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Apple gets a lot of shade, but… I used Linux for about 25 years. With the rising cost of hardware, I bought an M4 Max MacStudio earlier this year as it was the

by BirAdam 11mo ago

Apple gets a lot of shade, but… I used Linux for about 25 years. With the rising cost of hardware, I bought an M4 Max MacStudio earlier this year as it was the best bang for the buck on CPU/GPU and the savings on those offset the extortionate pricing on RAM/SSD. You know what? Despite Liquid Glass being a bit of a downgrade recently, macOS is still good. Do I enjoy it as much as the old lampshade iMac or even 68030 Macintosh? No. Is it absolutely astounding compared to anything else available? Yes. It is. The ecosystem effects with my phone and AirPods is nice, but the computer alone is phenomenal. I completely understand why people get upset about certain things, but the Macintosh, the iPhone, and even the watch and headset are solid products. Not everyone is going to like them, and I’d be worried if everyone did; yet, I think Cook did okay. No one was ever going to be Steve Jobs, and given Steve’s failings, we should not want anyone to be Steve Jobs. His genius came at a severe cost to his family and to him personally. Apple is still producing solid products. They have warts, but that was true of every single product that Apple ever released. Nostalgia plays a huge part in making us think things have gotten worse. I have a Mac Classic II, a Performa, a PowerMac G3, an XT clone, and a Pentium machine that I use often… things are so much better now than before.

bigyabai 11mo ago
> macOS is still good. > yet, I think Cook did okay. Kindly, I think your reality is being distorted. macOS could have gotten so good over the past 15 years; today, it's a pale imitation of Windows 8. It's got live tiles, radical acrylic accents, constant cloud service nags, and preinstalled advertisements everywhere across the system. OCSP won't let you launch certain apps unless your DRM API is online, for crying out loud! It is insulting. Tim Cook, in his wisdom, pivoted Apple harder into services. AppleTV, App Store, all the kinds of meaningless high-margin slop that can be created without direct competition. This has damaged macOS and iOS perennially, they are feature-poor operating systems when compared with desktop Windows and Android today. Can you imagine how much Apple would be worth if they didn't refuse to sign Nvidia compute drivers right now? Or how iOS would look with Vulkan 1.2 compliance and the Steam Deck's Proton stack? Apple is the #1 party holding Apple back, here! I daily drive Linux now, but the state of macOS is so ad-ridden and walled-off that I would rather do Linux development with WSL than bother setting up a Mac. It's that bad.
- ponector 11mo ago
  >> macOS could have gotten so good over the past 15 years; today, it's a pale imitation of Windows 8 Or it could have gotten a full imitation of Windows 11.
- hogdanish 11mo ago
  macOS isn't without its sins, but I feel like "ad-ridden” is a stretch compared to the baseline of Windows 11 injecting promotions into the Start menu, OEM Android flavors full of carrier crap, etc. There's iCloud+ nags here and there, but it’s still by far the least noisy consumer OS right now aside from Linux. Of course, if you consider iCloud's deep integration into Finder and the rest of the operating system a form of advertising, macOS is infested with ads. But then you’ve basically redefined “ad” to mean “any tightly integrated first-party service,” i.e. the core value proposition people are buying into with Apple's ecosystem at all. (I still agree with your points about the lost potential of macOS, though)
bibimsz 11mo ago
MacOS is the best desktop operating system by far. If they focused on gaming for a few cycles they'd put windows out of business. Would like better window management though. Just copy Omarchy.
- hogdanish 11mo ago
  Even as a diehard Linux user, I totally agree. If you can look past macOS's weak support for gaming, mediocre window management, and hostility towards unsigned binaries, the stability and experience it provides is second to none. ... Even then, you can still get around many pain points with third-party tools. AltTab + Raycast covers window management well enough for me and compatibility layers like Crossover/Wine are already great for gaming (which is hopefully only going to get better with Valve now working on x86 -> ARM translation layers)

by BirAdam 11mo ago

bigyabai 11mo ago

> macOS is still good. > yet, I think Cook did okay. Kindly, I think your reality is being distorted. macOS could have gotten so good over the past 15 years; today, it's a pale imitation of Windows 8. It's got live tiles, radical acrylic accents, constant cloud service nags, and preinstalled advertisements everywhere across the system. OCSP won't let you launch certain apps unless your DRM API is online, for crying out loud! It is insulting. Tim Cook, in his wisdom, pivoted Apple harder into services. AppleTV, App Store, all the kinds of meaningless high-margin slop that can be created without direct competition. This has damaged macOS and iOS perennially, they are feature-poor operating systems when compared with desktop Windows and Android today. Can you imagine how much Apple would be worth if they didn't refuse to sign Nvidia compute drivers right now? Or how iOS would look with Vulkan 1.2 compliance and the Steam Deck's Proton stack? Apple is the #1 party holding Apple back, here! I daily drive Linux now, but the state of macOS is so ad-ridden and walled-off that I would rather do Linux development with WSL than bother setting up a Mac. It's that bad.

ponector 11mo ago
>> macOS could have gotten so good over the past 15 years; today, it's a pale imitation of Windows 8 Or it could have gotten a full imitation of Windows 11.
hogdanish 11mo ago
macOS isn't without its sins, but I feel like "ad-ridden” is a stretch compared to the baseline of Windows 11 injecting promotions into the Start menu, OEM Android flavors full of carrier crap, etc. There's iCloud+ nags here and there, but it’s still by far the least noisy consumer OS right now aside from Linux. Of course, if you consider iCloud's deep integration into Finder and the rest of the operating system a form of advertising, macOS is infested with ads. But then you’ve basically redefined “ad” to mean “any tightly integrated first-party service,” i.e. the core value proposition people are buying into with Apple's ecosystem at all. (I still agree with your points about the lost potential of macOS, though)

bibimsz 11mo ago

MacOS is the best desktop operating system by far. If they focused on gaming for a few cycles they'd put windows out of business. Would like better window management though. Just copy Omarchy.

hogdanish 11mo ago
Even as a diehard Linux user, I totally agree. If you can look past macOS's weak support for gaming, mediocre window management, and hostility towards unsigned binaries, the stability and experience it provides is second to none. ... Even then, you can still get around many pain points with third-party tools. AltTab + Raycast covers window management well enough for me and compatibility layers like Crossover/Wine are already great for gaming (which is hopefully only going to get better with Valve now working on x86 -> ARM translation layers)