y ago
Strange. I've got the complete opposite experience. Most displays work fine. It helps if you stick with models that advertise at least a bit of macOS support (like some Dells or Samsungs). Docker sucks, but there's Orbstack. I don't care for posix, but most of my *nix tools are available in Homebrew. Network is steady and more bulletproof than wireless on Linux. Is your experience based on a recent mac?
- deleted 3y ago
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- piyush_soni 3y ago
  I have a modern Dell supported 4K display supporting USB-C to USB-C connection. macOS shows black screen for a few seconds before being able to show anything. Also using the 4K monitor with an actual 4K resolution makes everything very slow, so I just use it with lower resolutions :|. Never saw such issues on even entry level Windows laptops.
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    Is it macOS or the monitor not being responsive? Also, if it's slow your laptop might be too old to properly support 4K or you might have misconfigured something. At least Dell supports their hardware: have you tried updating the monitor firmware or submitting a report?
    - piyush_soni 3y ago
      It's the built-in mac display that goes blank along with the external monitor. On my Intel 2019 MBP it was very slow (many seconds), on this new M3 it's much shorter but still more than a decent Windows laptop which is almost instant.
- jsheard 3y ago
  The problem with third party displays on the Mac is the system has some deeply held assumptions that all monitors are as pixel-dense as the ones which Apple ships with their machines. 100% DPI scaling for classic ~100ppi monitors is a poor experience since macOS no longer supports subpixel font rendering, and DPI scales higher than 100% but less than 200% are really just 200% in a trenchcoat because the system renders everything at 200% then uses non-integer resampling to squish it onto the display. That works well enough on the ~220ppi panels that Apple uses but isn't ideal on common 4K displays which are usually around 140-160ppi. It's not unusable if you at least have one of those medium density 4K monitors, but it feels like a step backwards if you're used to Windows which still (mostly) supports subpixel font rendering for crisp text at 100% scale, and can render natively at 125/150/175% scales.
weikju 3y ago
Alas the corporate bloat wars ruins many a persons experience of macOS
tigeroil 3y ago
Indeed - I recently switched to Linux and I'm much happier. I'm shocked how much better the experience is lately.
carstenhag 3y ago
Effectively, software/hardware is hard and you will have issues in some way with all platforms.
bowsamic 3y ago
It's not a psyop, people are just having different experiences to you. I've had endless problems on Windows and Linux machines, and never had a serious or even annoying issue on a mac
raspasov 3y ago
As of recently, Docker on MacOS has improved and AFAICT the performance penalty is gone. Is the problematic corporate Mac an M-series Mac or Intel? M-series have been great in my experience. I did used to get random full system crashes on Intel Macs which haven't happened in a few years on M1/M2.
- avarun 3y ago
  I mean the performance penalty is just inherent to how Docker on Mac works. Instead of being a container like on Linux, it’s a virtual machine, which will necessarily be slower.
  - vbezhenar 3y ago
    The difference is absolutely marginal. The main slowdown sources is mounting huge volumes from the host, that's definitely works better with Linux. And emulating x86_64, if your container does not have arm64 build. But if you don't need it, I'd argue that M1 performance will yield faster containers compared to average Intel laptop.
- papruapap 3y ago
  Docker Desktop still sucks at least on my corp mac.
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    I'd recommend you try OrbStack.
blashyrk 3y ago
I cannot believe that, on macOS, high cpu usage leads to audio buffer underruns and popping, like something from the 90s but on today's premium hardware. It's inexcusable. On a platform that is constantly touted as the best for audio work, DAWs etc no less.
- piyush_soni 3y ago
  Wow, I thought I'm the only one as when asked in my Team no one agreed to facing these issues - but I faced it on multiple new Macbook Pros.
  - vbezhenar 3y ago
    I experienced it, but I'm not sure if it relates to high CPU. My guess it's something about kernel locks.
    - benterix 3y ago
      Yeah, the same on m2. And to thing I originally bought this machine with audio work in mind...
    - solarkraft 3y ago
      I experience this a lot (even up to complete freezes, even of the touchpad feedback, leading to crashes) and am confident that it is at least related to swapping due to memory pressure / RAM usage. Why they'd let the system become unstable rather than killing some apps that are too much goes beyond my understanding.
  - dawnerd 3y ago
    I discovered them when running stable diffusion which maxes out my m1max and audio started to stutter a lot despite everything else running fine. I was even thinking to myself how nice it is to be able to tax the machine and this be able to use it.
- darby_eight 3y ago
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xcv123 3y ago
Sounds like your Mac is broken. Hardware fault. I've been using multiple Macs daily with a third party 4k display, Docker, and stable network connection for years. No issues with any of that. Never needs rebooting aside from installing OS updates.
piyush_soni 3y ago
Completely agree. Have been using a MBP for almost three years now at work (after using Windows machines for a couple of decades), and I can see how laughable many of the design decisions in macOS are (though I highly doubt they were deliberate 'decisions' at all), and I still fail to understand why people use them over Windows or Linux (sure, great hardware, mostly). It's probably fine as a consumer device, but for developers/power users the UI/UX is just bad. Finder, the built-in File Manager is an abomination of a software. It's like someone paid them to deliberately write a bad quality application.
- darby_eight 3y ago
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- kruxigt 3y ago
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- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  Finder has always been like that. There have been some updates, but the core features of the UI have barely changed since 10.1. I'm finding this with software everywhere. Products keep doing the same old stupid shit they did when they were first released. "Refinements" are poorly-designed cruft. Is there anyone in charge of the OS X experience? There seems to be a lot of resume development - features that can be illustrated with smiling people in a video but don't really work all that well - and not so much interest in the core UX. I still find it better than Windows, but the gap between what it could be and what it is keeps growing.
- pacifika 3y ago
  What do you not like about finder?
  - nerdix 3y ago
    Enter to rename rather than open is one of the dumbest UX decisions ever made in a file manager. And then doubling down by not allowing any key remaps at all so you're stuck with it.
amval 3y ago
Absolutely agree. We changed on my team to primarily use Macbooks. Originally just to make easier testing on Safari. Later, just because the hardware is pretty nice. It has been a pretty frustrating experience at times. Most of the time is _fine_, but the problems after updates, Docker bugs, certain libraries that we cannot install.. On the other hand, it was never perfect with Linux either. But that was expected. And I can say that macOS does not deserbe the reputation it has. Overall, kind of a mixed bag. There are some very nice aspects to both he hardware and software, but some that are jarring and make me thing "this is not really meant for professional users". Like the atrocious window management (that admittedly can bve fixed with a couple free applicaitons).
tikkabhuna 3y ago
> posix compatibility is technically there but isn’t really useful It's been a long time since I ran a Macbook, but this was my biggest problem. The weird uncanny valley where its almost the same but then not. WSL has problems but there's a very clear line in the sand between Linux and Windows and you know what you're getting.
Razengan 3y ago
> Been saying this for as long as I’ve been using macOS: it is not a developer friendly OS My opinion and experience is the exact opposite. In fact, I switched to Macs BECAUSE of how good macOS was for development and just general work and daily life. Around 10-12 years ago I got an iPad, my first ever Apple purchase, as a gift for my aunt. I loved how simple and clean iOS was and found the apps and games interesting, so I thought I'd dabble in iOS dev. I was on Windows 8 at the time (and already sick of Microsoft's bs) so I downloaded a VMWare image for Mac OS X Lion. As the days went by I found myself spending more time in macOS than in Windows, and enjoying it! A month later I bought my first ever MacBook and never looked back. Well, sometimes I do look back at Windows, in a VM on macOS, just to try some games, and man, it's still a sad joke in 2024.
nottorp 3y ago
That's a definite it depends. Macs are finnicky with hardware (but hdmi sucks by definition, they think you bought the cable and monitor to pirate movies and not to do some work). However the GUI actually works and if you spend a week on windows 10+ you'll remember why people buy Mac OS. Personally I have a Mac for stuff that requires a GUI and a headless linux box that I ssh into. And I switched to Macs from ... Linux on the desktop. Edit: docker is shit because they just install a Linux VM and run their Linux stuff in there. Same on Windows I guess.
- addicted 3y ago
  Windows 10 (can’t speak for 11…I haven’t upgraded) with a lot of the animations etc turned off is a far superior developer experience than macOS. macOS is just so clunky. It tried to be so smooth all the time but just ends up being annoying.
  - nottorp 3y ago
    I just set up a windows box for some development last week. Spent 2-3 hours per day on it (on work not setup). So far I haven't managed to turn off the firewall scare popups, I did manage to remove that crap in the task bar that pops up the weather and selected news covering half the screen if you hover in the wrong place, I may or may not have turned off the OneDrive upsell, and I also got a full screen message to upgrade to 11 for free when booting once. Great user experience overall. And don't tell me I can spend another week to turn those off, is Microsoft paying for that wasted time?
    - fphhotchips 3y ago
      Let's not pretend that Mac OS is immune to a bit of the old upsell too. Core OS that features only work when paired with iPad/iPhone. iCloud is actively difficult not to use. The sidebar with the Apple shares and news apps.
      - nottorp 3y ago
        > iCloud is actively difficult not to use. Agreed, but if you turn it off it stays off, it doesn't pop up something every day. > The sidebar with the Apple shares and news apps. I kinda know it's there, but I can't remember when I last activated it by mistake *. But then I turn off all notifications except app icon badges so I don't use it at all otherwise. > Core OS that features only work when paired with iPad/iPhone. Which ones? Doing phone calls and texts from your laptop? I suppose that requires control of the OS on both sides to work well. I don't know what's available on the Android side. If there are other features that work when paired with apple mobiles and don't work with Android, I don't know about them. * Last time I've seen that bar I think it was my cat's butt on the F keys :) She taught me a lot of keyboard shortcuts.
okamiueru 3y ago
MacOS has bugs and inconsistencies everywhere. Some are bugs, some are inconsistent UX, only a few of them are "well... I just don't like it". An example: you cannot right click app-icons in the Docker in the mission control overview. The list of specific annoyances and bugs is likely in the 3 digits by now, and I've only used it for half a year. The worst of all was getting the M2 soft-bricked by an update, because I had changed the display frame rate to 60Hz, because the tween duration when moving between desktops was for some reason tied to this refresh rate. About 2 second tween duration on 120 Hz until input control, and one second on 60 Hz. Impressive for such a thing to not be picked up by QA.
- chrisandchris 3y ago
  Not to defend MacOS, but Windows is the no. 1 of incosistent UIs - by large. If you want a consistent UI, choose Linux.
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    Linux can be consistent if you reject all but applications built in your desktops toolkit of choice. Which means you're missing out on a lot of applications.
  - okamiueru 3y ago
    Windows has a mess of legacy UI that are never fully replaced. They could have gone down the path of translating the windows UI APIs, though I think it's better that they left it as is. The bigger issue however, is that there are different systems depending on what it is you want to configure, and it's all ducktaped in an ancient registry that I'm just amazed only breaks as often as it does. Not to mention that the thing Windows was supposed to always be better at, was driver support. On windows, you have to manually source them, and try as best to avoid all the bloatware that comes with. Windows itself might also decide to replace a driver with an older one (version, release date...). WiFi drivers didn't work last time I upgraded the mobo either. As for Linux. Completely agree. Gnome is consistent, and gets out of the way often enough. There are some annoyances there too. I have my 90 y/o grandma use Linux/Gnome, because that's what Just Works these days.
addicted 3y ago
The reputation was well earned when Linux on the Desktop wasn’t as easy or friendly as it is today and was severely lacking good quality GUI applications. Windows was a virus laden mess and was not useful for running Linux apps. And besides the flaws of the other OS’es, OS X had some of the nicest window management features (Expose from the Snow Leopard is still my favorite window switcher), was a UNIX and had a thriving indie development scene (which was basically killed by iOS…). Since then OSX has completely languished as a developer platform. It’s not clear what you can do today as a developer to make your life easier that you could not a decade ago on OSX. And in fact, the destruction of the indie dev scene, combined with the many heavy handed security restrictions of dubious benefit have made it a far worse dev environment than a decade and a half ago. Further, Linux DEs have greatly improved and Windows now supports Linux development. The Mac ecosystem has seen a complete turnaround where you now buy a Mac for the hardware, not the software.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  My reason to use Macs is for the modern version of NeXTSTEP and iDevices, not really for the overpriced hardware. However at home I have always been a Windows/Amiga/UNIX head, with Linux being the cheaper path to that UNIX experience, had Microsoft not messed up the POSIX layer, probably I would never have bothered. For some time I even tried to acquire one of those nice Toshiba laptops using Solaris that Sun used to have.
- vbezhenar 3y ago
  Here are few particular things that I like about development in my mac: 1. Terminal is very usable, compared to Windows cmd. Modern Gnome Terminal is good, though. 2. Cmnd+C for copy, Ctrl+C for SIGINT. 3. Touch ID instead of root password, which works with Bluetooth keyboard as well, and that's with absolutely minimal configuration, uncommenting single line.
  - benterix 3y ago
    > Terminal is very usable, compared to Windows cmd. It is subpar, however, when compared to Windows Terminal.
fphhotchips 3y ago
The third party display thing is dead on. I have a $2000 AUD LG monitor that Mac OS just occasionally decides to overdrive (or something) and cause instant but temporary burn in. I'm not the only one - you can find others on Reddit.
vardump 3y ago
Not saying you're wrong, but what else is there that just works and is usable instantly when you open the lid? While my work Windows laptop might be faster, it's certainly not the one I'm going to pick in a pinch or when I want to travel with just one laptop. The best mobile configuration I know right now is a Macbook Pro + Parallels. Even with all of its deficiencies. Are there any good Linux laptops with similar experience as Macbooks when it comes to power management and time from lid opening to usable state?
- hmottestad 3y ago
  You could always install Linux on your Macbook Pro. Personally I prefer MacOS though.
  - dimask 3y ago
    Not so simple for apple silicon.
    - hmottestad 3y ago
      I haven't tried Asahi Linux myself, but it looks promising. Do you know if it lives up to expectations?
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Why? Macos is already a unix os.
    - galdosdi 3y ago
      Everyone says this until they're spending their whole weekend working around some weird tiny differences in between a GNU tool and something that comes with OSX or homebrew or something. And when you finally get it working you have the "satisfaction" of knowing you bought NOTHING of value with all that wasted time -- just the opportunity to be able to use FaceTime on the same laptop you develop on, or something. If you're looking for a UNIXy nice desktop OS and that's the entirety of your requirement, mac OS is great. If your REAL use case isn't just generic hanging around, but specifically developing/maintaining an app that runs on linux in production, then you're only hurting yourself the more you introduce mac or windows into the dev process. Nothing good can come of it. Best case you get lucky and you don't run into any issues... and also reap no real benefits because a linux desktop nowadays works fine, it's not the year 2000.
askonomm 3y ago
Funny, I have the same feelings about Linux. So many bugs and glitches that it really feels like nobody actually tests anything. And Windows, while I don't remember any weird glitches, just has so many ads that it makes me feel like I'm browsing some sort of yellow newspaper. Almost every update of Windows brings with it new installed apps like Candy Crush or Amazon Prime Video that I never opted into.
- culopatin 3y ago
  Linux is that home made thing that is all function over form, you’re proud of but any time a guest wants to use it you have to be there to make it work, and it’s pretty ugly. Windows is the tacky plasticky thing you bought at Walmart/Amazon. It works, but you’re not putting it out to show anyone. It’s a cheap TV. Apple is the nice expensive thing you got from a design magazine but sometimes you wish they had thought of function over design.
  - askonomm 3y ago
    The solution then is to use all three interchangeably, like me. You hate them all, but since the hate is spread among all three it is more manageable.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Mac os is literally a gui on a turnkey linux distro. Under the hood its very comfortable.
valevino 3y ago
Some people think that I am crazy when I said that I would prefer to use Linux instead of the MacOS in a MacBook if this was an option for me. I constantly have network issues and UI issues that I can just recover after reboot the system. But the big problem is the MacOS experience, I really hate it.
- hmottestad 3y ago
  What MacBook do you have that you can't run Linux on it?
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Any with arm
    - hmottestad 3y ago
      All the ARM ones run Asahi Linux.
dangus 3y ago
And which commercial OS do you think is better? Windows? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66408996/python-not-found-despite-having-been-installed https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66408996/python-not-foun... > using a third party second display Has always worked fine for me > Docker sucks This is Apple’s fault how? It also sucks on Windows. > posix compatibility is technically there but isn’t really useful What does this mean exactly? Can you find an example where it’s not useful? In my experience most of the command line applications I would want on Linux are easily installable via Brew and I can choose all the same shell environments as Linux/Unix. > The thing randomly loses network and only rebooting fixes it. On your machine. Not my experience with any Mac I’ve owned. That isn’t expected or common behavior. > I reboot my corporate Mac more often I’m going to guess this is because your IT department sucks. I never reboot except for OS updates.
0xcrypto 3y ago
Agree with this. I tried to create objective C files in xcode 15.2 many times, spent days thinking I must have messed up somewhere and finally I found this https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/743032 https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/743032. Tried updating to latest xcode, learned that my Mac's storage is almost full. Why? iOS simulator images were taking a whopping 40 GB of space even when I didnt target those iOS versions nor tested on those simulator devices. I uninstalled all the images keeping the one I build for. Next tried updating Xcode again, the issue with creating objective C files was fixed. But then it forced me to download the iOS 17.2 again along with tvOS and a bunch of other extra things. Now my space is close to full again. Why Apple? Why do I need iOS 17.2 when I build for 15.4?
lenkite 3y ago
I only started using macOS a decade ago. OSX was good in the past - smooth, clean, minimal-reboots and lightning fast. It has progressively become worse and worse over time in most aspects with some marginal improvements in other aspects. The hardware definitely keeps getting better and yet the software keeps getting worse. sigh. I mean they have even screwed up a nice app like iBooks. I used to use it for reading ePubs all the time, but now I dread opening up one. Lags like crazy. And so many crashes and reboots needed. Keep submitting crash reports but fairly certain that no-one ever reads them. Yes, remarkably today - the Windows desktop needs less reboots than macOS today. Can anecdotally confirm this with 2 windows PC's, 3 windows laptops and 3 Macbooks in the family.

by baq 3y ago

EthicalSimilar 3y ago

I’ve been using macOS as my primary development environment for the past ~4 years and have loved every minute of it. I haven’t run into any of the issues you’ve mentioned thankfully, and docker works absolutely fine for my use cases. I can’t see myself ever switching for any reason.

surgical_fire 3y ago
I've been using MacOS for about 5 years, as it is the machine issued by my workplace. And I hate it. It's so much worse than Linux that it's not even a joke. Hell, I think I would have preferred to work on Windows with WSL than this crap. The hardware is not even that good. I presume people like it because it looks slick and serves as a status symbol.
- sneak 3y ago
  I didn’t realize you were joking until the second paragraph.
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    The only joke here is people white-knighting for a manufacturer of luxury toys. How dare someone doesn't like a MBP?
- culopatin 3y ago
  Please name a competitor with better laptop hardware (I assume your workplace provided you with a laptop). Things such as better screen, lower fan noise/computing power ratio, speaker quality, touchpad and battery life.
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    > Please name a competitor with better laptop hardware (I assume your workplace provided you with a laptop). My workplace provides me with a MacBook yes. I honestly prefer using my 5 year old Dell G5. I absolutely hate MacBook screen. It's reflexive, whereas I very much favor the matte finish of basically every other manufacturer. Fan noise for me is essentially irrelevant. Not that my Dell makes that much noise anyway. I am normally listening to music while I work, and when gaming there's in game sound. Speaker quality is shit on either laptop. My cheap speaker/subwoofer set that is connected to the docking system is leagues better than the laptop speaker (that I never use anyway). Touchpad is... as bad as any other touchpad? I use a mouse for a reason. Battery life is the only thing a MacBook would have in its favor. Again, irrelevant. 99% of the time it is plugged into power. MacBook comes with a major downside of being tied to OSX however. This cannot be understated.
    - nerdix 3y ago
      You sound a lot like me. I think macOS has the worst window management of any major OS especially for power users. It's so bad that buying a half dozen third party apps to "fix" the UX disaster that is macOS has basically been normalized. I don't like any touchpad so even if a MacBook touchpad is better it's still just the best worst method for mouse input. I think Apple makes nice hardware though. But I also work docked basically 99% of the time and use it as a desktop replacement so many of the Apple hardware advantages are moot for me. I'm kind of shocked when I see people voluntarily working on a laptop undocked. Working with a crappy keyboard, a crappy touchpad, and a small screen is torture to me even if it's the best crappy keyboard, the best crappy touchpad, and the best small screen.
      - surgical_fire 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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bzzzt 3y ago

Strange. I've got the complete opposite experience. Most displays work fine. It helps if you stick with models that advertise at least a bit of macOS support (like some Dells or Samsungs). Docker sucks, but there's Orbstack. I don't care for posix, but most of my *nix tools are available in Homebrew. Network is steady and more bulletproof than wireless on Linux. Is your experience based on a recent mac?

deleted 3y ago
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piyush_soni 3y ago
I have a modern Dell supported 4K display supporting USB-C to USB-C connection. macOS shows black screen for a few seconds before being able to show anything. Also using the 4K monitor with an actual 4K resolution makes everything very slow, so I just use it with lower resolutions :|. Never saw such issues on even entry level Windows laptops.
- bzzzt 3y ago
  Is it macOS or the monitor not being responsive? Also, if it's slow your laptop might be too old to properly support 4K or you might have misconfigured something. At least Dell supports their hardware: have you tried updating the monitor firmware or submitting a report?
  - piyush_soni 3y ago
    It's the built-in mac display that goes blank along with the external monitor. On my Intel 2019 MBP it was very slow (many seconds), on this new M3 it's much shorter but still more than a decent Windows laptop which is almost instant.
jsheard 3y ago
The problem with third party displays on the Mac is the system has some deeply held assumptions that all monitors are as pixel-dense as the ones which Apple ships with their machines. 100% DPI scaling for classic ~100ppi monitors is a poor experience since macOS no longer supports subpixel font rendering, and DPI scales higher than 100% but less than 200% are really just 200% in a trenchcoat because the system renders everything at 200% then uses non-integer resampling to squish it onto the display. That works well enough on the ~220ppi panels that Apple uses but isn't ideal on common 4K displays which are usually around 140-160ppi. It's not unusable if you at least have one of those medium density 4K monitors, but it feels like a step backwards if you're used to Windows which still (mostly) supports subpixel font rendering for crisp text at 100% scale, and can render natively at 125/150/175% scales.

weikju 3y ago

Alas the corporate bloat wars ruins many a persons experience of macOS

tigeroil 3y ago

Indeed - I recently switched to Linux and I'm much happier. I'm shocked how much better the experience is lately.

carstenhag 3y ago

Effectively, software/hardware is hard and you will have issues in some way with all platforms.

bowsamic 3y ago

It's not a psyop, people are just having different experiences to you. I've had endless problems on Windows and Linux machines, and never had a serious or even annoying issue on a mac

raspasov 3y ago

As of recently, Docker on MacOS has improved and AFAICT the performance penalty is gone. Is the problematic corporate Mac an M-series Mac or Intel? M-series have been great in my experience. I did used to get random full system crashes on Intel Macs which haven't happened in a few years on M1/M2.

avarun 3y ago
I mean the performance penalty is just inherent to how Docker on Mac works. Instead of being a container like on Linux, it’s a virtual machine, which will necessarily be slower.
- vbezhenar 3y ago
  The difference is absolutely marginal. The main slowdown sources is mounting huge volumes from the host, that's definitely works better with Linux. And emulating x86_64, if your container does not have arm64 build. But if you don't need it, I'd argue that M1 performance will yield faster containers compared to average Intel laptop.
papruapap 3y ago
Docker Desktop still sucks at least on my corp mac.
- bzzzt 3y ago
  I'd recommend you try OrbStack.

blashyrk 3y ago

I cannot believe that, on macOS, high cpu usage leads to audio buffer underruns and popping, like something from the 90s but on today's premium hardware. It's inexcusable. On a platform that is constantly touted as the best for audio work, DAWs etc no less.

piyush_soni 3y ago
Wow, I thought I'm the only one as when asked in my Team no one agreed to facing these issues - but I faced it on multiple new Macbook Pros.
- vbezhenar 3y ago
  I experienced it, but I'm not sure if it relates to high CPU. My guess it's something about kernel locks.
  - benterix 3y ago
    Yeah, the same on m2. And to thing I originally bought this machine with audio work in mind...
  - solarkraft 3y ago
    I experience this a lot (even up to complete freezes, even of the touchpad feedback, leading to crashes) and am confident that it is at least related to swapping due to memory pressure / RAM usage. Why they'd let the system become unstable rather than killing some apps that are too much goes beyond my understanding.
- dawnerd 3y ago
  I discovered them when running stable diffusion which maxes out my m1max and audio started to stutter a lot despite everything else running fine. I was even thinking to myself how nice it is to be able to tax the machine and this be able to use it.
darby_eight 3y ago
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xcv123 3y ago

Sounds like your Mac is broken. Hardware fault. I've been using multiple Macs daily with a third party 4k display, Docker, and stable network connection for years. No issues with any of that. Never needs rebooting aside from installing OS updates.

piyush_soni 3y ago

Completely agree. Have been using a MBP for almost three years now at work (after using Windows machines for a couple of decades), and I can see how laughable many of the design decisions in macOS are (though I highly doubt they were deliberate 'decisions' at all), and I still fail to understand why people use them over Windows or Linux (sure, great hardware, mostly). It's probably fine as a consumer device, but for developers/power users the UI/UX is just bad. Finder, the built-in File Manager is an abomination of a software. It's like someone paid them to deliberately write a bad quality application.

darby_eight 3y ago
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kruxigt 3y ago
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TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
Finder has always been like that. There have been some updates, but the core features of the UI have barely changed since 10.1. I'm finding this with software everywhere. Products keep doing the same old stupid shit they did when they were first released. "Refinements" are poorly-designed cruft. Is there anyone in charge of the OS X experience? There seems to be a lot of resume development - features that can be illustrated with smiling people in a video but don't really work all that well - and not so much interest in the core UX. I still find it better than Windows, but the gap between what it could be and what it is keeps growing.
pacifika 3y ago
What do you not like about finder?
- nerdix 3y ago
  Enter to rename rather than open is one of the dumbest UX decisions ever made in a file manager. And then doubling down by not allowing any key remaps at all so you're stuck with it.

amval 3y ago

Absolutely agree. We changed on my team to primarily use Macbooks. Originally just to make easier testing on Safari. Later, just because the hardware is pretty nice. It has been a pretty frustrating experience at times. Most of the time is _fine_, but the problems after updates, Docker bugs, certain libraries that we cannot install.. On the other hand, it was never perfect with Linux either. But that was expected. And I can say that macOS does not deserbe the reputation it has. Overall, kind of a mixed bag. There are some very nice aspects to both he hardware and software, but some that are jarring and make me thing "this is not really meant for professional users". Like the atrocious window management (that admittedly can bve fixed with a couple free applicaitons).

tikkabhuna 3y ago

> posix compatibility is technically there but isn’t really useful It's been a long time since I ran a Macbook, but this was my biggest problem. The weird uncanny valley where its almost the same but then not. WSL has problems but there's a very clear line in the sand between Linux and Windows and you know what you're getting.

Razengan 3y ago

> Been saying this for as long as I’ve been using macOS: it is not a developer friendly OS My opinion and experience is the exact opposite. In fact, I switched to Macs BECAUSE of how good macOS was for development and just general work and daily life. Around 10-12 years ago I got an iPad, my first ever Apple purchase, as a gift for my aunt. I loved how simple and clean iOS was and found the apps and games interesting, so I thought I'd dabble in iOS dev. I was on Windows 8 at the time (and already sick of Microsoft's bs) so I downloaded a VMWare image for Mac OS X Lion. As the days went by I found myself spending more time in macOS than in Windows, and enjoying it! A month later I bought my first ever MacBook and never looked back. Well, sometimes I do look back at Windows, in a VM on macOS, just to try some games, and man, it's still a sad joke in 2024.

nottorp 3y ago

That's a definite it depends. Macs are finnicky with hardware (but hdmi sucks by definition, they think you bought the cable and monitor to pirate movies and not to do some work). However the GUI actually works and if you spend a week on windows 10+ you'll remember why people buy Mac OS. Personally I have a Mac for stuff that requires a GUI and a headless linux box that I ssh into. And I switched to Macs from ... Linux on the desktop. Edit: docker is shit because they just install a Linux VM and run their Linux stuff in there. Same on Windows I guess.

addicted 3y ago
Windows 10 (can’t speak for 11…I haven’t upgraded) with a lot of the animations etc turned off is a far superior developer experience than macOS. macOS is just so clunky. It tried to be so smooth all the time but just ends up being annoying.
- nottorp 3y ago
  I just set up a windows box for some development last week. Spent 2-3 hours per day on it (on work not setup). So far I haven't managed to turn off the firewall scare popups, I did manage to remove that crap in the task bar that pops up the weather and selected news covering half the screen if you hover in the wrong place, I may or may not have turned off the OneDrive upsell, and I also got a full screen message to upgrade to 11 for free when booting once. Great user experience overall. And don't tell me I can spend another week to turn those off, is Microsoft paying for that wasted time?
  - fphhotchips 3y ago
    Let's not pretend that Mac OS is immune to a bit of the old upsell too. Core OS that features only work when paired with iPad/iPhone. iCloud is actively difficult not to use. The sidebar with the Apple shares and news apps.
    - nottorp 3y ago
      > iCloud is actively difficult not to use. Agreed, but if you turn it off it stays off, it doesn't pop up something every day. > The sidebar with the Apple shares and news apps. I kinda know it's there, but I can't remember when I last activated it by mistake *. But then I turn off all notifications except app icon badges so I don't use it at all otherwise. > Core OS that features only work when paired with iPad/iPhone. Which ones? Doing phone calls and texts from your laptop? I suppose that requires control of the OS on both sides to work well. I don't know what's available on the Android side. If there are other features that work when paired with apple mobiles and don't work with Android, I don't know about them. * Last time I've seen that bar I think it was my cat's butt on the F keys :) She taught me a lot of keyboard shortcuts.

okamiueru 3y ago

MacOS has bugs and inconsistencies everywhere. Some are bugs, some are inconsistent UX, only a few of them are "well... I just don't like it". An example: you cannot right click app-icons in the Docker in the mission control overview. The list of specific annoyances and bugs is likely in the 3 digits by now, and I've only used it for half a year. The worst of all was getting the M2 soft-bricked by an update, because I had changed the display frame rate to 60Hz, because the tween duration when moving between desktops was for some reason tied to this refresh rate. About 2 second tween duration on 120 Hz until input control, and one second on 60 Hz. Impressive for such a thing to not be picked up by QA.

chrisandchris 3y ago
Not to defend MacOS, but Windows is the no. 1 of incosistent UIs - by large. If you want a consistent UI, choose Linux.
- bzzzt 3y ago
  Linux can be consistent if you reject all but applications built in your desktops toolkit of choice. Which means you're missing out on a lot of applications.
- okamiueru 3y ago
  Windows has a mess of legacy UI that are never fully replaced. They could have gone down the path of translating the windows UI APIs, though I think it's better that they left it as is. The bigger issue however, is that there are different systems depending on what it is you want to configure, and it's all ducktaped in an ancient registry that I'm just amazed only breaks as often as it does. Not to mention that the thing Windows was supposed to always be better at, was driver support. On windows, you have to manually source them, and try as best to avoid all the bloatware that comes with. Windows itself might also decide to replace a driver with an older one (version, release date...). WiFi drivers didn't work last time I upgraded the mobo either. As for Linux. Completely agree. Gnome is consistent, and gets out of the way often enough. There are some annoyances there too. I have my 90 y/o grandma use Linux/Gnome, because that's what Just Works these days.

addicted 3y ago

The reputation was well earned when Linux on the Desktop wasn’t as easy or friendly as it is today and was severely lacking good quality GUI applications. Windows was a virus laden mess and was not useful for running Linux apps. And besides the flaws of the other OS’es, OS X had some of the nicest window management features (Expose from the Snow Leopard is still my favorite window switcher), was a UNIX and had a thriving indie development scene (which was basically killed by iOS…). Since then OSX has completely languished as a developer platform. It’s not clear what you can do today as a developer to make your life easier that you could not a decade ago on OSX. And in fact, the destruction of the indie dev scene, combined with the many heavy handed security restrictions of dubious benefit have made it a far worse dev environment than a decade and a half ago. Further, Linux DEs have greatly improved and Windows now supports Linux development. The Mac ecosystem has seen a complete turnaround where you now buy a Mac for the hardware, not the software.

pjmlp 3y ago
My reason to use Macs is for the modern version of NeXTSTEP and iDevices, not really for the overpriced hardware. However at home I have always been a Windows/Amiga/UNIX head, with Linux being the cheaper path to that UNIX experience, had Microsoft not messed up the POSIX layer, probably I would never have bothered. For some time I even tried to acquire one of those nice Toshiba laptops using Solaris that Sun used to have.
vbezhenar 3y ago
Here are few particular things that I like about development in my mac: 1. Terminal is very usable, compared to Windows cmd. Modern Gnome Terminal is good, though. 2. Cmnd+C for copy, Ctrl+C for SIGINT. 3. Touch ID instead of root password, which works with Bluetooth keyboard as well, and that's with absolutely minimal configuration, uncommenting single line.
- benterix 3y ago
  > Terminal is very usable, compared to Windows cmd. It is subpar, however, when compared to Windows Terminal.

fphhotchips 3y ago

The third party display thing is dead on. I have a $2000 AUD LG monitor that Mac OS just occasionally decides to overdrive (or something) and cause instant but temporary burn in. I'm not the only one - you can find others on Reddit.

vardump 3y ago

Not saying you're wrong, but what else is there that just works and is usable instantly when you open the lid? While my work Windows laptop might be faster, it's certainly not the one I'm going to pick in a pinch or when I want to travel with just one laptop. The best mobile configuration I know right now is a Macbook Pro + Parallels. Even with all of its deficiencies. Are there any good Linux laptops with similar experience as Macbooks when it comes to power management and time from lid opening to usable state?

hmottestad 3y ago
You could always install Linux on your Macbook Pro. Personally I prefer MacOS though.
- dimask 3y ago
  Not so simple for apple silicon.
  - hmottestad 3y ago
    I haven't tried Asahi Linux myself, but it looks promising. Do you know if it lives up to expectations?
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Why? Macos is already a unix os.
  - galdosdi 3y ago
    Everyone says this until they're spending their whole weekend working around some weird tiny differences in between a GNU tool and something that comes with OSX or homebrew or something. And when you finally get it working you have the "satisfaction" of knowing you bought NOTHING of value with all that wasted time -- just the opportunity to be able to use FaceTime on the same laptop you develop on, or something. If you're looking for a UNIXy nice desktop OS and that's the entirety of your requirement, mac OS is great. If your REAL use case isn't just generic hanging around, but specifically developing/maintaining an app that runs on linux in production, then you're only hurting yourself the more you introduce mac or windows into the dev process. Nothing good can come of it. Best case you get lucky and you don't run into any issues... and also reap no real benefits because a linux desktop nowadays works fine, it's not the year 2000.

askonomm 3y ago

Funny, I have the same feelings about Linux. So many bugs and glitches that it really feels like nobody actually tests anything. And Windows, while I don't remember any weird glitches, just has so many ads that it makes me feel like I'm browsing some sort of yellow newspaper. Almost every update of Windows brings with it new installed apps like Candy Crush or Amazon Prime Video that I never opted into.

culopatin 3y ago
Linux is that home made thing that is all function over form, you’re proud of but any time a guest wants to use it you have to be there to make it work, and it’s pretty ugly. Windows is the tacky plasticky thing you bought at Walmart/Amazon. It works, but you’re not putting it out to show anyone. It’s a cheap TV. Apple is the nice expensive thing you got from a design magazine but sometimes you wish they had thought of function over design.
- askonomm 3y ago
  The solution then is to use all three interchangeably, like me. You hate them all, but since the hate is spread among all three it is more manageable.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Mac os is literally a gui on a turnkey linux distro. Under the hood its very comfortable.

valevino 3y ago

Some people think that I am crazy when I said that I would prefer to use Linux instead of the MacOS in a MacBook if this was an option for me. I constantly have network issues and UI issues that I can just recover after reboot the system. But the big problem is the MacOS experience, I really hate it.

hmottestad 3y ago
What MacBook do you have that you can't run Linux on it?
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Any with arm
  - hmottestad 3y ago
    All the ARM ones run Asahi Linux.

dangus 3y ago

And which commercial OS do you think is better? Windows? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66408996/python-not-found-despite-having-been-installed https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66408996/python-not-foun... > using a third party second display Has always worked fine for me > Docker sucks This is Apple’s fault how? It also sucks on Windows. > posix compatibility is technically there but isn’t really useful What does this mean exactly? Can you find an example where it’s not useful? In my experience most of the command line applications I would want on Linux are easily installable via Brew and I can choose all the same shell environments as Linux/Unix. > The thing randomly loses network and only rebooting fixes it. On your machine. Not my experience with any Mac I’ve owned. That isn’t expected or common behavior. > I reboot my corporate Mac more often I’m going to guess this is because your IT department sucks. I never reboot except for OS updates.

0xcrypto 3y ago

Agree with this. I tried to create objective C files in xcode 15.2 many times, spent days thinking I must have messed up somewhere and finally I found this https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/743032 https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/743032. Tried updating to latest xcode, learned that my Mac's storage is almost full. Why? iOS simulator images were taking a whopping 40 GB of space even when I didnt target those iOS versions nor tested on those simulator devices. I uninstalled all the images keeping the one I build for. Next tried updating Xcode again, the issue with creating objective C files was fixed. But then it forced me to download the iOS 17.2 again along with tvOS and a bunch of other extra things. Now my space is close to full again. Why Apple? Why do I need iOS 17.2 when I build for 15.4?

lenkite 3y ago

I only started using macOS a decade ago. OSX was good in the past - smooth, clean, minimal-reboots and lightning fast. It has progressively become worse and worse over time in most aspects with some marginal improvements in other aspects. The hardware definitely keeps getting better and yet the software keeps getting worse. sigh. I mean they have even screwed up a nice app like iBooks. I used to use it for reading ePubs all the time, but now I dread opening up one. Lags like crazy. And so many crashes and reboots needed. Keep submitting crash reports but fairly certain that no-one ever reads them. Yes, remarkably today - the Windows desktop needs less reboots than macOS today. Can anecdotally confirm this with 2 windows PC's, 3 windows laptops and 3 Macbooks in the family.