Guide to Leaving your Mac

http://gigasquidsoftware.com/blog/2013/12/26/guide-to-leaving-your-mac-laptop/

by gigasquid • 13 years ago

76 119 13 years ago

I don't need a guide to leaving the best computer currently made. If I had to use a PC I don't know if I would bother with computers at all except for my job. PC laptops have the reputation they deserve and I think they not only tarnished personal/mobile computing as a general concept (only to be rescued by Apple), PC laptops should be the first category of the PC family to die out completely and save people the misery and disillusionment that when you buy such a thing, that you think you actually bought something.

And Im not even saying Windows laptops, this is a commodity hardware issue combined with fantastically disappointing software (Windows or Ubuntu), but I wouldn't want one running OS X either.

It's time for the PC industry to take out its own trash.

busterarm17• 13 years ago

The OEMs have been quite terrible for a long time. Even Lenovo is a barely-trustworthy brand to me anymore -- and it's the only brand and they don't currently have anything in their product lineup that I'd be happy to use. Dell and HP have become especially crap. Toshiba, which used to be crap is now somehow the better mass-market OEM out there. I wouldn't spend my own money on anything from Asus; every single Asus product I've ever come across has failed in under 3 years.

What I really want is for Apple to make an iPad that will let me use a USB keyboard. Safari and SSH are all I need.

greglindahl• 13 years ago

There are many nice bluetooth keyboards that work fine with iPads.

wandermatt• 13 years ago

Would be more useful to hear a retrospective after six months.

mkhpalm• 13 years ago

I left Apple last year after nearly a decade of using Apple products. I have a Zenbook Prime running Debian unstable now. I find Gnome Shell just as easy to use as OSX. In fact its more functional in many aspects like how quickly I can get to the things I'm looking for. That said, there are pros and cons to using OSX or Linux. But I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. I think people should use whatever floats their boat.

tokenrove• 13 years ago

I left Apple around the PPC->Intel transition, for Thinkpads (and recently, a Zenbook) running Debian. No regrets; life got much better; would not go back; YMMV. (I still have to use OS X and iOS machines regularly at work, and this only confirms my decision.)

jjoonathan5• 13 years ago

I left apple a bit over a year ago because I wanted to get a laptop with some serious GPU power (I was doing lots of sequence alignments that took hours to do on my old laptop and hours to upload to / download from my university's compute cluster). The computer performed fabulously at this task, but my experience with the Microsoft ecosystem has been absolutely dreadful. Now that I no longer need the GPU power, I will gladly pay a few hundred dollar premium to get a mac laptop for my next computer. I would probably pay a 2x premium if Apple asked it.

-------- OS Installation: The Horror Story --------

* Reinstalling the OS is a 4-5 hour manual slog through serial numbers and a dozen drivers that must be manually installed in the correct order, not a 1-hour fire-and-forget process like in the Mac ecosystem. (hours of my time vs minutes of my time).

* The bundled "backup solution" works neither for imaging nor for incremental document recovery. "Time Machine" this is not.

* MSE antivirus was dreadfully slow (Just downloaded an installer? It'll wait 30 seconds before launching 5 copies of the .exe corresponding to the 5 times you clicked on it).

* I got a 30gb SSD as a boot volume and put Windows on it, then linked ("junctioned") the "Program Files" directory to my HDD (I'd done similar on my mac without trouble). Big mistake, none of the applications would launch. They didn't launch after I copied them back either (yes, I looked up permission-resetting instructions and followed them to the letter). I had to reinstall.

* I looked up a Microsoft support document explaining how to properly put programs on a different HD (and also that it was unsupported). It involved registry edits and DOS-fu from the system restore disk. The next time Windows Update ran, it broke my system so that no program would launch (DLL error every time). Rolling back the updates didn't work, of course. I had to reinstall. Gave up on the 30gb SSD.

* I tried to upgrade my Win7 install to Win8. Big mistake. The installer took 2 hours to give me an unhelpful generic error message. After hours of searching through forums I found out that it scans your installed Win7 drivers+programs one by one and barfs if any of them aren't compatible (but it doesn't tell you that, of course).

* I tried a fresh install of Win8 on a new 250gb SSD I got on black friday. It froze every time I woke from sleep. Oh, and it would boot to an I/O error bluescreen unless I booted into Win7 first, touched a file on the SSD, and rebooted (yes, touching a file was necessary). Two firmware updates and a handful of driver updates later and I had the same symptoms.

* On a hunch, I switched the SSD from SATA slot 2 to 0. This broke the bootloader, and Microsoft's instructions to fix it didn't work, giving a generic error message that many people on the support forum seemed to experience but that nobody had a fix for. There were 2 Microsoft employees with unhelpful non-fix "solutions," though.

* I nuked the Win7 HDD install and reinstalled Win8 afresh on the SSD (now slot 0). It seems to be stable so far.

* There was a 4-month period where Dell's GPU drivers had broken OpenCL compatibility and the manufacturer drivers would silently fail to install unless I ran a 3rd-party sketchware wiping program first and disabled signature enforcement on every boot.

* Audio drivers occasionally fail to wake from sleep (no audio till reboot). No, updating them to the manufacturer version didn't help. No, reinstalling Dell's recommended drivers didn't help either.

-------- Small Gripes --------

* No decent UNIX command line. Cygwin starts slowly and is poorly integrated with the system.

* I can't get decent 2-finger scroll without a 3rd party program that is occasionally broken by system updates.

* I can't remap capslock without downloading a 3rd-party program to perform registry edits.

* I can't shut off the screen without installing a 3rd party program to do so.

* In Win7, all allowed keyboard layout switching shortcuts were combinations of modifiers that conflicted with productivity apps like Illustrator. Also, the layout would occasionally become "stuck" and failed to respect the GUI switcher. In Win8, they added a no-conflict key combination for switching layouts but it doesn't work in fullscreen apps.

* Metro. It looks slick, but it doesn't have any of the options you regularly need to access. Fortunately the old menagerie of Windows utilities is still there, just moved around.

* No standard install system that lets you inspect the installer's logs, scripts, or contents.

* The intimate connection between my computer account and Microsoft cloud account creeps me out.

* The full-screen force-quit mechanism is insane (ctrl-alt-del, open Task Manager, press Windows to reveal the Launch Bar, click on the arrow to see all system tray icons, right-click the tiny Task Manager icon (a gray box), enable "Always on Top", highlight the program in the task manager, hit "End Task", wait, hit "End Task" on the dialog box that pops up, and finally decline to send a bug report to Microsoft)

* I can't use the keyboard to navigate directories that contain a mixture of files and folders because in Mircrosoft-Land "Alphabetical Order" means "Sort folders first, then files."

* The sub-HD preloaded desktop backgrounds (yes, really).

-------- Small Victories --------

* Cheaper, better hardware (not remotely cost effective, given the hassle)

* I can manually tweak virtual memory settings (not that I should have to tweak it, which I do, but I think it's terribly cool that I can and that there's a GUI for it)

* Compatibility

* The super-handy "superuser menu" (Win-X)

* The ability to roll-back updates. It has never worked when I needed it to, but I like the idea.

-------- Concluding Remarks --------

I've had better UX with linux, which is saying something, since I had previously considered linux UX to be fairly poor, or rather great -- until a mission-critical piece of it inevitably broke. Turns out the same thing applies Windows, except worse. Sadly, it sees that there is tremendous value in having a non-fragmented ecosystem.

My next computer will be a mac.

-------- My Plea to You --------

If you know how to fix any of my gripes, please speak up. I'm still a newbie. Maybe these are just growing pains. I don't think so, but I can hope.

scardine• 13 years ago

For an alternative to Cygwin, take a look at GoW[1] and ConEmu[2]

[1] https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/wiki [2] https://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/

busterarm17• 13 years ago

My last Windows OS will be Windows 7 because of many similar problems and reasoning.

This has spawned a change in career because I currently make my living working in the Windows space. I'm throwing away 15 years of experience and a deep knowledge of Windows' internals. Also, work has slowed down tremendously since the year or so leading up to through the release of Windows 8. I don't see my current job existing in two years or other people as capable remaining where they are.

I can only address one of your gripes, but not really. Powershell isn't that bad. It's not good, but it's not that bad. It can do some things, but probably not the ones you really want.

bane7• 13 years ago

I think, given the amount of customization you're looking for, you want a linux desktop, not Windows.

I can't speak for Windows 8, but I've built a few dozen Windows 7 machines of various configurations and never had the kinds of install problems you've had. Here's how I do it.

1 - Put in the disk 2 - Boot to disk and run the installer 3 - it reboots a couple times while it's installing, but I don't care because I'm off doing something else 4 - it asks me a few questions and starts up 5 - let it run through a bunch of update cycles (which does take forever, but it's semi-automated so I'm doing something else most of the time)

On occasion I've had to install a network driver after it finishes, or if it's virtualized some guest additions but that's it. It does take hours, but they're mostly unattended hours that I can ignore, and if I want to use the machine quicker, I can skip the update cycles and just get going and let it update when I shut the machine off at the end of the day.

My latest machine, which I just built, didn't require any driver futsing.

I have no idea why you were trying to install 7 (and it sounds like your goal was to get to 8) on a 30GB SSD. I wouldn't install anything but a bare bones command-line only CentOS on a disk that small. It sounds like a couple days of your time were wasted trying to put a 50+GB OS on what's essentially a medium sized thumb drive and suffered for it.

All that being said, back in the XP days I did build a system with Program Files on a different machine and for the most part it did work, but it wasn't really well supported (even if it's supposed to be) and felt kludgy.

The Registry is one of the worst ideas in the history of computing. Nearly every time I've had something go wrong with a Windows machine that wasn't outright hardware failure, it was a problem with the registry. Registry editing really is a last resort for the bold and desperate. There's some serious voodoo in there.

So we've solved two of your problems off the bat, 1) don't install the OS on disks that are too small 2) don't mess with the registry

On to small gripes

* No decent UNIX command line. Cygwin starts slowly and is poorly integrated with the system.

True. Your best bet if you want Linux is to virtualize a linux machine or install linux or use Powershell. Remember, you aren't using a nix.

I can't get decent 2-finger scroll without a 3rd party program that is occasionally broken by system updates.

Touchpad support on Windows is lightyears behind OS X. Apple has actually turned the touchpad into something useful instead of an emergency replacement for a mouse. In Windows, just use a $5-10 2 button mouse with a scroll wheel.

* I can't remap capslock without downloading a 3rd-party program to perform registry edits.

True.

* I can't shut off the screen without installing a 3rd party program to do so.

What do you mean? Are you trying to just use the laptop hooked to a monitor and don't want the monitor on? Just set the power management so you can close the lid and leave the machine on. It's something that doesn't exist in OS X so you probably haven't thought of it.

What do you mean? Why are you trying to switch the keyboard layout so much?

* Metro. It looks slick, but it doesn't have any of the options you regularly need to access. Fortunately the old menagerie of Windows utilities is still there, just moved around.

No experience at all with 8, it looks like a version I'll probably skip alltogether as 7 is still majority supported and I don't have any compelling reasons to go to 8.

* No standard install system that lets you inspect the installer's logs, scripts, or contents.

True. Installation under OS X is much slicker and better thought out in general than on Windows. What's your compelling use case to need to do this though?

* The intimate connection between my computer account and Microsoft cloud account creeps me out.

Must be an 8 thing. 7 doesn't really have anything like this (at least that I use or care about).

Hit Ctrl-Shift-Esc, go to "processes", right click on the problem process and just hit "end process tree". I don't know why you're doing all that extra stuff after you've got the task manager up.

* I can't use the keyboard to navigate directories that contain a mixture of files and folders because in Mircrosoft-Land "Alphabetical Order" means "Sort folders first, then files."

Why not? I pretty much only navigate in Explorer via keyboard. Why does sorting folder first (which in my and many people's opinions is far superior to mixing them up with your files) prohibit this?

It's bad enough in OS X that most of the finder replacements I've tried change the sort to folders first then files. Folders are different then files and should be sorted separately. Between music, retrocomputing, movies, and photography I manage over 3 and a half million files using pretty much explorer from the keyboard without much fuss. It's lightyears ahead of Finder in this respect.

One trick, with a folder open, just start typing the name of the file or folder you want and it'll quickly navigate down to around where the file is.

* The sub-HD preloaded desktop backgrounds (yes, really).

Replace them with whatever you want. The built in Windows picture viewer is better than OS X's (it even lets you look through folders full of pictures in sequence!) and you can right-click and turn any picture into a background.

* The ability to roll-back updates. It has never worked when I needed it to, but I like the idea.

Sometimes when your registry gets b0rk3d, this is the only way to save the computer. I don't really like it at all when I try to use it manually, but it's got my bacon out the fire on more than one occasion.

jmduke• 13 years ago

I've got an iPhone, iPad, and MBA. In an abstract sense -- that is, all other things equal -- I'd like to swap them out for non-Apple products. I dislike Apple's software, their entire "magic/creative/yadda-yadda-yadda" branding, and of course their price tag.

But the app ecosystem and hardware to me seem absolutely incomparable. I can't see myself ever switching my phone or tablet because it seems as though iOS apps are just unapproachably better than Android counterparts -- and there aren't any laptops as functional and, yes, straight-up pretty as the MacBook Air.

(The reason the author cited for switching from Apple was two failed laptops. For what it's worth, my previous laptop -- a Dell -- broke every six months or so. [I had four-year insurance, thankfully, and replaced it once the insurance ran out.]

jccalhoun• 13 years ago

I switched from ipods and ipod touches to android and I can't really see myself going back any time soon because of the ability to tweak and customize android. I don't miss any apps from ios and I don't think I have ever felt like an android app was worse than an ios version.

Legion• 13 years ago

I'm of the same mind. I switched from the iPhone to Android because I was dissatisfied with the tiny iPhone screens, but I expected a quality drop-off in apps.

The drop-off, in the instances where it does exist, is not nearly as dramatic as advertised. It's pretty small, really, which has me looking at switching my tablet from iPad to an Android tablet as well.

Plus, on Android, I have a browser with functioning plug-ins (Firefox). iOS's app ecosystem doesn't seem so great when it fails so dramatically at perhaps the most important app: web browser.

astrodust3• 13 years ago

It's like switching from real orange juice to Fanta. Some people won't notice, and some people will like it better.

The problem with Android isn't the OS, it's the stupid number of hardware configurations possible that make fine-tuning the application to the screen virtually impossible. Most applications, even the best, are still rough around the edges compared to their iOS counterparts.

If you want tweaking and customizing, Android is the only way to go.

wyager2• 13 years ago

I would ditch Apple in a heartbeat if I felt that anyone could provide a similar hardware experience. I'm not just talking about CPU/RAM/Graphics card (yes, I know I can get a slightly better deal with non-Apple hardware), but everything else as well. Apple displays are beautiful and completely free of defects, Apple trackpads are incredible, the computers are ridiculously thin (my new ThinkPad is twice as thick as my MBP), the battery life is incredible (my early 2013 MBP gets 5-6 hours, new MBPs get 10-12 hours), etc. The hardware is just great. I don't understand why no one else can make hardware like this.

Re. failed laptops: I had to take my last MBP in for repair something like 8 times in 6 months. Totally unacceptable. Most of the time it was for something they botched during the last repair. However, Apple gave me store credit for the purchase price of the laptop and then some, so I'm happy. I do beat the shit out of my laptops, so I'm sure someone who was more gentle would have better luck.

usaphp2• 13 years ago

I would ditch Apple in a heartbeat...

Why would you ditch it in a heartbeat if you think that:

- Apple displays are beautiful and completely free of defects

- Apple trackpads are incredible

- Apple computers are ridiculously thin

- The battery life is incredible

- The hardware is just great

---

It's like saying I would ditch my wife in a heartbeat, but her face is super pretty, her body is perfect and her heart is a heart of angel...but I would still ditch her in a heartbeat...

yapcguy2• 13 years ago

- Apple displays are beautiful and completely free of defects

Guess that depends on whether you get the Samsung panel or the LG panel.

As for developers, where are are the matte displays?

luuio• 13 years ago

my new ThinkPad is twice as thick as my MBP

how much did you pay for the thinkpad and how much did you pay for MBP? i doubt that your MBP is thiner than the Lenovo Carbon X1

coldtea2• 13 years ago

I dislike Apple's software

In what sense? Does it run slow? Does it not give you enough options?

I've used Linux on and off, from RedHat 5 (circa '97) to the latest Ubuntu. Heck, I've even worked with CDE and such on Sun and HP boxes before Linux. Have also used Windows.

Besides political reasons, I haven't seen anything compelling enough to move over. I have all my commercial software (from Adobe to MS and beyond), I have most UNIX cli stuff, and if I want hardcode unixy stuff I can do it an a VM with Vagrant (as I would on a Linux system anyway, why pollute my desktop with project specific dev installations?).

I've tried Gimp -- it's no match for Photoshop, and I prefer Pixelmator and Acorn for lightweight stuff. I also try Open Office every couple of years -- it remains mostly as it was 15 years ago, and has added cruft and slowlyness to it (why it needs a JRE I don't even...). Pages, Numbers and Keynote are fine for my needs -- the only time I need something more it's when I need more MS Office compatibility, and there OO doesn't cut it either.

I also dabble in multimedia, and nothing on OSS comes close to Logic and FCPX. And I've been keeping an eye on the DAW space in Linux since before there was Jack and ALSA. Heck, even Mail.app has no much of a competition. If you like clunky, you can go for Thunderbird.

The reason the author cited for switching from Apple was two failed laptops. For what it's worth, my previous laptop -- a Dell -- broke every six months or so.

I never understand this reasoning. Don't people understand that there are faulty shipments in all production runs? I've had AMD CPUs overheat, IBM disk drives fails, Toshiba laptops crap out, etc. I've also had Apple stuff die on me. Those things happen.

busterarm17• 13 years ago

I don't know. Mail.app does a lot of things that are pretty nonsensical. It's easily the buggiest OS X app that I use b y about 10 to 1. I'm not saying Thunderbird is an alternative though. For all the grief that Microsoft deserves, Outlook is far and away the best mail application I've ever used, baring stupid quirks of PST/OST files (especially when it comes to Calendar). That's like the one application that Microsoft has completely nailed.

I WISH there were a better alternative.

azakai2• 13 years ago

Besides political reasons, I haven't seen anything compelling enough to move over.

apt-get to install practically any open source software in the world is one.

Partially as a consequence of that, but other stuff as well, the development experience for those using the console and not an IDE is far better on Linux than OS X or (by far) Windows.

Finally, the "political" stuff you mention is not politics for sake of politics. It stems from very practical real-world things. For example, if I write an app and calling a system library does something unexpected, I can read the source code to see exactly what is going on. That's not possible, generally speaking, on OS X or Windows. Open source isn't just for sake of lofty ideals, it's also just simpler, easier, and better.

As a consequence of these things, there is a culture around Linux that is not present on OS X and Windows. OS X and Windows people 'blindly' rely on the OS for many things, while on Linux, people hack the OS routinely. You have much more opportunity to ask people about how the OS works (and of course to see the code).

For all those reasons, I would say Linux is by far the best OS for hackers. Of course OS X and Windows are good as well, just in different ways, hacking isn't everything.

shalalala• 13 years ago

I happen to like the hardware a bit more than when I first got the MBPr, but would LOVE to have a good Debian install guide for this puppy. Heck, I might even settle for Ubuntu in the meantime.

kevinchen2• 13 years ago

Run a live cd and double click the installer icon?

msluyter• 13 years ago

The article doesn't address what for me are the major sticking points: iTunes and iPhoto. I have years of music & photos stored in both, and to switch to linux I'd need an relatively painless migration strategy. Anyone have any suggestions?

deepGem• 13 years ago

Have you tried using any of the cloud photo organizers? openphoto comes to mind.

sliverstorm• 13 years ago

For iTunes, Google Music provided a pretty darn seamless transition. You download their client software, it scans your iTunes library, and registers the songs you have with Google Play. Songs it doesn't recognize, it uploads.

This is a double-feature because Google Music is both platform-agnostic, and integrates with Android.

Google Music itself is not necessarily the most amazing user experience, and someone with a bajillion music files may be upset with it, but for me the high quality (all purchased & "recognized" music is 320kbps) and general platform- and client-agnostic nature trumps music management "power".

adrusi2• 13 years ago

Ah, yes. iTunes. I just did this a few days ago---switched from iTunes to a Linux alternative. This was hard. I've never bought anything through iTunes, but I love the program for managing my music library. It looks nice, which is important for me while listening to music, and it's very powerful, with smart playlists and the play queue. I eventually settled for Banshee and imported my library with a lot of manual support. It wasn't easy or fun to switch, but it only took a couple hours to get right, and now I'm quite pleased with the result.

iPhoto, however, has always been shit. Mostly because it's slow. I haven't moved my photos to Linux yet, but I think Darktable is supposed to be good.

busterarm17• 13 years ago

I have a mid-2011 Mac Mini and for a while considered an rMBP almost necessary. Instead of shelling out for one, I stuck a $40 SSD in a Lenovo x100e I had sitting around and installed Arch on it (after a decade or so of being a Slackware user). Best computing decision I ever made.

For one, I prefer the smaller form factor, trackpoint and much superior keyboard (even if it's still chiclet). Secondly, I hardly ever use X. I get so much more work done on this laptop than I can on any other computer and it's relatively distraction-free (I added a couple roguelikes and dwarf fortress). Just log in and tmux is ready to go with what I need to start working.

The one downside is that, on the occasions that I do use X, the fonts aren't very good. I wouldn't even begin to know how to approach making typography more Mac-like, but I'm okay with that. I spend 99% of my time in the console.

In fact, going forward I see myself using a VPS or running a dedicated server somewhere and then it doesn't really matter what laptop I use.

astrodust3• 13 years ago

That's the problem. Apple's typography is well ahead of anything in the Linux world, and even Linux is still ahead of what Windows has.

The "Retina" screens make this even harder to match.

busterarm17• 13 years ago

For sure, but I'm not such a typography nerd that what's on Linux is unacceptable to me. Ultimately I'm going to get my work done however is most efficient; that just tends to be Linux. My Mac (which I'm using now) is great for web browsing and reading articles. I'd sooner use my Kindle for that than my Linux laptop though and often I do.

Once Apple makes a retina iPad around 10 inches and lets me use my own USB keyboard, I'll never use anything else. If that iPad Pro rumor pans out, it'd better have USB.

hornetblack• 13 years ago

I use Arch on an XPS. The fonts have been the most annoying thing. I'm considering switch to Wayland to get away from X fonts. The good side is some desktop managers (like all Gnome-derived ones) allow you to universally set the fonts. But if you don't use X you can't really go running Gnome every time you want to run a X application.

I would like a kind of font-wrapper for X. So it could be configured simply and just start bare bones X with the fonts all configured. Then XMonad would be a bit prettier.

(You can then install Heltevica et al. if that's what your into)

busterarm17• 13 years ago

There are ways to make it more bearable for sure, but I haven't explored them in a long time. I think Wayland is still several years out for most people unless you really like Enlightenment, which I may give a try when E19 is out.

Firefox would need to work though.

asveikau2• 13 years ago

I tried Arch this year for the first time and I really liked it, but also encountered really crappy fonts. Not sure what gives there. On my Debian machine the fonts seem on par with my Mac (to my non-font-snob eyes, which were at least able to notice Arch's badness).

I'd say you don't have to abandon X to get decent fonts. I think the Arch defaults are just bad.

pimeys3• 13 years ago

The one downside is that, on the occasions that I do use X, the fonts aren't very good. I wouldn't even begin to know how to approach making typography more Mac-like, but I'm okay with that. I spend 99% of my time in the console.

I guess this has something to do with patent issues, but I'm not sure. Although being a bit of a hack, you can get the Ubuntu font rendering with patched libraries from AUR (1). For me the Ubuntu font patches provide in every way very pleasant rendering. If you want to spend time fine tuning and even better rendering, you might want to try Infinality patches and configuration (2).

Use yaourt (3) instead of pacman for keeping the system up to date, and it takes care of the AUR packages also. Installing yaourt is the most annoying part here, but after that it's pretty straightforward.

1. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration#Ubun...

2. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration#Infi...

3. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/yaourt

busterarm17• 13 years ago

I like managing my AUR packages with pacman for some reason. I actually find it to be less trouble than dealing with yaourt.

I've looked into this for a brief moment but realized that I want to spend as little time in the GUI being unproductive as possible. I'd almost say that shitty X fonts are a feature for me right now -- the one time it was an actual problem motivated me to set up CUPS and get my laser printer working (btw, HP, f* you for your handling of Zjstream printers).

Good tip though. And yes, the patent issue doesn't help.

derengel2• 13 years ago

Is sad but the MBA really has no rival, quality/hardware wise.

jonemo• 13 years ago

Mac hardware doesn't break, but when you purchase the four year warranty on a Dell (which will get you a total near the price of an equivalent Macbook) it will break a few times during the four years, but each time you get it fixed or replaced next day at home.

dima55• 13 years ago

I've never seen an apple laptop that didn't break after a few (<= 2) years. YMMV.

riobard• 13 years ago

So effectively for the the same price you get an inferior hardware/design which breaks more often but gets replaced for free.

I don't understand how this is better?

jkelsey4• 13 years ago

The author was having hardware problems, so he switched his software? There's nothing more open about Dell's hardware than Apple's and just because Dell offers a laptop with Linux does that mean you're now in some sort of open-source utopia where the open-source community comes together to solve every single computer problem that users encounter.

Don't get me wrong, I think Linux is great and there's tons of awesome open-source projects, but I don't think Ubuntu is one of them. If you've been following Canonical's behavior with Ubuntu over the past few years, you should be aware of what I'm talking about. And Dell? Well, their XPS laptops do seem to be of higher quality than what most of the PC industry offers, but support? I'm sorry, but I feel much more confidence in the Genius Bar.

Apple's not perfect, but the rest of the latop manufacturers are a joke.

tujv• 13 years ago

I was hoping for a comparison between competing platforms and how they stack up against iOS OSX.

But this article is free software evangelism ("I set myself free") not a serious guide to moving away from Apple.

jkelsey4• 13 years ago

But this article is free software evangelism ("I set myself free") [...]

That is what is so irritating about this type of rhetoric; I switched from OS X to Ubuntu and now I'm free! Well, no, you just switched from one corporate controlled Operating System to another. Ubuntu may be open-source, but it's hardly free. Biggest example: You have to opt-out of Canonical's desktop search results sharing relationship with Amazon. At least when I look for files on a Mac, I don't get ads in my search results. If you like Ubuntu over OS X, then that's fine, but please don't say it's because of "freedom".

If people are going to write about their holier-than-thou articles about how they switched to free software, they better be running something like Trisequel Linux on a Gluglug Laptop (http://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to-...) or perhaps they should think about something else to write about.

busterarm17• 13 years ago

I don't have a single good thing to say about Ubuntu, but it's hard to imagine most people jumping right into the deep end with Linux. Sure, Ubuntu is the wrong way to start IMO, but at least it shows people it's possible.

Speaking of what a joke laptop manufacturers are though, sometime around 2005 or 2006 when I worked in retail, we got these brand new, ~$3200 HP laptops in. DV4000something. While trying to upgrade a customer's laptop to use both DIMMs, we found out that this was impossible. Somehow, HP produced an entire line of laptops where the contacts for the second DIMM slot had no connections to the rest of the circuitboard. We opened up all the ones shipped to our store and confirmed with stores in other states. This actually made it through their QA process!

lshemesh2• 13 years ago

I think Lenovo still makes quality products, I'm currently using their x220 (with Mint). I suppose it's possible that their newer models are worse, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. The x1 carbon looks like a cool machine to play with.

I wouldn't bet on Dell, and HP ever getting back to their glory days, but I wouldn't count out Lenovo, Samsung, Google, and Asus (Asus zenbook prime, looks amazing).

jkelsey4• 13 years ago

This is my take: if it works for you, and you like it, then go for it. Some people, like you, obviously like ThinkPads, some people like Dells. We're all different and we have different tastes. We should respect that.

My issue with the article is how the author prepositions the argument for her computer with "Apple didn't fix my laptop to my liking, so I got a Dell and now freedom!" The difference in freedom between Apple and Dell is nil, and I'm arguing that the difference between OS X and Ubuntu is worse because at least OS X doesn't ship off your desktop search results to third parties or show you ads in the results.

prg318• 13 years ago

This article mentions that there is no native 1Password client for Linux and recommends some kind of dropbox workaround. While this probably true at the time of writing, Icculus recently wrote a native Linux client [1]. There's more details about it in this G+ post if you are interested:

- https://plus.google.com/+RyanGordon/posts/ZFyb9TQS9zB

[1] https://icculus.org/1pass/

adinb• 13 years ago

With the exception of using the browser plugins, 1password works great in wine—I pointed it to my Dropbox folder and was able to read and write passwords.

latch• 13 years ago

I looked at getting a Sputnik 3, but it's available only in select countries and 16GB isn't an option (nor is it for MBA, but it is for the relatively light rMBP).

And I hate the Dell logo. In fact, I hate all text logos. It's ridiculous. 150" TVs in shopping malls with a huge "SAMSUNG" or "SONY" at the bottom. If you have to do something, use some image (an apple, the ubuntu reactor thing, windows 4 squares...)

mmanfrin• 13 years ago

I recently switched my Windows desktop to Ubuntu, with the intention of making myself an at-home desktop dev environment. I still use my Macbook for work, and my MBA for personal dev.

My thoughts have been positive, Ubuntu is much nicer than I remember previous brushes with Linux being. A lot of things required slight configuration, but Ubuntu and Linux have hit that critical mass that most of my problems can be solved with a simple search. However, there are a few persistent problems that have lots of different solutions that dont all seem to work; and I feel there are lots of lacking areas in the app ecosystem. For instance, there does not seem to be a single well-designed SQL gui for linux. Everything looks out of Windows-ME-era-enterprise. For Macs, you have Sequel Pro amongst a lot of strong competition. Additionally, homebrew is a lot easier/more robust than apt-get; no repositories to deal with.

I think this all points to something about me, specifically: I want software to make some assumptions for me. Brew does this, apt-get doesnt. This is both the strength of Mac and the strength of Linux -- they cater to the level of assumption that their camps want. I, unfortunately, want more assumption.

Also, as a small side note, I can't get League of Legends to work on WINE, so I am unable to play with excoworkers -- that was the main way we kept in touch and it's pushing me to a point that I might put Windows back on my desktop, if only to have that connection back -- a little juvenile, but oh well.

w1ntermute7• 13 years ago

I can't get League of Legends to work on WINE

You do realize you can dual boot, right?

kbar13• 13 years ago

dual booting is really annoying.

pimeys3• 13 years ago

Additionally, homebrew is a lot easier/more robust than apt-get; no repositories to deal with.

Until I can do stuff like `brew install safari` in OSX, e.g. keeping your whole system up to date with one tool, I find it inferior to the Linux package managers. Although I find pacman and emerge better than apt, them being much easier to configure and use.

busterarm17• 13 years ago

Right. Homebrew is okay, but pacman is _amazing_. I actually have completely avoided setting up Homebrew on my Mac and the only Mac dev environment I have set up is in an Mountain Lion VM running on my Mac. I don't want to screw some strange thing up and then have to resort to using a Time Machine backup to fix it...

...Reasoning behind that one is that documentation floating around for solving Mac problems is quite terrible. A lot of information isn't well categorized and results for very old versions typically come up first. Fixes for problems I've had (getting CLANG to work in a VM under virtualbox, getting virtualbox to work after a restart because they stupidly use OSX features that were phased out) often only came up after digging quite hard to find the correct fix. Support and Documentation are what I do for a living, so I have a better shot finding the right fix than most.

Arch documentation and the forums are like the gold freakin' standard. It actually blows my mind how well organized and thorough it all is. I've yet to find a situation in Arch that didn't have a document to get me out of it...and often I use their documentation to fix problems in OSX and other Linux distros.

femiagbabiaka• 13 years ago

Use PlayOnLinux for League, the client is easy to set up and works well.

w1ntermute7• 13 years ago

At least there's the option of leaving Macs for other brands. As a ThinkPad user, I'm totally fucked because of Lenovo's decision to get rid of the physical TrackPoint buttons[0]. First they got rid of the traditional keyboard in favor an Apple-style chiclet keyboard (which, after using both extensively, is a severe downgrade from the traditional ThinkPad keyboard). Now they're getting rid of the TrackPoint buttons. Next is going to be the TrackPoint, all in the name of copying Apple. There's no one else making a proper TrackPoint (and HP and Dell are ditching what they did have), and using a trackpad is so slow. It's sad to see Lenovo take a great laptop line and turn it into an Apple clone.

0: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXa0XzNvuZU

busterarm17• 13 years ago

Here here. Trackpoint has long been a major factor for me picking Thinkpads. The lack of physical buttons on the new ones is beyond annoying and trackpads in the Windows PC space are total crap.

Macs really do have everyone beat there, but even better are Wacom's intuos Touch models. I use a few gestures to quickly move windows around in OSX but can almost totally stick to the keyboard.

w1ntermute7• 13 years ago

I'm amazed that more people never got into using TrackPoints. Mac or PC, I've never seen anyone able to use the trackpad to mouse around at anywhere near the speed that I (or other ThinkPad users) can use the TrackPoint to do so. It's funny to see how astonished people are at how quickly I can navigate, when it's really just a matter of using the right tool.

limeblack2• 13 years ago

Have you actually tried and compared the physical buttons to the new ones?

I have a slightly older Thinkpad with the physical buttons. I am trying to decide if I should buy one of the T530 from last year's models or just get the newer version.

w1ntermute7• 13 years ago

Have you actually tried and compared the physical buttons to the new ones?

No, not yet. However, I'm not holding out much hope, considering that the change to the chiclet keyboard was also proclaimed as being an "improvement", when in reality it was not. Also, as a Linux user, having to configure the trackpad-based buttons is definitely going to introduce driver headaches, something else that I have been able to avoid so far by sticking to the TrackPoint.

ibrahima3• 13 years ago

I've been posting all over this thread because I love my new T440s, so it looks kind of funny, but for me as a new Thinkpad user the clickpad as trackpoint buttons was really easy to get used to. I think it's actually worse as a touchpad, but as a Trackpoint I don't think you lose that much. I'd say give it a chance, I think they have a 30 day return window and I'd say you should easily figure out if you like it or not in that timeframe (you should verify the return window though, this is just what I'm remembering).

ibrahima3• 13 years ago

I have a Thinkpad T440s with the new trackpoint/lack of buttons, and while I am admittedly a new Thinkpad user, I find the Trackpoint excellent and completely natural to use. It was a little awkward for a day but I got used to it really fast. In comparison, I think the fact that the touchpad depresses makes using the touchpad part more awkward, but it seems perfect for the Trackpoint to me. You do lose the benefit of being able to feel the button boundaries but like I said I got used to it pretty fast (I had been playing with my roommates' Thinkpads before this which is why at first I was confused about the middle button). Actually, the funny thing is that since the action is pretty close to the keyboard, the main issue I had at first was that I kept hitting spacebar instead of the clickpad but over time my thumbs began resting over the right spot.

cgtyoder• 13 years ago

It's unfortunate that your Apple hardware experience was so poor, but you're really not going to have better luck elsewhere - all the major hw manufacturers have a fairly similar failure rate [1] (Apple apparently is one of the better ones). You just got unlucky.

[1] http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliab... http://www.statisticbrain.com/laptop-malfunction-rates/

eddieroger2• 13 years ago

Every time I consider ditching my MacBook for a Linux machine, I come back to wondering why I'd want to do that at all. If it's to appease my command-line-junky insides, I can open up Terminal (or iTerm 2) and have instant UNIX. If it's to run some LAMP-esque stack, I can fire up homebrew and have everything I want. And if I don't really want to deal with the inner-workings of a machine, I can spend time in Aqua and have access to some of the best designed software in the game. Lastly, it plays with my ecosystem of gadgets - my iPhone and iPad are first class citizens, and thanks to iCloud and quality developers, things work seamlessly between all my tech, including my AppleTV through mirroring or extended display in Mavericks. I realize that this last bit makes me not the target audience for the article anymore, but it's worth saying.

The author states his only reason for leaving is failed hardware. I've had nothing but great experiences with Apple's hardware, and in the few rare exceptions, Apple has gone above and beyond to make the situation right. Fixes after warranty period, quick turnaround, etc, have kept my business with them.

kevinchen2• 13 years ago

I wouldn't take OS X vs Linux advice from a person who calls her computer a "Mac Air"

_ouxp• 13 years ago

That's cheap and hardly warrants a reply. "Mac Air" may not be the trade name of the computer, but it's not ambiguous and has no bearing on the substance of the article.

pimeys3• 13 years ago

For me the real breakthrough was to get rid of Ubuntu and install Arch and configure everything by myself for my laptop. It was super fun, learning to use systemd and making everything to work. Having xmonad, with pretty fonts, automatic suspend, wifi, vpn and all that working. And it was not at all that hard and took me one night and a couple of beers to get everything done.

I might be different than most of computer users, but I really do enjoy doing everything by myself. Now I know exactly what's wrong if something breaks. And Arch (or Funtoo, my work distro) are much easier to configure with a text editor compared to Ubuntu (or if we go this path, to OSX). I like systemd much more than upstart or launchd. I like the idea of a rolling release, so I don't have the nerve breaking massive updates every now and then.

But if just switching from OSX to a Unity distro, for me that wouldn't be enough to switch.

zacinbusiness• 13 years ago

I really want to like Linux. I've spent hours, here and there, hacking away with various distributions of Linux and on different hardware (I was part of the group that finally got CompizFusion working on the HP Mininote 2133). But when it comes down to it I don't want to have to be elbow deep in source code just to fix a sound card problem or similar.

I love Linux as an idea, and that it's free has done wonders for the world as far as opening access to the internet and its knowledge. But I just don't see it as a viable day-to-day OS for me.

At the same time, I have and will continue to tinker around with Linux (I learned about Lua because of Conky!) because I don't think that there's any harm in learning new things. And I've found that I learn best by breaking things and then trying to fix what I broke - and that's a nearly weekly experience for me when I try to use anything but Unbuntu.

bane7• 13 years ago

I currently split time between a 15" rMBP and a few Windows 7 machines and to be honest, I prefer the time on my Windows 7 machines despite many downsides.

Every few years I'll have a go at going Mac (this is try #3) and they'll all sort of peter out and I'll end up back in Windows.

I think this current go around has been the most successful, I love my rMBP hardware. And the work that Apple has put into making touchpads actually useful (both with hardware and software) is miraculous. The keyboards are nice typing experiences (I'm more mixed on the magic mouse). It's also an awesome portable virtualization platform that I've had 4 or 5 Linux VMs all up and running like a champ on it. Multiple workspaces are usually awesome, I keep several workspaces for different semantic parts of my day and the flow is really nice. Airdrop is magic.

For the most part things just work.

To try and make it really stick, I went cold turkey for the better part of 9 months and didn't touch a Windows machine.

But then, small frustrations and irritations finally built up and I recently just built myself a new Windows 7 computer and pretty much use it for all of my day-to-day with my Mac sitting in a travel bag for when I need to go on the road. What is it that keeps pushing me back? I've spent a lot of time thinking about why this is and sorta have it narrowed down to a few user scenarios: Here's 1 line of reasoning:

1. When I'm using my Mac, I find I try and avoid actually interacting with OS X as much as possible. I spend all of my time in Office, a web browser, a console window or a virtualized linux machine and that gets me through 95% of my day.

2. Digging in deeper and I find that OS X, while having some nice bits here and there (as discussed above), is so full of so many clumsy frustrations that I've never really been able to get over the feeling of reduced productivity when I'm dealing with it. I've realized that I deal with this by simply avoiding doing the things that frustrate or irritate me. Some of this probably stems from me not wanting to do things the prescribed "Apple way" and wanting to do it my own way. But it's irritating enough that I want to get away from the entire system after any extended interaction with the OS bits.

3. By and large this is focused on Finder (there's other issues, but Finder is the biggest problem I have), which is probably the single worst file manager I've used in 30 years of computing, and no amount of "getting used to it" seems to alleviate the simple fact that it sucks. I've tried a couple replacements, but they all seem to scratch some small itch and nothing really comes close to the magical file management wonderland that is the Windows 7 Explorer. It's so bad that even after a solid year with my Mac I still can't reliably predict where a new folder is going to be created. I know this makes me sound impossibly dumb, but these kinds of simple file management interface problems have been solved everywhere else. Even the various Linux file managers work better and more reliably. I would be so much more interested in staying on my Mac if I knew I could manage files without feeling like I was poking around a dark damp hole trying to sort through and pick up grains of rice with my elbows. I could go on for pages ranting about the abortion of ideas that is Finder, but let's just conclude that I hate it.

4. I realized that one of the reasons I spend so much time in a terminal then is because managing files form the command line is better! (the other reason I'm in the command line is so I can ssh into my linux VMs)

5. so if most of what I'm doing is Chrome, Office, ssh and Linux via VirtualBox, which are essentially equivalent experiences in OS X or Windows, and then doing OS things like moving files around works better in Windows, why should I still use my Mac?

I've come up with other lines of reasoning:

- all of the media production tools I personally work with have emphasized Windows development over Mac development for a while or no Mac equivalent exists at all.

- retrocomputing and retrogaming, which I have a deep personal interest in, has a far richer ecosystem under Windows and the tools that have version for both OSs tend to work better in Windows. Also moving around and organizing tens of thousands of files related to this hobby is much better under Windows

- another hobby, photography, I shoot thousands upon thousands of photos and haven't met an photo organizing tool I like, so I manage everything on the filesystem, which again means I'm avoiding finder

- Until Mavericks, multi-monitor support with full-screen apps was broken, and there's no excuse for it. None. Maximize was solved in Windows 3.0. 23 years ago

- OS X seems to keep growing interface hair, meaning what started as simple elegant design slowly accumulated feature cruft until the design is no longer simple or elegant and the design wasn't really flexible enough to accommodate this growing interface hair. Witness the madness around the resizing window buttons in OS X. But all the various crap that shows up in my menubar vs. sometimes in my dock vs. sometimes nowhere but ps, etc. Or the haphazard combinations of modifier hotkey combinations that don't really carryover between apps, a legacy of the one-button mouse movement which is now just vestigial, but now means I have to keep track of which combination of shift, fn, control, option and command to use in some combination before I even think about what button I need to push to modify some other key to do some menial task that's standard and two buttons in Windows.

- Even after taking hundreds of screen shots over the last year, I still have to lookup the madness of screen capture in OS X every single time I sit down to take more screen shots. Here's a 3 page article on it. http://osxdaily.com/2010/05/13/print-screen-mac/ Sure I don't get a "prt scr" key on the keyboard, but I get half a dozen key modifier keys and an eject key. I'll sometimes just put off the task till I get home and just do it in Windows it's so irritating.

- There's no paint program that ships with OS X. Boggles the mind.

- Having to buy and install tons of little apps to "fix" some broken or poorly designed behavior in the default apps that ship with the OS. This isn't like buying photoshop because it fixed paint. Photoshop is a different level entirely to paint. This is like iTerm2 which is almost exactly like, but just fixes a few things and adds a couple things to iTerm. And this kind of drop-in replacement cancer permeates the entire Mac experience. There's entire ecosystems of slightly different replacements for the default apps, and it's entirely expected that setting up a new mac will involve hunting these down and installing them to replace the broken stuff that the OS ships with. I'm really just exhausted of both this process and the attitude that this is a perfectly normal and sane thing to do. It's not, the OS is shipped broken and Apple needs to fix this stuff.

- Video performance is noticeably better in Windows. I'm not sure what it is, but I find my Mac has lots of little screen-tearing issues, and watching full-screen video on it just isn't as snappy (using VLC on both) as it was on my 6 year old Windows box (before I built my current one).

- Things usually just work in OS X. But when they don't you enter a world of mystery that goes as deep as a computer science degree can take you. In Windows, these days things also more or less just work, but when they don't, there's a kind of expectation in the design that you're likely to have an issue so there's all sorts of good error reporting and resolution paths to try and exhaust before even having to start searching forums for advice.

- I need to read NTFS volumes frequently and OS X's default NTFS compatibility sucks and the fixes are out of date and don't work very well either. In contrast, I've never had to read an HFS (or whatever Apple journaled blah blah file system) volume.

- no dedicated page up/down home or end keys. I use those keys all the time. Why are they gone? It's irritating having to hunt down a modifier key and an arrow and hope that you figured out the magic combination that's "home".

- I can't multi-tab drag in Chrome. I drag groups of tabs around in Windows all the time. Doesn't work in OS X.

- minimized windows are a pain to bring up. Therefore I don't minimize in OS X. The dock (especially when auto-hid) is flaky and won't show up half the time. The delay for when it does feel like popping up when my mouse is down at the bottom of the screen feels entirely random.

- I don't like any of the text editors I've tried. I just end up in vi in iterm. But I really want a good text editor.

- VNC is not a suitable remote desktop solution compared to RDP. It's just not. I Remote into half a dozen machines over the course of a day and wish I had a decent way to remote into my Mac that wasn't VNC.

- and more and more and more

I'm sure there are built in solutions I'm overlooking, or some app I can install that fixes this or modifies that, or some setting that makes something behave better than the default. But the point is that outside of applications that exist on both platforms equally, I'm avoiding or annoyed with everything else on the platform. I'm committed to sticking it out and have even resolved to spend more time on my mac - especially post-Mavericks. But it's just not a better computing experience for me. It's interesting and it's different, and it makes me yearn for certain things that windows doesn't have (multiple workspaces), but when the equivalent functions work better in Windows I'm forced to choose the easier and less frustrating environment to spend time in.

mr_spothawk2• 13 years ago

you're on point about most of the things you have written here... but a few things are worth mentioning:

  1. capture a portion of the screen with: CMD + Shift + 4 
  2. i'm gonna guess you've tried sublime text, but mention it here anyway. 
  3. f*ing finder, how does it work!??!

I don't think I'll ever switch back to Windows, but I have certainly been thinking long and hard about Linux. I spend enough time in the console these days that it's likely to solve all my problems. Thanks for the laughs.

bane7• 13 years ago

Sublime text:

You know what, I keep thinking I've tried it and now looking at it I realize I haven't. And there's both Windows and Mac ports.

edit license: $70. Nope. Not for a text editor. Sorry. I don't care if it's made out of the shavings of a unicorn horn mixed with fairy blood. I've bought high-end audio production software for around that much.

Meh, I'll still check it out the problem is bad enough in OS X that I hate editing text files.

derengel2• 13 years ago

Microsoft has a RDP client for OS X that works great.

bane7• 13 years ago

Looking for a way to RDP (or equivalent) into my mac that's not VNC.

jjoonathan5• 13 years ago

It's funny because you seem to be in exactly my situation, but in reverse (I'm going mac->windows). We have similar types of gripes, maybe we can help each other out.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6973925

A few suggestions:

* Use QuickTime and avoid VLC if possible. QuickTime on mac is awesome. VLC is often worse and seldom better.

* Command+Shift+4 is the only screenshot shortcut you need (toss in ctrl if you want it clipboarded, not in a file). Waaay faster than printscr+paint+paste+crop.

* OSX respects a subset of emacs keyboard movement and editing shortcuts. Ctrl+ae replace home/end. I usually remap capslock to ctrl to make them ergonomic. I like them better (no need to move hands), any way to get them on windows?

* On OSX, the universal installer app lets you list the files installed and view a textual install log. Install scripts are bash scripts. Console.app helps with both system problems and application problems (that's where stdout goes by default). Go there to start your debug journey. Haven't found the equivalent in windows.

* You can debug hangs with a time profile from Activity Monitor (yep, time profile built into the gui) or spindump. Any way to do this on Windows?

* I'm in the opposite situation wrt HFS+ and NTFS but I've had great luck with the commercial solution "Paragon" ($20, worth it). WTF is up with the whole thing where NTFS wants to spend 8 hours checking the disk every time the computer crashes? Apple figured this shit out 16 years ago.

* Command-Shift-T puts TextEdit.app in plain text mode. Hey, it's better than Notepad. What's the killer text editor that's windows only?

How 'bout you list some of those little nitpicky features you like so much from Windows. I've already written my list of things I miss from the mac side (see link, Small Gripes and More Minor Gripes sections). While I'm stuck here I might as well enjoy what it has to offer. Ditto for you, of course.

teek• 13 years ago

What's good about windows:

* Explorer is better than Finder.

* Right click that works

* Start menu + Win7 taskbar is better than OSX Dock/Launchpad (can't comment on Win8 metro but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like it)

* Maximize

* clicking the clock gives you a calendar

I'm not exactly pro-windows but I believe the GP's point is that OSX is not flawless (neither is windows by far) but there's a lot of dumb things in OSX that should've been fixed but weren't because MS did it therefore it is not elegant by definition.

I've been able to make OSX work for me only because I get my real work done on the command line. Finder is nothing but a source of frustration. Also I ought to be able to right-click the volume icon on the menu bar and get the same menu as option-click but I don't...probably because that would be too windows-like.

busterarm17• 13 years ago

The Event Viewer is actually pretty solid for solving problems, once you learn how to read it.

A few of the utilities from the SysInternals team (particularly Process Monitor and Process Explorer) make life a bit better.

Also, WinDbg might be the best debugging suite ever. These are things I will miss leaving Windows but not enough to keep using Windows.

bane7• 13 years ago

Thanks for the advice. I'm going to put it to use!

Nitpicky issues from Windows:

* Registry is an abortion of a bad idea. I remember in Windows 3.x how much better life was dealing with .ini files (if that can be believed). It corrupts all the time, fails in weird ways, has duplicate and triplicate entries for everything and is almost impossible to play around in without risking the entire system.

* CMD.exe needs a complete overhaul. I don't need a very powerful shell, but I'd like to use one that wasn't a fixed width dos prompt from 1983.

* I don't ever want to see a defrag utility again. I'm a firm believer that the more OS utilities there are for something the bigger a problem it is and there are hundreds of defrag utilities for Windows.

* I wish the default apps that shipped with Windows were a hair more powerful.

* Searching for stuff is molasses slow compared to spotlight. I actually install a utility called "everything" on all my machines that solves 80%-90% of my issues with finding things, but it seems stupid that something of equivalent power and speed isn't a built-in app.

* OS X exclusive apps. Most of them are forgettable fixes for brokenness in OS X or similar, but there are a few that are simply awesome and don't have a good (enough) equivalent in Windows. I was just thinking about this subject the other day with the release of OpenEmu.

* System slowdown. Eventually every windows system will slow down to a constant disk grind. There's no real explanation for it, you can tend the system as carefully as you want but it will happen. You can defrag as much as you want etc. But before long you'll have 10 minute boot times and it sucks. I'm trying a new approach this go around doing my day-to-day in a virtualized Windows VM and trying to keep my host system "pure" or for only things that require lots of system resources like games or music production. That way when the VM starts to slow down and piss me off I can just jettison it out an airlock.

* Multiple workspaces/desktop. I mean common! It's so well done in OS X I can't believe there isn't even a basic version of this in Windows by now.

* I hate the libraries, my documents "here's how to organize your shit into folder" noise. I've avoided it since XP and haven't ever been disappointed I did so.

* I hate how various programs will just create folders in my documents

* The installation stuff it messed up and I hate how uninstalling software leaves bits of it all over the system. I can't believe that this isn't better sandboxed by now. For a while I used to use sandboxie to solve this, but it got annoying enough that I've just solved it with VMs now.

* hiding file extension, in favor of just showing them in another column is an abortion of an idea and I turn on file extension as the first thing I do when I setup a new machine.

* windows update loves to restart my machine when I'm in the middle of doing things. There's a fix for it, but I've made a rule not to edit the registry for annoyances.

* sticky keys, until I turn it off.

* UAC still gets annoying. Especially during startup. Some apps, like Everything, still trigger it when I startup, and it's stupid and I want to have an option to stop prompting me about it. There is a resolution, but it's so involved that I can't be bothered.

* right-click context menus either don't populate or they get cluttered. I've never been "happy" with what's in them and there's not a clean way to edit it.

Yoshino2• 13 years ago

I switched in 2005. It took me at least a year before I really felt comfortable and maybe another year before Windows felt harder to use.

Perhaps you already know this, but I found it really hard to use Finder until I stumbled upon the hotkeys, which seem nonsensical when coming from Windows:

  Cmd-Down/Cmd-O - open
  Cmd-Up         - go up
  Cmd-C          - place item on clipboard
  Cmd-V          - copy item on clipboard
  Cmd-Opt-V      - move item on clipboard
  Return/Enter   - rename

In other words, to cut in OS X, you must do a Cmd-C followed by Cmd-Opt-V (as opposed to Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V), the reasoning being that you can choose to copy or move at the destination. I must have used the Mac for 5 or 6 years before I found that out.

I also use an app called Moom to mimic some basic tiling window functions. I have hotkeys bound to move a window to a quarter, third, half, or full screen. This is nice for setting up MacVim and iTerm side-by-side, or two or four Finder windows. Alfred (application launcher) includes some functionality to make working with files easier. Mine is set so Cmd-Opt-\ will pull the currently selected file(s) in the frontmost Finder window, and then you can perform an “Open With…”, or Copy/Move the file (you can just start typing the letters of the destination without browsing to it). Shortcat, Witch, Little Snitch, KeyRemap4MacBook are also fantastic.

As for Page-Up and Page-Down, I tried to remember that Fn-Up is bound to Page-Up, and Fn-Down is bound to Page-Down, and therefore Home/End are bound to Fn-Left/Right. It becomes second nature after enough use.

I agree that some of these things should be built in, but I think any operating system is going to have these kinds of issues. There’s no way to cater to everyone. I just wish some of these modifications to OS X felt a little less… hacky…

(edit: formatting issues)

7stark7• 13 years ago

My experience:

Broken motherboard AND screen on my Macbook air.

Apple replaced both for free, with no AppleCare.

I have a few other stories just like this one.

Guide to Leaving your Mac

Related Stories