Completely the opposite - I was a Windows user most of my life
Yet despite this, I very quickly fell in love with OS X
I think perhaps a way to elaborate on it it ‘feeling right’ is that it felt very intuitive - things just worked how I expected them to, with it feeling more natural than anything I had used before it. Similarly, I reckon the same can be said about languages we ‘fall in love with’ - they just work how we expect them to work.
What I’ve always found interesting though is that the same is not true for everyone (like our many discussions about Ruby have demonstrated) so that leaves met thinking that we’re all just wired differently (which is totally fine - it would be boring if we were all carbon clones of each other ).
I tend to avoid external services too if at all possible (self host email and git repos, prefer airdrop (bluetooth) to dropbox or iCloud etc).
I would love a ‘myCloud’ - a home based iCloud! Imagine that, people would be buying Mac Mini’s to act as home servers for all their devices I think this could offer more security too - because each device could be set to handshake via bluetooth or local network at least once a day (or some other setting if you are going on holiday etc) otherwise you get locked out of the system - this would be a massive layer of protection (could also change service access keys daily too). If govt intervention ever became a thing, I would push for this!
An intuitive UX is key imo. When things just work as you expect (or want) them to you don’t feel like you’re battling the system and life just feels easier because of it. The less annoyances there are the better - and I think there may be far less announces with OS X than other operating systems.
They’re not perfect mind, I am finding their Music app a bit of a pain atm, every week they updated several playlists and I have my favourite (for example, Global Dance is one of them) however, I would LOVE a way where I can ‘ignore tracks in my library’ and ‘ignore tracks I’ve already listened to’ because when I listen to these playlists I listen to them to find good new music to add to my library! Ok I’m going off-topic here but just wanted to say it’s not all roses
Just curious - how long ago was that?
I think it’s a little bit magical when it runs the way you want it to - but as I mentioned in my post to @OvermindDL1, it seems some of us are just wired differently, so unless operating systems allow two or three different ‘flavours’, one is never going to be able to be everyone’s cup of tea..
I’m just glad Mac OS ‘fits’ for me - for the most part!
IMO, the “Mac OS feel” that developers love comes down to:
Control over the UI,
Consistent user experience, and
Dev-friendly choices.
Windows controls the desktop, but only has so-so consistency (many windowing toolkits in evidence in the OS). And the choices aren’t dev-friendly (more below).
Linux has nearly zero control over its own UI: The Chrome browser, for example, refuses to follow standard keyboard shortcut for Quit and other functions. Built-in apps like the Gnome Software store don’t support Page Up/Down correctly, and also have issues with Quit and Close Window (!). Various versions of KDE Linux gain, and then frustratingly lose, the ability to adjust the mouse scroll speed. Finally, Linux copies Windows’ anti-dev-friendly UX designs.
MacOS, on the other hand, stands out above these:
Like Windows, MacOS has absolute control over the machine, in design and function. Chrome Browser responds to gestures and keyboard shortcuts just like Safari.
99.99% of apps behave in the same predictable ways. It’s rare (or impossible?) to find a user-level difference due to toolkit changes.
MacOS provides an extremely friendly dev experience: It’s the only OS that provides Bash(emacs)-style keyboard shortcuts in every text input field in every app. (A weaker, not as usable version of this can be enabled on Linux via Gnome Tweaks app.) It’s the only OS that provides Quit, Copy, Paste, etc. keyboard shortcuts across every app, including the terminal. It does this by smartly, in an opinionated manner, using e.g. Super-C for copy everywhere, instead of the Ctrl-C / Shift-Ctrl-C pair used by Windows and Linux. This frees up Ctrl key in terminal for dev and coding uses.
Another example is the global shortcuts for next tab / previous tab. The MacOS choice keeps your fingers close to the home position: Super-} and Super-{. I find this much more consistent and comfortable than the Windows & Linux keys, Ctrl-PageUp and Ctrl-PageDown. Those always make me stop and hunt for the right keys, especially on a laptop.
Now, me personally? I’m typing this on a Dell XPS tower running Fedora, heavily modified to act like a Mac with AutoKey and a keyboard whose keys I’ve slightly re-arranged. I have global mappings for Super-C, etc., and a separate set of mappings for obnoxious apps like Chrome. Further, I use the imwheel hack to adjust the mouse wheel scroll speed. It’s a fragile setup, but this is what fits my budget at the moment.
I returned my macbook air back to my employer at the time 11 months ago.
I think it’s not.
I started using computers in '95 or '96. And although there were some problems with every Windows and Linux i used they were solvable in matter of days at most. MacOS was the first that had no way of dealing with something, and community around macs was the first that instead of helping me with problem, were suggesting that the problem is with me trying to change something in system, and not the system not allowing changing something.
I think system running the way YOU want it to work is not magical is standard.
I’ts been a couple of years so I don’t remember specifics, but many things I tried, it might have looked like a Mac, but it was surface only, shallow implementations, lacking in usability features that should have been there…
You can use these either from a home server or a public server. They are very flexible in use cases. You even have mobile apps. The problem with using these on your own servers is that you’re now responsible for the security and maintenance of the software and data. You can pay some companies to manage these for you but then why not just use iCloud/Dropbox?
Haha. Unless you’re happy to waste time fixing and maintaining a buggy system then you’re better off not even trying. I’ve wasted far more time that I should have fooling myself that it’s doable. The PC that I currently keep trying with has an Nvidia 1080 which is now a few years old so you would imagine it’s a fine choice. If I wake the computer from sleep I lose sound output to the monitor and have weird artefacts in some windows. Even when it works it has lower performance than in Windows. It’s constant issues like that which you’ll fight with. This is the mac user’s thread though not the linux rant thread so I’ll stop there.
I did but have since changed my mind. I’ve got an appointment at an Apple store tomorrow to see if it’s cost effective to fix my 2015 MacBook Pro as the battery has expanded. Either way I’m actually going for the iMac now. I rarely use a laptop as a laptop these days so it makes more sense.
I think I’ll go with the following specs:
Customise your 27‑inch iMac with Retina 5K display.
3.6GHz 8-core 9th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz
16GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory
Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
512GB SSD storage
Magic Trackpad 2
I currently use an LG 34" ultrawide (3440x1440) monitor but it just looks terrible. It’s fine for gaming but there’s uneven lighting and the text is anything but sharp. I partly blame macOS anti-aliasing because it used to look OK until they messed with it in Mojave. It’s never looked good in Windows or linux though. Having seen the “retina” 27" 5k at 2x makes the above decision even easier.
Nvidia Linux drivers are awful because it’s nvidia writing most of them (in short). AMD ones are almost fully open sourced, and they work great, to the point, where they are often more performant than on Windows, and are very stable.
On Mac’s, where the developer has just a bunch of hardware configuration to test, drivers are probably as stable as one can get, and I have no idea how it is when it comes to performance because I don’t even know if they make any games or GPU intensive soft for macs any more.
If you go to Linux it’s better to have Intel or AMD gpu than Nvidia one. Much less hassle. And for me going with AMD was as stable on Linux as it was on OSX. On laptop with Intel igpu and dedicated nvidia card I needed few hours to make it problem free for me, but it was doable.
I simply advise looking before the switch for any potential problems on Linux with the hardware you want to use. It’s not really that bad as some say
I get where linux users are coming from and I would love for it to be a option for me but I’ve heard it all before… I’ve been trying for literally 20 years now. I still have a linux install I keep up to date.
If I can only use certain hardware, in certain configurations, with certain caveats then the benefit of hardware choice (my main draw) is nothing but an illusion.
Even if i magically found the perfect hardware setup that didn’t have any issues I’d then have to start fighting with the software. Screen tearing is still a thing, software not in the distro repos is still a pain to maintain (installation and updates), wifi is still an issue, bluetooth is still an issue, lack of adobe/ms/other software, games perform poor with a smaller selection e.t.c. Then there’s the constant in-fighting between OSS/Free/Distros/DEs/WMs/Systemd/Wayland/X.
Or I can just buy a Mac and have the hardware and software work perfectly out of the box and have access to a huge variety of quality software. This is why I’m a Mac user .
Isn’t it how it’s with macs at moment? You don’t have literally no choice when it comes to hardware, or rather the choice you have is nothing but an illusion.
Let’s agree to disagree, when it comes to hardware sometimes it works better on Linux, sometimes on Windows. I had bluetooth and wifi dongles that just worked after plugin them in on Linux. Same needed some beta drivers really hard to find to start working on Windows.
Like I wrote, often games performance is much better than on Windows. And the choice is way bigger than on OSX, nowadays you can run most of AAA title through wine and such without any problems (performance or others).
Where hardware choice is illusion, and still lacks a lot of software.
It’s not that I want everyone to change to Linux. I just think that Linux is really demonized, and it’s really not even close to being as bad as some write. And OSX has some problems you just can’t solve, on the other hand all Linux problems are solvable, because you have full control over software and hardware.
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