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Comment by _red | Hacker News Reader

I'm much in the same boat as you (haven't built a hackintosh but contemplating).

Its more than just being "lax" though, their product vision has fundamentally changed under Cook. What they've done to the MacMini is a perfect example:

Around 2013/14 they saw that Mac Mini's were becoming powerful enough to start syphoning off market from Mac Pros (not in video world, but in music production world). So, Cook did what "operation types" do...hobbled the MacMini and released a slew of upgraded iMacs to reach a higher price point.

The days are gone where Apple designs "the best product possible", now its largely devices to tick boxes in a marketing feature matrix. While operationally it seems clever -- even logical -- it does ultimately undermine the brand long-term.

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Oh, the mini...

I've got the quad-core, dual drive 2012 mini doing server duties. Because CPUs haven't advanced that much since then, it still keeps up pretty well. Even about to turn it into a low-end gaming box for the kids with an eGPU (works via patching the eGPU detection to allow original Thunderbolt and not just TB3). I'll be very sad when it dies.

A modern version of that Mac with better integrated graphics would be fantastic, but as your post says... that would eat too much into the Mac Pro and iMac sales. Blergh.

Wuldn't it be easier to just instal linux then?

Yeah, but then you have to use Linux.

That's why I use Windows. It's got better file and window management than Mac, more software, more hardware and more hooks to let me do what I want.

Not only that - it's way, way easier to setup my dev tools for things like Node.js, Python and Golang... I just run a couple of graphical installers and I'm done. On my Macs, I have to look up the secret incantations every time and do all sorts of configuration to make the Macintosh OS even usable.

> Node.js

I'm not sure where your downloading your software, as there is (and has been for at least the last 4 years) a graphical installer on the downloads page for osx:

https://nodejs.org/en/download/

Maybe I just haven't paid enough attention when doing this, but nearly every repository of every package for node has the default instructions for *nix command line. One of my most used packages is `n`, and the first line after the description is

"Unfortunately n is not supported on Windows yet"

It's main alternative, `nvm` also has:

"Note: nvm does not support Windows"

and suggests an alternative specifically named `nvm-windows`. When you have to specify the operating system in the name, it's typically the "off-brand".

I bet you don’t use the graphical installer on your Mac though do you?

Why is that? What do you do instead?

> I bet you don’t use the graphical installer on your Mac though do you?

Your mind reading skills are terrible. I'm not sure who or what gave you that impression.

EDIT:

Again, from the node site, clicking on install with package manager, both windows and osx lead off with "simply download the installer" before listing alternatives.

https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#macos

https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#windows

OK fine. I see a lot of people using homebrew.

What about python? You have to replace the built-in one don’t you?

> OK fine. I see a lot of people using homebrew.

Its been the defacto standard for package management for a while, and it works on top of the base OS thanks to /usr/local having priority in $PATH

> What about python? You have to replace the built-in one don’t you?

If Python 2.7.10 doesn't suit your needs, yes.

$ /usr/bin/python --version Python 2.7.10

$ /usr/local/bin/python2 --version Python 2.7.15

$ /usr/local/bin/python3 --version Python 3.6.5

Same with Bash:

With Python it is a bit annoying with variables but other than that not a big deal. I started out with Bash v2 so that's my reference point. Sometimes its annoying for portability reasons.

Rumor is Apple doesn't like GPLv3. I don't see it as a big problem but that is thanks to the efforts of Homebrew package maintainers.

> Its been the defacto standard for package management

While I agree that it's a standard for package management, I don't think that using a package manager is the defacto standard. I've yet to see any onboarding docs that use brew install, for the reasons I stated parallel to your comment.

> I see a lot of people using homebrew.

The major reason I don't use homebrew and don't recommend it is because it's an absolute pain to use a version manager due to where brew stores its binary files.

I don't use python very frequently, so I don't really think much about it much when installing. I'm pretty sure I installed it with anaconda, but can't remember. As I mentioned above I doubt I used brew for the same reason.

I typically only use brew for installing linux commands that are absent from osx or for one-off uses of something random. Looking at my brew list, it's things like phantomjs or rethinkdb. I'll uninstall them with brew and use their installer if I actually end up using them.

I don't take issue with someone liking windows. But this reads like it was written by someone technically challenged - which is probably why you've been down voted

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My Macs have all crashed more than my beautiful and stable self-built Windows boxes and just about every time I get in front of one of my Macs, I have to restart it for updates.

I’m pretty meh about telemetry. At the basic level where I have it set it just sends them some information about my drivers. Big whoop.

Speaking of clicking though, I can actually operate the entire Windows OS with just the keyboard. You could try to do the same thing on a Mac but it doesn’t really work very well. For instance, open a window from one of your menu bar utilities and then switch away from it with the keyboard. Try switching back. With Apples window management you can’t do it unless you replace it with something better.

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