New switcher on his brand new MacBook Neo who doesn't want to learn Mac apps and conventions? Guaranteed this person uses a Windows "Alt-tab" style switcher app too.
The tab switching is one of the main things that annoy me on a mac, and I'd describe myself as a linux tiling window person first, windows user only second.
Also my mac usage is hopefully only temporary, so why adopt to this - to me - inferior way.
And jftr, I don't plan to use this - I kinda like NPP, but I prefer to use TextAdept on Linux and Mac for notes anyway (and not vim, which is weird, but I guess I am weird with my choices).
Can confirm, friend who moved to Mac after 30+ years on Win ecosystem and all of the discussions we have are basically "but on Windows..." They specifically have lamented the unavailability of Notepad++ because of a specific hanging indent behavior they are used to.
Most people do not have the cognitive flexibility to really adapt to a tool that is more or less domain equivalent but different in any way. These small differences create more friction than learning something that doesn't have any close mapping to what you knew before.
Cuts both ways too. I am finding Windoews harder due to using the mac as daily driver. Haven't got the hang of finder yet. I use CLI as much as possible making use rare enough not to master.
I have the flexibility to adjust to platforms other than macOS but I’d rather not have to. My setup works for me and having to change it is annoying and drags down productivity.
In my case it’s more intense than usual because I’m a visual person and my productivity suffers for things like my desktop environment, theme, etc not looking “right”. When using Linux for anything more “serious” than studying with Anki I get pulled down a bottomless rabbit hole of trying to “fix” everything, which is futile because many of the problems can’t be fixed without a huge number of project forks.
I've never seen the appeal of GNOME 3+, the design seems so user-hostile to anyone who has used computers for a while: hiding menus for no reason, having super limited menu options, etc.
It's great to have the choice but the context was pretty MacOS UIs. There the only competition is Gnome and i was arguing that it's slowly getting nicer than MacOS.
I’ve not been a fan of the Liquid Glass changes, but it’s similar enough that I’ve been able to get used to it.
Fluent on Windows doesn’t look too bad but MS hasn’t made particularly great use of it and parts of the OS still don’t use it.
GNOME/Adwaita get some things right, and other things wrong (the padding everywhere is way too thick, its crusade against menu bars is odd). It’s also so minimal that it makes macOS look maximalist, and as such isn’t my cup of tea.
Gnome is the only linux DE that tries to be consistent (probably due to more centralised decision making). I think that makes it most likely to be most user friendly over time.
The consistency is one of the things it gets right, but it’s undermined by its sheer bare-bonesness, which brings people to try to augment it with extensions, but those constantly break due to functioning by way of monkeypatching GNOME internals.
I think the idea of a “blank slate” DE that you build up with extensions is actually great, but a highly capable stable extension API is non-optional for that to actually work. I can’t have half my customizations vanishing or breaking overnight due to a system update.
I thought that MS had a good thing going on with the refinements in Aero brought by Windows 7. It nicely balanced a modern theme with a traditional desktop model and it still respected the user while bringing some massive QoL improvements.
Had Windows 8 been further refinement into the Fluent design language along with unifying lingering Win9x style panels into the Vista/7 style, it would’ve been massively popular and more beloved by users than XP or 7. Instead, Microsoft decided to forget non-touch devices entirely and saddle the desktop with an ugly theme reminiscent of Windows 1.0/2.0 in a botched attempt to make it fit in with the flat Metro touch UI bits.
They might have. I moved to the Mac during XP. I never used Windows 7.
I have used the server version that’s designed to be a bit like 8. I may have used 8 too, I can’t remember for sure. I’ve definitely used 10+.
I have a PC at work that I use from time to time, plus I remote into various Windows machines. Between those two I’ve gotten a taste of the more modern versions.
Porting Windows apps that people like, helps MacBook sales, not hurt them. That certain people use their MacBook in a different way should not be a concern of other users, as at least they are using MacBooks.
Granted I've only been using MacOS for a few years as my work machine, but am I missing something here? Is the Mac CMD+tab already not nearly identical to to windows alt+tab?
Are you just referring to the switcher switching through apps vs windows?
Window previews when switching are also a nice thing when doing heavy multitasking.
There are a few things MacOS X inherited from classic MacOS that I don't think work that well in the modern world, and application-focused task switching is one of them. It made sense in the classic Mac context where many apps used floating windows for toolboxes and other non-document windows. You wanted to switch the whole application, with all of its windows, as a unit. It was also the right technical decision with classic MacOS's modest multitasking abilities.
But the world has since mostly standardised on SDI app design with tools contained within that window, and multiple windows representing different documents.
In that context, the macOS app-then-window approach is more roundabout than pure window switching. You get used to it, but when you've got a lot of windows open, it's a small but ever-present drag on usability.
Alt-Tab is one of the first things I install on a new Mac. Hopefully one day Apple will give us a built-in option, much like they eventually did with window tiling and full-screen window zooming.
As used by commercial hardware and software vendors, "support" can mean anything from "we'll come fix it for you when it breaks, or your money back" to merely "theoretically, it should work, and we won't get in the way of you trying". Likewise, "unsupported" can mean anything from "don't complain to us if it doesn't work" to "we're going to spend significant engineering effort to prevent it from working".
A stance of "here's some hardware documentation, implement the drivers yourself" definitely falls within that spectrum of "support", and is the kind of "support" for Linux that some hardware vendors have in the past been lauded for, eg. when AMD started documenting their GPUs.
That level of "support" from Apple for running Linux bare-metal on Apple Silicon would be an improvement from the status quo, and in practice would probably be sufficient to get good drivers written and upstreamed in short order, given how much interest there is in running Linux on these devices.
We're talking about "people walking into Genius Bar expecting help with Linux" support. It's not philosophical discussion on what support is, there's literally a specific thing discussed here.
That's one of the several forms of support under discussion, under the specious claim that it would become the expected level of support as soon as Apple declared any level of support for Linux. But as the comments you're refusing to understand have explained, Apple could meaningfully "support" Linux in the form of providing hardware documentation, without making any promises to help any customers troubleshoot Linux running on that hardware.
Yes, Linux developers are officially supported by both Apple and Microsoft, with Microsoft developers being a major contributor to upstream Linux and WSL2 having grown into a capable Linux development environment.
Being the least bad doesn't make something good. macOS is the least bad choice for the majority of people that just want a machine to mostly browse the Internet, look at their photos, do some light productivity work, and participate in their ecosystem. It also arguably hosts has the best software options for creative work (although that's reaping the fruits of seeds planted long ago - not sure there's much about macOS that makes it inherently better for those tasks these days). For development, its advantage is the hardware it's running on. To achieve any level of customization or to define my own workflow that isn't what Apple wants me to do or to work across multiple systems, I have to fight macOS rather than work with it. Linux on the other hand does what I tell it to do.
I’ve been using macOS because its creative ecosystem for decades. And over the last 10 years, it’s started to be apparent to me this is an expensive and unstable place to be. It will not be a place where tools find longstanding stability measured in decades. It is and will be a place where various sandcastle taxes are periodically assessed so the particular vision of the platform as a novel current luxury experience will be reinforced, and developers and users will be asked to keep pace on the treadmill and smile.
Linux as a desktop OS for the vast overwhelming majority of people is a far inferior option. It just is, and always has been. Even for developers, MacOS doesn't prevent you from getting your job done and getting paid, while using arguably the best laptop hardware. Shit just works and stays out of your way.
If all MacOS has going for it is better hardware, someone would have stepped up and shipped a better linux laptop ages ago. God knows I'm not going back to a flimsy creaking chassis, shit screen, and horrible battery life just so my Docker container doesn't have to run in a VM.
Sucked compared to what? My OS X life began shortly before Panther, and coming from a Linux laptop everything was better. Compared to Windows XP, everything in Panther was better. Panther on a 1GHz TiBook was amazing compared to anything else at the time.
> If you own one of the affected Kindles, you’ll still be able to access all of the books that are already downloaded to your device. However, you’ll no longer be able to purchase, borrow, or download books to your device from the Kindle Store.
> And while you can sideload DRM-free (digital rights management–free) titles to the Kindle via USB [...], it’s not the best option from a security standpoint.
I hate how Mac OS makes it harder to delete than to add stuff to system folders. I forgot what was it, but adding something worked with sudo, removing it required disabling sip. Is there a reason for that?
> Backseat industrial designing through legislation is not the answer.
Again, why not? It's not mandating design, just minimal standards for repairability that should be obvious. If Framework and Lenovo can do it and Apple can do it on a $600 laptop, why can't everyone do it?
What everyone is missing: Because other manufactures do not have to; the profit margins are too good to give a shit, and they allow some pretty fierce competition within the target demographic:
<soapbox>
Sadly, the general public still just wants the cheapest option to consume their bullshit content, even if it needs to be replaced a year from now after their cat walks on it and causes critical damage.
The MacBook Neo is brilliant in that Apple takes a share of this market with a premium and affordable product that is basically just their previous generation phone, with the expensive bits likely sourced from their exchange program or surplus supply. Products that at some point the same people would've loved to have, but couldn't afford. Now repurposed with a larger screen, sporting the envied Apple logo, at an affordable price, and targeting that same demographic as the hot new thing, just one generation later.
I have a feeling we'll see this pattern continue, and it's genius. Minimizing waste, maximizing profits, and giving the consumers what they want, while maintaining a gap between low-end and high-end -- people that spend $$$$ still want to feel special, of course.
Don't get me wrong, the Neo is great, especially for us hackers, but it is absolutely not meant for us in any way. What is in our favor: it does, at the very least, raise the bar for these other manufactures that product absolute garbage.
</soapbox>
Someone needs to be a reference as to what is feasible in order for a standard to be established. Apple, Framework, and I guess Lenovo are the ones doing this these days. RIP the others.
> Backseat industrial designing through legislation is not the answer.
But it _could_ save us from Lenovo or Dell or any other company copying Apple's design practices (and the latter largely already has), while, as another poster mentioned, not mandating design per se, but rather just setting minimum standards.
I don't understand your math. The 1mm (the wall) was there already, so why is it being counted here? Plus, multiplying by 1 doesn't do anything? Also, the 2mm extra won't be solid plastic (they'll be solid air, since that's why we're adding the extra thickness, for the room.
If anything, the extra material for the case would be the perimeter length times the perimeter wall width times the height.
The post was fixed about 30 seconds after making it - due to the *s being interpreted as italics. It is a shame there isn't a preview button when composing posts.
There's a new field in your profile called delay. It's the time delay in minutes between when you create a comment and when it becomes visible to other people. I added this so that when there are rss feeds for comments, users can, if they want, have some time to edit them before they go out in the feed. Many users edit comments after posting them, so it would be bad if the first draft always got shipped.
Delay is initially 0. The maximum effective value is 10. It only applies to comments.
That may not even be where the devices are most toxic to the environment :\
How about all the energy waste for manufacture of what are "engineered" as effectively disposable components & assemblies in numerous facilities?
Also scattered local emissions, not only at the factories and delivery ships & trucks, but consumers kick up all kinds of exhaust and waste just earning the money to participate in such a scheme. And way more so for short-lived products that are the least bit overpriced compared to how they could be from the same factory.
Stories like this is all my family members get iPhones. If Google wants to move to a walled garden too it should at least deliver on the walled garden benefits. No point otherwise.
Indeed, unfortunately most manufacturers are against it, even the smaller/niche ones. I am waiting for more people to wake up so we get good hardware with open firmware/OSs.
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