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.
> 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.
I'm quite fascinated by this dilemma: on one hand there's too much choice with Linux (desktop environments, package managers, shells, ...) while on the other hand there's the complaint that there's too little choice (graphics suites, DAWs, CAD/CAM packages, 3D rendering apps, video editing...).
The actual complaint, however, is that there's no Pro Tools, no Final Cut, no Adobe Suite - because that's what people actually mean when it comes down to it.
The perceived "wasteland" primarily refers to just a handful of very specific products, most of which do have equivalents in Linux (not all FOSS, mind you), albeit often with vastly different workflows associated with them.
They do have equivalents, mostly FOSS, some not FOSS (e.g. Reaper and Bigwig are not FOSS), but they generally those aren't the top picks of pros (or hobbyists for that matter).
That said, for 3D it's a much better situation, but for video, music, and graphic design it's much bleaker. And even when you do 3D you still want some Photoshop, video editing and other stuff, unless you're part of a large team and only do modelling etc.
Then there's a big ecosystem of smaller utilities, plugins, specialty drivers, and stuff, that also doesn't work.
> [...] but they generally those aren't the top picks of pros (or hobbyists for that matter)
But that's exactly what I said: the complaint isn't that there is no software available. The complaint is that VERY specific software isn't available.
There's Gimp, Krita, and Darktable for image- and photo editing, but people still keep asking for Photoshop. More often than not the very same people, mind you, who also complain about Adobe's subscription model and pricing in general!
They don't want to be able to do the same work - they want to do the same work the exact same way using the exact same software. Same goes for video editing as well - there's kdenlive, OpenShot, DaVinci Resolve, Lightworks, and yes, even Blender can do it. But, nope. People want Premiere, Sony Vegas, and Final Cut - the rest doesn't even cross their mind.
That's the issue at hand - not lack of software. It's unwillingness to learn (pros don't count - they have different needs and concerns) and all to often just plain ignorance of alternatives.
The big ecosystem of smaller utilities is met by FOSS - here marketing and communication (as well as terrible naming in most cases) are the biggest factor.
Plugins and special drivers can be a problem, I fully agree with that. The question is however, whether this is relevant for hobbyists and people who just want to get started.
Seeing as special drivers are only required for special hardware (graphics cards and studio equipment comes to mind) and that plugins can easily exceed the cost of a small workstation, we're starting to leave hobbyist territory again.
>They don't want to be able to do the same work - they want to do the same work the exact same way using the exact same software.
They don't merely want to the same work. They also want the best of class software. GIMP is not Photoshop by a large margin, for example. Ardur is too little to be compared to Logic or Cubase or ProTools (even without the issue of plugins). And so on...
>Same goes for video editing as well - there's kdenlive, OpenShot, DaVinci Resolve, Lightworks, and yes, even Blender can do it. But, nope. People want Premiere, Sony Vegas, and Final Cut - the rest doesn't even cross their mind.
No, many would be happy with DaVinci Resolve. But then they'd need many other parts of a video/post production workflow still not available on Linux in good form or any form.
It's not just "you're a videographer, you use Premiere on Windows, just switch to Davinci on Linux". Because I also e.g. might use AfterEffects, tons of video plugins not available on Linux, Photoshop and Audition for post-production work, several post production utilities, drivers for different peripherals I use for video, and so on. Oh, and plus all the saved presets and automations and such they've made for those.
DaVinci on Linux is great, but only solves a small (albeit core) part of the workflow.
Also, it's very understandable that professionals have invested in learning programs and constellations of programs.
Would a heavy Emacs user move to another platform that doesn't have Emacs - but offers e.g. Jove?
So it's not about unwillingness to move from Photoshop to say Gimp and Krita because they're "different". It's that Gimp and Krita are quite behind in several aspects, and that their presence only solves a small part of a professional (or hobbyist for that matter) workflow.
That's exactly what I doubt (again - professionals and semi-pros aside).
People associate video editing with Final Cut Pro or Premiere. Image editing? Photoshop! Recording, editing and mixing - Pro Logic or Cubase of course!
Is it because the vast majority of hobbyists and occasional users need the features these packages offer? No! It's because "the pros" use it and therefore it has to be good and what I need. It's because these are names that pop up when I search the internet. It's because that's what the tutorials on YT use.
Nobody needs Photoshop to crop an image, to do some quick colour correction, make a collage or a meme.
You don't need Pro Logic to do a podcast or edit a recording of your daughter's garage band.
Premiere and AfterEffects are overkill times 20 for editing the footage of your brother's wedding shot on a variety of smartphones, etc.
Sure, some users may want move on from the likes of Kdenlive, Krita, Inkscape, Gimp, Ardour or Reaper at some point. For the average user, however, lack of functionality or workflow support is not the problem.
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).
In my experience (because of my work I have macbooks, linux machines and a windows machine), linux with i3 beats mac os x and windows on battery life by a (very) large margin; in some cases 3x (for instance on x220 2011 with 9 cell, I get 4 hrs under windows and 15 under linux/i3) with the same workload. Obviously I run the Linux battery tools, but so do the other OSs their own.
i3 here is the ‘magic’ part because with other, more mac/windows like window managers, the battery life is comparable, however, I cannot turn those off on mac/win so I cannot test if that is really the case. But if I use, say, unity, the battery life drops to at or below what it does with it’s native system.
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.
> How many people are using Bluetooth with their computers?
No idea about the numbers, but my n=1 uses Bluetooth a lot. I use my Airpods Pro on my laptop all the time, for calls and music and watching videos with others in the room, the noise cancelling is really good and I don't have to drain my phone battery as much. I really like the Magic Mouse, which is Bluetooth as well, and I have a keyboard with 3 Bluetooth IDs that I can switch back and forth between my phone, gaming PC and laptop with a single keypress, and I use that a lot and would use it even more if it could handle five devices instead of three. Apart from that, I have a stationary bluetooth speaker I often stream music to from my laptop to conserve my phone battery, and, finally, one of my electronics projects that I never seem to get around to finishing is a lipo-powered glove-shaped bluetooth midi controller.
Macbooks do retain their 3.5mm jacks, but I hate that I have to be mindful of the cable (i.e. can't move around the room), and good wired headphones tend to be bulkier. I don't really mind a 10-15 minutes charging break every couple of hours, and sound quality and noise cancelling are really good for my standards.
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.
You're forgetting professionals are also human. I don't consider lowering the chances or shooting yourself in the foot a negative. And if you're 'that' professional it should not be a problem to switch a few configuration options.
There has never, ever, ever been a time where most developers bought Macs. Ever.
The vast majority of software developers have always been on Windows. This is true worldwide and in the US. Only in certain fields and places like Silicon Valley do developers on Macs outnumber those on Windows.
I can link some numbers for you but they are findable. The stackoverflow developer survey shows it year after year.
As a matter of fact, you can see here [0] that 72.4% of the 57k developers who took the survey primarily use Windows or Linux over a Mac. This is certainly in line with general desktop OS market share statistics [1] showing that Macs are only used by about 17% of the general population world wide with Windows taking the lion's share.
Perhaps I've offended someones feelings with these statistics. Sorry, I can't apologize for facts though.
I guess most will start with MacOs because they do frontend work and for anyone who does design work macs just provide the best out of the box experience. Then later you evolve to full stack dev and find out that because OS X is based on unix, you can do it all on the same machine.
Having some useful console tools certainly pulled a lot of people from Linux to macOS. The macOS GUI at least delivers a working desktop where "Linux on the desktop" seems to be eternally 'around the corner' for the last decade or something like that.
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.
You have to confirm that (A) laptop USB-C does PD (power delivery) and DP (DisplayPort); (B) your monitor has USB-C and can deliver enough power (60-100W I guess is enough); (C) the USB-C cable is 3.1 gen2 with 10Gbps rating.
Then you'll need enough USB plugs for your peripherals. I added a hub to the backside of my monitor, works without issues even though the chain is now laptop-monitor-hub-device.
Switching between laptop and desktop is also another consideration. I have desktop with DisplayPort cable + USB-C 3.0 for peripherals. Then I got a short USB-C male-female extension (3.1 gen2) so I can switch laptop/desktop cables without wearing out the monitor USB-C port.
I have a 34" LG ultrawide USB-C display that just works with my private and work Macbooks, no issues at all. I also have a non-USB-C monitor with a 40-ish Euros USB-C hub (brand name is Uni I think, no idea what model, it's a relatively small one with ethernet) that works like a charm. In my laptop bag I have a smaller power/1 USB/1 HDMI adapter from the same brand (because it was relatively cheap), a USB-C extension cord, and short USB-C to Micro USB and USB-C to Lightning cables and a small USB-A-USB-C adapter – sounds like a lot but packs very flat and neat into a small pocket, and so far it's been enough for my needs.
I bought another hub for about 100 Euros that should support multiple screens but doesn't really, and it swallows DDC commands, meaning I can't use MonitorControl to control my external screen's brightness – not happy with that one at all, but I believe this is an outlier, it was an early Gen2 device that says it can drive more screens than its bandwidth can possibly allow for.
I've tried and used a couple others as well. So far, this is what I've learned:
- Look for power delivery with sufficient watts (60W for my 13" Macbook Pro) – this is sometimes buried in the description and it sucks when your laptop won't charge under load.
- Look for 4k at 60hz, even if you don't have a 4k screen (yet) — lots only do 30hz, which means 5gbit/s USB 3.1 Gen1, which is the same bandwidth as the old USB 3.0, which may lead to issues with larger screens (starting way below 4k) and fast periphery. 4k at 60hz seems like the best indicator for USB 3.1 Gen2, which is 10gbit/s, which has more headroom. This is sometimes buried deep in the product description, and I may have some of this wrong, the baker's dozen of USB-C standards is a real mess.
- Don't rely on plugging USB-C devices into a USB-C hub; try to do with USB 2.0/3.0 ports. Many hubs offer one USB-C data port, but I've yet to see one that isn't very, very temperamental. I've briefly used a pretty pricey Lenovo hub where this caused the hub to just freeze randomly, regardless of what I plugged into that port. Power delivery nowadays works fine though, as long as the supported wattage is large enough.
The ecosystem seems to have matured quite a bit over the last few years; the first hub I've used at work was barely functioning, with power delivery mostly a joke and HDMI kinda sketchy, nowadays I guess you'll be fine if you buy a 30W/60W/100W (whatever you need), 4k@60hz single HDMI one.
No idea how to get multiple screens off a single USB-C cable to work, though. I hear it's relatively easy on Windows, kinda difficult on macOS and a major engineering challenge on Linux.
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 guess the reply to stevewodil clarifies some of my concerns.
Window management: Native window management makes it difficult to dock them or move them across screens. Rectangle allieviates some of those issues, but things like command+tab not working on minimised application, having to use a different shortcut to switch between windows of an application is not ideal. In MSWindows, windows are first class citizens and alt + tab works across all the cases mentioned above.
Keyboard shortcuts are good, the issue is it does not work across all applications. One example is the end key going to end of line in some application and end of page in others. Ctrl + E does not work on some application etc. This probably partly the applications fault, but it does make for a subpar experience.
I assume the butterfly keyboard needs no explaination.
The keyboard shortcuts are good, but the problem is they do not behave the same across all the application. I guess the problem is partly the application implementing them (one example is the end key going to end of line in some application and end of page in others. Ctrl + E does not work on some application etc).
I have been using Rectangle now which makes window management bit more sane. But things like command+tab not working on minimised application, having to use a different shortcut to switch between windows of an application is not ideal. In MSWindows, windows are first class citizens and alt + tab works across all the cases mentioned above.
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.
> 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.