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> it’s a company that I feel has lost its alignment with me and other long-time Apple users and customers. When OS X debuted there was a daytime radio talk sho

> it’s a company that I feel has lost its alignment with me and other long-time Apple users and customers. When OS X debuted there was a daytime radio talk show in my area called “The Computer Guys.” They capably covered all sorts of computing topics, but were clearly long-time Apple dudes. And they spent weeks complaining about what a disaster OS X was. The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG. The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did. And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac? Going even farther back, it was long-time dedicated Apple users who booed when Jobs announced the deal with Microsoft. Being a long-time dedicated Apple user is a shitty job. You don’t get paid, have no input, and are constantly disappointed. And Apple does not care about you. I strongly suggest people should throw this notion away. It does not matter how long you’ve bought from a big company, they owe you nothing. If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t. Any more emotional investment than that is going to cause pointless unhappiness. Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman.

ars 1y ago
> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac? Me. I have to use a Mac at work, and I use the text terminal more than anything else on the computer. It doesn't help that Mac's don't have a good UI, everything is hidden behind extra key-presses, and switching between windows is a PAIN. On a mac every window for an app is considered the same, so there's no concept of switching between windows (except with special hidden key presses). When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice. The menubar of a non-active window doesn't exist, so you need an extra click, first to activate the window, then to go find its menubar and do an action. It's just a bad UI.
- dylan604 1y ago
  > When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice I get hit by this all the time. I have multiple monitors and I can scroll in a window without the window having focus. The scrolling leads you believe it has focus so when you hit cmd-w to close the window the window with actual focus closes instead.
- airstrike 1y ago
  > On a mac every window for an app is considered the same, so there's no concept of switching between windows (except with special hidden key presses). Is Cmd+` the hidden key press? Alternatively you can go to "Window" at the menubar if you prefer to click
  - roryirvine 1y ago
    The problem with that is that the backtick key is awkwardly-placed on most (all?) non-US layouts. In the UK, for instance, it's immediately above the option key so to hit it requires clawing together your thumb and little finger. It's surprisingly awkward to switch between that and Cmd+Tab. GNOME does this much better - window switching is done using Super+<whatever the key above Tab is>. In the US, that remains ` but elsewhere it's so much better than on MacOS.
- baq 1y ago
  Of all the things you can dislike you pointed out a few features which actually make some sense. Cmd+` works well, even better than alt-tab most of the time, though it’s a major pain in the ass if you want multiple windows laid out from multiple apps on a single screen, and god forbid you have more windows of any in the background. The click to focus stops accidental clicks and gives a way out when the only visible piece of an app is a button. I’d rather focus on Apple refusal to support standard dpi displays (hat tip betterdisplay), basically broken .0 releases, gimped docker implementation, useless window management and broken multi screen windows.
- rifty 1y ago
  > When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice. This is sort of true but the full truth is less straight forward. On unfocused apps you can still send through scrolling and (mostly) perform single clicks with command + click... you can also without focus send single clicks to certain controls the developer has ad hoc allowed 'click through' on... For mouse oriented users I'd recommend trying a focus follows mouse experience like AutoRaise [1]. But I mean, it's not like this solution existing absolves Apple of the broader criticism here about what they prioritize and deprioritize for the default user interface experience. [1] https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise
rjsw 1y ago
> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac? Had they never used MPW?
xmprt 1y ago
The biggest reason for me using Android is simply because of how much competition there is in the space. If I use Apple products and don't like something they do then I'm stuck on an older version at best and need to migrate everything from their walled garden (at great cost) at worst. With Android, I can use Samsung one generation, switch to Pixel the next, and give Motorola/some other smaller company a chance later. I can choose a phone that has the exact features I want - better battery life? great camera? best performance? great display? cheap price? smaller display? larger display? There's a phone for each of those.
- snowwrestler 1y ago
  What would be the “great cost” of moving from an iPhone to an Android phone? I’m struggling to think of what would cost money at all, aside from the phone itself.
  - viraptor 1y ago
    Time and existing apps I already paid for. Even upgrading to a new Android phone costs me a few hours of setup. Moving to iPhone (or the other way) would be seriously painful.
  - xmprt 1y ago
    There's no straightforward way to migrate between an iPhone and Android so you'd spend a lot of time. Also I'm not sure if it's even possible to fully move over - for example would you be able to export your iMessages? Also, if you're fully bought into the ecosystem with Airpods and a Watch, you'd be better off replacing those (at least the watch which turns into a paperweight without an iPhone).
    - killingtime74 1y ago
      I've migrated back and forth. Most things are backup to cloud now. Only thing missing was Signal messages last time and I think they now fixed that. Do people still use plain SMS now?
dylan604 1y ago
> It does not matter how long you’ve bought from a big company, they owe you nothing The same can be said of employers. The company does not care about you no matter how many years you’ve been there. If you’re not c-suite, you're just a cog.
- killingtime74 1y ago
  At my employer even c-suite get fired all the time. If anything it's safer being rank and file
  - immibis 1y ago
    They probably walk away with ten million dollars each time.
    - carlosjobim 1y ago
      And the company makes more than that back by getting rid of them.
hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
I believe the term is "parasocial relationship". I found this article quite weird. It would be one thing if it were (yet another) "Company X has lost its way..." kind of article. But this post seemed more along the lines of "Apple built these things that I don't care about." Umm, so??? Obviously some people do, and this article struck me as someone complaining that Apple isn't building exactly what he wants. Furthermore, his analysis seems way off base to me: "Relying on legacy and unquestioning fanpeople, for whom everything Apple does is good and awesome and there’s nothing wrong with it, can only go so far." Apple stopped relying on "legacy and unquestioning fan people" a long time ago, ever since they basically became "the iPhone company" to a majority of their userbase.
- fallous 1y ago
  No, it's not a parasocial relationship. Those are one-sided and usually a passive consumer of media believing they have a real relationship with those who appear within said media. If you are a customer you most assuredly have an actual relationship with the company. Your options when dissatisfied with that relationship is to end it, send your complaints to the company, or decide the dissatisfaction is overcome by the value you receive.
linguae 1y ago
I’ve also come to this realization as a longtime Mac user. Granted, I’m not old enough to have used the classic Mac OS as a professional, though I did use it in my childhood. However, I was in high school and college during the Jobs era of Mac OS X, and that’s when I started using Macs as my daily drivers from 2006 until 2022 when I retired my 2013 Mac Pro and 2013 MacBook Air and switched back to PCs running Windows. Before Apple’s success with the iPhone, Apple was essentially the Macintosh company. Its fortunes were tied to the Mac, and Apple seemed to be attuned to the needs of Mac users. In return, there was quite a strong Mac fandom. The Mac was more than just a tool or just a platform. The Mac was a philosophy, and what attracted people to the Mac was the philosophy of the Mac and its ecosystem. Ever since the iPhone became a major hit, and especially since the passing of Jobs, it became apparent to me that my best interests as a computer user and Apple’s interests as a company no longer align. Apple no longer needed to cater to “the Mac faithful” to survive. In fact, Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world thanks to the iPhone. It also seems that macOS is losing its distinctiveness. The unfortunate thing, and I think this is where some Mac users get emotional and disappointed, is that there’s nothing else out there in the personal computing landscape that is like the glory days of the Mac. Windows is an inconsistent mess filled with annoyances, and the bazaar of the Linux ecosystem is nothing like the polished cathedral of the Mac. Everything is a step down from older Macs, even modern Macs. However, while thankfully we can enjoy retrocomputing for hobbyist use, many of us still need to use up-to-date platforms to browse the Web and to get our work done, and so clinging on to, say, Snow Leopard is not an option outside of hobbyist activities. Hence, why I use Windows. It’s not Snow Leopard but it gets the job done for now. The beauty about software, though, is that we don’t have to resign ourselves to accepting whatever Apple, Microsoft, and Google releases. Many of us reading this forum have the ability to write our own software. FOSS projects such as Linux have shown that it’s possible for user communities to write their own software that fit their needs without needing to be concerned about business matters such as market dominance. So, yes, this is a hard lesson for many longtime Mac users about being loyal to a company; companies change. But this lesson also creates opportunities. I think if enough disaffected longtime Mac users got together and pooled their resources together, we could create a FOSS alternative that is community-driven, one where the evolution of Mac-like personal computing is driven by the community, not by Apple or any other corporation.
inferiorhuman 1y ago
what a disaster OS X was OSX before the final iterations of 10.4 was a half-baked shitshow.
- stateofinquiry 1y ago
  maybe, but I think not as bad as MacOS "classic" 8.1 and 9 that came before it!
- silvestrov 1y ago
  but "a half-baked shitshow" that got better with each version. Currently OSX/iOS gets worse with each version.
huhkerrf 1y ago
> Any more emotional investment than that is going to cause pointless unhappiness. Agreed 100%. If you're writing 2,000+ word blog posts out of anger and exasperation, you should take it as a moment of self reflection that just maybe you're too invested in a corporation.
- nico_h 1y ago
  I mean if we were talking about Cheetos or Coca, I’d agree with you, but we live in a Duopoly on both Mobile, Desktop and the web. If you’re an adult, you’ve been living in their ecosystem for years. It’s kind if hard to not be emotionally invested in something you use all day for your work and/or personal life.
  - closewith 1y ago
    > It’s kind if hard to not be emotionally invested in something you use all day for your work and/or personal life. I think the vast majority of people manage not to care at all, so that emotional investment isn't as essential as you may believe.
wvenable 1y ago
> If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t. There is another aspect to this though. As a user of an ecosystem, you're committed in many ways. As Apple or Microsoft or Google releases a new version of their operating system you're going to run that on hardware you already own. You're going to run software that you already own on that the OS. And you're doing to use skills and knowledge of that software to accomplish something useful. In some ways it doesn't matter if the product is good or bad -- you're pretty committed. You're going to be willing to suffer some pain because the alternative is too difficult and too expensive. The only thing you really can do is complain.
- grues-dinner 1y ago
  To be honest I sometimes feel that my aversion to getting looked into an ecosystem is actually a detriment in some ways. I have a horrible mishmash of apps and programs and nothing integrates really well long term (story of life on a Linux desktop, really). Maybe life would really be better if I just hand over control and become a true believer!
  - von_lohengramm 1y ago
    I used to go through phases where I would try this. I gave Windows + WSL a shot. I gave embracing the Apple ecosystem a shot. I gave GNOME a shot. I gave KDE a shot. I was even crazy enough to give ChromeOS as my daily driver a shot. And so on and so forth. I found every single time that it just wasn't worth it. There was always some critical failure that was either completely underlooked or a 20 year old bug/shortcoming that had every patch to fix it rejected. I genuinely don't understand how people tolerate the dogshit being forcefed to you on all of these controlled platforms. People say that everything is getting worse, and it's true, but it's also true that you're actively choosing to use the things that are getting worse. I've eventually settled on NixOS and XFCE so I can tweak things to my particular needs while also benefiting from an army of unpaid labor continually improving nixpkgs and other flakes. This setup isn't perfect, but I've optimized for maximal comfort & utility while exerting minimal effort & time. Things really only break when they're self-updating under the hood, which thankfully is rather rare in nixpkgs.
mdasen 1y ago
It's not just about emotion or loyalty. It's about built-up knowledge and the difficulty of switching. When you're a long time user, you know how to do everything with what you're using - whether that's an operating system, a programming language, or something else. The latest product isn't good and your suggestion is "don't buy it." OK, what do I do instead? Buy a Windows or Linux laptop where I have to re-learn a decade's worth of knowing-how-everything-works? Build up my natural flow in a new OS? Find whatever are the Windows alternatives for all the little things that I do on my Mac? I'm not saying that companies owe things to their customers, but I think it's really simplistic to say that it's just an emotional investment and misplaced loyalty. People have a tool and then a company makes that tool worse. There are other tools, but it takes time to learn them, figure out their differences and how to get everything done with them, etc. Pretending that there's zero cost to switching is disingenuous. For example: if you're a software engineer and someone made your main programming language bad, there's a high cost to switching to a new language. Even if you're excellent at learning new languages, you don't know which libraries are good, you don't know what various functions are named, you don't know what warts are in the build system (and how to avoid them), etc. It's not just some emotional response or misplaced loyalty. It's that you've built up skills over many years that are tied to that thing.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  Companies owe their livelihoods to their customers. If they do stupid shit and annoy those customers they lose money and potentially kill the business. There is a long list of companies which have done themselves serious financial harm, or even slit their own throats by failing to understand how Customer World works. No one is too big to fail. Especially in computing. There's also a long list of companies which looked like permanent fixtures for a while and were dead a few years later. As for Apple - I have a busy lock screen, and I can no longer read the time because the big numbers are too thin and the refraction effect makes them impossible to read. Rookie, stupid error. Just embarrassing.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    Fwiw, if you go into settings -> Wallpaper on iOS, you can change the font and the font size of the time on the lockscreen, if that's your beef.
freetime2 1y ago
The worst Apple era for me was the butterfly keyboard / touchbar era of Macs. They went too far in the pursuit of thin and light - removing ports, going with a keyboard design that felt bad to type on and was prone malfunction, and the touchbar, which I actually thought sounded cool at first, ended up being much less useful than a row of function keys. I didn't feel betrayed by Apple, I just decided not to buy a new MacBook until they fixed their keyboard issues. I switched to Linux for a couple of years, and switched back once they released the M1 MacBook Pro. I'm perfectly happy with my Macs (I have 3) now. I actually really like the current era of Apple where their motto seems to be give people what they want. MacBook Pros with HDMI ports and SD card readers. iPads finally getting viable multi-tasking support and a real mouse cursor (although iPadOS still sucks IMO). The iPhone 17 Pro is slightly thicker than the 16 Pro to allow for a bigger battery. Their storage and memory upgrade prices are still ridiculous, but at least Macs come with a usable 16 GB memory minimum now, and iPhones start with an honestly better-than-I-expected 256 GB storage. It's not all perfect - especially on the software side. The settings menu on iOS is kind of a cluster. Apple Music has a terrible UX, as does the recent update to Photos. And I haven't tried Tahoe and Liquid Glass yet - but I'm definitely a little concerned.
kelnos 1y ago
> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman. Couldn't agree more. But I'd add that some (smaller?) businesses, where you still can't really establish a connection, can be worth your loyalty if they have a mission that resonates with you, and they are actually true to that mission. Of course, be prepared for the day when they get too successful and start acting in ways against the principles they were founded upon. But yeah... I think the best place to use our energy is by evangelizing people first and foremost, not businesses. Send people to your favorite restaurant because the owner is always there, chats with customers, and seems to love what they do. Recommend the person who regularly cuts your hair and cares enough to remember you and ask about your life. Refer that great handyman to others, who you trust to be a straight-shooter, pride themselves on the quality of their work, and not gouge you on cost.
calf 1y ago
This is such a unfair interpretation, it's a false equivalence argument. "OS X added Terminal and throwing out HIG for a UNIX-y UI" is a moot point. It's not about loyalty, it's about Apple's own coherence and vision as a creative-technology company, and a bunch of sophisticated users offering a critique of it over time. Read it that way and it makes a lot more sense. Beneath the Apple "fandom" or any fandom there are valid reasons why they came to be (the quality of the product), and we ought to elevate that than call customers naive for not adopting the very corporate cynicism that is a result of anticompetitive economics.
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mulmen 1y ago
Ok but who do I buy from? I agree Apple isn’t good but who is better?
- immibis 1y ago
  Literally anyone else?
  - mulmen 1y ago
    Who sells a better laptop than an M4 MacBook Pro?
    - immibis 1y ago
      Everyone who isn't Apple. Those Lenovo ones that had the scandal with the horrible spyware, for example, those are better, since you can reinstall Linux and then you have a laptop where you own the software and there isn't any spyware.
      - mulmen 1y ago
        Sorry I’m not finding this persuasive. What model? Does it have similar performance to the M4?
    - ranger_danger 1y ago
      What is your definition of "better" in this context?
      - mulmen 1y ago
        Dealer’s choice.
flohofwoe 1y ago
> The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did. Tbf, the Finder is still crap (if only it would be nearly as good as Windows Explorer was in its heyday I would probably use it more), and the UNIX terminal is pretty much needed to make a Mac usable in the first place - which is fine though, because the UNIX-ness was exactly why I switched to Mac ;)
- 8fingerlouie 1y ago
  > Tbf, the Finder is still crap (if only it would be nearly as good as Windows Explorer was in its heyday I would probably use it more) I have the exact opposite opinion. I loathe Windows Explorer, and relatively simply stuff like presenting a tree view is apparently some weird magic trick that only Apple has figured out how to do. Browsing SMB shares (or any other networked storage) is one shortcut away (cmd+k), and I don't need to visit control panel to enable weird subsystems that expose services on my machine to connect to other machines. I use the terminal a lot, also for simple file operations, but that is because of proficiency, not out of need.
  - nikau 1y ago
    How is \\server\share any harder than finder?
    - pasc1878 1y ago
      You have to type it. Finder shows them in the sidebar and you just click on it. Apple OS (both classic and NeXTStep) are not keyboard driven but mouse driven.
      - efdee 1y ago
        Same for Explorer, really. The SMB hosts that announce themselves show up in the sidebar.
  - theshrike79 1y ago
    ...but the SMB implementation on macOS is shit. Try to browse any network directory with a non-trivial amount of files and see the whole Finder window just beach-ball or freeze. I can browse my NAS faster via a browser and copyparty[0] than with Finder and SMB or NFS... [0] https://github.com/9001/copyparty https://github.com/9001/copyparty
chromehearts 1y ago
> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman Thank you for saying this
aucisson_masque 1y ago
I wish it was possible. I bought an iPhone 13 mini that was running well. now if I want to stay secured I got to regularly update the phone and eventually get iOS 26, which will make the phone horrendous. What choice do I have ?
postexitus 1y ago
Arguably, they were wrong on all these points. Unix roots (text terminal) gave the one of the strongest boosts to Macbook sales in terms of newly minted developers. Deal with Microsoft brought not only much needed liquidity, but also Office, which was "the killer app(r)" for that era. Let me add one more - people complained about PowerPC->Intel switch, and then same people complained about Intel->Arm switch (both brave and visionary decisions which has been years in the making. The naysayers may complain about everything and nothing but Apple continues to prevail - I am saying that as no Apple fanboy - viva la Amiga!
commandersaki 1y ago
Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection To be fair, I find despite the various foibles, Apple has always looked out for me when it comes to accessibility -- where none of the competitors bother. Maybe I shouldn't act out of loyalty, but they will keep getting my business as they keep it up (despite Liquid Arse stuffing up accessibility quite a bit).
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  > Apple has always looked out for me when it comes to accessibility I don't follow. Do you mean accessibility for visually or physically disabled? If so, can you give an example where Apple is better than Android?
DrScientist 1y ago
> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac? Why complain about something you don't need to use if you don't want to? What's great about the commandline? Scriptability, automation, configurability, composability, the easy re-running of complex commands with a small tweak, access Unix commandline tools that have been fined tuned over decades. And to compare the terminal to DOS is not to understand the gulf in quality between them. > Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac? Developers & scientists. They are people too :-)
alexey-salmin 1y ago
>> it’s a company that I feel has lost its alignment with me and other long-time Apple users and customers. > When OS X debuted there was a daytime radio talk show in my area called “The Computer Guys.” They capably covered all sorts of computing topics, but were clearly long-time Apple dudes. And they spent weeks complaining about what a disaster OS X was. The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG. The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did. And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac? I kind of see it differently. That is, Apple did in fact lose the alignment with the Classic MacOS fans but Apple did it on purpose. Objectively, by 2001 standards MacOS sucked and you wouldn't want to align with people who think otherwise. As the result Apple broke out of a small stagnating niche and won a big market. This is different from today's situation where it feels like Apple breaks the alignment not on purpose and not by innovation but rather just slowly drifts out. There's a theory in the comments that they want to align with "people who want the best camera array and have money to burn". This could be true but even then it doesn't look like a good strategy to win a big market long-term. More like a retreat back into a small niche that may stagnate in the future, like "people who want the best publishing software and have money to burn".
- card_zero 1y ago
  > Objectively, by 2001 standards MacOS sucked and you wouldn't want to align with people who think otherwise. I see, so like "Don't think different"?
  - alexey-salmin 1y ago
    By 2001 the Classic MacOS wasn't really "different", it was largely the same as the System 7 release from 10 years ago. The NeXTSTEP on the other hand was quite different. Different from MacOS, from DOS/Windows and from proprietary UNIXes. I would argue that switching to NeXTSTEP was more aligned with the original spirit of "think different" than getting stuck in the old ways.
    - card_zero 1y ago
      Like another post says, "The Mac was a philosophy". I bought a series of them but stopped around the year 2000 because they threw away the philosophy in favor of innovation. I think things were going south already around 1998. Remember Sherlock? On system 8.5 it would regularly interrupt the user (sending games from full screen to windowed) to display a dialog to say that it was indexing files. This couldn't be turned off except by disabling the Sherlock extension altogether. That says that Sherlock's mission wasn't to help the user do user activities, but to get the user out of the way of Sherlock's activities, while keeping the user informed about the magnificence of Sherlock. This attitude became really popular with every OS that was competing to be innovative, and we're still stuck with it today. Shut up user, pay attention, look at my features!
card_zero 1y ago
> HIG Thing is, the Human Interface Guidelines were a sort of contract with the user, and the same goes for the ethos or culture or principles a big company has, if any. So in a sense they do have a connection with customers, via "community", if they choose to do so (and choose to be sincere about it instead of faking). I mean a business can be bigger than a local handyman and still go down the friendly path, for years potentially, until it decides that the friendly strategy was wasteful and streamlines it away.
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scoofy 1y ago
> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection I feel like modernity has brought about an identity for people as consumers. Much like a pro sports team who you have no relationship with beyond proximity, brands have slowly gained the same kind of consumptive identity associations. I see it by for the most in golf, where people literally wear caps repping their favorite club and ball manufacturers, rather than athletes. For me, I’m prefer to associate with brands that have some kind of editorial voice that align with my own. Like media outlets, university, or individuals.
pjerem 1y ago
FWIW, I use macOS everyday since more than 15 years (I also have a PC running various distros) and it’s true that the dock is absolutely dogshit. It’s unclear what will happen wen you click on anything, it’s useless if you have multiple windows of the same application, it’s even more of a mess if you have multiple windows but some are minimized. And of course in 2025, all applications icons are some variant of the same red green blue yellow colors so nothing stands out of the dock because it doesn’t show anything else than the icon. Yup, I hate the dock :)
FrustratedMonky 1y ago
"If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t." Well, they have done a good job with lock in. If you've bought a bunch on Apple Music, you need an apple device laying around to get it. Maybe some people just keep there old phone around just for this. But it can be a hard transition. Really, 'lock in', is the key to a lot of technology these days, so be aware.
grvdrm 1y ago
Agree, completely. Also aligns in spirit with "company is not your family" idea. The original post reads like an aggregation of complaints. I have some too! In particular stating that the Apple Watch is too complicated to use resonates. I have/use regularly but I am never pleased w/the interface. AirPods on the other hand - a gem. They just work. Sure, they sometimes awkwardly disconnect/connect to other devices (when I have more than 1 vying for attention) but they're rock solid for me thus far.
freefaler 1y ago
>> The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG. Oh, the atrocities of "simplification" made during Ive's later years of leadership are so numerous that they beggar belief. Many aspects of iOS and macOS no longer conform to even the basic principles of UI affordances.
TechSquidTV 1y ago
I had been fairly anti apple my entire life. Believing they were massively over priced, and lacked support for many of the things I did personally. In my younger years I was pretty big on graphic design, still big on video editing. People used to always say "Mac is better for design". I would ask, where did you get this from? Adobe runs on both platforms and updates often come out for Windows before they are ported to Apple (Adobe updates). And my Windows machines had powerful graphics cards, unlike macs. However. A couple years ago I built myself an insanely expensive computer build with the best parts I've ever put into a machine. It died 2 years later. I decided I just couldn't go through that anymore. I'm done building computers. I'm done with the little problems they always get. I'm done fixing my machine more than using it. Since the $500 Mac mini, Apple has started looking interesting. Finally I bought the Mac Studio M3 Ultra. So far so good. I wish I could play more games, but I could be looking into things like Crossover. There are a few old bespoke programs for old versions of Windows I also wish I could run once in a while but nothing too major. And best of all, Apple Care +. I'm not dealing with a broken machine again. I'll be buying warranties for it until I'm done with it. Bought 2 years for I think about $200, and my understanding is I should be able to renew that service/warranty at the end of the two years. After that, we'll see.
- IgorPartola 1y ago
  I was in a similar boat with desktop Linux and Android. What got me to switch: 1. Build quality of Apple laptops was higher than anything else available at the time. Having a metal laptop meant you got a MacBook or a Toughbook. I got tired of plastic breaking, hinges loosening, etc. Their introduction of retina screens really sealed the deal. 2. The iPhone was first to solve seamless cloud backups. 3. AppleCare. I was traveling and had my phone on a restaurant table when a waiter dropped a salt shaker on it. He was horrified that he shattered my screen. I got it replaced when I got back to the states for like $10. Android phones at the time did not have this option. 4. Apple sold devices directly to you. Most other phones you had to buy through the wireless carrier with annoying fee structures and deceptive pricing. 5. I could use a decent photo editor ok macOS vs GIMP in Linux. I love what GIMP is trying to be but it is a mess UI-wise. Same with Lightroom vs Darktable. 6. iPhone more or less solved offloading files to the cloud. It is still bad and broken but it was at the time I switched workable vs what Android had. 7. Apple devices mostly got out of my way whereas with Android I had to tinker. I would still use desktop Linux if macOS wasn’t needed for my work, but at this point the difference is minimal. 8. They are not an advertising company. Google phones feel like devices designed to spy on you. “Personal data please!” Apple is not ideal here but at least their primary point isn’t to sell you car insurance. This isn’t to say that Apple stuff doesn’t have warts. They cram way too much stuff in their systems. Their hardware is expensive. They often are behind the curve on performance. Their cloud offloading just does not work right for iMessage. Their protocols are closed and that is annoying. But at this point their stuff works well enough for me that I don’t see a reason to switch.
Aurornis 1y ago
Don’t forget the waves of rage when Apple removed the CD-ROM drive from laptops. Or when USB Type A ports disappeared in favor of USB-C ports. Or when the iPhone dropped the headphone jack. People still seethe about this decision even though Apple sells an excellent DAC for $9.99 that rates extremely well when tested by the audiophile obsessives and is easy to leave permanently attached to your headphones. There are two types of long-term Apple users: Those who can go with the flow and shrug off the changes, and those who are deeply pained whenever anything changes. The latter group mostly comes around after a couple years and the issues are forgotten.
- stackedinserter 1y ago
  > whenever anything changes Not any changes, but those that force me to change from solutions that worker perfectly well (like 3.5 jack, or USB-A, or RJ45, or HDMI) to shitty tech that rarely work well, like dongles, bluetooth audio, or usb-hdmi converters (gosh I hate them, they're all crap). Just before you mention them, CDs and floppy disks were never good tech, nobody misses them.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  > People still seethe about this decision even though Apple sells an excellent DAC for $9.99 Gee, I wonder why people are still mad that a change obviously intended to milk the users due money means they have to pay more money. Must be just because they hate change.
  - freedomben 1y ago
    Maybe that's why. Personally I think it was multi faceted. More hardware sales, thinner and more waterproof device (allegedly, I don't know), and getting rid of a pesky universal and simple standard for something they can make work way better with their walled garden offerings than this parties can. This gives them way more control. Wins all around
- addicted 1y ago
  If you think anyone has "forgotten" the issues you're deeply mistaken. Apple essentially has a monopoly on iOS so just because people have adapted to their decisions doesn't make their decisions correct, or at the very least, painless. If a headphone jack existed people would still be using it. The USB-C example is particularly ironic given that it was Apple that was fighting switching over to USB-C on the iPhone until forced to do so by the EU. For years you could carry an Android and Macbook with a single charger, but needed 2 chargers for a Macbook and an iPhone. When Apple dropped USB-A completely it was painful for years, and people still have trouble with it. Most competitors still include at least 1 USB-A port. Which wasn't the case for the CDRom or the floppy drive examples, showing that those decisions were correct in a way the USB-A removal one wasnt. Further, even when Apple dropped the CD-Rom, it was a phased removal starting with teh Macbook Air, which made complete sense. People who bought the MacBook Pro still had CD Roms (except for 1 of the cheapest models). That was the correct way to approach this. Remove it from a device where it made sense to remove it, while keeping it for the Pros who needed it, but also signaling that it was going away giving people time to transition their workflows. The USB-A port was signaled for 1 year at best (and even then it really wasn't signaled...it was simply removed from the cheapest model, which could have been seen as cost cutting more than anything else), and then a year later all the PRO laptops lost their USB-A ports completely. This was the opposite of the kind of transition they did earlier (such as keeping Firewire on the Pro laptops for years after they were removed from their no Pro versions).
makingstuffs 1y ago
Save your loyalty for people that matter in your actual life. There isn’t a single business in existence that cares about you. Even companies in the business of keeping you alive will only do so while doing so makes them a profit. I say this as the example of the local handyman is one where you will matter more. It’s a human relationship with a real person not a fake relationship with one person and a spreadsheet
- dingnuts 1y ago
  spoken like someone who has never been a regular at a small business. there are all kinds of benefits when you get to know the guy who owns you favorite pizza shop for instance
  - nemomarx 1y ago
    I think that falls under a real relationship with a specific person. You can definitely have those, but a larger Corp isn't going to let employees do that very much
    - Jensson 1y ago
      A small business owner has much more control over it than a local manager in a big corporation does so there are more benefits to becoming friends with them. That doesn't happen with large companies since there is no singular "owner" in public companies, even the CEO has to listen to the profit demands of the investors.
  - acdha 1y ago
    I think the key aspect here is scale: if the person making the decision knows the people affected, you usually see a pattern of different results than without that human connection. Large companies tend to be bad both from isolation and because the frontline people increasingly are not allowed to make decisions or consulted or even known by the people who are.
  - i80and 1y ago
    As a good friend of a restaurant owner I have personal experience with this and you're friends with the people, not the company. Restaurant owner friend transferred his company to new ownership, and I would never ask for the kinds of goodies the previous owner gave me. Because it was the owner, not the company, with which I had a relationship.
righthand 1y ago
The crowd you’re talking at say things like “I love Apple” unironically as an expression of self-discovery and identity.
pxc 1y ago
> The Dock was useless > The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did Aren't these basically true, even now? If I could easily, completely remove the Dock and Finder, I would. Launching apps via search (e.g., Spotlight) is quicker and easier than hunting for icons visually (especially given the amount of clutter on the Dock by default), and so is switching apps via search (e.g., Contexts, Witch, etc.). Finder is the least capable file manager I've ever used since the Windows 3 days. If I could replace it wholesale with CyberDuck or something, I would.
- roryirvine 1y ago
  Even more true now than it was then, I think. I mean, the dock was actually quite nice in the NeXTSTEP days but OSX munged it together with the Shelf and aspects of the Win95 taskbar (actually, I think this might have started with the final OpenStep release, but I never got to use that). These days when using a Mac, I tend to make it as small as possible and set it to auto-hide. I never actually use it for anything, but I don't think there's any way to turn it off altogether - so now it's just an annoyance, popping up with a distracting animation every time the pointer touches the bottom few pixels of the screen. I never got along with the Miller columns in FileViewer / OSX Finder, but my impression is that it has also continued to get worse over time with features coming (and, just as often, going!) every few years without much in the way to help you discover them. TBH, I use the cli for file management by preference.
- seec 1y ago
  Yeah pretty much. The dock is truly useless in a way the taskbar cannot dare to be. I think the windows model with menus integrated into the software windows and the taskbar for general multitasking management is just better. It was also much more future proof for multi-display use. The global menu bar just feels dumb nowadays, especially with the notch on laptops, where they take even more space from a place where everything was already crowded. Overall, I feel that Windows model of computing is just more solid and allows for more complexity/expansions. And I say that as a Mac user since before I'm 10 years old. OS X had some solid technical base that made it very worth it. But nowadays it feels all locked down and there are fewer leftovers. The UI is increasingly focused on looking good at the expense of everything, they have abandoned many of the good ideas in favor of oversimplification and unification with iOS.
looseyesterday 1y ago
I think I agree only partially, ofc people tend to over-react to change, however I do think as apple has grown they have become more careful in the ways that matter. I like that they are still pushing things with liquid glass and trying and failing, thats not the issue. But where is my trifold? Where is the folding iPhone? Or some sort of Dex mode? I Think they've stopped pushing the edge of whats possible and I think thats only natural, since they are worth so much money a single product managers messup could cost them millions if not billions, when thats the case its only natural to stop experimenting and play it safe, every incentive will push you towards that from D&O insurance, to activit shareholders even the increased media scrutiney.
tcmart14 1y ago
I agree. Both companies and people change. Companies and their customers will grow together and apart. Markets change, etc. And people should accept that is fine. While there is a group that thought OS X was a disaster, there is a group of people that say OS X Snow Leopard was peak OS development. And here in 10 years, there will be a group of people saying MacOS Tahoe was peak OS development. Those groups may have an intersection people, or not.
mbrochh 1y ago
The problem is, these companies invest billions to find ways to lock you in, often using illegal ways abusing their monopolies. "don't like it? buy the competition!" is easier said than done.

ars 1y ago

> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac? Me. I have to use a Mac at work, and I use the text terminal more than anything else on the computer. It doesn't help that Mac's don't have a good UI, everything is hidden behind extra key-presses, and switching between windows is a PAIN. On a mac every window for an app is considered the same, so there's no concept of switching between windows (except with special hidden key presses). When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice. The menubar of a non-active window doesn't exist, so you need an extra click, first to activate the window, then to go find its menubar and do an action. It's just a bad UI.

dylan604 1y ago
> When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice I get hit by this all the time. I have multiple monitors and I can scroll in a window without the window having focus. The scrolling leads you believe it has focus so when you hit cmd-w to close the window the window with actual focus closes instead.
airstrike 1y ago
> On a mac every window for an app is considered the same, so there's no concept of switching between windows (except with special hidden key presses). Is Cmd+` the hidden key press? Alternatively you can go to "Window" at the menubar if you prefer to click
- roryirvine 1y ago
  The problem with that is that the backtick key is awkwardly-placed on most (all?) non-US layouts. In the UK, for instance, it's immediately above the option key so to hit it requires clawing together your thumb and little finger. It's surprisingly awkward to switch between that and Cmd+Tab. GNOME does this much better - window switching is done using Super+<whatever the key above Tab is>. In the US, that remains ` but elsewhere it's so much better than on MacOS.
baq 1y ago
Of all the things you can dislike you pointed out a few features which actually make some sense. Cmd+` works well, even better than alt-tab most of the time, though it’s a major pain in the ass if you want multiple windows laid out from multiple apps on a single screen, and god forbid you have more windows of any in the background. The click to focus stops accidental clicks and gives a way out when the only visible piece of an app is a button. I’d rather focus on Apple refusal to support standard dpi displays (hat tip betterdisplay), basically broken .0 releases, gimped docker implementation, useless window management and broken multi screen windows.
rifty 1y ago
> When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice. This is sort of true but the full truth is less straight forward. On unfocused apps you can still send through scrolling and (mostly) perform single clicks with command + click... you can also without focus send single clicks to certain controls the developer has ad hoc allowed 'click through' on... For mouse oriented users I'd recommend trying a focus follows mouse experience like AutoRaise [1]. But I mean, it's not like this solution existing absolves Apple of the broader criticism here about what they prioritize and deprioritize for the default user interface experience. [1] https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise

rjsw 1y ago

> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac? Had they never used MPW?

xmprt 1y ago

The biggest reason for me using Android is simply because of how much competition there is in the space. If I use Apple products and don't like something they do then I'm stuck on an older version at best and need to migrate everything from their walled garden (at great cost) at worst. With Android, I can use Samsung one generation, switch to Pixel the next, and give Motorola/some other smaller company a chance later. I can choose a phone that has the exact features I want - better battery life? great camera? best performance? great display? cheap price? smaller display? larger display? There's a phone for each of those.

snowwrestler 1y ago
What would be the “great cost” of moving from an iPhone to an Android phone? I’m struggling to think of what would cost money at all, aside from the phone itself.
- viraptor 1y ago
  Time and existing apps I already paid for. Even upgrading to a new Android phone costs me a few hours of setup. Moving to iPhone (or the other way) would be seriously painful.
- xmprt 1y ago
  There's no straightforward way to migrate between an iPhone and Android so you'd spend a lot of time. Also I'm not sure if it's even possible to fully move over - for example would you be able to export your iMessages? Also, if you're fully bought into the ecosystem with Airpods and a Watch, you'd be better off replacing those (at least the watch which turns into a paperweight without an iPhone).
  - killingtime74 1y ago
    I've migrated back and forth. Most things are backup to cloud now. Only thing missing was Signal messages last time and I think they now fixed that. Do people still use plain SMS now?

dylan604 1y ago

> It does not matter how long you’ve bought from a big company, they owe you nothing The same can be said of employers. The company does not care about you no matter how many years you’ve been there. If you’re not c-suite, you're just a cog.

killingtime74 1y ago
At my employer even c-suite get fired all the time. If anything it's safer being rank and file
- immibis 1y ago
  They probably walk away with ten million dollars each time.
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    And the company makes more than that back by getting rid of them.

hn_throwaway_99 1y ago

I believe the term is "parasocial relationship". I found this article quite weird. It would be one thing if it were (yet another) "Company X has lost its way..." kind of article. But this post seemed more along the lines of "Apple built these things that I don't care about." Umm, so??? Obviously some people do, and this article struck me as someone complaining that Apple isn't building exactly what he wants. Furthermore, his analysis seems way off base to me: "Relying on legacy and unquestioning fanpeople, for whom everything Apple does is good and awesome and there’s nothing wrong with it, can only go so far." Apple stopped relying on "legacy and unquestioning fan people" a long time ago, ever since they basically became "the iPhone company" to a majority of their userbase.

fallous 1y ago
No, it's not a parasocial relationship. Those are one-sided and usually a passive consumer of media believing they have a real relationship with those who appear within said media. If you are a customer you most assuredly have an actual relationship with the company. Your options when dissatisfied with that relationship is to end it, send your complaints to the company, or decide the dissatisfaction is overcome by the value you receive.

linguae 1y ago

I’ve also come to this realization as a longtime Mac user. Granted, I’m not old enough to have used the classic Mac OS as a professional, though I did use it in my childhood. However, I was in high school and college during the Jobs era of Mac OS X, and that’s when I started using Macs as my daily drivers from 2006 until 2022 when I retired my 2013 Mac Pro and 2013 MacBook Air and switched back to PCs running Windows. Before Apple’s success with the iPhone, Apple was essentially the Macintosh company. Its fortunes were tied to the Mac, and Apple seemed to be attuned to the needs of Mac users. In return, there was quite a strong Mac fandom. The Mac was more than just a tool or just a platform. The Mac was a philosophy, and what attracted people to the Mac was the philosophy of the Mac and its ecosystem. Ever since the iPhone became a major hit, and especially since the passing of Jobs, it became apparent to me that my best interests as a computer user and Apple’s interests as a company no longer align. Apple no longer needed to cater to “the Mac faithful” to survive. In fact, Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world thanks to the iPhone. It also seems that macOS is losing its distinctiveness. The unfortunate thing, and I think this is where some Mac users get emotional and disappointed, is that there’s nothing else out there in the personal computing landscape that is like the glory days of the Mac. Windows is an inconsistent mess filled with annoyances, and the bazaar of the Linux ecosystem is nothing like the polished cathedral of the Mac. Everything is a step down from older Macs, even modern Macs. However, while thankfully we can enjoy retrocomputing for hobbyist use, many of us still need to use up-to-date platforms to browse the Web and to get our work done, and so clinging on to, say, Snow Leopard is not an option outside of hobbyist activities. Hence, why I use Windows. It’s not Snow Leopard but it gets the job done for now. The beauty about software, though, is that we don’t have to resign ourselves to accepting whatever Apple, Microsoft, and Google releases. Many of us reading this forum have the ability to write our own software. FOSS projects such as Linux have shown that it’s possible for user communities to write their own software that fit their needs without needing to be concerned about business matters such as market dominance. So, yes, this is a hard lesson for many longtime Mac users about being loyal to a company; companies change. But this lesson also creates opportunities. I think if enough disaffected longtime Mac users got together and pooled their resources together, we could create a FOSS alternative that is community-driven, one where the evolution of Mac-like personal computing is driven by the community, not by Apple or any other corporation.

inferiorhuman 1y ago

what a disaster OS X was OSX before the final iterations of 10.4 was a half-baked shitshow.

stateofinquiry 1y ago
maybe, but I think not as bad as MacOS "classic" 8.1 and 9 that came before it!
silvestrov 1y ago
but "a half-baked shitshow" that got better with each version. Currently OSX/iOS gets worse with each version.

huhkerrf 1y ago

> Any more emotional investment than that is going to cause pointless unhappiness. Agreed 100%. If you're writing 2,000+ word blog posts out of anger and exasperation, you should take it as a moment of self reflection that just maybe you're too invested in a corporation.

nico_h 1y ago
I mean if we were talking about Cheetos or Coca, I’d agree with you, but we live in a Duopoly on both Mobile, Desktop and the web. If you’re an adult, you’ve been living in their ecosystem for years. It’s kind if hard to not be emotionally invested in something you use all day for your work and/or personal life.
- closewith 1y ago
  > It’s kind if hard to not be emotionally invested in something you use all day for your work and/or personal life. I think the vast majority of people manage not to care at all, so that emotional investment isn't as essential as you may believe.

wvenable 1y ago

> If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t. There is another aspect to this though. As a user of an ecosystem, you're committed in many ways. As Apple or Microsoft or Google releases a new version of their operating system you're going to run that on hardware you already own. You're going to run software that you already own on that the OS. And you're doing to use skills and knowledge of that software to accomplish something useful. In some ways it doesn't matter if the product is good or bad -- you're pretty committed. You're going to be willing to suffer some pain because the alternative is too difficult and too expensive. The only thing you really can do is complain.

grues-dinner 1y ago
To be honest I sometimes feel that my aversion to getting looked into an ecosystem is actually a detriment in some ways. I have a horrible mishmash of apps and programs and nothing integrates really well long term (story of life on a Linux desktop, really). Maybe life would really be better if I just hand over control and become a true believer!
- von_lohengramm 1y ago
  I used to go through phases where I would try this. I gave Windows + WSL a shot. I gave embracing the Apple ecosystem a shot. I gave GNOME a shot. I gave KDE a shot. I was even crazy enough to give ChromeOS as my daily driver a shot. And so on and so forth. I found every single time that it just wasn't worth it. There was always some critical failure that was either completely underlooked or a 20 year old bug/shortcoming that had every patch to fix it rejected. I genuinely don't understand how people tolerate the dogshit being forcefed to you on all of these controlled platforms. People say that everything is getting worse, and it's true, but it's also true that you're actively choosing to use the things that are getting worse. I've eventually settled on NixOS and XFCE so I can tweak things to my particular needs while also benefiting from an army of unpaid labor continually improving nixpkgs and other flakes. This setup isn't perfect, but I've optimized for maximal comfort & utility while exerting minimal effort & time. Things really only break when they're self-updating under the hood, which thankfully is rather rare in nixpkgs.

mdasen 1y ago

It's not just about emotion or loyalty. It's about built-up knowledge and the difficulty of switching. When you're a long time user, you know how to do everything with what you're using - whether that's an operating system, a programming language, or something else. The latest product isn't good and your suggestion is "don't buy it." OK, what do I do instead? Buy a Windows or Linux laptop where I have to re-learn a decade's worth of knowing-how-everything-works? Build up my natural flow in a new OS? Find whatever are the Windows alternatives for all the little things that I do on my Mac? I'm not saying that companies owe things to their customers, but I think it's really simplistic to say that it's just an emotional investment and misplaced loyalty. People have a tool and then a company makes that tool worse. There are other tools, but it takes time to learn them, figure out their differences and how to get everything done with them, etc. Pretending that there's zero cost to switching is disingenuous. For example: if you're a software engineer and someone made your main programming language bad, there's a high cost to switching to a new language. Even if you're excellent at learning new languages, you don't know which libraries are good, you don't know what various functions are named, you don't know what warts are in the build system (and how to avoid them), etc. It's not just some emotional response or misplaced loyalty. It's that you've built up skills over many years that are tied to that thing.

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
Companies owe their livelihoods to their customers. If they do stupid shit and annoy those customers they lose money and potentially kill the business. There is a long list of companies which have done themselves serious financial harm, or even slit their own throats by failing to understand how Customer World works. No one is too big to fail. Especially in computing. There's also a long list of companies which looked like permanent fixtures for a while and were dead a few years later. As for Apple - I have a busy lock screen, and I can no longer read the time because the big numbers are too thin and the refraction effect makes them impossible to read. Rookie, stupid error. Just embarrassing.
- fragmede 1y ago
  Fwiw, if you go into settings -> Wallpaper on iOS, you can change the font and the font size of the time on the lockscreen, if that's your beef.

freetime2 1y ago

The worst Apple era for me was the butterfly keyboard / touchbar era of Macs. They went too far in the pursuit of thin and light - removing ports, going with a keyboard design that felt bad to type on and was prone malfunction, and the touchbar, which I actually thought sounded cool at first, ended up being much less useful than a row of function keys. I didn't feel betrayed by Apple, I just decided not to buy a new MacBook until they fixed their keyboard issues. I switched to Linux for a couple of years, and switched back once they released the M1 MacBook Pro. I'm perfectly happy with my Macs (I have 3) now. I actually really like the current era of Apple where their motto seems to be give people what they want. MacBook Pros with HDMI ports and SD card readers. iPads finally getting viable multi-tasking support and a real mouse cursor (although iPadOS still sucks IMO). The iPhone 17 Pro is slightly thicker than the 16 Pro to allow for a bigger battery. Their storage and memory upgrade prices are still ridiculous, but at least Macs come with a usable 16 GB memory minimum now, and iPhones start with an honestly better-than-I-expected 256 GB storage. It's not all perfect - especially on the software side. The settings menu on iOS is kind of a cluster. Apple Music has a terrible UX, as does the recent update to Photos. And I haven't tried Tahoe and Liquid Glass yet - but I'm definitely a little concerned.

kelnos 1y ago

> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman. Couldn't agree more. But I'd add that some (smaller?) businesses, where you still can't really establish a connection, can be worth your loyalty if they have a mission that resonates with you, and they are actually true to that mission. Of course, be prepared for the day when they get too successful and start acting in ways against the principles they were founded upon. But yeah... I think the best place to use our energy is by evangelizing people first and foremost, not businesses. Send people to your favorite restaurant because the owner is always there, chats with customers, and seems to love what they do. Recommend the person who regularly cuts your hair and cares enough to remember you and ask about your life. Refer that great handyman to others, who you trust to be a straight-shooter, pride themselves on the quality of their work, and not gouge you on cost.

calf 1y ago

This is such a unfair interpretation, it's a false equivalence argument. "OS X added Terminal and throwing out HIG for a UNIX-y UI" is a moot point. It's not about loyalty, it's about Apple's own coherence and vision as a creative-technology company, and a bunch of sophisticated users offering a critique of it over time. Read it that way and it makes a lot more sense. Beneath the Apple "fandom" or any fandom there are valid reasons why they came to be (the quality of the product), and we ought to elevate that than call customers naive for not adopting the very corporate cynicism that is a result of anticompetitive economics.

deleted 1y ago

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mulmen 1y ago

Ok but who do I buy from? I agree Apple isn’t good but who is better?

immibis 1y ago
Literally anyone else?
- mulmen 1y ago
  Who sells a better laptop than an M4 MacBook Pro?
  - immibis 1y ago
    Everyone who isn't Apple. Those Lenovo ones that had the scandal with the horrible spyware, for example, those are better, since you can reinstall Linux and then you have a laptop where you own the software and there isn't any spyware.
    - mulmen 1y ago
      Sorry I’m not finding this persuasive. What model? Does it have similar performance to the M4?
  - ranger_danger 1y ago
    What is your definition of "better" in this context?
    - mulmen 1y ago
      Dealer’s choice.

flohofwoe 1y ago

> The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did. Tbf, the Finder is still crap (if only it would be nearly as good as Windows Explorer was in its heyday I would probably use it more), and the UNIX terminal is pretty much needed to make a Mac usable in the first place - which is fine though, because the UNIX-ness was exactly why I switched to Mac ;)

8fingerlouie 1y ago
> Tbf, the Finder is still crap (if only it would be nearly as good as Windows Explorer was in its heyday I would probably use it more) I have the exact opposite opinion. I loathe Windows Explorer, and relatively simply stuff like presenting a tree view is apparently some weird magic trick that only Apple has figured out how to do. Browsing SMB shares (or any other networked storage) is one shortcut away (cmd+k), and I don't need to visit control panel to enable weird subsystems that expose services on my machine to connect to other machines. I use the terminal a lot, also for simple file operations, but that is because of proficiency, not out of need.
- nikau 1y ago
  How is \\server\share any harder than finder?
  - pasc1878 1y ago
    You have to type it. Finder shows them in the sidebar and you just click on it. Apple OS (both classic and NeXTStep) are not keyboard driven but mouse driven.
    - efdee 1y ago
      Same for Explorer, really. The SMB hosts that announce themselves show up in the sidebar.
- theshrike79 1y ago
  ...but the SMB implementation on macOS is shit. Try to browse any network directory with a non-trivial amount of files and see the whole Finder window just beach-ball or freeze. I can browse my NAS faster via a browser and copyparty[0] than with Finder and SMB or NFS... [0] https://github.com/9001/copyparty https://github.com/9001/copyparty

chromehearts 1y ago

> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman Thank you for saying this

aucisson_masque 1y ago

I wish it was possible. I bought an iPhone 13 mini that was running well. now if I want to stay secured I got to regularly update the phone and eventually get iOS 26, which will make the phone horrendous. What choice do I have ?

postexitus 1y ago

Arguably, they were wrong on all these points. Unix roots (text terminal) gave the one of the strongest boosts to Macbook sales in terms of newly minted developers. Deal with Microsoft brought not only much needed liquidity, but also Office, which was "the killer app(r)" for that era. Let me add one more - people complained about PowerPC->Intel switch, and then same people complained about Intel->Arm switch (both brave and visionary decisions which has been years in the making. The naysayers may complain about everything and nothing but Apple continues to prevail - I am saying that as no Apple fanboy - viva la Amiga!

commandersaki 1y ago

Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection To be fair, I find despite the various foibles, Apple has always looked out for me when it comes to accessibility -- where none of the competitors bother. Maybe I shouldn't act out of loyalty, but they will keep getting my business as they keep it up (despite Liquid Arse stuffing up accessibility quite a bit).

throwaway2037 1y ago
> Apple has always looked out for me when it comes to accessibility I don't follow. Do you mean accessibility for visually or physically disabled? If so, can you give an example where Apple is better than Android?

DrScientist 1y ago

> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac? Why complain about something you don't need to use if you don't want to? What's great about the commandline? Scriptability, automation, configurability, composability, the easy re-running of complex commands with a small tweak, access Unix commandline tools that have been fined tuned over decades. And to compare the terminal to DOS is not to understand the gulf in quality between them. > Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac? Developers & scientists. They are people too :-)

alexey-salmin 1y ago

>> it’s a company that I feel has lost its alignment with me and other long-time Apple users and customers. > When OS X debuted there was a daytime radio talk show in my area called “The Computer Guys.” They capably covered all sorts of computing topics, but were clearly long-time Apple dudes. And they spent weeks complaining about what a disaster OS X was. The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG. The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did. And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac? I kind of see it differently. That is, Apple did in fact lose the alignment with the Classic MacOS fans but Apple did it on purpose. Objectively, by 2001 standards MacOS sucked and you wouldn't want to align with people who think otherwise. As the result Apple broke out of a small stagnating niche and won a big market. This is different from today's situation where it feels like Apple breaks the alignment not on purpose and not by innovation but rather just slowly drifts out. There's a theory in the comments that they want to align with "people who want the best camera array and have money to burn". This could be true but even then it doesn't look like a good strategy to win a big market long-term. More like a retreat back into a small niche that may stagnate in the future, like "people who want the best publishing software and have money to burn".

card_zero 1y ago
> Objectively, by 2001 standards MacOS sucked and you wouldn't want to align with people who think otherwise. I see, so like "Don't think different"?
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  By 2001 the Classic MacOS wasn't really "different", it was largely the same as the System 7 release from 10 years ago. The NeXTSTEP on the other hand was quite different. Different from MacOS, from DOS/Windows and from proprietary UNIXes. I would argue that switching to NeXTSTEP was more aligned with the original spirit of "think different" than getting stuck in the old ways.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    Like another post says, "The Mac was a philosophy". I bought a series of them but stopped around the year 2000 because they threw away the philosophy in favor of innovation. I think things were going south already around 1998. Remember Sherlock? On system 8.5 it would regularly interrupt the user (sending games from full screen to windowed) to display a dialog to say that it was indexing files. This couldn't be turned off except by disabling the Sherlock extension altogether. That says that Sherlock's mission wasn't to help the user do user activities, but to get the user out of the way of Sherlock's activities, while keeping the user informed about the magnificence of Sherlock. This attitude became really popular with every OS that was competing to be innovative, and we're still stuck with it today. Shut up user, pay attention, look at my features!

card_zero 1y ago

> HIG Thing is, the Human Interface Guidelines were a sort of contract with the user, and the same goes for the ethos or culture or principles a big company has, if any. So in a sense they do have a connection with customers, via "community", if they choose to do so (and choose to be sincere about it instead of faking). I mean a business can be bigger than a local handyman and still go down the friendly path, for years potentially, until it decides that the friendly strategy was wasteful and streamlines it away.

deleted 1y ago

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scoofy 1y ago

> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection I feel like modernity has brought about an identity for people as consumers. Much like a pro sports team who you have no relationship with beyond proximity, brands have slowly gained the same kind of consumptive identity associations. I see it by for the most in golf, where people literally wear caps repping their favorite club and ball manufacturers, rather than athletes. For me, I’m prefer to associate with brands that have some kind of editorial voice that align with my own. Like media outlets, university, or individuals.

pjerem 1y ago

FWIW, I use macOS everyday since more than 15 years (I also have a PC running various distros) and it’s true that the dock is absolutely dogshit. It’s unclear what will happen wen you click on anything, it’s useless if you have multiple windows of the same application, it’s even more of a mess if you have multiple windows but some are minimized. And of course in 2025, all applications icons are some variant of the same red green blue yellow colors so nothing stands out of the dock because it doesn’t show anything else than the icon. Yup, I hate the dock :)

FrustratedMonky 1y ago

"If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t." Well, they have done a good job with lock in. If you've bought a bunch on Apple Music, you need an apple device laying around to get it. Maybe some people just keep there old phone around just for this. But it can be a hard transition. Really, 'lock in', is the key to a lot of technology these days, so be aware.

grvdrm 1y ago

Agree, completely. Also aligns in spirit with "company is not your family" idea. The original post reads like an aggregation of complaints. I have some too! In particular stating that the Apple Watch is too complicated to use resonates. I have/use regularly but I am never pleased w/the interface. AirPods on the other hand - a gem. They just work. Sure, they sometimes awkwardly disconnect/connect to other devices (when I have more than 1 vying for attention) but they're rock solid for me thus far.

freefaler 1y ago

>> The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG. Oh, the atrocities of "simplification" made during Ive's later years of leadership are so numerous that they beggar belief. Many aspects of iOS and macOS no longer conform to even the basic principles of UI affordances.

TechSquidTV 1y ago

I had been fairly anti apple my entire life. Believing they were massively over priced, and lacked support for many of the things I did personally. In my younger years I was pretty big on graphic design, still big on video editing. People used to always say "Mac is better for design". I would ask, where did you get this from? Adobe runs on both platforms and updates often come out for Windows before they are ported to Apple (Adobe updates). And my Windows machines had powerful graphics cards, unlike macs. However. A couple years ago I built myself an insanely expensive computer build with the best parts I've ever put into a machine. It died 2 years later. I decided I just couldn't go through that anymore. I'm done building computers. I'm done with the little problems they always get. I'm done fixing my machine more than using it. Since the $500 Mac mini, Apple has started looking interesting. Finally I bought the Mac Studio M3 Ultra. So far so good. I wish I could play more games, but I could be looking into things like Crossover. There are a few old bespoke programs for old versions of Windows I also wish I could run once in a while but nothing too major. And best of all, Apple Care +. I'm not dealing with a broken machine again. I'll be buying warranties for it until I'm done with it. Bought 2 years for I think about $200, and my understanding is I should be able to renew that service/warranty at the end of the two years. After that, we'll see.

IgorPartola 1y ago
I was in a similar boat with desktop Linux and Android. What got me to switch: 1. Build quality of Apple laptops was higher than anything else available at the time. Having a metal laptop meant you got a MacBook or a Toughbook. I got tired of plastic breaking, hinges loosening, etc. Their introduction of retina screens really sealed the deal. 2. The iPhone was first to solve seamless cloud backups. 3. AppleCare. I was traveling and had my phone on a restaurant table when a waiter dropped a salt shaker on it. He was horrified that he shattered my screen. I got it replaced when I got back to the states for like $10. Android phones at the time did not have this option. 4. Apple sold devices directly to you. Most other phones you had to buy through the wireless carrier with annoying fee structures and deceptive pricing. 5. I could use a decent photo editor ok macOS vs GIMP in Linux. I love what GIMP is trying to be but it is a mess UI-wise. Same with Lightroom vs Darktable. 6. iPhone more or less solved offloading files to the cloud. It is still bad and broken but it was at the time I switched workable vs what Android had. 7. Apple devices mostly got out of my way whereas with Android I had to tinker. I would still use desktop Linux if macOS wasn’t needed for my work, but at this point the difference is minimal. 8. They are not an advertising company. Google phones feel like devices designed to spy on you. “Personal data please!” Apple is not ideal here but at least their primary point isn’t to sell you car insurance. This isn’t to say that Apple stuff doesn’t have warts. They cram way too much stuff in their systems. Their hardware is expensive. They often are behind the curve on performance. Their cloud offloading just does not work right for iMessage. Their protocols are closed and that is annoying. But at this point their stuff works well enough for me that I don’t see a reason to switch.

Aurornis 1y ago

Don’t forget the waves of rage when Apple removed the CD-ROM drive from laptops. Or when USB Type A ports disappeared in favor of USB-C ports. Or when the iPhone dropped the headphone jack. People still seethe about this decision even though Apple sells an excellent DAC for $9.99 that rates extremely well when tested by the audiophile obsessives and is easy to leave permanently attached to your headphones. There are two types of long-term Apple users: Those who can go with the flow and shrug off the changes, and those who are deeply pained whenever anything changes. The latter group mostly comes around after a couple years and the issues are forgotten.

stackedinserter 1y ago
> whenever anything changes Not any changes, but those that force me to change from solutions that worker perfectly well (like 3.5 jack, or USB-A, or RJ45, or HDMI) to shitty tech that rarely work well, like dongles, bluetooth audio, or usb-hdmi converters (gosh I hate them, they're all crap). Just before you mention them, CDs and floppy disks were never good tech, nobody misses them.
bigstrat2003 1y ago
> People still seethe about this decision even though Apple sells an excellent DAC for $9.99 Gee, I wonder why people are still mad that a change obviously intended to milk the users due money means they have to pay more money. Must be just because they hate change.
- freedomben 1y ago
  Maybe that's why. Personally I think it was multi faceted. More hardware sales, thinner and more waterproof device (allegedly, I don't know), and getting rid of a pesky universal and simple standard for something they can make work way better with their walled garden offerings than this parties can. This gives them way more control. Wins all around
addicted 1y ago
If you think anyone has "forgotten" the issues you're deeply mistaken. Apple essentially has a monopoly on iOS so just because people have adapted to their decisions doesn't make their decisions correct, or at the very least, painless. If a headphone jack existed people would still be using it. The USB-C example is particularly ironic given that it was Apple that was fighting switching over to USB-C on the iPhone until forced to do so by the EU. For years you could carry an Android and Macbook with a single charger, but needed 2 chargers for a Macbook and an iPhone. When Apple dropped USB-A completely it was painful for years, and people still have trouble with it. Most competitors still include at least 1 USB-A port. Which wasn't the case for the CDRom or the floppy drive examples, showing that those decisions were correct in a way the USB-A removal one wasnt. Further, even when Apple dropped the CD-Rom, it was a phased removal starting with teh Macbook Air, which made complete sense. People who bought the MacBook Pro still had CD Roms (except for 1 of the cheapest models). That was the correct way to approach this. Remove it from a device where it made sense to remove it, while keeping it for the Pros who needed it, but also signaling that it was going away giving people time to transition their workflows. The USB-A port was signaled for 1 year at best (and even then it really wasn't signaled...it was simply removed from the cheapest model, which could have been seen as cost cutting more than anything else), and then a year later all the PRO laptops lost their USB-A ports completely. This was the opposite of the kind of transition they did earlier (such as keeping Firewire on the Pro laptops for years after they were removed from their no Pro versions).

makingstuffs 1y ago

Save your loyalty for people that matter in your actual life. There isn’t a single business in existence that cares about you. Even companies in the business of keeping you alive will only do so while doing so makes them a profit. I say this as the example of the local handyman is one where you will matter more. It’s a human relationship with a real person not a fake relationship with one person and a spreadsheet

dingnuts 1y ago
spoken like someone who has never been a regular at a small business. there are all kinds of benefits when you get to know the guy who owns you favorite pizza shop for instance
- nemomarx 1y ago
  I think that falls under a real relationship with a specific person. You can definitely have those, but a larger Corp isn't going to let employees do that very much
  - Jensson 1y ago
    A small business owner has much more control over it than a local manager in a big corporation does so there are more benefits to becoming friends with them. That doesn't happen with large companies since there is no singular "owner" in public companies, even the CEO has to listen to the profit demands of the investors.
- acdha 1y ago
  I think the key aspect here is scale: if the person making the decision knows the people affected, you usually see a pattern of different results than without that human connection. Large companies tend to be bad both from isolation and because the frontline people increasingly are not allowed to make decisions or consulted or even known by the people who are.
- i80and 1y ago
  As a good friend of a restaurant owner I have personal experience with this and you're friends with the people, not the company. Restaurant owner friend transferred his company to new ownership, and I would never ask for the kinds of goodies the previous owner gave me. Because it was the owner, not the company, with which I had a relationship.

righthand 1y ago

The crowd you’re talking at say things like “I love Apple” unironically as an expression of self-discovery and identity.

pxc 1y ago

> The Dock was useless > The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did Aren't these basically true, even now? If I could easily, completely remove the Dock and Finder, I would. Launching apps via search (e.g., Spotlight) is quicker and easier than hunting for icons visually (especially given the amount of clutter on the Dock by default), and so is switching apps via search (e.g., Contexts, Witch, etc.). Finder is the least capable file manager I've ever used since the Windows 3 days. If I could replace it wholesale with CyberDuck or something, I would.

roryirvine 1y ago
Even more true now than it was then, I think. I mean, the dock was actually quite nice in the NeXTSTEP days but OSX munged it together with the Shelf and aspects of the Win95 taskbar (actually, I think this might have started with the final OpenStep release, but I never got to use that). These days when using a Mac, I tend to make it as small as possible and set it to auto-hide. I never actually use it for anything, but I don't think there's any way to turn it off altogether - so now it's just an annoyance, popping up with a distracting animation every time the pointer touches the bottom few pixels of the screen. I never got along with the Miller columns in FileViewer / OSX Finder, but my impression is that it has also continued to get worse over time with features coming (and, just as often, going!) every few years without much in the way to help you discover them. TBH, I use the cli for file management by preference.
seec 1y ago
Yeah pretty much. The dock is truly useless in a way the taskbar cannot dare to be. I think the windows model with menus integrated into the software windows and the taskbar for general multitasking management is just better. It was also much more future proof for multi-display use. The global menu bar just feels dumb nowadays, especially with the notch on laptops, where they take even more space from a place where everything was already crowded. Overall, I feel that Windows model of computing is just more solid and allows for more complexity/expansions. And I say that as a Mac user since before I'm 10 years old. OS X had some solid technical base that made it very worth it. But nowadays it feels all locked down and there are fewer leftovers. The UI is increasingly focused on looking good at the expense of everything, they have abandoned many of the good ideas in favor of oversimplification and unification with iOS.

looseyesterday 1y ago

I think I agree only partially, ofc people tend to over-react to change, however I do think as apple has grown they have become more careful in the ways that matter. I like that they are still pushing things with liquid glass and trying and failing, thats not the issue. But where is my trifold? Where is the folding iPhone? Or some sort of Dex mode? I Think they've stopped pushing the edge of whats possible and I think thats only natural, since they are worth so much money a single product managers messup could cost them millions if not billions, when thats the case its only natural to stop experimenting and play it safe, every incentive will push you towards that from D&O insurance, to activit shareholders even the increased media scrutiney.

tcmart14 1y ago

I agree. Both companies and people change. Companies and their customers will grow together and apart. Markets change, etc. And people should accept that is fine. While there is a group that thought OS X was a disaster, there is a group of people that say OS X Snow Leopard was peak OS development. And here in 10 years, there will be a group of people saying MacOS Tahoe was peak OS development. Those groups may have an intersection people, or not.

mbrochh 1y ago

The problem is, these companies invest billions to find ways to lock you in, often using illegal ways abusing their monopolies. "don't like it? buy the competition!" is easier said than done.