I agree with you for the most part, but Cook was an operations guy not a finance guy. He has done very well for Apple in that regard, but Jobs was a unique individual. I don’t think Apple has a snowball’s chance to find another like him.
It’s all about tradeoffs really. Every system has its plusses and minuses, and while I am pulling for Linux, I think we are seeing that it has significant struggles just like Mac and Windows. I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes something totally new to unseat the big 3, and there’s no telling how long it might be before we see that. In the meantime I will stick with Apple just because it is the most problem free for me, but I can certainly see why others might choose Linux or even Windows, which is clearly the worst choice.
You’re right, and according to Apple’s own site he was the person responsible for worldwide sales:
Before being named CEO in August 2011, Tim was Apple’s chief operating officer and was responsible for all of the company’s worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple’s supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also headed Apple’s Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace.
I’ll correct my post to reflect this
Haha!
Though I think it’s probably fair to say Linux is arguably the ‘best’ choice for developers as most production servers will be running Linux and it is the most (and largest) open-source-centric platform around.
I totally agree with this. I’m pretty sure that if a new unix based/derived OS came that had offered the same level of design and user experience as macOS does (i.e a real and legitimate alternative) and it was open source and it was privacy first and it allowed you to run your own cloud servers to mimic what iCloud does, a very very large number of people would jump to it.
Like you, I wonder whether we’ll ever see something like it.
Of course. Under Jobs, Mac were cool but expensive. Under Cook, Macs are very reasonably priced but not as cool as before. I think we are near or already in the 3rd phase: Macs are very reasonably priced and very restrictive.
Yeah. They became so restrictive that annoyed even me, the burned out guy who needed a more cozy comfy environment that I can’t ruin by a mistake. Imagine how hugely they frakked up.
Going to Linux is a whole different can of worms though. I refuse to run Chrome under the same user, I just know they’ll install a rootkit and start doing whatever. So I’ll be looking for ways to run GUI apps under a different users. There are various programs like xsudo that can do it but I’ll have to experiment.
If you find your eyesight is deteriorating you might find this interesting:
This is the book they mention: Amazon.co.uk (I’ve not read it myself).
There are other things you might want to look into too, such as ‘brain gym’, though the effectiveness of it is probably dependent on general lifestyle and your approach to health. For instance, eating clean, doing regular detoxes/cleanses, etc.
Brain Gym
Can be done anywhere - just imagine a figure 8 on its side then slowly track your sight along it, slowly expanding the figure 8 so it reaches the edges of your vision. Switch directions a few times.
Tackle bio-films and other infections
Diluted tea-tree oil solution after cleansing face with warm water (avoid soaps - they strip your natural oils) wiping from the centre outwards. Do not cross contaminate. Wash pillow cases daily for a few weeks, esp if you suspect conjunctivitis.
Health in general is a huge topic, but it’s always worth seeking out pearls of wisdom handed down through the generations. Both local wisdom (i.e where you live) as well as global (we live in a global world where things are imported from all over) or where your ancestors might originate from.
It’s convenient for it to be usable as a great gaming ring as well
I’ve been using a Macbook Air M1 for 3 years+ now and am really happy with it as I needed something to carry around. I wanted to install Linux on it at first but it wasn’t possible.. .I would need to check again if it is doable nowadays (with everything working: wifi, bluetooth, function keys …)
For general desktop experience the apps available on Mac are just way nicer to use than the linux alternatives(as someone that worked a KDE booth in 2001 and has been hoping for the year of the linux desktop for a long time). The internet is fast enough and servers cheap enough to lease these days that I can code on a Linux server while enjoying the nicer desktop experience using vim over ssh or ever Cursor over ssh. Hell with how powerful MBPs are these days working in a dev container is completely painless if you want to keep everything on machine.
Besides that I know that if I buy all apple it will just work together. Some of the software is worse and android users will certainly get a lot of features much sooner but none of it is worse enough to give up the easy interoperability.
The company I work for provided me with a MacBook Pro, but I switched to a MacBook Air M3, which is more than sufficient for most of my work. However, my personal machine is a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano (weighing just 900 grams), running i3wm on Arch Linux. Setting up Linux on a laptop can be a bit of a hassle, but once it’s configured, it works perfectly. It’s stable, uses far less memory compared to macOS, and offers zero distractions. If I could convince my company, I’d use my ThinkPad exclusively, but unfortunately, they don’t support non-macOS devices with their MDM and other tools.
Hard to say! I’ve been in this position so many times, but everyone else seems to screw something up in a big way when trying to compete with the Macbook. They don’t give thunderbolt, they put rattling crappy speakers under the keyboard, include a terrible screen, have bad support, giant power supply with old-school DC pin connectors…
As much as I dislike Apple and the Mac isn’t perfect, it’s far better than anything else out there hardware-wise. Seems like maybe Framework is the best mainstream linux laptop these days, unless you want one of the hardened platforms that are a bit more niche.
This is a super interesting idea. Every time I start wearing my glasses again, I feel like my eyes get weaker. At the same time, I feel like there may be some connection between my floater numbers and not wearing glasses.
I’ve been running Xubuntu for almost 20 years in some form or another. It’s always worked on every machine I ever booted it on, even where others failed.
The Snaps are an annoyance for sure… I would like to switch to Linux Mint at some point. But it’s a rock-solid OS for the price, and it’s quite stable IMO.
@dimitarvp There are Chromium forks that can be relied on not to do sketchy Google stuff. Firefox is my main browser, but I have a copy of Ungoogled Chromium (AppImage FTW) that I keep around for when I need to make sure something works on Chrome.
I’ve been using Ubuntu since forever, since 2010 I’ve had two top shelf dev PCs, first one I bought in 2010 and second around 2020, during theseyears I never reinstalled the system, only did upgrades and mostly LTS-LTS. My current machine was reasonably expensive (around 3k Euro) and I have it for around 5 years, did a couple updates now, other that that things just work.
Here are the specs:
Hardware Information:
Hardware Model: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. MS-7C36
Memory: 64,0 GiB
Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 9 3900X × 24
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 2070 SUPER
Disk Capacity: 2,5 TB
This kind of stability is not offered by MacOS in my experience (I have some with laptops in recent years), even if we throw money at it. During these years the system got more and more stable, any problems that I had were solvable. I am not a dummy, but also not an OS nerd, I just want it to work and Linux delivers.
I also use this PC to play games, I’ve had no Windows since very long time (it’s scary to come up with actual numbers). These days with Steam things mostly just work, usually you hit play and play, even AAA titles. Issues, if there are any, are discussed here https://www.protondb.com, so gaming as a reason to not switch to Linux is old news.
Anyway, if switching from Apple as a company that handles both hardware and software to deliver integrated experience is scary, there are companies that help with that. Here we have this one https://www.tuxedocomputers.com I think they deliver everywhere in Europe. They not only sell hardware that is guaranteed to be compatible, but also have their own distro which got some positive feedback recently (eg Linux Distro Reviews: Tuxedo OS). I’ve got their laptop since 2019 (opted out of their OS and installed Ubuntu) and it works fine today. Next time I buy from them I will probably check their OS out, I like the niche of it being Ubuntu LTS based, but tightening privacy and handling the drivers. In the US the comparable company is https://system76.com with their distro Pop!_OS by System76
I don’t wear glasses myself but I would definitely read that book I linked to if I did.
I’d also do more brain gym, go out in nature more so my eyes get appropriate ‘exercise’/use etc. I think there’s certainly some truth in what they touched upon in that podcast - that eyesight has suffered because of modern lifestyle, and it’s probably only going to get worse now because so many are glued to their phones all day…
i don’t run wsl, but my co workers do.
i use arch, and they use arch via wsl.
if i want to run a remote server (even for desktop) it’s linux, it’s not macos or windows.
i used macox when their fancy metal laptops came out and i ran linux at the same time, i found linux much much better for work. work always wins for me. other OSes are just for playing around.
Going out in nature without glasses would be life-threatening to me. I’m myopic at -7.0 diopters and not seeing where I’m stepping can be disastrous.
I already dialed back my phone usage, by a lot even.
I’ve been told by people to wear the glasses less before and “not be on the computer as much” which is quite amusing considering that I’m a programmer. Well okay, enlightened ones, here are my monthly expenses, please financially support me for the entire time I’m meditating in nature and live a life like a legally blind person without my glasses, which could easily take 3 years, if not more. I’m sure at one point I’ll be seeing perfectly without the glasses…
You’re right that there are options to improve the health of the eyes. I’ll admit to not doing the eye exercises, for example. And I’ll try to be more persistent there.
But having in mind that I can rarely if ever afford to not wear glasses for more than 18 hours in the best case scenario (and that includes 7-8 hours of sleep), I cannot understand how will my eyes auto-correct themselves when they’re constantly forced to work differently than they’re naturally inclined to (i.e. the glasses are forcing them).
As adults, many things are too late to fix, but it’s still good information so that our children and younger relatives get good advice and don’t end up with the same problems.
Personally, my sight was about -2.5 so not that bad but still always using glasses. I had a surgery done while I was living in Korea and since then it’s been good but when I’m tired it’s not 100%. Driving at night is not great either.
Back on topic, is someone using his Macbook Air M1 with Linux here? Is everything supported out of the box nowadays?
