I basically went back 5 or 10 years and replaced every "modern" technology solution. I pay now way more than I did with iCloud, but I am back in control. I am more productive.
- Listening to Music takes 3 clicks and just a few seconds
Wired headphones never run out of battery and have superior audio quality
- I can take real photos wiht high quality instead of relying on ever newer iPhone models for thousands of dollars which will always have lesser quality than a mirrorless camera for the same price
- I have fun again discovering bands and artists on Bandcamp instead of mind numbing listening to Apple Music playlists
- Coding via neovim on a terminal and just being on my keyboard navigating not only tmux and co, but also my OS is way more productive and faster
The measurement of success in this case doesn't seem to be that he's gained new abilities, but rather the poster figured out how to gain them without Apple.
Most of these seem like pyrric victories to me, as the Apple versions rose to success with all of these as competition by providing a better experience. I certainly wouldn't want to carry a mirrorless camera everywhere, nor deal with Bandcamp.
"Listening to Music takes 3 clicks and just a few seconds Wired headphones never run out of battery and have superior audio quality ..."
This item is the reason I am leaving the iphone and trying an unlocked/stock android device.
My music collection is a directory tree that I have curated and organized since 1996.
The correct way to deal with this is to move this directory tree onto my phone (either via network transfer or attaching a USB filesystem) and then browse those files with a music player app.
Anyone familiar with iDevices knows that every piece of the simple, standard workflow I just described is totally impossible.
Instead, you have to manually build playlists inside of itunes while "importing" your music (and storing two copies of it) and then transfer those playlists (one by one) to the idevice and ... it's just insane.
It is a workflow built for people that impulse buy a track here and there ...
I’m actually joining the Apple ecosystem from Android/Windows for similar reasons. In particular, I wanted to use Logic instead of paying huge sums for new versions of Ableton; I wanted to use Pixelmator Pro instead of paying for Adobe subscription (although Affinity Photo is also available on windows); I wanted to use Time Machine instead of Google Drive; I especially wanted my passwords stored on my computer instead of locked behind my Google account at passwords.google.com (I was locked out of my Google account for a week once and it was temporarily life-ruining); and finally, I was so tired of trying to keep up with endless UI changes in Windows and Android. I’m not saying these were good reasons, but they were my reasons. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure I guess.
> I realised that my life while using Apple products is
> controlled by Product Managers/Owners who want to get a
> raise, rather than by technology people who share the same
> passion as me
Mainly because I feel exactly the opposite. I don’t find Windows, Linux or x86 technologically exiting anymore.Apple makes (IMO of course) the most technologically exciting CPUs, their GPUs are a breath of fresh air, I love their approach to UI, APIs and OS security.
One of the biggest opportunities in technology right now is to re-run the Next/Apple playbook and create a new hardware/software technology company focused on developers. Good quality hardware married with a great OS / window manager. Most of the software we use to create software are electron apps, a thin layer of native code to run a bunch of javascript. The main notable exception is XCode, but the ecosystem of non-ios/apple developers is far larger. Wish someone would do this. I'd pre-order tomorrow.
I want to leave the apple ecosystem as well, and appreciate this post, but there’s an inherent limitation to “just switched” posts like this. To wit: they don’t capture the cost and benefit over time. Switching to Arch & rsync takes “just a month,” but then you upgrade something and drivers break, you have an issue on your remote machine you’re syncing to and have to debug it, your backups stop working and you urgently need to address the issue, etc etc. Either one of these can be showstopping issues. That said, Macs screw up on updates as well at times.
The general point is that “just switched” narratives like this paint an incomplete picture because one big benefit of, say, iCloud photos is that I pay a monthly fee then I never have to think about it. Not so rsync.
I've been running Fedora for the better part of a year. The switching costs for me were negligible. What I like about Fedora is that it is really stable while still being pretty bleeding edge. Vanilla Fedora (running unmodified Gnome) is really an excellent OS. So far, I haven't had any major issues.
The biggest thing I missed was the Macbook trackpad. The Dell XPS's trackpad is janky by comparison.
That said, I won't be confident in recommending this setup until I've been through another year or so of upgrade cycles.
> one big benefit of, say, iCloud photos is that I pay a monthly fee then I never have to think about it
Just to offer up a real-world counter-example, I once ran into a syncing issue with iCloud Photos where my family members stopped receiving any new photos that I posted to a shared album. I tried a few different things to get it to sync properly again, like logging out and back into icloud on my device, etc. It was basically impossible to debug because the whole syncing process is completely opaque to the user in Apple Photos. After about a month I was very nearly on the verge of ditching iCloud for photo sharing completely, and then one day it started working again just as mysteriously as it stopped.
I agree with your broader point that iCloud generally requires less effort to set up and manage than rsync. But in this particular case I would have really loved to be running rsync, because I could have easily debugged it.
With Arch you might get breakages. If you're worried about that, then go with Kubuntu. Seriously, it has been ages since I've seen hardware compatibility issues with Kubuntu, maybe eight years or longer across literally dozens of install on my own and other peoples' hardware.
> The demise of Aperture, iPhoto, good keyboards and the introduction of the touch bar were just a few signs that product owners were in charge who rather wanted a raise by trying something "new" instead of technical owners who wanted to help creative people getting work done.
This is exactly how I feel.
Way too much software is being developed in the Resume Driven Development these days.
Touch Bar is a prime example of this. It solves a nonexisting problem in an imperfect way. It's a mere copycat from Optimus Keyboard, except that in Optimus each individual key was still a physical key.
The same goes for the vast majority of the web 2.0 front end frameworks, which reduce user experience, but add to the resume of people who implement all of that nonsense. The new versions of Slashdot and Reddit are prime examples — slower, less usable and accessible, but, hey, all the newest frameworks and buzzwords!
I think that anything to do with music and transferring files to your iPad or iPhone is an utter mess on the Mac. The entire iTunes project was an utter mess and breaking that up and fixing it is going to take a long time.
I was also taken back by some of the new restrictions on the Application directory with Big Sur but it appears that they aren't as bad as I initially thought and mostly seem to apply to apps that the OS installs.
I think it is great that the author outgrew his machine. They started out as a new developer and now they have brought their skills up to the point that they require a new OS to allow them to maximise their potential. That is an awesome story.
Apple has had to ride a fine line between being a lifestyle device and a computer and I think that there are times when they totally mess it up and lock out things they don't need to. Other times they seem to get it right.
Like a lot of people here I really wish Apple would stop trying to organize my music but I also realise that a large number of people younger than me don't even own music any more.
The number of use cases for these devices is huge and it is natural that the hardware can't be everything to everyone. It used to be the case but so many more people use computers and use them for a wide variety of things that those days are far behind us.
I don’t think it’s just people “younger than” you who don’t own any music anymore. Statistically, I’m pretty sure I’m older and I gave away my entire CD collection (as I had previously done with my LPs). I ripped the very few that I couldn’t find on Spotify. It just doesn’t make sense for me to keep all those plastic discs around when I can carry my entire collection and anything else I want to listen to around all the time. As for quality of sound, at my age I’m happy to hear at all.
I switched from a MacBook Pro to a Linux desktop a couple years ago - not for philosophical reasons, but just because I felt like at the time the performance per dollar spent was much better if I built my own machine with an AMD CPU. Switching was really no big deal - there are plenty of good alternatives out there to Apple apps, and Apple also has browser-based versions of a lot of their iCloud apps if you need to access files or Photos from a Linux PC. And I have continued to use other Apple devices in my home without any real issues.
Now with the success Apple has had with the M1 chips, and how they seem to be fixing their keyboard issues, I would definitely consider buying a MacBook Pro if the new models look compelling.
I guess my point here is that being fully committed to the "Apple Ecosystem" isn’t as big a deal as some people make it out to be. You don’t have to be all-in or all-out on Apple. It’s something to consider when making a purchasing decision, but at the end of the day you should just buy the thing that works best for your needs and budget, regardless of who makes it.
I always look at blog posts like this and I always end up a bit disappointed when people go completely in the other direction with i3 and the like. What if I want customization and pretty animations with sane defaults? Surely there has to be some middle ground between "here's your empty screen and a keyboard shortcut to open the terminal, good luck" and "this minor release will redesign the entire interface and break all your custom themes and scripts, good luck" when it comes to open source desktops?
Still, I'm glad people are getting out of closed ecosystems.
KDE works pretty well for me. The defaults are not bad, but it has lots of customization options. I mostly leave it on defaults, except for switching on focus follows mouse. You don't need to manually edit config files. It also has some nice (optional) animations. It's like a nicer Windows, with more customization and a more uniform UI (no mixture of historical UI elements).
I'm currently in the process of moving from Linux back to Windows running VMWare. For software development, I use a virtual xubuntu distribution. For browsing the web, listening to music, etc. it's all Windows. I just can't be bothered to fix broken drivers or wonky settings on Linux for stuff that should work out of the box. At the same time I still don't see an alternative for Linux as a development environment - so I hope with this new setup I get the best of both worlds.
The article is light on criticism about Apple. Usually what happens to these people is they go out all guns blazing, spend a lot of time, figure how to do stuff the hard way, feel temporarily in control and then face death by a thousand cuts or decreased productivity. It is the case with 90% of the users. For most people, computer is a means to an end, which Apple understands spectacularly well. It gives you 5-star hotel like experience with its products. Is everything perfect? No. Does it make mistakes? Yes. There is no progress without mistakes, unless you allow many many years for ideation. Apple strikes this balance spectacularly well, they are mostly at the forefront of tech, meanwhile giving users a fantastic experience. It is Ritz Carlton of computers, you stay there, do your business, expect mostly everything to work like a well oiled machine, and you go home without sweat after finishing your work. To write 3 or 4 subjective opinions about Apple and dismissing it tells more about the author than Apple IMO.
Except there have been too many mistakes and missteps for a while now, it's three stars at best. I can respect a system that does what I need it to do in one opinionated way, but when that system doesn't do what I need or does too many things poorly, why would I stay? If I need to fix the system anyway, I'll use one that makes it easiest.
This generally my take on this too. When I see posts like this I’m never sure if I’m envious of the free time to faff about like this, or have pity that they have nothing better to do.
Some things never change. Talk about switching OSes and the entire comment thread becomes about dancing around calling people wrong about their aesthetic UX preferences
I think if anything, this post illustrates that no matter how many people you pay to do it, there's no "objectively better" workflow for everyone, and preferences will always be individual
When I try to convince people to use *nix OSes or FOSS tools generally, my one and only argument is the value of having control, or, perhaps more saliently, not being controlled by the company that makes your tools. If that doesn't persuade you, then just use whatever you like best. Your preferences are your own, and no amount of supposed expertise or practiced snobbishness can make your preferences override mine, or vice versa.
That's all well and good and noble. But I don't feel controlled by Apple. I have Macs, iPhones, iPads, iPods, Apple TV. The whole kit. I am "invested".
That said, I've never turned iCloud on, all my photos are on my phone or my computer, all my iTunes music is downloaded to my machine, free to take with me. (I also still buy physical CDs.) I don't sync anything.
The only place this isn't true is the Apple TV videos I've bought. Don't know where they are, but I don't really care to be honest. If Apple didn't know about my rental habits, Blockbuster would. What difference does it make.
I have enough dusty DVDs in my drawer that I don't think I'd miss if they suddenly vanished, I'm not that tied to the content I've purchased on Apple either. I know what I'm getting in to when I do it, and it's OK with me.
The other aspect would be the apps I've got from the App Store. If I were move off of iOS those wouldn't be coming with me anyway, so...no drama there.
And why do I not use iCloud? Not because of any big brother eyeball on me. I don't use it the same reason I don't use a Smart TV, or a "smart home", or anything else. It's just one more thing designed to make my life easier that simply won't. As soon as it messes up (and it WILL mess up, catastrophically, and at the worst time. Everyone has stories), whatever value its added will be washed away.
As I like to say, I love programming, but I hate computers. I hate messing with them, configuring them, tweaking them, googling for arcane stuff. I never want to hear the word "driver" ever again if I can avoid it.
My Macs and Apple stuff, that I use, pretty much "just works". I keep my profile as thin and light as possible. The printer works, on all my machines and devices! Hallelujah! Air Drop works! I can serve videos from my Mac to the my Apple TV. +1!
So, whatever control Apple has over me, I think the boot on my neck might instead just be a flip flop, and I can get up whenever I want.
My preferences are irrelevant when I can’t natively run the commercial software I require to do my job(s) on the OS you suggest.
If Linux can work for you - especially in your office - you are a privileged minority.
With MacOS, I get the underlying UNIX subsystem - and the ability to use commercial software, to boot.
Even Windows has WSL nowadays.
And you can downvote me - you can disagree with me - but deep down; you know nothing you can say is going to change the fact that - for example - I rely on Apple’s Logic Pro X; and have a decade and a half of Logic files.
It would take an immeasurable amount of effort to somehow extract the MIDI and audio data from those files, and somehow convert them into Ardour files.
I would lose EQ and compressor settings - and - even then, the plugins I use - iZotope and Native Instruments software, in particular - wouldn’t work.
That’s just one simple example - and there’s one of those for almost anyone.
The larger one is the corporate/enterprise situation, where proprietary applications are often hanging on by a thread with the office ecosystem as-is, and - no - they will not convert these applications over to Linux.
They won’t update those applications to start.
Linux is great, it’s awesome that it exists, and it can work for a very small minority of people.
I respect this but the X1 Carbon's keyboard is bad, and so is its trackpad. Until something like this[0] project takes off, this is just a non-starter for me. Windows at least has OK trackpad support, and now with WSL and whatnot, the surface pro laptops are maybe a feasible option, but Windows ironically has the absolute worst window management of the 3.
And of course Apple is still a moving target. I'm not going back to a x86 toaster of a laptop with 5 hrs of battery life, when i can have one which stays cool for 11. Signs point to them ditching the touchbar too.
I lately bought a refurbished HP 15s with Ryzen 5500U (and AMD graphics). This thing runs way cooler than any Intel laptop I ever used in the past, even under load. The track pad is surprisingly good for a non-MacBook; still not as good but it's IMO fairly close.
I admit I don't care much about total time on battery though. I'm a dev and I need the full performance so never tinkered with power profiles and such. To me it's "100% the CPU power at all times or get out".
I toy with the idea every once in awhile. I own a M1 Mac and I actually hate it for various reasons. I've been a mac fanboi (I'm probably an even bigger Linux fanboi) for many years as I feel like I gave me so many of the things I love about Linux/BSD... and it's flat out beautiful. But as many have stated. Over the years, it's ceased to match my workflow. I've always kept plenty of Linux machines around me, so for the past few years, I've been full time on Linux. I do miss getting my text messages on my laptop. I do miss transferring music with ease - but I have to be honest. Using iTunes/Music to transfer music to my iPhone has actually been pretty painful the past few years. When I try to drag and drop, for some odd reason, it just says, "nope".
My issue is, the alternatives are just not as high quality. I looked at ditching my iPhone 12 for a Pixel 4 or a Samsung, and maybe getting the Samsung watch (which I hear can do blood pressure now?). But I've read so many bad reviews. Sadly, one of the biggest things that keeps me on Apple right now is iMessage. We have plenty of Apple products in the household, so I'd never ditch them totally.
iMessage is the ultimate lock-in. Both sides of my family use iMessage, so anyone switching off iPhone becomes the black sheep by splitting off the family thread. And it sucks because it is wholly a political decision by Apple not to add android support.
But besides that, I bought a Pixel 5a for testing of android apps. While the experience is majorly improved over my last android experience...it just feels wrong. Animations are not consistent across apps. Swipe actions sometimes follow your finger, sometimes they don't. I thought widgets would be better...but wow are they ugly out of the box. Yes I am aware you can customize everything, but I really don't want to spend hours figuring all that out when I can just have sane defaults. I feel like looking at screenshots you can say that android and iOS are very similar, but that leaves out the most important part of a touch only device - the interactions with content on screen.
I'm probably going to pick up a PinePhone once they're back in stock, if KDE connect works with it then I might be able to finally have the PC/Pager combo I've always dreamed of...
I used Linux from 93 until around 2000, and while i'm aware that the state of the Linux Desktop is completely different today, and as a stand alone product may even compete with Windows/MacOS, the Apple ecosystem is something that is not yet beaten on Linux. People may think it is, but that's mostly because they were never "all in" on the Apple ecosystem.
Copy / Paste across devices, handoff of documents, synchronization of files that actually works and won't get stuck for weeks updating a file.
As for iCloud, one thing that Google/Microsoft/etc don't get is family sharing. We share a 2TB iCloud plan across the family, and while the plan is tied to my credit card, the data is not "mine". If i die tomorrow my credit card dies with me, and presumably so does my iCloud subscription, but all my family needs to do is start paying for another plan, and their data "magically" transfers from my icloud subscription to theirs.
The Apple ecosystem is not without flaws though. Personally i would love for TimeMachine (or 3rd party tools) to be able to backup iCloud storage without having to synchronize data locally first. I keep a Mac Mini for the purpose, which also acts as a content cache for iCloud storage, meaning most file access from our house is done at "LAN speed", but i would love to simply click a setting on my macbook and it would "magically" include that content in the backup.
Same except I got an M1 Mini. For all my hate of what apple does, I'm an ARM addict and I really love the new Mini. I really hope we eventually get full Linux support for Apple Silicon at some point just so I can play with it that way as well.
I was looking forward to Qualcomm's ARM Dev kit for Windows, but it hasn't released yet outside of what seems to be some listings on chinese websites for bulk orders of 100+ units.
It really sucks that my Pinebook Pro is still the best I can get as far as ARM linux laptops go that are easy to use and try different distros on.
This article could have sparked sympathy in me since I am gradually and slowly making my way to a full Linux dev workflow on a laptop with 2TB NVMe SSD, 32GB and a pretty good CPU (Ryzen 5500U) but... the kinda sorta ideological language the author used in the article is really unfortunate.
(And believe me, it's a huge cognitive dissonance to convince yourself out of using the iMac Pro as much as you can...)
Look, if it doesn't work for you anymore, alright. Move to Linux. Most of us the devs will eventually move to it anyway I think, since Apple just doesn't care about dev ergonomics -- especially with scanning each binary you run; try working under Linux for a week and you'll say to yourself "gosh, computers can be FAST!" -- but truthfully, many employers don't care about our ergonomics as well and they are OK with the lost productivity of waiting for tools to just... run, you know.
I agree Apple Music is a train wreck though, that's a fact.
In any case, I wish people learned to just make two small lists with pros and cons and be done with it. Using language like the quote in the start:
> I realised that my life while using Apple products is controlled by Product Managers/Owners who want to get a raise, rather than by technology people who share the same passion as me. And I wanted to change that.
...is true to an extent but it gives you exactly zero things that are actually and visibly wrong. (Obviously this is an exaggeration, e.g. they mention subscription model vs. paying for stuff once which is valid, but my overall point is about things that are technical, not business-level.)
So, good for him I suppose but the article could have been written in a much more compelling and factual manner.
You do realize you can disable a healthy chunk of this stuff, right? A dev might not want it, but end users (non-technical, as much as this term annoys me) benefit from it.
Disable SIP (recovery mode dance) and disable GateKeeper (spctl) and you're off to a decent start.
> Around 10 years ago, during my studies, almost all of my CS colleagues had Windows laptops. A few installed Linux on it, but literally no one had a MacBook.
I recall CS grad school 10 years ago as being a sea of Macbooks…
Very personal opinion here: Apple innovated as hell, pure lab of goodness and years and years ahead of any other OS. Sad reality is that they are now a 100 billion mega megacorp, user is second in the money dance. I don’t see them as innovative, freedom (not as in free beer) means a lot and they don’t contribute to it at all, if anything even more closed ecossystem - long gone the days of OpenDarwin. Most people I know switched back to Windows for better drivers support. UX is still second to none in Apple, but at what cost? In the end, you want to press a button to turn on the system and get things done. I think there’s more than just Apple nowadays - but unique strengths in different contexts for sure
[+] [-] Terretta|4 years ago|reply
I basically went back 5 or 10 years and replaced every "modern" technology solution. I pay now way more than I did with iCloud, but I am back in control. I am more productive.
- Listening to Music takes 3 clicks and just a few seconds Wired headphones never run out of battery and have superior audio quality
- I can take real photos wiht high quality instead of relying on ever newer iPhone models for thousands of dollars which will always have lesser quality than a mirrorless camera for the same price
- I have fun again discovering bands and artists on Bandcamp instead of mind numbing listening to Apple Music playlists
- Coding via neovim on a terminal and just being on my keyboard navigating not only tmux and co, but also my OS is way more productive and faster
Which of these can I not do on a Mac?
[+] [-] mholm|4 years ago|reply
Most of these seem like pyrric victories to me, as the Apple versions rose to success with all of these as competition by providing a better experience. I certainly wouldn't want to carry a mirrorless camera everywhere, nor deal with Bandcamp.
[+] [-] rsync|4 years ago|reply
This item is the reason I am leaving the iphone and trying an unlocked/stock android device.
My music collection is a directory tree that I have curated and organized since 1996.
The correct way to deal with this is to move this directory tree onto my phone (either via network transfer or attaching a USB filesystem) and then browse those files with a music player app.
Anyone familiar with iDevices knows that every piece of the simple, standard workflow I just described is totally impossible.
Instead, you have to manually build playlists inside of itunes while "importing" your music (and storing two copies of it) and then transfer those playlists (one by one) to the idevice and ... it's just insane.
It is a workflow built for people that impulse buy a track here and there ...
[+] [-] monkeyfacebag|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ribit|4 years ago|reply
> I realised that my life while using Apple products is > controlled by Product Managers/Owners who want to get a > raise, rather than by technology people who share the same > passion as me
Mainly because I feel exactly the opposite. I don’t find Windows, Linux or x86 technologically exiting anymore.Apple makes (IMO of course) the most technologically exciting CPUs, their GPUs are a breath of fresh air, I love their approach to UI, APIs and OS security.
[+] [-] ajsharp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sequoia|4 years ago|reply
The general point is that “just switched” narratives like this paint an incomplete picture because one big benefit of, say, iCloud photos is that I pay a monthly fee then I never have to think about it. Not so rsync.
[+] [-] christophilus|4 years ago|reply
The biggest thing I missed was the Macbook trackpad. The Dell XPS's trackpad is janky by comparison.
That said, I won't be confident in recommending this setup until I've been through another year or so of upgrade cycles.
[+] [-] beebeepka|4 years ago|reply
I certainly didn't have to sacrifice much of anything by moving from Windows 8 (the best one) to Ubuntu and Manjaro.
I've even moved old people to Ubuntu back in the gnome 2 days. Worked great
[+] [-] freetime2|4 years ago|reply
Just to offer up a real-world counter-example, I once ran into a syncing issue with iCloud Photos where my family members stopped receiving any new photos that I posted to a shared album. I tried a few different things to get it to sync properly again, like logging out and back into icloud on my device, etc. It was basically impossible to debug because the whole syncing process is completely opaque to the user in Apple Photos. After about a month I was very nearly on the verge of ditching iCloud for photo sharing completely, and then one day it started working again just as mysteriously as it stopped.
I agree with your broader point that iCloud generally requires less effort to set up and manage than rsync. But in this particular case I would have really loved to be running rsync, because I could have easily debugged it.
[+] [-] dotancohen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cnst|4 years ago|reply
This is exactly how I feel.
Way too much software is being developed in the Resume Driven Development these days.
Touch Bar is a prime example of this. It solves a nonexisting problem in an imperfect way. It's a mere copycat from Optimus Keyboard, except that in Optimus each individual key was still a physical key.
The same goes for the vast majority of the web 2.0 front end frameworks, which reduce user experience, but add to the resume of people who implement all of that nonsense. The new versions of Slashdot and Reddit are prime examples — slower, less usable and accessible, but, hey, all the newest frameworks and buzzwords!
[+] [-] pixelgeek|4 years ago|reply
I think that anything to do with music and transferring files to your iPad or iPhone is an utter mess on the Mac. The entire iTunes project was an utter mess and breaking that up and fixing it is going to take a long time.
I was also taken back by some of the new restrictions on the Application directory with Big Sur but it appears that they aren't as bad as I initially thought and mostly seem to apply to apps that the OS installs.
I think it is great that the author outgrew his machine. They started out as a new developer and now they have brought their skills up to the point that they require a new OS to allow them to maximise their potential. That is an awesome story.
Apple has had to ride a fine line between being a lifestyle device and a computer and I think that there are times when they totally mess it up and lock out things they don't need to. Other times they seem to get it right.
Like a lot of people here I really wish Apple would stop trying to organize my music but I also realise that a large number of people younger than me don't even own music any more.
The number of use cases for these devices is huge and it is natural that the hardware can't be everything to everyone. It used to be the case but so many more people use computers and use them for a wide variety of things that those days are far behind us.
[+] [-] bwanab|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freetime2|4 years ago|reply
Now with the success Apple has had with the M1 chips, and how they seem to be fixing their keyboard issues, I would definitely consider buying a MacBook Pro if the new models look compelling.
I guess my point here is that being fully committed to the "Apple Ecosystem" isn’t as big a deal as some people make it out to be. You don’t have to be all-in or all-out on Apple. It’s something to consider when making a purchasing decision, but at the end of the day you should just buy the thing that works best for your needs and budget, regardless of who makes it.
[+] [-] throwoutway|4 years ago|reply
They definitely have not “fixed” the keyboard.
[+] [-] emptyparadise|4 years ago|reply
Still, I'm glad people are getting out of closed ecosystems.
[+] [-] xioxox|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ByteJockey|4 years ago|reply
It's the boring option, but there's a lot of customization options and they've never broken anything I use.
[+] [-] jcfrei|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] npteljes|4 years ago|reply
I got my fix of this with KDE, namely with Kubuntu 20.04.
[+] [-] abc_lisper|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] izacus|4 years ago|reply
The "everything is a web/Electron app" trend has pretty much ensured that your "productivity" effect is pretty much only in your head now.
[+] [-] jay_kyburz|4 years ago|reply
I would never stay at a Ritz Carlton and pay $1000 a night when I could stay at the motel down the road for $100.
I'm not waited on hand and foot, I have to do everything myself, but its done the way I like it, and I've saved myslef $900 as well.
[+] [-] dvdkon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bengale|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] advael|4 years ago|reply
I think if anything, this post illustrates that no matter how many people you pay to do it, there's no "objectively better" workflow for everyone, and preferences will always be individual
When I try to convince people to use *nix OSes or FOSS tools generally, my one and only argument is the value of having control, or, perhaps more saliently, not being controlled by the company that makes your tools. If that doesn't persuade you, then just use whatever you like best. Your preferences are your own, and no amount of supposed expertise or practiced snobbishness can make your preferences override mine, or vice versa.
[+] [-] whartung|4 years ago|reply
That said, I've never turned iCloud on, all my photos are on my phone or my computer, all my iTunes music is downloaded to my machine, free to take with me. (I also still buy physical CDs.) I don't sync anything.
The only place this isn't true is the Apple TV videos I've bought. Don't know where they are, but I don't really care to be honest. If Apple didn't know about my rental habits, Blockbuster would. What difference does it make.
I have enough dusty DVDs in my drawer that I don't think I'd miss if they suddenly vanished, I'm not that tied to the content I've purchased on Apple either. I know what I'm getting in to when I do it, and it's OK with me.
The other aspect would be the apps I've got from the App Store. If I were move off of iOS those wouldn't be coming with me anyway, so...no drama there.
And why do I not use iCloud? Not because of any big brother eyeball on me. I don't use it the same reason I don't use a Smart TV, or a "smart home", or anything else. It's just one more thing designed to make my life easier that simply won't. As soon as it messes up (and it WILL mess up, catastrophically, and at the worst time. Everyone has stories), whatever value its added will be washed away.
As I like to say, I love programming, but I hate computers. I hate messing with them, configuring them, tweaking them, googling for arcane stuff. I never want to hear the word "driver" ever again if I can avoid it.
My Macs and Apple stuff, that I use, pretty much "just works". I keep my profile as thin and light as possible. The printer works, on all my machines and devices! Hallelujah! Air Drop works! I can serve videos from my Mac to the my Apple TV. +1!
So, whatever control Apple has over me, I think the boot on my neck might instead just be a flip flop, and I can get up whenever I want.
[+] [-] lostgame|4 years ago|reply
If Linux can work for you - especially in your office - you are a privileged minority.
With MacOS, I get the underlying UNIX subsystem - and the ability to use commercial software, to boot.
Even Windows has WSL nowadays.
And you can downvote me - you can disagree with me - but deep down; you know nothing you can say is going to change the fact that - for example - I rely on Apple’s Logic Pro X; and have a decade and a half of Logic files.
It would take an immeasurable amount of effort to somehow extract the MIDI and audio data from those files, and somehow convert them into Ardour files.
I would lose EQ and compressor settings - and - even then, the plugins I use - iZotope and Native Instruments software, in particular - wouldn’t work.
That’s just one simple example - and there’s one of those for almost anyone.
The larger one is the corporate/enterprise situation, where proprietary applications are often hanging on by a thread with the office ecosystem as-is, and - no - they will not convert these applications over to Linux.
They won’t update those applications to start.
Linux is great, it’s awesome that it exists, and it can work for a very small minority of people.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] c54|4 years ago|reply
And of course Apple is still a moving target. I'm not going back to a x86 toaster of a laptop with 5 hrs of battery life, when i can have one which stays cool for 11. Signs point to them ditching the touchbar too.
[0] https://bill.harding.blog/2020/04/26/linux-touchpad-like-a-m...
[1] Disclosures / context:
- I have an X1 carbon for work
- I vastly prefer my M1 Macbook Pro
- I miss i3wm, i used to run it on laptop and desktop in college, on Arch.
[+] [-] royal_ts|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdimitar|4 years ago|reply
I admit I don't care much about total time on battery though. I'm a dev and I need the full performance so never tinkered with power profiles and such. To me it's "100% the CPU power at all times or get out".
Just an anecdote.
[+] [-] nobleach|4 years ago|reply
My issue is, the alternatives are just not as high quality. I looked at ditching my iPhone 12 for a Pixel 4 or a Samsung, and maybe getting the Samsung watch (which I hear can do blood pressure now?). But I've read so many bad reviews. Sadly, one of the biggest things that keeps me on Apple right now is iMessage. We have plenty of Apple products in the household, so I'd never ditch them totally.
[+] [-] jclardy|4 years ago|reply
But besides that, I bought a Pixel 5a for testing of android apps. While the experience is majorly improved over my last android experience...it just feels wrong. Animations are not consistent across apps. Swipe actions sometimes follow your finger, sometimes they don't. I thought widgets would be better...but wow are they ugly out of the box. Yes I am aware you can customize everything, but I really don't want to spend hours figuring all that out when I can just have sane defaults. I feel like looking at screenshots you can say that android and iOS are very similar, but that leaves out the most important part of a touch only device - the interactions with content on screen.
[+] [-] smoldesu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bachmeier|4 years ago|reply
I used to send and receive text messages all the time on Linux. I use email, but it works fine.
[+] [-] 8fingerlouie|4 years ago|reply
Copy / Paste across devices, handoff of documents, synchronization of files that actually works and won't get stuck for weeks updating a file.
As for iCloud, one thing that Google/Microsoft/etc don't get is family sharing. We share a 2TB iCloud plan across the family, and while the plan is tied to my credit card, the data is not "mine". If i die tomorrow my credit card dies with me, and presumably so does my iCloud subscription, but all my family needs to do is start paying for another plan, and their data "magically" transfers from my icloud subscription to theirs.
The Apple ecosystem is not without flaws though. Personally i would love for TimeMachine (or 3rd party tools) to be able to backup iCloud storage without having to synchronize data locally first. I keep a Mac Mini for the purpose, which also acts as a content cache for iCloud storage, meaning most file access from our house is done at "LAN speed", but i would love to simply click a setting on my macbook and it would "magically" include that content in the backup.
[+] [-] elsonrodriguez|4 years ago|reply
Nope. I just installed Ubuntu 20.04 and within a few days I was messing with xrandr commands to get the HDMI resolution set to anything but 800x600.
Linux will never be good on the desktop. Not because there are too many cooks in the kitchen, but because there's too many biochemists in the commune.
[+] [-] djhworld|4 years ago|reply
Latest one is the M1 air and it's almost perfect. It never gets hot, it never gets noisy, performance is superb, battery life amazing.
Really hoping a similar ARM based linux machine comes out that can beat it, but for the time being I'd find it difficult to switch away from my Air!
[+] [-] officeplant|4 years ago|reply
I was looking forward to Qualcomm's ARM Dev kit for Windows, but it hasn't released yet outside of what seems to be some listings on chinese websites for bulk orders of 100+ units.
It really sucks that my Pinebook Pro is still the best I can get as far as ARM linux laptops go that are easy to use and try different distros on.
[+] [-] dmitriid|4 years ago|reply
For that someone should've been outputting consumer devices for 12-15 years.
[+] [-] pdimitar|4 years ago|reply
(And believe me, it's a huge cognitive dissonance to convince yourself out of using the iMac Pro as much as you can...)
Look, if it doesn't work for you anymore, alright. Move to Linux. Most of us the devs will eventually move to it anyway I think, since Apple just doesn't care about dev ergonomics -- especially with scanning each binary you run; try working under Linux for a week and you'll say to yourself "gosh, computers can be FAST!" -- but truthfully, many employers don't care about our ergonomics as well and they are OK with the lost productivity of waiting for tools to just... run, you know.
I agree Apple Music is a train wreck though, that's a fact.
In any case, I wish people learned to just make two small lists with pros and cons and be done with it. Using language like the quote in the start:
> I realised that my life while using Apple products is controlled by Product Managers/Owners who want to get a raise, rather than by technology people who share the same passion as me. And I wanted to change that.
...is true to an extent but it gives you exactly zero things that are actually and visibly wrong. (Obviously this is an exaggeration, e.g. they mention subscription model vs. paying for stuff once which is valid, but my overall point is about things that are technical, not business-level.)
So, good for him I suppose but the article could have been written in a much more compelling and factual manner.
[+] [-] Klonoar|4 years ago|reply
You do realize you can disable a healthy chunk of this stuff, right? A dev might not want it, but end users (non-technical, as much as this term annoys me) benefit from it.
Disable SIP (recovery mode dance) and disable GateKeeper (spctl) and you're off to a decent start.
They even document it, it's not hidden: https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/10.2/index.html?localePath=...
[+] [-] canjobear|4 years ago|reply
I recall CS grad school 10 years ago as being a sea of Macbooks…
[+] [-] arnon|4 years ago|reply
This is not true in Europe and Asia.
[+] [-] Jyaif|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Borlands|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhaak|4 years ago|reply
Updates break something so often that I wonder if it somehow is sponsored by other OS developers to make them look good.
[+] [-] qudat|4 years ago|reply