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Another very odd comment, to me. > Aren't Mac the opposite for the developers No? > with subpar support for say, containers and dev tools, It's a Unix machi

Another very odd comment, to me. > Aren't Mac the opposite for the developers No? > with subpar support for say, containers and dev tools, It's a Unix machine. All that is right there and readily available. > and crappy out of the box window management Not really, no. Add one app and it's a tiling environment. Actually that is built-in in macOS 15 but I've got it turned off as I have a tiling app I've been using for 15+ years and I'm happy with it. > compared to a laptop running on linux? No. It's a better UI in every way, less hassle, more apps and better support. I've been using Linux for 28 years now and for a while it improved beyond all recognition, but it's getting very clunky again with all the bloat now. I switched to macOS on my desktop machines once I could afford it, and Linux for laptops. This is a happy compromise. But I've also been writing about it for well over 25 years and that means reading other people's writing about it and where possible talking to them. All the professionals evangelising Linux in the 20th century have moved to Macs now. It's the same core experience, but done better. > Seems to me you have to do a lot of manual tweaking and install before having something half decent as a dev. I can't speak for being a developer because I'm not one, but I can speak about Linux and macOS as a pro. This is the wrong way to use a Mac. The right way to use a Mac is not to fight it. Accept things as they are, learn to work with it, and add the extras you need. You can't customise macOS very much and it's hard. So, don't. Be like bamboo, not a tree: bend with the wind, adapt to where you are, and then grow where you want to go. The result is a proper full on UNIX™ environment which needs little to no maintenance and has integration to an extent no other Unix-like OS will ever achieve. Your questions seem to me to be motivated by bias and conviction of faith, and it is misplaced, as any such fervent belief is.

Emigre_ 2y ago
> No. It's a better UI in every way That's very subjective. I prefer KDE Plasma.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  Subjective indeed. I like Gnome Desktop's simplicity and straightforwardness.
  - lproven 2y ago
    See my comment above. Although colleagues have earnestly described why they like GNOME, and demonstrated it, all I see is people who don't know how to use the existing, 35+ year old keyboard UI of Windows, or the simpler and only a few years younger one of NeXTstep/macOS. I can't stand GNOME myself. It doesn't get out of my way. It wastes a tonne of precious vertical space on its wasted panel. Its app-switcher is poor. Its window management is atrocious, but then, I've met with and interviewed the dev team, and they don't manage windows. They switch between full-screen sessions instead. I'm looking at twin 27" screens right now, and I want to see 5 or 6 apps at once. GNOME obstructs that massively. But it's trivial to configure macOS to be as minimal as GNOME. Dock to autohide, cmd+space for the app launcher, trackpad gestures to hop between full-screen apps. It's not how I work or want to, but it's easily achieved.
- lproven 2y ago
  I am honestly boggling here. Yesterday I upgraded Fedora Asahi 40 to 41 on my M1 MBA, and KDE is so bad I was reduced to laughter at its pathetic clunkiness. But then I am a documented KDE-hater ever since the days of KDE 2.0. And GNOME, too, but at least it has the mercy of being pretty. Horribly confining and with an appalling keyboard UI, but it's pretty.
  - Emigre_ 2y ago
    > KDE is so bad I was reduced to laughter at its pathetic clunkiness We can all have our particular taste. I don't think KDE Plasma is "bad". I personally prefer KDE Plasma.
    - lproven 2y ago
      Is there a typo on there or are you being very meta in some way I can't follow?
  - sgt 2y ago
    Interesting, I loved KDE 1 when it came out... that was a couple of years ago, 1998 I think. I ran it on Slackware.
    - lproven 2y ago
      I see now that my comment was ambiguous. I liked KDE 1.x a lot. I didn't love it, but it was a perfectly serviceable desktop for Linux and it was FOSS. All the other usable Linux desktops I'd seen before then were paid for, such as IXI X.Desktop. When I say I've been a KDE hater since KDE 2 I meant that I liked KDE 1, but KDE 2 was a bit of a bloated mess. KDE 3 was much much worse and it's continued to turn into a parody of a bad implementation of the Windows 98 desktop -- the bad version, with IE4 embedded in the shell -- ever since.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Yeah, desktop environments are pretty bad on Linux. Window managers are where it’s at of course. I guess it is sort of unfortunate for people if they get the impression that Linux has bad UI because somebody decided a desktop environments should be the out-of-the-box experience.
lloeki 2y ago
> I've been using Linux for 28 years now and for a while it improved beyond all recognition, but it's getting very clunky again with all the bloat now. Oh my this rings so true. While some don't like systemd (which is fine, everyone's entitled to their own choices) I do like the more cohesive and consistent approach a lot. But then my two uphill battles are: - Xorg is still my go-to in spite of limitations Wayland aims to solve (colour management, heterogeneous multihead) but I can't for the life of me seem to be able to make it stable/reliable/usable. - Pulseaudio was a debacle, so I used ALSA since like forever and could do great things with it. Trouble is some modern things expected become hard to impossible with just ALSA. Enter Pipewire, which conceptually sounds like a great thing but it is so obscure and underdocumented that I just can't wrap my head around it.
Cumpiler69 2y ago
>All the professionals evangelising Linux in the 20th century have moved to Macs now. >Your questions seem to me to be motivated by bias and conviction of faith, and it is misplaced, as any such fervent belief is. Weird to accuse someone of conviction of faith while confidently claiming that all linux users switched to Mac and how Mac is the be-all end-all of computers. You're in a bubble if you think so, I can definitely tell you that.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  You're arguing with one of the better writers for The Register, there. I'm not much of a Linux person, but I have been using Macs since 1986 (as a developer), so I can attest to most of Mr. Proven's statements, irt to the MacOS.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    >You're arguing with one of the better writers for The Register, there. You're saying that like it should mean something. It's still the subjective opinion of a person. It holds no more or less value than the subjective opinion of another person. Being a journalist doesn't automatically make you the supreme authority on something, you're still just a professional opinionator (no offence), but that opinion can be different than other users. >I have been using Macs since 1986 (as a developer) That's an issue IMHO. Long term MacOS nerds are the ones who got used to all the quirks and can't see anything at fault as they molded themselves into he platform with age, developing muscle memory workarounds without realizing, so to them that status is perfection. Meanwhile, new users to the platform will see things differently.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
      > It's still the subjective opinion of a person. It depends on who "the person" is. In this case, it's a seasoned professional, who uses both operating systems regularly, at a fairly advanced level, and also explains this stuff to others, while being held to journalistic standards. Also, The Register tends to hire pretty sharp folks. > Meanwhile, new users to the platform will see things differently That's always the case. Unless you are an invested user of a platform, it's likely to be uncomfortable. When folks ask me if they should get an Apple device, as opposed to an Android/Windows PC, they are often surprised, when I say they should probably get what they are already used to. Truth be told, there's plenty of good in all UI (including CLI), and people get very efficient, using their UI of choice. I find that it's usually best, if they stay on it. Having been an Apple developer for decades, I have been absolutely slathered in bile from Apple-haters. It seems to be pathological. I assume that's because of the "snottiness" of Apple's approach. It's actually deliberate, and part of their branding. It can get annoying, but I know why they do it. Personally, I don't feel that way, despite being invested in the Apple ecosystem, and I don't hate other approaches, either. I managed a multi-platform development team for a couple of decades. It was not conducive to effectiveness, for me (or any of my employees) to be jingoistic about platform choices.
homarp 2y ago
>container and macos docker assumes there is a linux kernel underneath, not a mac 'unix' kernel... so you end up having to have, just like on Windows, a vm running a linux kernel to run a docker container
- lproven 2y ago
  Yes, I am fully aware of that. But I am told -- I do not work with this stuff myself -- that if you simply install Docker Desktop, or something equivalent, it just happens, invisibly and out of sight, zero intervention and zero maintenance. Which is the general Mac story, even now.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Yes and for reasons I was running an x86 SQL Server Docker image on my ARM Mac and that just works
    - lproven 2y ago
      Wow! :-)
    - sgt 2y ago
      Although if you can find ARM images, make the effort. I stay away from anything x86 via Rosetta as I don't want the slowdown.
      - scarface_74 2y ago
        It didn’t need to be performant. I was in between jobs for 3 weeks and I reviewing C#/EF Core. I hadn’t programmed in C# in over four years
        neonsunset 2y ago
        Luckily quite a lot of .NET teams are using Postgres or MySQL nowadays but yeah. It’s a different environment compared to what it was 5 years ago.
criddell 2y ago
> The right way to use a Mac is not to fight it. I've found that to be true on every OS I use. Customize as little as possible and things tend to work better and you will have better luck finding answers when something does break.

Emigre_ 2y ago

> No. It's a better UI in every way That's very subjective. I prefer KDE Plasma.

rbanffy 2y ago
Subjective indeed. I like Gnome Desktop's simplicity and straightforwardness.
- lproven 2y ago
  See my comment above. Although colleagues have earnestly described why they like GNOME, and demonstrated it, all I see is people who don't know how to use the existing, 35+ year old keyboard UI of Windows, or the simpler and only a few years younger one of NeXTstep/macOS. I can't stand GNOME myself. It doesn't get out of my way. It wastes a tonne of precious vertical space on its wasted panel. Its app-switcher is poor. Its window management is atrocious, but then, I've met with and interviewed the dev team, and they don't manage windows. They switch between full-screen sessions instead. I'm looking at twin 27" screens right now, and I want to see 5 or 6 apps at once. GNOME obstructs that massively. But it's trivial to configure macOS to be as minimal as GNOME. Dock to autohide, cmd+space for the app launcher, trackpad gestures to hop between full-screen apps. It's not how I work or want to, but it's easily achieved.
lproven 2y ago
I am honestly boggling here. Yesterday I upgraded Fedora Asahi 40 to 41 on my M1 MBA, and KDE is so bad I was reduced to laughter at its pathetic clunkiness. But then I am a documented KDE-hater ever since the days of KDE 2.0. And GNOME, too, but at least it has the mercy of being pretty. Horribly confining and with an appalling keyboard UI, but it's pretty.
- Emigre_ 2y ago
  > KDE is so bad I was reduced to laughter at its pathetic clunkiness We can all have our particular taste. I don't think KDE Plasma is "bad". I personally prefer KDE Plasma.
  - lproven 2y ago
    Is there a typo on there or are you being very meta in some way I can't follow?
- sgt 2y ago
  Interesting, I loved KDE 1 when it came out... that was a couple of years ago, 1998 I think. I ran it on Slackware.
  - lproven 2y ago
    I see now that my comment was ambiguous. I liked KDE 1.x a lot. I didn't love it, but it was a perfectly serviceable desktop for Linux and it was FOSS. All the other usable Linux desktops I'd seen before then were paid for, such as IXI X.Desktop. When I say I've been a KDE hater since KDE 2 I meant that I liked KDE 1, but KDE 2 was a bit of a bloated mess. KDE 3 was much much worse and it's continued to turn into a parody of a bad implementation of the Windows 98 desktop -- the bad version, with IE4 embedded in the shell -- ever since.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Yeah, desktop environments are pretty bad on Linux. Window managers are where it’s at of course. I guess it is sort of unfortunate for people if they get the impression that Linux has bad UI because somebody decided a desktop environments should be the out-of-the-box experience.

lloeki 2y ago

> I've been using Linux for 28 years now and for a while it improved beyond all recognition, but it's getting very clunky again with all the bloat now. Oh my this rings so true. While some don't like systemd (which is fine, everyone's entitled to their own choices) I do like the more cohesive and consistent approach a lot. But then my two uphill battles are: - Xorg is still my go-to in spite of limitations Wayland aims to solve (colour management, heterogeneous multihead) but I can't for the life of me seem to be able to make it stable/reliable/usable. - Pulseaudio was a debacle, so I used ALSA since like forever and could do great things with it. Trouble is some modern things expected become hard to impossible with just ALSA. Enter Pipewire, which conceptually sounds like a great thing but it is so obscure and underdocumented that I just can't wrap my head around it.

Cumpiler69 2y ago

>All the professionals evangelising Linux in the 20th century have moved to Macs now. >Your questions seem to me to be motivated by bias and conviction of faith, and it is misplaced, as any such fervent belief is. Weird to accuse someone of conviction of faith while confidently claiming that all linux users switched to Mac and how Mac is the be-all end-all of computers. You're in a bubble if you think so, I can definitely tell you that.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
You're arguing with one of the better writers for The Register, there. I'm not much of a Linux person, but I have been using Macs since 1986 (as a developer), so I can attest to most of Mr. Proven's statements, irt to the MacOS.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  >You're arguing with one of the better writers for The Register, there. You're saying that like it should mean something. It's still the subjective opinion of a person. It holds no more or less value than the subjective opinion of another person. Being a journalist doesn't automatically make you the supreme authority on something, you're still just a professional opinionator (no offence), but that opinion can be different than other users. >I have been using Macs since 1986 (as a developer) That's an issue IMHO. Long term MacOS nerds are the ones who got used to all the quirks and can't see anything at fault as they molded themselves into he platform with age, developing muscle memory workarounds without realizing, so to them that status is perfection. Meanwhile, new users to the platform will see things differently.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    > It's still the subjective opinion of a person. It depends on who "the person" is. In this case, it's a seasoned professional, who uses both operating systems regularly, at a fairly advanced level, and also explains this stuff to others, while being held to journalistic standards. Also, The Register tends to hire pretty sharp folks. > Meanwhile, new users to the platform will see things differently That's always the case. Unless you are an invested user of a platform, it's likely to be uncomfortable. When folks ask me if they should get an Apple device, as opposed to an Android/Windows PC, they are often surprised, when I say they should probably get what they are already used to. Truth be told, there's plenty of good in all UI (including CLI), and people get very efficient, using their UI of choice. I find that it's usually best, if they stay on it. Having been an Apple developer for decades, I have been absolutely slathered in bile from Apple-haters. It seems to be pathological. I assume that's because of the "snottiness" of Apple's approach. It's actually deliberate, and part of their branding. It can get annoying, but I know why they do it. Personally, I don't feel that way, despite being invested in the Apple ecosystem, and I don't hate other approaches, either. I managed a multi-platform development team for a couple of decades. It was not conducive to effectiveness, for me (or any of my employees) to be jingoistic about platform choices.

homarp 2y ago

>container and macos docker assumes there is a linux kernel underneath, not a mac 'unix' kernel... so you end up having to have, just like on Windows, a vm running a linux kernel to run a docker container

lproven 2y ago
Yes, I am fully aware of that. But I am told -- I do not work with this stuff myself -- that if you simply install Docker Desktop, or something equivalent, it just happens, invisibly and out of sight, zero intervention and zero maintenance. Which is the general Mac story, even now.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Yes and for reasons I was running an x86 SQL Server Docker image on my ARM Mac and that just works
  - lproven 2y ago
    Wow! :-)
  - sgt 2y ago
    Although if you can find ARM images, make the effort. I stay away from anything x86 via Rosetta as I don't want the slowdown.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      It didn’t need to be performant. I was in between jobs for 3 weeks and I reviewing C#/EF Core. I hadn’t programmed in C# in over four years
      - neonsunset 2y ago
        Luckily quite a lot of .NET teams are using Postgres or MySQL nowadays but yeah. It’s a different environment compared to what it was 5 years ago.

criddell 2y ago

> The right way to use a Mac is not to fight it. I've found that to be true on every OS I use. Customize as little as possible and things tend to work better and you will have better luck finding answers when something does break.