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Comment by eknkc | Hacker News Reader

What I'm mostly curious about these posts is, how the heck do you guys switch operating systems that easily? I guess it would work if you are already using Linux or Windows on a Mac hardware but that's gotta be rare.

I mean, hardware is nothing compared to the OS.. I can switch to any other Mac and it would take me a couple hours to be comfortable. That would be it.

If I'm switching to a Dell XPS, I don't really care about the hardware at that point. It's all about software.

I tried doing that a couple months ago when my MBP went bad as Apple doesn't know how to build a keyboard anymore. Bought an XPS 13". I think it has great hardware. Couldn't switch away from macOS. I'd use XPS with macOS over the shitty Macbook Pro any day.

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I'm surprised no one has mentioned keyboard portability. I find it incredibly hard to switch from ctrl on Windows to cmd on Mac. In college I had to switch frequently between Windows and Mac, and it was a nightmare.

Since then, I've committed to only use MacOS on a Macbook and Windows on a real keyboard. That seems to preserve my muscle memory the best. But things can be rough when I use a Windows laptop or a standalone Mac keyboard.

I am the same, but with the Mac command layout burned into my brain (and thumbs). My solution when I switched to Linux from Mac is to make the control key the one next to the space bar, like command is. Luckily it's super easy to swap control and super or alt (depending on Mac or PC layout) using xkbd on Linux. In MATE and KDE it's in the keyboard settings; in GNOME it's in Tweaks (with Xfce you need to use a config file somehow). I think you can do the same on Windows with autohotkey but I haven't tried.

Replying because I can't edit: for anyone googling, it's XKB (no D).

Weird. I just switched the command to the outermost key and alt/ctrl with each other and had no issues with it.

Fixed some wrist pain I was having though from cmd-tabbing with the default layout!

When I was using an MBP and a Windows desktop, I got a gaming keyboard that let you remap the keys. I swapped the keycaps on the keyboard so that the Control key was where the Command key would be. Of course, this doesn't help if you're using a laptop, but my desktop keyboard remained that way for a while, even after I left OSX on the laptop side.

With respect to Windows on the Macbook Pro, when I used Windows VMs, I would go to the VM preferences and swap the command key mappings so that I could continue using my muscle memory.

I find the Mac keyboards to be garbage for two reasons, the command key is awkward and the tactile feel is subpar

> the command key is awkward

How do you usually try to press the command key? If you're going for it with anything other than your thumb, you're doing it wrong. Note that Apple keyboards often have narrower spacebars than PC keyboards, so the command key is closer to the center of the keyboard (and closer to your thumb) than the alt key on a standard PC keyboard.

I definitely prefer the thumb (CMD, OSX) over the pinky (CTRL, Windows). It feels more ergonomic, and I'm curious how universal that feeling is.

My solution is to map Ctrl to CapsLock on Windows and Cmd to CapsLock on MacOS. Not perfect by any means but seems to be an ok compromise muscle-memory wise.

Yup! Then I just get confused when I use someone else's computer, but all of mine are fine (Windows, Linux, Mac)

Karabiner is a great app.

And AutoHotKey to go the other way on Windows

I use a windows desktop and a MacBook. Apart from some hiccups in the first day of using both, I never make mistakes confusing the two keys now.

I seem to be switching based on the type of keyboard I'm using. Whenever I open bootcamp I have to consciously remember to use ctrl not cmd.

At o e point I was switching between Windows and macOS computers on a daily basis. One way to ease the pain of control vs command is to remap your caps lock key to command in macOS and to control in Windows.

I have my Macbook at work, opposite to my Dell work laptop. I just mode switch and use one key on one machine and the other key on the other.

Can't speak for everyone, but I've always been a polyglot on OSes. I'm usually either remoted into a Linux box from a Mac, remoted into a Linux box from Windows, remoted into Windows from a Mac, or several of those at once.

Pretty much all the software I use is cross-platform, and even Windows is a fairly acceptable Unix nowadays, so the biggest transitioning problem I have is keeping track of which modifier keys to use for my keyboard shortcuts.

Ditto; besides Final Cut Pro, Photos, and Sequel Pro, most apps I use on macOS work as well (or nearly so) under Windows.

Agreed that the worst thing is the muscle memory for shortcuts; my pinkie always needs a few hours before it starts to remember which keyboard layout I'm using.

I've heard that the Lightroom and Photoshop experience is better overall on Windows now than Mac. I'm sticking with my 2015 MBP for now, but was wondering if anyone could comment on this? I've seen comments elsewhere about Adobe focusing on Windows more, but I've not been able to find details or a good comparison.

I could go either way; I actually think LR and PS have become harder to use on either platform over the years. But you can tune a high-end PC a little better to get more performance out of both on Windows.

Aperture used to be one of the two _major_ draws of macOS over Windows for me, but Apple really burned that bridge when they dumped Aperture—arguably the best RAW photography workflow tool on the market—and pushed towards Photos, which lacked about 50% of the features that made Aperture amazing (Loupe, star rating, workflows, UI, shortcuts, etc.).

Exactly. I've always bounced between OSes over my career. Switching between them is not that hard at all - just need to mentally page in the key modifiers, shell commands, and other little idioms and pretty quickly I'm running along working.

In my experience I've found inflexibility with respect to OS to be a warning sign that usually means someone isn't going to work well long term as a flexible, open-minded team member. Signs of that at interview time usually push me pretty quickly in a 'no' direction.

>In my experience I've found inflexibility with respect to OS to be a warning sign that usually means someone isn't going to work well long term as a flexible, open-minded team member.

Come on. Someone can be an excellent dev but be made much more efficient by their chosen tools/environment.

Come do some public sector work for a while - you'll see what inflexibility really looks like.

I've been working on a mac after being a long time windows user, and as you say, most of the software I use is cross-platform. The biggest problem is modifier keys, and I still prefer how windows does window management (oh, and finder is garbage).

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I really don't see what anyone likes about Macs or macOS, I bought a rMBP a few years back and it's to this date one of the worst purchases of my life, I hate the touchpad (the clicking thing is much slower than tapping), I hate the keyboard (feels really cheap) and macOS too, mostly due to Finder and Objective C being absolute garbage like nothing else I've seen. Wound up bootcamping it and giving it to my brother.

You're definitely not alone. I agree with everything you said. I'll add that MacOS is like a weird, slow toy rather than a serious work environment. Everyone uses homebrew to do development but that's just a painfully slow version of package managers that have existed on Linux for decades. It might "just work", but it doesn't work at all the way I want it to.

> the clicking thing is much slower than tapping

That has nothing to do with Macs vs PCs. Everything with a touchpad gives you a tap to click option, and if you didn't spend enough time with a Mac to realize this then you can't really make a fair assessment of the platform in any way other than hostile first impressions.

Defaults are very important in any UI. An OS that prides itself on usability should have the best default.

Yes, but you can't assume that having tap to click enabled by default is the best default for the general public. It's way too easy for that to lead to a ton of stray clicks for anyone with impaired sensation or dexterity in their fingers. Apple very often likes to err on the side of making things simpler and more accessible by default while keeping the more powerful features hidden where power users can find them and where they won't distract your grandma. This can be a bit annoying at times for power users, but since those features are available to be turned on it's just a momentary annoyance when you're first setting up a new machine.

Agreed, but at least one person came off with a bad experience. That anecdote is worth only that much. But it does indicate a problem.

You can't please everyone, and the people who are looking for things to complain about are pretty low on the list of who you should be trying to please.

I am not looking for things to complain about. And I doubt the parent was too. It's a genuine issue. As far as not being able to please everyone, how many old people are using macbook pros? Is that number more than the number of regular users who prefer a better touchpad?

It might be annoying for a regular user to have that disabled until they figure out how to enable that, it could be literally unusable for a less capable user to have touch to click enabled. If you're not savvy enough to know that you might be able to disable it, you're probably also unsavvy enough that spurious clicks are disastrous, because you aren't comfortable enough to undo things.

I think they may have thought about this a little bit before making their default decisions.

A lot of us think it is the best. I've never liked tap-to-click; I tried it again a year or so ago when my trackpad button went out, and decided it was indeed unusable — too many unintended clicks. (I replaced the trackpad.)

Anyway, "the clicking thing is much slower than tapping" is just not true if you're used to clicking.

I figured I'd get used to it eventually, so I didn't want to just up and change what seemed like it should have been a good default, what you're suggesting would mean basically turning off a hardware "feature". In the end it just wasn't for me and I didn't accept it until I had basically switched to using my desktop machine full time.

I typically give things like this their fair shot - some of them I get used to, like Windows switching to grouped single icons without titles... I hated it at first, but eventually it made some sense to me. Only when I've absolutely given up on them do I bother changing settings.

I try my best not to let those negative first impressions stick, to give them a real shot, and this was part of the machine I'd purchased, I figured I better try it...

> what you're suggesting would mean basically turning off a hardware "feature".

Enabling tap to click does not disable the mechanical or haptic click mechanisms, nor does it disable any other functionality.

> the clicking thing is much slower than tapping

System Preferences -> Trackpad -> Tap To Click

Are you sure you had a Mac because this isn't hard to find.

> Objective C

Why are you using it ? Swift has been the default and its a fantastic language.

I used Linux for everything in college, only switching to Mac when it became clear to me that it was a nicer laptop that had enough Unix for me to get by. Going back the other way, there are a few things Mac OS has that I like, but my day-to-day is IntelliJ, Emacs, Firefox and a terminal, so it's not that big of a problem.

I'll probably never be totally Apple-free. I leave the door open for them to make a decent developer laptop again. And I don't have compelling replacements for, or the money to go down the rabbit hole all at once, for the iPhones, Apple TV, iPads etc. and figure out what to do about my photos and music. But Apple got me by wooing me as a developer. Now that I'm on Linux full-time at home, I can start thinking about how I'd like to solve those problems, where before I wasn't really giving it any thought. Apple should be worried, because we are a bell weather, and you can't expect a platform to thrive that developers despise.

I recently switched from a 2015 MacBook Pro to a Dell XPS 15" 9570 running Fedora + Cinnamon

The following shifts Ctrl/Win/Alt one to the left:

    clear control
    clear mod4
    clear mod1
    
    keycode 37 = Super_L
    keycode 133 = Alt_L Meta_L
    keycode 64 = Control_L
    
    add control = Control_L Control_R
    add mod4 = Super_L
    add mod1 = Alt_L Alt_R Meta_L

Add this to `~/.Xmodmap`, add it to autorun (KDE and Cinnamon will autostart, Gnome needs a kick in the pants): `xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap`

You can't use this on Wayland, has to be on X11, which is fine with me because Wayland has other issues.

Now you can copy/paste/cut/etc using Alt key (which is now mapped to Ctrl).

Can I ask you what is other issues when you use xps 9570 with Wayland?

It takes a few hours for me to switch to any OS. Most of my tools are not OS dependent like (vim, PyCharm, Chrome/Firefox, Sublime), others are default ones (I do not really care which shell script is there or which tool to use to read my emails or store passwords, there are a lot of alternatives)

I guess if you do video editing or staff like that XPS or any other machine is not an option over MBP

A whole lot of people do everything on the web. They don't even need a laptop at all really because they don't need real applications. Any web kiosk would do. If they're a web developer they might also want an SSH client.

I'm not a Mac user or a Linux user. I'm a Unix-like user, and pretty much everything else is gravy. Switching from iTerm2 to Tilix doesn't faze me; zsh still works the same. Literally the only apps I use that are Mac-constrained are Logic Pro X (I have a dedicated machine for that) and the occasional Adobe app--and I dual-boot my desktop and my primary laptop with Windows, so I care much less about that there, too.

Oh, and Keynote is nice, but web Keynote is fine for my purposes. But everything I use for my actual job is either a web app (LucidChart, etc.) or is eminently portable (Unix tools, VSCode, etc.).

What MacOS software do you miss?

I use MacOS, Linux and Windows daily (less often Windows these days). The only feature I really miss on other OS's is spotlight, though I can kind of replace it with rofi in Linux world. Also, in my experience the ecosystem of Linux and Windows software is much larger than that of MacOS. Not to mention Mac software is sold at a premium (even things as simple as tab switching or note taking programs).

I still love Macs, but for me it's mostly the hardware (screen, touch pad, etc).

GNOME and KDE have builtin functionality that is pretty close to Spotlight. But from your comment I'm guessing you are using a more minimalistic window manager.

For me, Quick Look (more of a feature than standalone software). I'm using a Windows app[0] which does a good enough job, but without that I'd honestly use my PC even less than I do now.

Beyond that, not having iMessage is a loss. Pages, Keynote, & Numbers are free on Mac, and they're so much nicer to use than LibreOffice IMO.

[0]https://github.com/xupefei/QuickLook

iMessages for is a big deal for me too. Almost everything else is manageable for me on windows for the most part. For me, this is the one thing that is annoying to not have.

Everyone is different, bug biggest thing I missed was Transmit, as I do a lot with s3. Most of the Linux options seemed lacking in various ways, so I found myself using command line more, which gets the geek in me going, but wasn't as efficient.

I also use Git Tower. Again, command line is of course an option, but I'm more efficient with a UI. Git Kraken isn't bad, but I ran into some weird permissions issues the last time I used it, so I ended up relying on VS Code's git client more.

Check out Wox for a Spotlight replacement on Windows: https://github.com/Wox-launcher/Wox

+1 for Wox. Listary is another option http://www.listary.com/

For me, most of the software I use is webapps these days (or natively wrapped webapps like VS Code), so the base OS doesn't make a big difference to me. The one exception is requiring a Unix-style terminal, which Windows (mostly) does these days.

That said, I have to work on iOS every now and then, and Apple's tight grip on that toolchain means I'm stuck with a Mac no matter what. If not I'd seriously be considering a laptop like this Dell or a Surface Book next.

A lot of us use multiple environments every single day. Linux/Unix/Windows for a variety of server environments, MacOS for daily life / photo editing / web dev / IOS dev, Linux for web development, Windows for gaming. Switching between them isn't really much of an issue at this point, unless you're trying to literally move your entire life to a new environment. I use each for their suitable tasks.

I have both Mac and Windows 10 running simultaneously in my office at home and I keep getting Ctrl-W and Cmd-W confused when I try to close a browser tab. Maybe I'll get used to it eventually. I hope so.

Why does Mac os even have Ctrl? Why not do everything with Cmd? The Ctrl key is really unused on Mac.

I'm guessing you don't use the command line much.

I use it all the time! Why would you think so?

You asked about the control key. Have you ever used "control-c" or "control-d" from a Unix command line?

Yeah. Of course. And that's what I was referring to. There is no reason for a separate cmd key to exist. Some stuff is switched to cmd (copy, paste, select all) and other stuff stays with ctrl (ctrl+c, ctrl+d). See now I can't even remember how to close a tab in chrome. Is that cmd+w or ctrl+w? All of this is really arbitrary.

Yes, but you originally said there was no reason for a control key to exist.

The modifiers serve two different purposes: control+something is sent to the remote host, cmd+something is handled by the application.

So if I run a long running grep and terminate it using Ctrl+c, which remote host am I sending the command to?

It would be sent to whatever process is attached to the current pseudo terminal. (When I said "remote" I was more referring to the SSH scenario, but the mechanism is the same...)

Ok, so that means the remote vs local logic doesn't apply. In fact none does. The demarcations are arbitrary. Cmd is randomly used and ctrl is randomly used. Even if there is a remote vs local rule, why not make ctrl do something for local programs? Do you use a separate keyboard for your ssh and another one for email? No. The keys switch contexts according to the active program.

Unix programs use it quite frequently. Photoshop requires multiple modifier keys, you can't get away with just a single modifier because there are too many keyboard shortcuts.

> I guess it would work if you are already using Linux or Windows on a Mac hardware but that's gotta be rare.

I ran Linux on my MBP up until the touchbar nonsense, then I switched to a Dell XPS with Ubuntu preinstalled. The experience has been great, probably better hardware support under Linux than on the Mac.

Quoting what I read somewhere else, people in both camps just greatly exaggerate the difference between Linux and MacOS. I've been using both for a couple of years and this year I made the full switch to Arch Linux + i3 on a Carbon X1.

Wonderful experience so far. Pretty much the only two things I miss are the wonderful built-in multi-language dictionary and good HiDPI support. That's it. In other aspects it has been much better than MacOS for a developer. Programs even crash much less frequently as well.

I'm so glad you mentioned this, I find that when I have to switch back and forth between mac and windows, I struggle with muscle memory switching from ctrl to cmd, and on mac I always struggled to figure out which window is my active window.

Such tiny things, but it's one of the things that has kept me on windows (even though I used a mac most of the time for the past two years).

Some of my co-workers switch between mac, windows & linux without skipping a beat.

Karabinder (Macos) and AutoHotKey (Windows) can help unify whichever you prefer on the other. Linux has Autokey.

> how the heck do you guys switch operating systems that easily?

My answer to this is, use cross-platform software as much as possible and avoid anything platform-specific (especially if dealing with Windows or MacOS). I use a Mac at work and a Linux (with KDE) at home, and hardly even notice the switch between these two environments. A terminal is a terminal, and a browser is a browser...

> If I'm switching to a Dell XPS, I don't really care about the hardware at that point. It's all about software.

Switch to cross platform software alternatives before you switch, or don't get locked in in first place. This way you just replicate your environment on the new platform for the most part.

Web-based applications will all be the same, CLI programs will mostly be the same between any nix operations system, homebrew is conceptually not that different from any other package manager. Most IDEs are very portable. What's the main hurdle in switching from macOS to any other nix?

I switch between all three major OSs on a regular basis. With so much of our software in the cloud it's not really an issue. The funny thing is that each OS has some apps that you really miss on the other ones. But it's not that onesided and you can be productive on any of them.

It didn't take me much to adjust to Ubuntu (Mac user for 10 years). Terminal and apps (Sublime) are the same, browser is the same, etc.

I did change some shortcuts so that run=cmd+shift+g instead of alt+f2 and f4 to work like Mac OS but that's it really.

I think these days we spend 50% of our time in web apps which are OS independent. And a lot of the rest (for developers) is in cross-platform editors with customizable keybindings.

I use both macOS and Ubuntu every day and have no issues switching.

Practice, really. You learn how to do X. You adapt to ~X not being quite X, and later X not being quite ~X. You learn what Xs you care about. You learn what causes ~X to not be X; afterwards ~Y makes more sense.

Most stuff I use is the same across OSes. Chrome, Slack, IntelliJ, VS Code. I use WSL on Windows 10 to get my linux command line and then terminal is about as good as any other.

I switch between Windows and Linux all day long. I use my wife's Mac fairly regularly too. It's not that hard.

Perhaps there's a market for a PC OEM about making their laptop convenient to convert into a Hackintosh.

I don't think any hardware manufacturer will touch Hackintoshing; previous company in that space (Psystar) was sued out of existence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psystar_Corporation

Obviously if a company isn't selling product with OSX installed it's different, but any marketing that suggests it would likely be problematic. Besides, the community has done a pretty good job of identifying compatible hardware

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

They don't have to make it public knowledge... it's just, behind the scenes, they try to prioritize designs that are easily Hackintoshable

The difference is Psystar:

1) Was kind of a scam

2) Sold computers with OS X already installed

2 is the real violation that got them sued. Obviously it's legal to sell computers that are compatible with OS X. Selling them with OS X installed in violation of Apple's EULA is a good way to end up in court.

I literally acknowledged this point:

> Obviously if a company isn't selling product with OSX installed it's different

> Obviously it's legal to sell computers that are compatible with OS X

Never said it wasn't. Only that most companies wouldn't market their product's alternative illegal uses, as that puts them in a gray area. (Almost every product can be used for illegal purposes after all)

Get Linux Mint with Cinnamon, install MacBuntu and Docky, enjoy a fluid macOS UI experience on Linux.

shell, emacs, chrome. What else do you need?

Vim and Firefox :P

I agree. I've used windows and Linux all my life and macos absolutely kills my productivity. Simple stuff I take for granted in a UI are not present or hidden away. I can imagine similar pain for somebody coming from macos to windows. However I feel that it is possible to train yourself again. I'd only do that as a last resort though.

I use free software and that generally is available anywhere. Freedom is great.

I nuked MacOS from my 2013 MacBook the day I bought it (installed Windows and formatted the SSD).

Best computer I've ever owned. Like a fine watch.

You don't need Bootcamp anymore and a USB Windows 10 install takes minutes.

MacOS is abandonware at this point, IMO.

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