If you don't like macOS or Macs, that's ok, but this seems like very poor reasoning...
> Xcode
You either need it and can't switch to a non-Mac, or you don't need it. What's the argument here?
> the omnipresent ‘Dock’ (never used it once)
I hide mine. In 12 years on a Mac this hasn't been an issue for me since I turned Dock hiding on 5 minutes in.
> the omnipresent ‘Finder’
Finder isn't great, but I wouldn't say that the graphical file managers on Linux are particularly stellar either.
> black magic in the ‘Terminal.app’
What "black magic" is this? Also iTerm2 is a wonderful piece of software.
> Notifications (and its omnipresent menu hamburger icon)
Users do typically need to be notified about things. Is the problem that you want these somewhere else? Is it that you want to disable notifications? Because you do have full control over which apps can notify.
> App store
What's the problem here? Since they moved system updates back out of the AppStore, it's very easy to just ignore it entirely.
> start-up chord
If this is making it to your list of things you hate about macOS, you're really scraping the barrel.
Come on. Let's make better arguments than this. Let's be clear about our requirements, our biases, our specific likes and dislikes. This article has no substance to it, it's essentially clickbait.
There are many reasons to dislike macOS, there are many legitimate reasons to move to another OS on other hardware.
We make better decisions when we are more honest like this.
Agree, as far as 'I left Apple for reasons...' posts go, this one is very weak, there really is nothing in that article that is not irrelevant or trivially fixable. Even the 'things I miss' paragraph makes very little sense ('the fast browser', like Safari is in a special class of its own compared to browsers on other systems)?
IMO I think there have been way too many of these 'why I left Apple' posts, I don't see the point, they rarely add anything meaningful for anyone who hasn't already made up their mind and the discussion afterwards is always a repetition of the same tired anecdotes.
I'd guess anyone who doesn't like or need macOS is already running something else, and for those of use who still like macOS but also use other systems like myself it is trivially easy to run things in a VM so you can have the 'best of both worlds' (my opinion, YMMV).
Didn't they disable the startup chime, like, three years ago? I remember people being very excited to discover the `defaults write` command to re-enable it.
Well, yes, but also, the arguments are much shorter when we're honest.
Apple is an overpriced fashion company. Ten words or less, end of fucking argument, nothing more should have ever been considered. The entire rest of the thread brings no useful details or counterarguments. If you want practical hardware, buy it from literally any other vendor for a substantial discount and possible improvement in quality.
Okay, that was rough and brutal. I don't know if we can have discussions that are so honest! Let's go back to whining about Finder.
These posts always skip over the problem of the GUI. Compared to macOS, I've never found a Linux desktop even remotely as good, and the problem on the BSDs is even worse.
Then there are the details that everyone seems to miss, like the fact that OpenBSD has no bluetooth support at all.
For 99% of the world, macOS is still the best option.
>These posts always skip over the problem of the GUI. Compared to macOS, I've never found a Linux desktop even remotely as good, and the problem on the BSDs is even worse. Then there are the details that everyone seems to miss, like the fact that OpenBSD has no bluetooth support at all.
90% of the time it's from people who just do coding on the backend and/or web development, plus use web and mail.
If you work or have hobbies that have to do with photography, music, audio editing, video, multimedia in general etc, it's more of a wasteland.
E.g. when it gets to DAWs your options get very limited, very fast (BitWig, Reaper, iirc, and some FOSS ones that are not up to the task). Same or worse for VSTs.
Actually, the underlying reason for at least the successful stories behind such migrations stems from non-GUI thinking. The power lies in the CLI and engagement with POSIX-compliance with an open arm. This sometimes turn out highly liberating for developers (which lead them to write such stories).
How many people are using Bluetooth with their computers? Most wireless keyboards/mice usually include their own receivers which plug into a port.
And 3.5mm audio jacks are still a thing on the think pad, so you can get a cheaper, higher quality headset for this device which unlike Bluetooth ones does not run out of power every couple
of hours.
Apple is an expensive oem offering a a finite number of models in a product category with an extremely broad selection.
Take powerful desktops. It's never been cheaper to build a powerful expandable box but whereas you can have something great for 700-1200 apples start at 6000 for something that might not beat the 1200 option.
Alternatively take their very well reviewed laptops that start at 50% more than than the average person pays for a computer. They may be a good value but the average buyer prefers to spend their money on other affairs.
How about a laptop with a modest screen size and dedicated gpu, doesn't exist.
How about a dedicated gpu. You'll need to buy the highest end model starting at 2400 instead of paying 1000 at Walmart.
Sounds like the guy wasn't really the Mac target audience in the first place. It just kind of worked for him on the Unix side of things and all the bells and whistles we justify the steep pricing by were merely "things he is now glad to never have to deal with again".
Professionals were Apples target a long time ago, but they just switched over to the mainstream and keeping a lot of professionals that was in the earlier segment. Year over year the Mac is dumbed down to protect the user from doing something stupid, but not really thinking about the people that don't want to be cushioned. It's great HW though.
What is the Mac target audience if not "professional creatives" though (which got a late huge influx of developers who wanted a "UNIX machine that just works" when Apple switched from MacOS to OSX, and those are also the first to leave now). Maybe the market in the US is very different, but in Europe the Mac always used to be a "professional tool" for creating things. The way OSX/macOS has been going in the last decade alienates many of those users.
I struggle to see the point in that strategy. We're at a point where the 'average user' doesn't need a computer, since even cheap noname mobile phone are good enough for most things now. Why turn the Mac into an oversized mobile phone? This won't attract any new users who are happy with their phone, it just will drive away the people who bought a computer because it lets them do stuff that's not possible on a phone.
PS: My comment reads a bit snobbish, which wasn't my intention. I do believe that no actual "average user" (or "homogeneous" target audience) exists in the real world. Thus it doesn't make sense to create a single setup which targets such an "average user". Options, customization and (for some people at least) being able to poke into the guts of the system are important, and that's what Apple is taking away on macOS, and that's what makes macOS more and more unattractive.
I stopped to count how many blog posts "bye-bye Apple, welcome OpenBSD or GNU/Linux" I saw the last years... to come back to macOS a few months / years after for different reasons (especially hardware compatibility to be honest).
The OS is a tool.
Choose the one you are familiar with or want to work on, and change it if you are not happy with.
Could you point to some? I would be interested in knowing what major issues they face since I’m considering switching over entirely to Linux (albeit from Windows. I switched from OSX to Windows a few years ago).
Why such a sour tone in the post? The author obviously has different needs than 99% of the population that doesn't know what `ps uaxww` is (me included) and doesn't want to know (me included). Get a machine that fits your needs and don't badmouth the others.
This, unfortunately, seems to be an occasion of someone who likes to paint themselves as one of those super elitist "hey look, I am the 0.1%" [insert obscure tech stack here] mensa hacker kids. Being oblivious to the obvious needs of the other 99.9%, they can seem even more elitist.
> I’m never going to need a dongle, or say the word dongle, ever again now that Apple is out of my life.
I find connecting devices through a dongle convenient in certain cases. I mostly work in my home office with 3-4 devices connected and when I want to move around a bit, it is easier to disconnect the single dongle - rather than disconnecting each individual cable.
For this USB-C has been a godsend. With one cable I get power, monitor, mouse, keyboard, webcam, and audio. Super easy to switch between laptop and desktop while using same peripherals. I don't miss the dongles a bit.
YMMV but I personally separate adapters into dongles (one input, one output) and hubs (N inputs, one output). There's also docks, but those are just stationary hubs.
I recently swithced to Mac as my primary dev machine and I am not a big fan of it. Things like bad window management, shit keyboard(butterfly) and the keyboard shortcuts not working uniformly across all application makes it a subpar experience compared to Windows/WSL/Surface or Lennovo laptop.
I find the list of things they won’t miss to be strange. I am not opposed to legitimate criticism of Apple’s hardware/software offerings, but I felt like they were kind of reaching to find things they didn’t like.
.DS_Store files? The startup chord? The dock?
These are all incredibly minor things. This read more like an attempt to justify a purchase than any kind of actual comparison or analysis.
As an aside, I may be totally alone here, but I never plug anything into my laptop with the obvious exception of a charger. I don’t need more ports and I don’t see them as a selling point. That said, I can easily imagine different use cases where they’d be useful.
After 15 years of the Mac as my primary client OS, I am (very) slowly transitioning to Ubuntu:
* Quality control has gone completely downhill. Catalina is completely unusable and the last two security updates for Mojave cause constant OS panics
* Apple’s push to switch developers to subscription pricing is unconscionable
* So are their antitrust abuses
* the price-gouging on the Mac Pro has gotten completely out of hand. I’ve owned a PowerMac G5, Nehalem Mac Pro and 2013 Round Mac Pro, but I draw the line at the new one.
I love OpenBSD, sadly it is not usable as a full-time desktop/laptop for me:
If hes the guy that is content with running openbsd on a thinkpad. Apple for sure is not what he seeks. It maybe was some years ago but the target audience has become too big for people like him to be relevant for apple.
People give computer and os branding too much importance, this is a non issue.
.DS_Store files are indeed sometimes a pain. I remember once setting up a Linux USB boot drive. And it didn't start because MacOS corrupted the drive checksum by writing exactly that file.
Of course this can be circumvented by immediately removing the drive after setting it up, but also other USB drives get littered with this once you put them in.
I've been on a macOS workstation for 6y, but I miss having a real Linux. I code & live in the terminal, and avoid GUIs. The problem for me is the amazing monitor and trackpad on MacBooks. Are there any latest reviews comparing the trackpad on Linux OSes?
I used to have a Macbook for work (2013 model, I think). It ran Fedora Workstation nicely. You may be able to keep the hardware but change the software.
Apple complaint posts on here are always so funny because the logic is always so niche and techy and silly. It comes off sounding like a person who loves running their own steam train because it works for them and can't believe that anyone would ever want to use a car or bicycle.
More power to anyone who's needs are met by OpenBSD on a laptop, but they are as far from a typical user as can exist. And I don't mean just a stereotypical 'business user' who only uses their computer to access email and spreadsheets, I mean any power user who actually creates stuff with their computer, whether it's programs, websites, music, video editing, documents, whatever.
This person hates Finder. A normal person hates a laptop that might not go into suspend mode when they close the lid to go to a meeting or it might just lock up and lose all their work because some webcam driver that got loaded doesn't fully support suspend. And god forbid if they try to plug the laptop into a random projector to do a presentation.
This person hates the startup sound. A normal person hates a laptop where the fonts look like crap or all the GUI elements render at way too small a size unless you edit config files and play with DPI settings.
This person hates the dock. A normal person hates a laptop that requires you to install command line utilities and edit config files to enable reliable power management and get decent battery life.
This person hates laptops that don't have lots of different kinds of ports to plug in stuff. A normal person loves that they can just buy any external solid state hard drive on Amazon and plug it into the USB-C port with zero configuration and it transfers files super fast. Or they can buy any brand new USB-C webcam or headset and everything just works and they get it with next day delivery and can get on with their actual job and never thing about it again.
This person hates .DS_Store files. A normal hates a laptop where trying to have a simple video call is probably going to require 6 hours of figuring out which kernel modules are required to support your webcam and audio chipset. And if you use multiple webcams or regularly switch between headsets or whatever, you might as well just give up.
This person hates the App Store. A normal person hates a laptop that doesn't let them run essential software like Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, Illustrator or whatever modern creation software makes them 50x more efficient at their job.
But if OpenBSD solves your specific laptop needs, that's awesome and keep on keeping on. The best thing to happen to computing since the mid-90s is that now pretty much any computer can talk to any other computer and most file types can be read across and range of operating systems and software. It really didn't used to be like that. So at least we live in a world where the steam train people can keep on running their steam trains.
[+] [-] danpalmer|5 years ago|reply
> Xcode
You either need it and can't switch to a non-Mac, or you don't need it. What's the argument here?
> the omnipresent ‘Dock’ (never used it once)
I hide mine. In 12 years on a Mac this hasn't been an issue for me since I turned Dock hiding on 5 minutes in.
> the omnipresent ‘Finder’
Finder isn't great, but I wouldn't say that the graphical file managers on Linux are particularly stellar either.
> black magic in the ‘Terminal.app’
What "black magic" is this? Also iTerm2 is a wonderful piece of software.
> Notifications (and its omnipresent menu hamburger icon)
Users do typically need to be notified about things. Is the problem that you want these somewhere else? Is it that you want to disable notifications? Because you do have full control over which apps can notify.
> App store
What's the problem here? Since they moved system updates back out of the AppStore, it's very easy to just ignore it entirely.
> start-up chord
If this is making it to your list of things you hate about macOS, you're really scraping the barrel.
Come on. Let's make better arguments than this. Let's be clear about our requirements, our biases, our specific likes and dislikes. This article has no substance to it, it's essentially clickbait.
There are many reasons to dislike macOS, there are many legitimate reasons to move to another OS on other hardware.
We make better decisions when we are more honest like this.
[+] [-] w0utert|5 years ago|reply
IMO I think there have been way too many of these 'why I left Apple' posts, I don't see the point, they rarely add anything meaningful for anyone who hasn't already made up their mind and the discussion afterwards is always a repetition of the same tired anecdotes.
I'd guess anyone who doesn't like or need macOS is already running something else, and for those of use who still like macOS but also use other systems like myself it is trivially easy to run things in a VM so you can have the 'best of both worlds' (my opinion, YMMV).
[+] [-] bydo|5 years ago|reply
Update: four years ago: https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/enable-classic-startup-chim...
[+] [-] amelius|5 years ago|reply
The argument is don't giving in to a company that refuses to provide tooling across platforms.
It's like we had to install Windows to test our websites in Explorer. And at least Windows you could install on your own hardware.
[+] [-] 0x008|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kednicma|5 years ago|reply
Apple is an overpriced fashion company. Ten words or less, end of fucking argument, nothing more should have ever been considered. The entire rest of the thread brings no useful details or counterarguments. If you want practical hardware, buy it from literally any other vendor for a substantial discount and possible improvement in quality.
Okay, that was rough and brutal. I don't know if we can have discussions that are so honest! Let's go back to whining about Finder.
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|5 years ago|reply
Then there are the details that everyone seems to miss, like the fact that OpenBSD has no bluetooth support at all.
For 99% of the world, macOS is still the best option.
[+] [-] coldtea|5 years ago|reply
90% of the time it's from people who just do coding on the backend and/or web development, plus use web and mail.
If you work or have hobbies that have to do with photography, music, audio editing, video, multimedia in general etc, it's more of a wasteland.
E.g. when it gets to DAWs your options get very limited, very fast (BitWig, Reaper, iirc, and some FOSS ones that are not up to the task). Same or worse for VSTs.
[+] [-] grey_earthling|5 years ago|reply
The GUI is precisely the reason I dislike macOS. It's chaotic.
To quote the article, GNOME for me:
> It’s like coming home to a quiet orderly house.
[+] [-] sadid|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arvinsim|5 years ago|reply
As if 99% of the world can afford a MacOS machine.
[+] [-] warvariuc|5 years ago|reply
And battery issues?
[+] [-] addicted|5 years ago|reply
And 3.5mm audio jacks are still a thing on the think pad, so you can get a cheaper, higher quality headset for this device which unlike Bluetooth ones does not run out of power every couple of hours.
[+] [-] michaelmrose|5 years ago|reply
Take powerful desktops. It's never been cheaper to build a powerful expandable box but whereas you can have something great for 700-1200 apples start at 6000 for something that might not beat the 1200 option.
Alternatively take their very well reviewed laptops that start at 50% more than than the average person pays for a computer. They may be a good value but the average buyer prefers to spend their money on other affairs.
How about a laptop with a modest screen size and dedicated gpu, doesn't exist.
How about a dedicated gpu. You'll need to buy the highest end model starting at 2400 instead of paying 1000 at Walmart.
It seems like 89% disagree with your assessment.
[+] [-] Toutouxc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjorngi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arvinsim|5 years ago|reply
In a related note, I see Windows being adopted more as they keep improving WSL2.
[+] [-] flohofwoe|5 years ago|reply
I struggle to see the point in that strategy. We're at a point where the 'average user' doesn't need a computer, since even cheap noname mobile phone are good enough for most things now. Why turn the Mac into an oversized mobile phone? This won't attract any new users who are happy with their phone, it just will drive away the people who bought a computer because it lets them do stuff that's not possible on a phone.
PS: My comment reads a bit snobbish, which wasn't my intention. I do believe that no actual "average user" (or "homogeneous" target audience) exists in the real world. Thus it doesn't make sense to create a single setup which targets such an "average user". Options, customization and (for some people at least) being able to poke into the guts of the system are important, and that's what Apple is taking away on macOS, and that's what makes macOS more and more unattractive.
[+] [-] LucidLynx|5 years ago|reply
The OS is a tool. Choose the one you are familiar with or want to work on, and change it if you are not happy with.
[+] [-] addicted|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josefrichter|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x008|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] innagadadavida|5 years ago|reply
I find connecting devices through a dongle convenient in certain cases. I mostly work in my home office with 3-4 devices connected and when I want to move around a bit, it is easier to disconnect the single dongle - rather than disconnecting each individual cable.
[+] [-] distances|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThePadawan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] test001only|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aldanor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevewodil|5 years ago|reply
What keyboard shortcuts are you talking about exactly? Also you can map any menu item to a custom keyboard shortcut in macOS for any application
[+] [-] andykx|5 years ago|reply
.DS_Store files? The startup chord? The dock?
These are all incredibly minor things. This read more like an attempt to justify a purchase than any kind of actual comparison or analysis.
As an aside, I may be totally alone here, but I never plug anything into my laptop with the obvious exception of a charger. I don’t need more ports and I don’t see them as a selling point. That said, I can easily imagine different use cases where they’d be useful.
[+] [-] qz2|5 years ago|reply
It’s particularly annoying when you ram a USB stick in a TV and have to play “find which file is the film you wanted to watch”.
Granted we have our thumbs.db as well.
As for the solution, if you can switch to OpenBSD on a Thinkpad, having macOS to start with sounds a bit like choosing the wrong tool for the job.
[+] [-] fmajid|5 years ago|reply
* Quality control has gone completely downhill. Catalina is completely unusable and the last two security updates for Mojave cause constant OS panics
* Apple’s push to switch developers to subscription pricing is unconscionable
* So are their antitrust abuses
* the price-gouging on the Mac Pro has gotten completely out of hand. I’ve owned a PowerMac G5, Nehalem Mac Pro and 2013 Round Mac Pro, but I draw the line at the new one.
I love OpenBSD, sadly it is not usable as a full-time desktop/laptop for me:
* No modern WiFi support beyond 802.11n
* No Docker
I haven’t bought a Mac since 2015.
[+] [-] eddhead|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blodkorv|5 years ago|reply
People give computer and os branding too much importance, this is a non issue.
[+] [-] qayxc|5 years ago|reply
I'd say the author is in a niche within a niche.
[+] [-] yayr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justRafi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grey_earthling|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pstadler|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] durnygbur|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ageitgey|5 years ago|reply
More power to anyone who's needs are met by OpenBSD on a laptop, but they are as far from a typical user as can exist. And I don't mean just a stereotypical 'business user' who only uses their computer to access email and spreadsheets, I mean any power user who actually creates stuff with their computer, whether it's programs, websites, music, video editing, documents, whatever.
This person hates Finder. A normal person hates a laptop that might not go into suspend mode when they close the lid to go to a meeting or it might just lock up and lose all their work because some webcam driver that got loaded doesn't fully support suspend. And god forbid if they try to plug the laptop into a random projector to do a presentation.
This person hates the startup sound. A normal person hates a laptop where the fonts look like crap or all the GUI elements render at way too small a size unless you edit config files and play with DPI settings.
This person hates the dock. A normal person hates a laptop that requires you to install command line utilities and edit config files to enable reliable power management and get decent battery life.
This person hates laptops that don't have lots of different kinds of ports to plug in stuff. A normal person loves that they can just buy any external solid state hard drive on Amazon and plug it into the USB-C port with zero configuration and it transfers files super fast. Or they can buy any brand new USB-C webcam or headset and everything just works and they get it with next day delivery and can get on with their actual job and never thing about it again.
This person hates .DS_Store files. A normal hates a laptop where trying to have a simple video call is probably going to require 6 hours of figuring out which kernel modules are required to support your webcam and audio chipset. And if you use multiple webcams or regularly switch between headsets or whatever, you might as well just give up.
This person hates the App Store. A normal person hates a laptop that doesn't let them run essential software like Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, Illustrator or whatever modern creation software makes them 50x more efficient at their job.
But if OpenBSD solves your specific laptop needs, that's awesome and keep on keeping on. The best thing to happen to computing since the mid-90s is that now pretty much any computer can talk to any other computer and most file types can be read across and range of operating systems and software. It really didn't used to be like that. So at least we live in a world where the steam train people can keep on running their steam trains.
[+] [-] fmakunbound|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|5 years ago|reply