> it’s a company that I feel has lost its alignment with me and other long-time Apple users and customers.
When OS X debuted there was a daytime radio talk show in my area called “The Computer Guys.” They capably covered all sorts of computing topics, but were clearly long-time Apple dudes. And they spent weeks complaining about what a disaster OS X was. The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG. The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did. And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Going even farther back, it was long-time dedicated Apple users who booed when Jobs announced the deal with Microsoft.
Being a long-time dedicated Apple user is a shitty job. You don’t get paid, have no input, and are constantly disappointed. And Apple does not care about you.
I strongly suggest people should throw this notion away. It does not matter how long you’ve bought from a big company, they owe you nothing. If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t. Any more emotional investment than that is going to cause pointless unhappiness.
Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman.
>> it’s a company that I feel has lost its alignment with me and other long-time Apple users and customers.
> When OS X debuted there was a daytime radio talk show in my area called “The Computer Guys.” They capably covered all sorts of computing topics, but were clearly long-time Apple dudes. And they spent weeks complaining about what a disaster OS X was. The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG. The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did. And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
I kind of see it differently. That is, Apple did in fact lose the alignment with the Classic MacOS fans but Apple did it on purpose. Objectively, by 2001 standards MacOS sucked and you wouldn't want to align with people who think otherwise. As the result Apple broke out of a small stagnating niche and won a big market.
This is different from today's situation where it feels like Apple breaks the alignment not on purpose and not by innovation but rather just slowly drifts out.
There's a theory in the comments that they want to align with "people who want the best camera array and have money to burn". This could be true but even then it doesn't look like a good strategy to win a big market long-term. More like a retreat back into a small niche that may stagnate in the future, like "people who want the best publishing software and have money to burn".
Pre MacOS X was a 90s style OS and had major limitations that were a problem for every user, starting with no real multi-threading, and I think no protected memory.
Where it was great was in the simplicity to the user. If you wanted to install or uninstall a driver or functionality, all you had to do is move an extension file in or out of the extension folder and reboot. That simplicity was lost in MacOS X. That made simple users dumber. (and iOS went back to the simplicity)
> Pre MacOS X was a 90s style OS and had major limitations that were a problem for every user, starting with no real multi-threading, and I think no protected memory.
Technically, the last “classic” Mac OS had memory protection and a fully preemptive scheduler.
The very serious caveat was that all “classic” Mac OS applications ran in a single process, and, within it, were scheduled cooperatively.
It was possible to create fully preemptively scheduled threads from within such applications, but they couldn’t write to the screen. I don’t remember whether they could do file I/O.
Locking down the OS so you can't install or uninstall functionality at all is not simplicity.
It kinda is, though.
Its an exchange in complexity
It is if Grandma keeps downloading scams and installing them.
You mean there are no scams in the famous "we're protecting you from all those internet evil guys by charging you app subscriptions" app stores?
No, even then it still isn't. A device should not protect you from making bad decisions. It should be an aid in making good choices, not a nanny keeping you safe because you can't be trusted to do better.
So, turn off your firewall if you don't want to be protected.
Do modern OSes have services listening on external IPs without explicitly told to still?
I think to the parents point, everything should be wide open, all the features possible, and let him configure. By not listening, isn't that 'over-simplifying', let the user decide.
So because "Grandma" keeps doing stupid things with tech she doesn't understand, that now means the rest of us have to suffer for it?
Grandma has a tablet these days.
All the downvotes are really missing the point of Apple.
Simple exactly does mean less features. That is what you are buying into. Less features, easy to find, no 'ambiguity'.
If you want a ton of feature and flexibility, you go elsewhere.
But don't criticize Apple for being locked down, when that is exactly what they are selling.
> Objectively, by 2001 standards MacOS sucked and you wouldn't want to align with people who think otherwise.
I see, so like "Don't think different"?
By 2001 the Classic MacOS wasn't really "different", it was largely the same as the System 7 release from 10 years ago.
The NeXTSTEP on the other hand was quite different. Different from MacOS, from DOS/Windows and from proprietary UNIXes. I would argue that switching to NeXTSTEP was more aligned with the original spirit of "think different" than getting stuck in the old ways.
Like another post says, "The Mac was a philosophy". I bought a series of them but stopped around the year 2000 because they threw away the philosophy in favor of innovation. I think things were going south already around 1998. Remember Sherlock? On system 8.5 it would regularly interrupt the user (sending games from full screen to windowed) to display a dialog to say that it was indexing files. This couldn't be turned off except by disabling the Sherlock extension altogether.
That says that Sherlock's mission wasn't to help the user do user activities, but to get the user out of the way of Sherlock's activities, while keeping the user informed about the magnificence of Sherlock. This attitude became really popular with every OS that was competing to be innovative, and we're still stuck with it today. Shut up user, pay attention, look at my features!
That was because MacOS classic couldn’t multitask
Sure it could, it had cooperative multitasking. Inside Macintosh instructed programmers on the importance of politely giving way to other processes.
https://archive.org/details/inside-macintosh-1992-1994/1992-...
WaitNextEvent (hmm, a Windows call has the same name, but functions differently I think).
Multitasking via mandatory manual yields isn’t.
people will sell their things and buy it. especially now that it seems to have this epithet that it is for "people who want the best camera array and have money to burn"
> There's a theory in the comments that they want to align with "people who want the best camera array and have money to burn".
I agree with you and this theory sounds like moving goalposts.
First people claimed that the free market will always give the consumer what they want.
Then this turned out to be not true (we even have a term, enshittification), and now people come up with a more "refined" theory. Why would it be true this time?
>First people claimed that the free market will always give the consumer what they want.
That was maybe true at the time of Adam Smith for something like chocolates or bags of cheaper rice, or shirts and socks and bricks.
For things that take tens of billions to design, code for, build, and support, like smartphones and their OSes, there are just a few players (only two that mater for smartphone OSes), and there are huge barriers to entry even ignoring any rules and regulations you have to adhere to, but even more so with those in mind too.
So you get what the players give you, and that's it.
Could it be that "people" that say that are different groups of people?
This is the other side of it. "Online everyone complains about X," but everyone is 200 randos online, hardly conclusive. If anything its more like the yelp effect. The people who are most likely to complain and celebrate online are the small vocal slice. Not even online really. The vast majority of people just dont give a damn so long as youtube, calls, and texting works (if its a phone), or whatever are probably the most common 3-4 activities most users do.
> First people claimed that the free market will always give the consumer what they want.
Enshittification does give consumers what they want: free stuff. People will deny it up and down and claim they would pay for non-enshittified Facebook, for example. But how many people actually would pay a subscription to use a Facebook style service? Enough to build sustain a company of Meta's size? Probably not. How many people pay for Kagi?
>Enshittification does give consumers what they want: free stuff
Nope. Enshittifition happens to paid stuff just as well, including stuff you pay more (including when inflation adjusted) from what you paid before.
It's about futher increasing the profit margins, whether it's a paid product or not, not about affording to give something for free.
Yes. And it's also about strategic lock-in.
> Enough to build sustain a company of Meta's size?
This is the problem - I'd argue we shouldn't have companies the size of Meta (or Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, etc.). It's that these companies are nation-state level huge, and operate in a system that continues to demand more growth still, that causes problems like enshitification.
Would enough people pay for Facebook to support a company of Meta's size? No, but that's OK - enough people would pay for it to support a much smaller, customer-focused company, and that would be a really good thing across all of tech.
What's so wrong about just sustaining a certain size/user base instead of endlessly growing bigger and bigger?
[dead]
Save your loyalty for people that matter in your actual life.
There isn’t a single business in existence that cares about you. Even companies in the business of keeping you alive will only do so while doing so makes them a profit.
I say this as the example of the local handyman is one where you will matter more. It’s a human relationship with a real person not a fake relationship with one person and a spreadsheet
Yeah, this is dead wrong.
I'll go in the other direction. With a few exceptions, it is unfortunately true that "a business" isn't just "a way to make money," it's VERY OFTEN "the only reasonable way to accomplish a big-ish goal involving multiple people."
I say this as someone who started a business incidentally, my father had a big project that he and I loved the idea of, and I knew I could put together a good team to do the web part of it, and so I did. Money was NOT the primary motivator.
You’re conflating small business and large business. The moment you have investors return on investment becomes the sole motivating factor and whatever humanity the organization had will be slowly squeezed out from the top down. This isn’t ideological, it is a legal principle. A corporation taking actions that harm returns opens them up to lawsuits.
Edit: worker owned coops don’t have this issue because they are definitionally managed from the bottom up.
Additional edit: the “you” in my post is doing heavy lifting I mean both the post I replied to and the one directly above it.
GGP started with "There isn’t a single business in existence" though.
Hi, thank you for your comment. I have clarified that I was responding to both of the parent posts.
I think you misread. The GGP post did not differentiate by small or large, nor did GP
Hi, thank you for your comment. I have clarified that I was responding to both of the parent posts.
Investors want infinite growth which leads to enshitification.
You’re mistaking motivation with priorities.
The motivation for starting a project/business is very rarely going to be the priority for said business’s survival if it reaches a large enough audience.
That’s just an inevitability of scale — the larger the audience, the harder to focus on one member of said audience and the less any one single member of said audience matters.
I have some loyalty in open source project I rely on and I regularly donate to them, particularly KDE and thunderbird.
Maybe loyalty is the wrong word - if they really go to left field, I would abandon them.
But I have a lot of faith in their design decisions and overall vision. Their software works, continues to work, and has always worked amazingly for me.
I also feel the same way about Firefox but donating to Firefox isn't like donating to thunderbird.
spoken like someone who has never been a regular at a small business. there are all kinds of benefits when you get to know the guy who owns you favorite pizza shop for instance
As a good friend of a restaurant owner I have personal experience with this and you're friends with the people, not the company.
Restaurant owner friend transferred his company to new ownership, and I would never ask for the kinds of goodies the previous owner gave me. Because it was the owner, not the company, with which I had a relationship.
Splitting hairs. At the time your friend owned it, the company and people were one and the same.
I think that falls under a real relationship with a specific person. You can definitely have those, but a larger Corp isn't going to let employees do that very much
A small business owner has much more control over it than a local manager in a big corporation does so there are more benefits to becoming friends with them. That doesn't happen with large companies since there is no singular "owner" in public companies, even the CEO has to listen to the profit demands of the investors.
I think the key aspect here is scale: if the person making the decision knows the people affected, you usually see a pattern of different results than without that human connection. Large companies tend to be bad both from isolation and because the frontline people increasingly are not allowed to make decisions or consulted or even known by the people who are.
That’s a very strange and long reaching assumption to make from a post which literally said a local trader is more likely to care for you.
Reading aye…
You get it. Being a regular at my local sushi place (once a week typically), they would always give me free extra stuff, and stuff that wasn't on the menu for free. The chefs would also try out new (delicious) dishes on me. Why would I ever go anywhere else?? That's loyalty to a business. I recommend them to everyone.
> The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did.
Tbf, the Finder is still crap (if only it would be nearly as good as Windows Explorer was in its heyday I would probably use it more), and the UNIX terminal is pretty much needed to make a Mac usable in the first place - which is fine though, because the UNIX-ness was exactly why I switched to Mac ;)
> Tbf, the Finder is still crap (if only it would be nearly as good as Windows Explorer was in its heyday I would probably use it more)
I have the exact opposite opinion. I loathe Windows Explorer, and relatively simply stuff like presenting a tree view is apparently some weird magic trick that only Apple has figured out how to do.
Browsing SMB shares (or any other networked storage) is one shortcut away (cmd+k), and I don't need to visit control panel to enable weird subsystems that expose services on my machine to connect to other machines.
I use the terminal a lot, also for simple file operations, but that is because of proficiency, not out of need.
...but the SMB implementation on macOS is shit.
Try to browse any network directory with a non-trivial amount of files and see the whole Finder window just beach-ball or freeze.
I can browse my NAS faster via a browser and copyparty[0] than with Finder and SMB or NFS...
[0] https://github.com/9001/copyparty
Yeah I don’t know how they made it so bad. On Windows & Linux, using an SMB share basically gives you the same experience as using a USB hard drive connected directly to the machine. On Mac, you have to wait 30 seconds every time you open a directory. Then when you’re finally at the directory you want and start copying files, the speed slows down to a crawl as the copy progresses. I find it especially confusing because Apple offers 10 Gbit networking for their desktops at an additional fee. What’s the point of having that option when their shitty SMB implementation makes doing anything on your LAN far slower than 1 Gbit anyway?
Finder isnt crap?
Why can't i paste a path and just go to it like I can in Windows or KDE, why can't I cut and paste files? Why do i have to open 2 separate windows and drag the files between them?
Who decided that it is somehow useful to leave an applocation running when you close its window?
There are so many silly and stupid small things wrong with os x
You can:
Copy current path: Option + Command + C [1] Cut & paste: Alt + Command + Move (actually moves the file)
It's just bad that these simple things are very much hidden.
[1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/47216/copying-the-...
It moves the file? That's not the use case. The use case is copying a path and pasting it into the address bar of Explorer, and then Explorer showing the contents of the path. No file action is implied.
Shift-Command-G - "Go to folder..."
"Why can't i paste a path and just go to it like I can in Windows or KDE?"
on my Mac, the finder systematically fails to display the most recent downloaded files, or files synchronized through Nextcloud, under "recent files". For some reason, it always displays some random selection of recently used files. It's completely useless. In fact, I look for recent files using "find" in the terminal. At least this work.
On my Linux laptop, Nautilus (Gnome) displays exactly the last files in the right order, and it's incredibly useful.
There are countless annoyances like this on MacOS; window focus and placement always surprises and annoys me, even if Rectangle helps somewhat. I find it so much less usable and useful than Gnome.
>or files synchronized through Nextcloud, under "recent files"
Are those created/updated with the current date when they sync, or with the date they have on the host system?
How is \\server\share any harder than finder?
You have to type it.
Finder shows them in the sidebar and you just click on it.
Apple OS (both classic and NeXTStep) are not keyboard driven but mouse driven.
Same for Explorer, really. The SMB hosts that announce themselves show up in the sidebar.
>I loathe Windows Explorer, and relatively simply stuff like presenting a tree view is apparently some weird magic trick that only Apple has figured out how to do.
Is this a joke? This has to be a joke. Finder is so lame compared to Explorer that I'm reading it as a joke.
>Browsing SMB shares (or any other networked storage) is one shortcut away (cmd+k), and I don't need to visit control panel to enable weird subsystems that expose services on my machine to connect to other machines.
Uh... MacOS is nowhere near easier with SMB shares than Windows. You are dead wrong about all of this. SMB works out-of-the-box with Windows, you open Explorer and the "Network" is there, which will show available network shares. You could make it an icon on the desktop if you wanted to and then just click to open (not how I would do it, but you could). Or you can type \\servername in the Explorer address bar and get a list of all its shares, and there are probably many other ways for different use cases too.
MacOS has been difficult with SMB shares for us, especially with Finder - when we mount an SMB share in Finder they just stop responding eventually for no reason, there's no error - they just can't be reached anymore, requiring us to re-mount the share. But on Windows they always just work, no exception, no problem, 100% of the time - and no, that is not an exaggeration. There's very few things in tech that I would say works 100% of the time for me, but SMB on Windows is one of them.
Of course, it's all about what you're used to. But after 6 years on Windows as my daily driver I still prefer Finder.
It's tree/table view is superior to the Details view in Explorer. Explorer regularly hangs when opening folders with more than a couple videos in it. QuickLook (spacebar to preview an item) is so useful.
While I agree with your overall 4-letter assessment, Windows Explorer in any so-called "heyday" was always deserving of your same 4-letter assessment in comparison to Apple Finder.
Until the day when I can right-click on a folder and create a folder inside that folder, I'll consider the Finder inferior to the Windows 98 explorer. Come on, that's an absolute basic feature!
The right-click context menu of a folder has 15 items! Most of them I've never used! Colors, tags, quick actions, compress, make alias? But no "New Folder"?
But I moved to the mac, in 2005, because of the unix terminal. I had been using Cygwin for years, but an OS that had it included, natively? On good hardware? Yes, please.
I'm never moving back to Windows (ads in the OS??). To switch to linux it would take great hardware with 100% support. Not holding my breath, but it might happen one day.
> Tbf, the Finder is still crap (if only it would be nearly as good as Windows Explorer was in its heyday I would probably use it more)
Try Alfred :)
Or Marta. Finder is an absolute piece of sh*t.
Windows Explorer was never good. The only file manager app type (on Windows/Linux, never used a Mac) that makes sense to me is one of the "Commander" ones. Like Total Commander, but rather than a specific app the point here is the two-pane style that greatly expands what is easily possible to do with a few clicks.
What's crap about Finder?
For me, the keyboard (in)accessibility is the biggest issue. On Windows I got used to navigating Explorer completely with the keyboard — this was a LONG time ago, I have no idea of the current state. On macOS, it's just impossible (or, at the very least (but I doubt), impractical).
Other issues:
- the fact that you cannot cut and paste files
- dragging files from one folder to another can be unreliable/error-prone, particularly in tree view
> - the fact that you cannot cut and paste files
Back in time I also complained about this, but do you know that if you copy (CMD+C) then do CMD+ALT+V, then copy&paste becomes cut&paste ?
Also cmd-up arrow and cmd-down arrow to go up and down folders.
You can also click on the title to get a list view of the current folder and its parents.
Thanks for the tip. It's not as convenient as CMD+X, CMD+V, but I might see if I can commit it to memory.
I have a hard time remembering this. But there’s also right-click, then Option to show secondary options (Copy becomes Move)
I lost track of how many times ive lost data to cut.
I cannot right-click and create a new file.
The "Recents" doesn't contain files I've recently interacted with, and I'm still not sure what qualifies a file to be listed in Recents.
Every time I need to browse to a specific path I have to google it, because there is no path input anywhere.
(It's Shift+Cmd+G of course)
They also screwed up cmd-shift-g a few versions ago where if you type, say, /Users/me/Documents, it puts you in /Users/me. Now you have to put in /Users/me/Documents/ if you actually want that folder. Then of course the autocomplete wasn’t changed as well, so if you start typing and then cursor down to the completion and hit enter, it doesn’t fill in the slash, so it goes to the parent folder. You have to cursor down, press tab, so it fills in the trailing slash, then hit enter.
It’s theoretically a small annoyance, but it gets me a few times a week since I had muscle memory for the old, correct way. I’ve filed several radars over the years and never heard back. It’s one of those things that makes me want to get a job at Apple, fix the bug, and quit.
Incidentally, this was one of the nice little things that made me switch to the Mac many years ago. There wasn’t any way to my knowledge that you could switch to a path in windows by typing it out from inside explorer.
If you use the terminal at all just cd to your directory of choose and then do open .
It's in the menu bar under "Go…" or something similar.
(I'm not on a desktop right now, so I can't be precise.)
It's slow and doesn't... find stuff.
Most of the time when someone on HN complains about Finder, it's not a Finder problem. It's that the user doesn't know how to do what they want, and other people respond with the answer.
Finder has its problems. But the overarching problem is that Apple has done a poor job of discoverability and letting people know how to do things.
It's counterintuitive, because in most of Apple's macOS programs there are multiple ways to do the same thing.
For example, there are close to a dozen ways to eject/unmount a disk/volume, but I still run into people who say they can't figure out how to do it.
I think the problem is that Finder searches too much stuff by default. The same problem is true of modern windows search, iOS search, and Android.
First thing I do on all of them is have it only search local stuff. If I want to do a damn web search I'll open my browser of choice and use Kagi. On iOS I restrict it even further to only show local apps and settings. Massively improves the speed, latency, etc etc.
You're describing Spotlight. Finder is the file manager.
> If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t.
There is another aspect to this though. As a user of an ecosystem, you're committed in many ways. As Apple or Microsoft or Google releases a new version of their operating system you're going to run that on hardware you already own. You're going to run software that you already own on that the OS. And you're doing to use skills and knowledge of that software to accomplish something useful.
In some ways it doesn't matter if the product is good or bad -- you're pretty committed. You're going to be willing to suffer some pain because the alternative is too difficult and too expensive. The only thing you really can do is complain.
To be honest I sometimes feel that my aversion to getting looked into an ecosystem is actually a detriment in some ways. I have a horrible mishmash of apps and programs and nothing integrates really well long term (story of life on a Linux desktop, really). Maybe life would really be better if I just hand over control and become a true believer!
I used to go through phases where I would try this. I gave Windows + WSL a shot. I gave embracing the Apple ecosystem a shot. I gave GNOME a shot. I gave KDE a shot. I was even crazy enough to give ChromeOS as my daily driver a shot. And so on and so forth.
I found every single time that it just wasn't worth it. There was always some critical failure that was either completely underlooked or a 20 year old bug/shortcoming that had every patch to fix it rejected. I genuinely don't understand how people tolerate the dogshit being forcefed to you on all of these controlled platforms. People say that everything is getting worse, and it's true, but it's also true that you're actively choosing to use the things that are getting worse.
I've eventually settled on NixOS and XFCE so I can tweak things to my particular needs while also benefiting from an army of unpaid labor continually improving nixpkgs and other flakes. This setup isn't perfect, but I've optimized for maximal comfort & utility while exerting minimal effort & time. Things really only break when they're self-updating under the hood, which thankfully is rather rare in nixpkgs.
I love how contradictory this comment is. "There was always some critical failure... this setup isn't perfect... things really only break when..."
Everybody has different needs and something you don't care about on Windows or Mac or Gnome might be critically important for someone else.
There's nothing contradictory here. Not once do I say that I've found the best solution. I merely reached a point where more effort & time spent on this problem will only give me a worse solution. And of course this is merely for myself and everybody has different needs. I never claimed otherwise. The crux of the issue is that we all disagree on what's good and bad, what's necessary and pointless, and too many people are just willingly accepting what's being given to them even if it's worse by their own metrics.
I used to use i3. Even now I've mostly moved to Cinnamon via KDE (which I abandoned as Plasma made my laptop fans spin too much, maybe user error? I never solved it) I haven't "settled" on anywhere and never really felt either was good enough to commit to. Obviously you don't have to commit, but you end up kind of unmoored. Especially as a lot of GNOME apps seem somewhat lacking so I often end up using, say, Okular or XReader rather than Evince, or CuteCom rather than whatever the GNOME serial terminal is. And I also gave up on vim as an editor so I don't really even have a "home" editor other than VS Code which is just kind of default. Plus a bunch of Windows only industrial and East Asian software the only works via a VM which is pretty clunky.
I used to use Macs at work and while I never really loved the experience (and certainly not that of fiddling with kernel drivers) and write keenly felt the metaphorical guards watching from the towers, it really did feel like a thought-through experience for a normal computer user.
I've tried this on various platforms (Microsoft, Linux, Apple)... the only one that does it the least worst is Apple. And you get a bunch of other stuff with it, too. Linux is nigh impossible, and the feeling I get with Microsoft is I'm being exploited.
I’m a long time Apple user. But I never do anything that locks me into Apple in a way that makes me dependent on Apple. I could move to Linux tomorrow and everything I depend on would be fine. There’s no Apple service I actually need.
I think Google and Android is worse in this way. The backup Android I had years ago forced me to login with my Gmail or I couldn’t use it. My old iPhone happily runs without being logged in. I just lose the cloud features. Whatever.
That may be true for you but it's not true for many people, like me.
I have twenty years of iPhone data, eg messages, apps, etc. I can't easily move to some other phone.
A desktop, maybe, but I'd still have to repurchase or find alternates to a bunch of software. It is far, far better if the existing system _stays useful_.
>It is far, far better if the existing system _stays useful_
I doubt anyone is arguing the opposite. The point of the parent is that the system staying useful and not turning hostile on your usecase is not under your control or something you can personally prevent, and until that magically changes it's best to structure your use case to be least affected by things not in your control.
"twenty years"? Wasn't the iPhone released in 2007?
I think rounding over 18 years up to 20 is reasonable.
I've used my past several Android phones without signing into a Google account or using gapps. I pick something with LineageOS support (usually OnePlus stuff) and get it from eBay, update to latest stock firmware (gets newer baseband and such) then flash LineageOS over it and get my apps from F-Droid.
These, “just change the firmware” comments are silly. I should get basic phone functionality from my phone out of the box with exactly ZERO effort.
I can use an iPhone without an Apple account. I cannot use an Android phone without a Google account unless they changed that in the last few years.
Both Android and iphones require an account to download apps I believe. Am I mistaken here? Other than that they can be used in the same way without accounts. In fact, with Android an email account suffices and giving your phone number is "opt-in". Apple forces you to give your phone number to create an account last time I checked. Also no F-droid on iphones? But the iphone is the better "phone" experience because there is less bloat and UI nagging.
Android does not require an account to download apps, as grandparent pointed out.
I haven't "signed in" to Android phone in 10 years.
You absolutely can use Android without a Google account. I have a device like that currently. You won't get the play store and some other features, but I believe that is also true of Apple (at least was of it isn't any more)
The other aspect with setting up third party firmware as a general "don't like the stock OS? then do this" option for many is besides the big headline limitations like safetynet/attestation, it also either involves a benevolent third party setting up and maintaining builds for your device (hope you bought a popular model) and any changes match what you want, or individuals doing so themselves
You can, but you don't get access to the app store.
What are you going to do with all your Mac hardware?
Throw it in the bin?
Doesn’t your hardware lock you in?
What? I can and have accessed everything I need on Linux. If you make sure none of your data is locked in, the hardware is just a computer. Absolute worst case, get a new computer.
No. You can always export your files and your passwords etc.
... That's theft protection, and iphones have similar mechanisms. You do not need to sign in, even to a pixel, to use it. Granted you won't get the app store, but you don't get that on iphone either.
This isn't true when literally everywhere else outside of Apple, and only a problem if you are deep in their ecosystem. Why? Open standards, nothing proprietary and closed and fuck you all.
I have phone that's from Samsung, earplugs from Sennheiser, thinking about buying watch from Garmin (Fenix 8 pro), have chargers and powerbanks from Anker, laptop from Dell.
Bluetooth, USBC and other standards. Its beyond good enough for me, and I can switch each component for a better one from another company if I want (apart from those Sennheisers, no company makes better sounding earplugs and they integrate flawlessly for my needs).
Forerunner 955 is a lot cheaper (can still be bought new from Garmin) and does most of what the Fenix does !
And it's lighter
You don't have to update the OS. And no, you won't have any security issues as a personal computer user.
I had been fairly anti apple my entire life. Believing they were massively over priced, and lacked support for many of the things I did personally.
In my younger years I was pretty big on graphic design, still big on video editing. People used to always say "Mac is better for design". I would ask, where did you get this from? Adobe runs on both platforms and updates often come out for Windows before they are ported to Apple (Adobe updates). And my Windows machines had powerful graphics cards, unlike macs.
However. A couple years ago I built myself an insanely expensive computer build with the best parts I've ever put into a machine. It died 2 years later.
I decided I just couldn't go through that anymore. I'm done building computers. I'm done with the little problems they always get. I'm done fixing my machine more than using it.
Since the $500 Mac mini, Apple has started looking interesting. Finally I bought the Mac Studio M3 Ultra.
So far so good. I wish I could play more games, but I could be looking into things like Crossover. There are a few old bespoke programs for old versions of Windows I also wish I could run once in a while but nothing too major.
And best of all, Apple Care +. I'm not dealing with a broken machine again. I'll be buying warranties for it until I'm done with it. Bought 2 years for I think about $200, and my understanding is I should be able to renew that service/warranty at the end of the two years. After that, we'll see.
I was in a similar boat with desktop Linux and Android. What got me to switch:
1. Build quality of Apple laptops was higher than anything else available at the time. Having a metal laptop meant you got a MacBook or a Toughbook. I got tired of plastic breaking, hinges loosening, etc. Their introduction of retina screens really sealed the deal.
2. The iPhone was first to solve seamless cloud backups.
3. AppleCare. I was traveling and had my phone on a restaurant table when a waiter dropped a salt shaker on it. He was horrified that he shattered my screen. I got it replaced when I got back to the states for like $10. Android phones at the time did not have this option.
4. Apple sold devices directly to you. Most other phones you had to buy through the wireless carrier with annoying fee structures and deceptive pricing.
5. I could use a decent photo editor ok macOS vs GIMP in Linux. I love what GIMP is trying to be but it is a mess UI-wise. Same with Lightroom vs Darktable.
6. iPhone more or less solved offloading files to the cloud. It is still bad and broken but it was at the time I switched workable vs what Android had.
7. Apple devices mostly got out of my way whereas with Android I had to tinker. I would still use desktop Linux if macOS wasn’t needed for my work, but at this point the difference is minimal.
8. They are not an advertising company. Google phones feel like devices designed to spy on you. “Personal data please!” Apple is not ideal here but at least their primary point isn’t to sell you car insurance.
This isn’t to say that Apple stuff doesn’t have warts. They cram way too much stuff in their systems. Their hardware is expensive. They often are behind the curve on performance. Their cloud offloading just does not work right for iMessage. Their protocols are closed and that is annoying. But at this point their stuff works well enough for me that I don’t see a reason to switch.
There are branded Windows PCs too. Go get a Dell and you're done with support. Let's not pretend that Apple is the only company out there that can provide quality hardware that will work for ages.
Dell for support is an option. I may go back to Windows but if I do, my plan is to go with Puget Systems. That way I can still get the beast of a machine I really do need, and it's someone else's problem
> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman.
Couldn't agree more. But I'd add that some (smaller?) businesses, where you still can't really establish a connection, can be worth your loyalty if they have a mission that resonates with you, and they are actually true to that mission. Of course, be prepared for the day when they get too successful and start acting in ways against the principles they were founded upon.
But yeah... I think the best place to use our energy is by evangelizing people first and foremost, not businesses. Send people to your favorite restaurant because the owner is always there, chats with customers, and seems to love what they do. Recommend the person who regularly cuts your hair and cares enough to remember you and ask about your life. Refer that great handyman to others, who you trust to be a straight-shooter, pride themselves on the quality of their work, and not gouge you on cost.
The biggest reason for me using Android is simply because of how much competition there is in the space. If I use Apple products and don't like something they do then I'm stuck on an older version at best and need to migrate everything from their walled garden (at great cost) at worst.
With Android, I can use Samsung one generation, switch to Pixel the next, and give Motorola/some other smaller company a chance later. I can choose a phone that has the exact features I want - better battery life? great camera? best performance? great display? cheap price? smaller display? larger display? There's a phone for each of those.
What would be the “great cost” of moving from an iPhone to an Android phone? I’m struggling to think of what would cost money at all, aside from the phone itself.
There's no straightforward way to migrate between an iPhone and Android so you'd spend a lot of time. Also I'm not sure if it's even possible to fully move over - for example would you be able to export your iMessages? Also, if you're fully bought into the ecosystem with Airpods and a Watch, you'd be better off replacing those (at least the watch which turns into a paperweight without an iPhone).
I've migrated back and forth. Most things are backup to cloud now. Only thing missing was Signal messages last time and I think they now fixed that. Do people still use plain SMS now?
iMessage is extraordinarily popular in the US. Its userbase dwarfs Signal by over an order of magnitude
Ah fair enough. Not as many use it here in Australia
Is there data behind that or is it just anecdata?
A year ago someone on HN said “I can confirm that iMessage is extremely common in Australia. WhatsApp is very uncommon, outside of people with European (and maybe South American?) friends or family to keep in touch with.”
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39365562
My guess is you’re both expressing truths of your individual social circles but making unjustified extrapolations to an entire nation.
iMessage is very popular in the US but 90% of users just think they are "texting". There's no other way to send an SMS for them.
That's true . The only stats I could find are unreliable SMS marketing company ones.
I can also confirmed that iMessage is basically unused in France. (And that was a core argument in the EU of Apple against the DMA for iMessage, so even Apple admits its low usage in the EU)
The issue with iMessage outside the US is the branding, it's branded as an SMS app and SMS being dead (outside of ads and delivery drivers) doesn't help for adoption.
iMessage is popular in the US because everyone has an iPhone because everyone has iMessage and everyone connects it to social status - network effects. The same reason (besides the social status) everyone uses WhatsApp in Europe.
This has more to do with the way the iPhone was launched, and the American desire to own the most expensive product, than any technical merits.
They've also finally added RCS support so while you still get "green bubbles" you mostly avoid SMS
How about photos? Moving from android's Google photo integration to apples icloud photos integration seems.. complicated
My solution was to use both - they behave a bit differently and I figure it can't hurt to get two sets of backups (I do also get iCloud for free though).
Google photos is definitely easier to export and backup to my windows PC although Apple does provide a half decent iCloud client now for windows. It's a bit janky and took awhile for me to get a proper pipeline (you can accidently delete your cloud copy by doing the wrong thing).
One thing I really miss about Android was the ability to just plug in via USB-C to any computer and backup all the photos (and then remove them from the local phone). Google Photos would retain its full quality copy this way and I would free up phone space and have a full quality copy on my local machine (plus local external drive). Try this on an iPhone and it's slow as hell (even though it has USB-C), often fails partway through a large copy, and when you delete the photos locally I believe iCloud deletes their copy as well (even if you have plenty of cloud storage). I understand it's a "sync" tool technically but there's really no reason for it to be restricted in this way.
I don't know how to take pictures out of Google photo, but it's very easy to move outside photos into Apple Photos. I do this quite often since I'm a Sunday photographer and wrangle my images in Lightroom Classic on a Windows box.
If you have an iCloud subscription, you can do this directly with a browser, just click upload and wait for it to happen. There's also a Windows client for iCloud, but I've never tried it.
Use third party, cross platform software like ente and you have no problem moving to or from any platform. Use platform dependent services and you get locked in. It is very simple, actually.
I’m on iOS and backup my photos to both iCloud and google photos
I've always been on Google only so that helps a bit. It works to backup on iPhone as well
Personally I don't care if old messages migrate from one phone to the other (can always boot up the old phone if necessary). I sync all my contacts to my Google account which can easily be added on Android or iPhone. So far works great !
That’s only if you are deep into one ecosystem or the other, or you don’t want to start with a clean state. Taking the time to move some basic apps and install the rest in time as you need them does not take much.
> need to migrate everything from their walled garden (at great cost)
It's not just about migrating the phone, if you own an Apple Watch, AirPods, one of their laptops, their online services, etc. all that stuff works best within the Apple ecosystem. If you move they don't work as well (if at all) and you may need to replace them. If you are deeply bought in to Apple products, it really isn't that easy to move.
Time and existing apps I already paid for. Even upgrading to a new Android phone costs me a few hours of setup. Moving to iPhone (or the other way) would be seriously painful.
The lost cost of the apps and purchases you've invested in that you will likely now need to re-purchase?
Don’t forget the waves of rage when Apple removed the CD-ROM drive from laptops.
Or when USB Type A ports disappeared in favor of USB-C ports.
Or when the iPhone dropped the headphone jack. People still seethe about this decision even though Apple sells an excellent DAC for $9.99 that rates extremely well when tested by the audiophile obsessives and is easy to leave permanently attached to your headphones.
There are two types of long-term Apple users: Those who can go with the flow and shrug off the changes, and those who are deeply pained whenever anything changes. The latter group mostly comes around after a couple years and the issues are forgotten.
> People still seethe about this decision even though Apple sells an excellent DAC for $9.99
Gee, I wonder why people are still mad that a change obviously intended to milk the users due money means they have to pay more money. Must be just because they hate change.
Maybe that's why. Personally I think it was multi faceted. More hardware sales, thinner and more waterproof device (allegedly, I don't know), and getting rid of a pesky universal and simple standard for something they can make work way better with their walled garden offerings than this parties can. This gives them way more control. Wins all around
If you think anyone has "forgotten" the issues you're deeply mistaken.
Apple essentially has a monopoly on iOS so just because people have adapted to their decisions doesn't make their decisions correct, or at the very least, painless.
If a headphone jack existed people would still be using it.
The USB-C example is particularly ironic given that it was Apple that was fighting switching over to USB-C on the iPhone until forced to do so by the EU. For years you could carry an Android and Macbook with a single charger, but needed 2 chargers for a Macbook and an iPhone. When Apple dropped USB-A completely it was painful for years, and people still have trouble with it. Most competitors still include at least 1 USB-A port.
Which wasn't the case for the CDRom or the floppy drive examples, showing that those decisions were correct in a way the USB-A removal one wasnt.
Further, even when Apple dropped the CD-Rom, it was a phased removal starting with teh Macbook Air, which made complete sense. People who bought the MacBook Pro still had CD Roms (except for 1 of the cheapest models). That was the correct way to approach this. Remove it from a device where it made sense to remove it, while keeping it for the Pros who needed it, but also signaling that it was going away giving people time to transition their workflows.
The USB-A port was signaled for 1 year at best (and even then it really wasn't signaled...it was simply removed from the cheapest model, which could have been seen as cost cutting more than anything else), and then a year later all the PRO laptops lost their USB-A ports completely. This was the opposite of the kind of transition they did earlier (such as keeping Firewire on the Pro laptops for years after they were removed from their no Pro versions).
> whenever anything changes
Not any changes, but those that force me to change from solutions that worker perfectly well (like 3.5 jack, or USB-A, or RJ45, or HDMI) to shitty tech that rarely work well, like dongles, bluetooth audio, or usb-hdmi converters (gosh I hate them, they're all crap).
Just before you mention them, CDs and floppy disks were never good tech, nobody misses them.
Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection
To be fair, I find despite the various foibles, Apple has always looked out for me when it comes to accessibility -- where none of the competitors bother. Maybe I shouldn't act out of loyalty, but they will keep getting my business as they keep it up (despite Liquid Arse stuffing up accessibility quite a bit).
The worst Apple era for me was the butterfly keyboard / touchbar era of Macs. They went too far in the pursuit of thin and light - removing ports, going with a keyboard design that felt bad to type on and was prone malfunction, and the touchbar, which I actually thought sounded cool at first, ended up being much less useful than a row of function keys.
I didn't feel betrayed by Apple, I just decided not to buy a new MacBook until they fixed their keyboard issues. I switched to Linux for a couple of years, and switched back once they released the M1 MacBook Pro. I'm perfectly happy with my Macs (I have 3) now.
I actually really like the current era of Apple where their motto seems to be give people what they want. MacBook Pros with HDMI ports and SD card readers. iPads finally getting viable multi-tasking support and a real mouse cursor (although iPadOS still sucks IMO). The iPhone 17 Pro is slightly thicker than the 16 Pro to allow for a bigger battery. Their storage and memory upgrade prices are still ridiculous, but at least Macs come with a usable 16 GB memory minimum now, and iPhones start with an honestly better-than-I-expected 256 GB storage.
It's not all perfect - especially on the software side. The settings menu on iOS is kind of a cluster. Apple Music has a terrible UX, as does the recent update to Photos. And I haven't tried Tahoe and Liquid Glass yet - but I'm definitely a little concerned.
> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection
I feel like modernity has brought about an identity for people as consumers. Much like a pro sports team who you have no relationship with beyond proximity, brands have slowly gained the same kind of consumptive identity associations. I see it by for the most in golf, where people literally wear caps repping their favorite club and ball manufacturers, rather than athletes.
For me, I’m prefer to associate with brands that have some kind of editorial voice that align with my own. Like media outlets, university, or individuals.
> Any more emotional investment than that is going to cause pointless unhappiness.
Agreed 100%. If you're writing 2,000+ word blog posts out of anger and exasperation, you should take it as a moment of self reflection that just maybe you're too invested in a corporation.
I mean if we were talking about Cheetos or Coca, I’d agree with you, but we live in a Duopoly on both Mobile, Desktop and the web. If you’re an adult, you’ve been living in their ecosystem for years. It’s kind if hard to not be emotionally invested in something you use all day for your work and/or personal life.
> It’s kind if hard to not be emotionally invested in something you use all day for your work and/or personal life.
I think the vast majority of people manage not to care at all, so that emotional investment isn't as essential as you may believe.
>> The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG.
Oh, the atrocities of "simplification" made during Ive's later years of leadership are so numerous that they beggar belief. Many aspects of iOS and macOS no longer conform to even the basic principles of UI affordances.
> It does not matter how long you’ve bought from a big company, they owe you nothing
The same can be said of employers. The company does not care about you no matter how many years you’ve been there. If you’re not c-suite, you're just a cog.
At my employer even c-suite get fired all the time. If anything it's safer being rank and file
They probably walk away with ten million dollars each time.
And the company makes more than that back by getting rid of them.
> The Dock was useless
> The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did
Aren't these basically true, even now? If I could easily, completely remove the Dock and Finder, I would.
Launching apps via search (e.g., Spotlight) is quicker and easier than hunting for icons visually (especially given the amount of clutter on the Dock by default), and so is switching apps via search (e.g., Contexts, Witch, etc.).
Finder is the least capable file manager I've ever used since the Windows 3 days. If I could replace it wholesale with CyberDuck or something, I would.
Even more true now than it was then, I think.
I mean, the dock was actually quite nice in the NeXTSTEP days but OSX munged it together with the Shelf and aspects of the Win95 taskbar (actually, I think this might have started with the final OpenStep release, but I never got to use that).
These days when using a Mac, I tend to make it as small as possible and set it to auto-hide. I never actually use it for anything, but I don't think there's any way to turn it off altogether - so now it's just an annoyance, popping up with a distracting animation every time the pointer touches the bottom few pixels of the screen.
I never got along with the Miller columns in FileViewer / OSX Finder, but my impression is that it has also continued to get worse over time with features coming (and, just as often, going!) every few years without much in the way to help you discover them. TBH, I use the cli for file management by preference.
I think I agree only partially, ofc people tend to over-react to change, however I do think as apple has grown they have become more careful in the ways that matter. I like that they are still pushing things with liquid glass and trying and failing, thats not the issue. But where is my trifold? Where is the folding iPhone? Or some sort of Dex mode? I Think they've stopped pushing the edge of whats possible and I think thats only natural, since they are worth so much money a single product managers messup could cost them millions if not billions, when thats the case its only natural to stop experimenting and play it safe, every incentive will push you towards that from D&O insurance, to activit shareholders even the increased media scrutiney.
I agree. Both companies and people change. Companies and their customers will grow together and apart. Markets change, etc. And people should accept that is fine. While there is a group that thought OS X was a disaster, there is a group of people that say OS X Snow Leopard was peak OS development. And here in 10 years, there will be a group of people saying MacOS Tahoe was peak OS development. Those groups may have an intersection people, or not.
> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Why complain about something you don't need to use if you don't want to?
What's great about the commandline? Scriptability, automation, configurability, composability, the easy re-running of complex commands with a small tweak, access Unix commandline tools that have been fined tuned over decades.
And to compare the terminal to DOS is not to understand the gulf in quality between them.
> Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Developers & scientists. They are people too :-)
> HIG
Thing is, the Human Interface Guidelines were a sort of contract with the user, and the same goes for the ethos or culture or principles a big company has, if any. So in a sense they do have a connection with customers, via "community", if they choose to do so (and choose to be sincere about it instead of faking). I mean a business can be bigger than a local handyman and still go down the friendly path, for years potentially, until it decides that the friendly strategy was wasteful and streamlines it away.
Arguably, they were wrong on all these points. Unix roots (text terminal) gave the one of the strongest boosts to Macbook sales in terms of newly minted developers. Deal with Microsoft brought not only much needed liquidity, but also Office, which was "the killer app(r)" for that era. Let me add one more - people complained about PowerPC->Intel switch, and then same people complained about Intel->Arm switch (both brave and visionary decisions which has been years in the making. The naysayers may complain about everything and nothing but Apple continues to prevail - I am saying that as no Apple fanboy - viva la Amiga!
> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman
Thank you for saying this
I believe the term is "parasocial relationship".
I found this article quite weird. It would be one thing if it were (yet another) "Company X has lost its way..." kind of article. But this post seemed more along the lines of "Apple built these things that I don't care about."
Umm, so??? Obviously some people do, and this article struck me as someone complaining that Apple isn't building exactly what he wants. Furthermore, his analysis seems way off base to me: "Relying on legacy and unquestioning fanpeople, for whom everything Apple does is good and awesome and there’s nothing wrong with it, can only go so far." Apple stopped relying on "legacy and unquestioning fan people" a long time ago, ever since they basically became "the iPhone company" to a majority of their userbase.
No, it's not a parasocial relationship. Those are one-sided and usually a passive consumer of media believing they have a real relationship with those who appear within said media.
If you are a customer you most assuredly have an actual relationship with the company. Your options when dissatisfied with that relationship is to end it, send your complaints to the company, or decide the dissatisfaction is overcome by the value you receive.
It's not just about emotion or loyalty. It's about built-up knowledge and the difficulty of switching.
When you're a long time user, you know how to do everything with what you're using - whether that's an operating system, a programming language, or something else.
The latest product isn't good and your suggestion is "don't buy it." OK, what do I do instead? Buy a Windows or Linux laptop where I have to re-learn a decade's worth of knowing-how-everything-works? Build up my natural flow in a new OS? Find whatever are the Windows alternatives for all the little things that I do on my Mac?
I'm not saying that companies owe things to their customers, but I think it's really simplistic to say that it's just an emotional investment and misplaced loyalty. People have a tool and then a company makes that tool worse. There are other tools, but it takes time to learn them, figure out their differences and how to get everything done with them, etc. Pretending that there's zero cost to switching is disingenuous.
For example: if you're a software engineer and someone made your main programming language bad, there's a high cost to switching to a new language. Even if you're excellent at learning new languages, you don't know which libraries are good, you don't know what various functions are named, you don't know what warts are in the build system (and how to avoid them), etc.
It's not just some emotional response or misplaced loyalty. It's that you've built up skills over many years that are tied to that thing.
Companies owe their livelihoods to their customers. If they do stupid shit and annoy those customers they lose money and potentially kill the business.
There is a long list of companies which have done themselves serious financial harm, or even slit their own throats by failing to understand how Customer World works.
No one is too big to fail. Especially in computing. There's also a long list of companies which looked like permanent fixtures for a while and were dead a few years later.
As for Apple - I have a busy lock screen, and I can no longer read the time because the big numbers are too thin and the refraction effect makes them impossible to read.
Rookie, stupid error. Just embarrassing.
Fwiw, if you go into settings -> Wallpaper on iOS, you can change the font and the font size of the time on the lockscreen, if that's your beef.
Agree, completely.
Also aligns in spirit with "company is not your family" idea.
The original post reads like an aggregation of complaints. I have some too! In particular stating that the Apple Watch is too complicated to use resonates. I have/use regularly but I am never pleased w/the interface.
AirPods on the other hand - a gem. They just work. Sure, they sometimes awkwardly disconnect/connect to other devices (when I have more than 1 vying for attention) but they're rock solid for me thus far.
I’ve also come to this realization as a longtime Mac user. Granted, I’m not old enough to have used the classic Mac OS as a professional, though I did use it in my childhood. However, I was in high school and college during the Jobs era of Mac OS X, and that’s when I started using Macs as my daily drivers from 2006 until 2022 when I retired my 2013 Mac Pro and 2013 MacBook Air and switched back to PCs running Windows.
Before Apple’s success with the iPhone, Apple was essentially the Macintosh company. Its fortunes were tied to the Mac, and Apple seemed to be attuned to the needs of Mac users. In return, there was quite a strong Mac fandom. The Mac was more than just a tool or just a platform. The Mac was a philosophy, and what attracted people to the Mac was the philosophy of the Mac and its ecosystem.
Ever since the iPhone became a major hit, and especially since the passing of Jobs, it became apparent to me that my best interests as a computer user and Apple’s interests as a company no longer align. Apple no longer needed to cater to “the Mac faithful” to survive. In fact, Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world thanks to the iPhone. It also seems that macOS is losing its distinctiveness.
The unfortunate thing, and I think this is where some Mac users get emotional and disappointed, is that there’s nothing else out there in the personal computing landscape that is like the glory days of the Mac. Windows is an inconsistent mess filled with annoyances, and the bazaar of the Linux ecosystem is nothing like the polished cathedral of the Mac. Everything is a step down from older Macs, even modern Macs.
However, while thankfully we can enjoy retrocomputing for hobbyist use, many of us still need to use up-to-date platforms to browse the Web and to get our work done, and so clinging on to, say, Snow Leopard is not an option outside of hobbyist activities. Hence, why I use Windows. It’s not Snow Leopard but it gets the job done for now.
The beauty about software, though, is that we don’t have to resign ourselves to accepting whatever Apple, Microsoft, and Google releases. Many of us reading this forum have the ability to write our own software. FOSS projects such as Linux have shown that it’s possible for user communities to write their own software that fit their needs without needing to be concerned about business matters such as market dominance.
So, yes, this is a hard lesson for many longtime Mac users about being loyal to a company; companies change. But this lesson also creates opportunities. I think if enough disaffected longtime Mac users got together and pooled their resources together, we could create a FOSS alternative that is community-driven, one where the evolution of Mac-like personal computing is driven by the community, not by Apple or any other corporation.
> I’ve also come to this realization as a longtime Mac user. Granted, I’m not old enough to have used the classic Mac OS as a professional, though I did use it in my childhood. However, I was in high school and college during the Jobs era of Mac OS X, and that’s when I started using Macs as my daily drivers from 2006 until 2022 when I retired my 2013 Mac Pro and 2013 MacBook Air and switched back to PCs running Windows.
Me too. I liked opinionated software when my opinions aligned with Apple's. But I found i hated it when they didn't. Around mavericks or Sierra or so I started getting more and more annoyed with all the things being changed for the worse (in my opinion). Then during the pandemic I had plenty of free time to dig deep into my computing future and I moved to KDE. Heavily customised just the way I love it. It's a breath of fresh air not having someone else make choices on how I should use my computer. Haven't looked back since.
I had already left iOS because it's so locked down and the hardware too expensive for the specs. That already broke a ton of the "just works" of course.
Prior to the iPhone (but within the years Jobs was in charge), Apple was a company whose target demographic was the professional/semi-professional creative market. Once iPod and iPhone demonstrated a huge sales potential the company abandoned the creatives market and became a consumer-oriented company that provided means of media consumption.
The day XCode runs on the iPadOS, the classical Mac is gone.
They already got rid of servers and the workstation market, apparently losing those customers to Windows/Linux wasn't seen as something to worry about.
Between Swift playground and bitrig, that's not as far off as it once was!
XCode does a little more than those, but yeah the seeds are there.
> bazaar of the Linux ecosystem is nothing like the polished cathedral of the Mac
Just stick with the KDE no matter what distro, and you will have basically no major day to day usability problems on Linux.
Why do you favor Windows over Linux then?
There are proprietary software packages that I rely on that are unavailable for Linux, though I regularly use WSL for development.
> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Had they never used MPW?
I wish it was possible. I bought an iPhone 13 mini that was running well.
now if I want to stay secured I got to regularly update the phone and eventually get iOS 26, which will make the phone horrendous.
What choice do I have ?
FWIW, I use macOS everyday since more than 15 years (I also have a PC running various distros) and it’s true that the dock is absolutely dogshit. It’s unclear what will happen wen you click on anything, it’s useless if you have multiple windows of the same application, it’s even more of a mess if you have multiple windows but some are minimized.
And of course in 2025, all applications icons are some variant of the same red green blue yellow colors so nothing stands out of the dock because it doesn’t show anything else than the icon.
Yup, I hate the dock :)
Ok but who do I buy from? I agree Apple isn’t good but who is better?
Literally anyone else?
Who sells a better laptop than an M4 MacBook Pro?
The crowd you’re talking at say things like “I love Apple” unironically as an expression of self-discovery and identity.
"If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t."
Well, they have done a good job with lock in. If you've bought a bunch on Apple Music, you need an apple device laying around to get it. Maybe some people just keep there old phone around just for this. But it can be a hard transition.
Really, 'lock in', is the key to a lot of technology these days, so be aware.
but "a half-baked shitshow" that got better with each version.
Currently OSX/iOS gets worse with each version.
maybe, but I think not as bad as MacOS "classic" 8.1 and 9 that came before it!
> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Me. I have to use a Mac at work, and I use the text terminal more than anything else on the computer. It doesn't help that Mac's don't have a good UI, everything is hidden behind extra key-presses, and switching between windows is a PAIN.
On a mac every window for an app is considered the same, so there's no concept of switching between windows (except with special hidden key presses).
When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice.
The menubar of a non-active window doesn't exist, so you need an extra click, first to activate the window, then to go find its menubar and do an action.
It's just a bad UI.
> When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice.
This is sort of true but the full truth is less straight forward.
On unfocused apps you can still send through scrolling and (mostly) perform single clicks with command + click... you can also without focus send single clicks to certain controls the developer has ad hoc allowed 'click through' on...
For mouse oriented users I'd recommend trying a focus follows mouse experience like AutoRaise [1]. But I mean, it's not like this solution existing absolves Apple of the broader criticism here about what they prioritize and deprioritize for the default user interface experience.
[1] https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise
Of all the things you can dislike you pointed out a few features which actually make some sense. Cmd+` works well, even better than alt-tab most of the time, though it’s a major pain in the ass if you want multiple windows laid out from multiple apps on a single screen, and god forbid you have more windows of any in the background. The click to focus stops accidental clicks and gives a way out when the only visible piece of an app is a button.
I’d rather focus on Apple refusal to support standard dpi displays (hat tip betterdisplay), basically broken .0 releases, gimped docker implementation, useless window management and broken multi screen windows.
> When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice
I get hit by this all the time. I have multiple monitors and I can scroll in a window without the window having focus. The scrolling leads you believe it has focus so when you hit cmd-w to close the window the window with actual focus closes instead.
> On a mac every window for an app is considered the same, so there's no concept of switching between windows (except with special hidden key presses).
Is Cmd+` the hidden key press? Alternatively you can go to "Window" at the menubar if you prefer to click
This is such a unfair interpretation, it's a false equivalence argument. "OS X added Terminal and throwing out HIG for a UNIX-y UI" is a moot point.
It's not about loyalty, it's about Apple's own coherence and vision as a creative-technology company, and a bunch of sophisticated users offering a critique of it over time. Read it that way and it makes a lot more sense.
Beneath the Apple "fandom" or any fandom there are valid reasons why they came to be (the quality of the product), and we ought to elevate that than call customers naive for not adopting the very corporate cynicism that is a result of anticompetitive economics.