Antique Memes Roadshow

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[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 8 months ago (6 children)

"It just works" was always bullshit marketing drivel. Even long-time Mac users didn't swear by it. No computer "just works." They all have a learning curve. Most of them make dumb-ass decisions. I like Macs, but it's not like Macs are perfect and PCs are complete dogshit. I use a Windows 11 machine at work and I enjoy working with it for the most part. (To be fair, Copilot is disabled by IT, so it's not full fat Windows 11.) I do like my Mac more, but there are some things Windows machines do better. By the same token, yeah, it kind of does just work, but so does Windows. So does Linux. So does Android. Your computer/device doesn't get brownie points for doing its fucking job. It gets brownie points for the things that make you miss it when you're using another one. And they all have those.

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[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago (4 children)

thank you for your good reply.

Just stupid thoughts; years ago I'd have tried to talk about how shit OSX is and maybe stick to windows or move to linux. With your great post and the current OS landscape, I have no fucking idea what my opinion is anymore.

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[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

For people using open-source software, MacOS is not much worse than Linux. It's FreeBSD under the hood with a solid GUI on top, very automateable. There are lots of open-source utils for tuning the GUI, just like in Linux one needs specific programs to do particular things with the UI. Iirc there's even a tiling wm.

Moreover, Mac has some productivity software that's way better than anything on Linux or Windows. Namely Alfred and Hammerspoon.

And of course, you know that the drivers will never give up on you after an update.

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[–] AbsolutelyClawless@piefed.social 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

The way MacOS has been explained to me is "you pay for it to just work", I.e. no random driver issues after an OS update or stuff breaking. I've never used it and I can't stand Apple, but I understand why people who need it for work prefer it over Windows or Linux. Windows has been particularly bad with updates breaking the most basic shit and producing bizarre bugs, and I genuinely wish I didn't have to use it for work. My Fedora has unironically been more stable and consistent than Windows.

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[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

I'm also a bit into UI design, so I have the questionable capability of seeing where each OS has effort put into its UI. When I first tried MacOS in a VM, I saw right away that it was made for people and not some abstract users. Apple's designers actually know more than a little about design, while MS struggles with basic stuff like the principles of grouping. (How basic? Well you can make a good design in black and white with just these principles and nothing else.) Microsoft's design paradigm since the nineties until Win10 was to cram as much stuff as possible onto the screen, with no regard to how people will have to use that.

And naturally, the control panel, the litmus test of an OS' design, had ten different styles of windows in Windows 7. And two entirely different control panel designs in Win10.

With Linux, of course, it's a toss as to whether any given environment has some design sense. KDE started as 'Windows, but even more so': they've managed to be even more busy with hundreds of options and dialogs. Gnome 2 unabashedly stole good stuff from MacOS, until they threw it all away in Gnome 3. Cinnamon still lacks some little details that make MacOS so damn good: e.g. the fact that you can adjust the volume in 1/4th increments in Mac by pressing alt-shift and volume up/down.

MacOS is actually great if you treat is as a desktop environment and nothing else. Buy a used Macbook Pro, don't buy other Apple devices, don't use the 'Apple ecosystem', just use the same open-source apps that you would in Linux or Windows, plus some more for tweaking the UI, and a couple paid apps that are better than alternatives. You get a rock-solid DE.

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[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 2 points 8 months ago*

It comes down to what a person needs to do, what they may need to do, their comfort level with learning, what they're used to, and any other requirements.

Average person I'm not putting on Linux of any flavor. But someone asks me for a special use-case (e.g. old laptop), or expresses interest in doing something beyond average user things (like some form of self-hosting) then I may suggest a Linux distro.

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[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 2 points 8 months ago*

To be fair back in the early days of Mac vs Windows 3.X, "It just works" had a lot more relevance.

For the average user, it did just work more than Windows. Though I crashed Macs as much as I did Windows boxes back then.

I appreciate what Apple was trying to do despite their approach. Finding anything in the UI beyond the basics was painful (intuitive my ass).

But after NT4 (and especially Win2k), that difference was gone.

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[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Ironically MS make some great peripherals. The Sculpt ergonomic keyboard is pretty good, and when I inevitably break some keys trying to clean them, I unpack old reliable Natural 4000 and clack away again.

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[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago* (5 children)

peepShowErgonomicManagementKeyboard.jpg

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[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Btw, I probably mentioned this elsewhere: MS Natural's humongous alt keys, mapped to the main modifier cmd in Mac, are a revelation. I'm not having ctrl under the pathetic pinky finger in Linux or Windows ever again.

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[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I’m not having ctrl under the pathetic pinky finger in Linux

in KDE :

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[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

Yeah, I've already set that up on my system — although Cinnamon doesn't allow some more complex setups, seemingly just like KDE. Gonna have to look into xkb remapping.

Mac is again ahead here, because open-source Karabiner allows arbitrary mappings and different mappings per keyboard (e.g. built-in vs external ones).