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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

> Someone at Apple really seems to believe in pain as a motivator.

I think they simply believe they're large enough player to make such calls unilaterally, and that the rest of the industry will follow. And I fear they might be right - such decisions enter into the calculations of more "commoditized" vendors like peripheral manufacturers when they design next iterations of their products.

I mean, that's why removing the headphone jack is such a big deal even for people not using iPhones. Not just because we sympathize with iPhone owners - but because Apple is big enough to make this stupidity a new standard everywhere.

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Recently switched to Manjaro Deepin operating system. Everything looks nice and quite polished once inside the OS. I have a great pull down terminal. I can snap windows side by side. Almost everything is configurable without digging into configuration files. It's a rolling release so you don't get stuck on a particular version of a package until the next major release. You get the latest stable release of all software monthly or sooner using the built in package manager. Most of my development tools I install using the package manager. Git, docker, docker-compose, vitualbox, openjdk, node, go, python, (dont use pip use pacman to install python packages), (sdkman for kotlin, gradle and maven), visual studio code, postman,(dbeaver as gui for SQL, Cassandra, mongo, big table, redis, neo4j). Download and install intellij and sublime. WPS office is better than Microsoft Office in my opinion. There's also the AUR repository which are community built packages that can also be enabled in the package manager settings. Everything is really stable. Built in screen recorder and screenshots with annotations. You can map your keys to work like a Mac or a Windows computer even on a Mac. The latest Gimp is actually really good (not yet available on macos). There's also Krita for image editing but doesn't handle large PSD files well. Overall the development experience is much less frustrating and docker runs natively which means everything is much faster. I've had a lot of luck running music production DAW and VSTs and games under Wine. There's a great guide on the techonia website about how to dual boot Manjaro Deepin safely on a MacBook Pro. The best part is I can have this environment on any computer so I can have the latest intel processor if I want and the OS won't make my company issued external monitor look like crap. Unfortunately Apple runs more like a fashion company than a technology company. Making people feel compelled to buy the latest product.

Attempting take this idea seriously, I just catalogued apps I have open right now that I know/suspect have no good equivalent on Linux:

  * Safari - might seem unnecessary, but it's a lot of the web
  * Discord - I hear they have a Linux version in alpha, but...alpha
  * iTerm - best there is after years, why the hell can't Linux win at this?!
  * 1Password - guess I use the CLI? ugh.
  * iTunes - largely used for watching movies
  * Messages - This is surprisingly nice to have on the desktop
  * Microsoft Outlook - guess you are forced to use the web client
  * Xcode - heh

Stuff I didn't expect to see but was pleasantly surprised to see:

  * Spotify
  * Hipchat
  * Zoom
  * Skype

I could live without Discord, Messages, Safari, iTunes and Outlook if I got motivated (Outlook I have to have, but the web client is halfway decent). That leaves Xcode, iTerm and 1Password as dealbreakers. We know one of those isn't going to change!

I'm of course not including the apps I use less often but really like when I need them, like Lightroom, Photoshop, Illustrator, Keynote, Excel/Numbers, OmniGraffle, Sketch, and Things.

I think Linux is safe from me, except as the system I have next to my daily driver, and which I use for Windows (when I need to look at something there) and dual boot for Tensorflow.

For passwords I use enpass. It stores and encrypts passwords in your own personal cloud storage account e.g. Dropbox Google drive. Desktop version is free. Mobile version has a once off fee to buy the app.

For office I use WPS office (word/excel/power point). It has tabs for documents and I have never had document compatibility issues (like I have had with libre office). I believe office 2013 runs under Wine too if you really need office.

I prefer the web clients for email anyway.

I use wavebox to integrate web based chat and email with the operating system for notifications.

Safari uses WebKit so it's very similar to the engine chrome uses - but Google forked at some point.

Deepin Terminal is an amazing terminal.

Can't help you with Xcode unless you switch programming languages :)

It would be great if Adobe released Linux versions of their products.

I don't do much video editing but I think there are good options on Linux.

Try it as a challenge I think you might be pleasantly surprised - if you use all the above apps how far Linux has come. Most of these apps work on Mac as well so you may find a few new good tools.

I have been using Discord on Ubuntu for some time without experiencing any problems.

1Password 4 runs fine on Wine (the Windows version, of course).

Okay, I'll take a stab at this:

Safari - either Google Chrome or Chromium (depending on how open you like things) can keep pace with Safari in terms of general usability and extension ecosystem. At worst I think you'd find the experience on par, but when I owned a Mac, I found Google Chrome to be more performant than Safari on the regular, and its Linux build is just as quick. A lot of Linux folks recommend Firefox as well but I still am not convinced it beats Chrome in terms of out-of-the-box magical "Just Works" factor.

Discord - The client may be alpha, but this works just fine honestly. I've never had a problem. This is largely because the desktop app is Electron based, so it's running on a web browser anyway; it's very, very cross platform friendly. Slack too, if that's your thing.

iTerm - There are MANY good terminal clients for Linux. I personally use Terminator, which I find has a good balance of power features and stability. I particularly enjoy its terminal broadcasting implementation, but I'm in the unusual position of working on many parallel servers in tandem during my day job, so this feature is very important to me.

iTunes - If it's just for movie watching, I've found VLC to be perfectly servicable. mPlayer is also quite popular and there are many frontends.

Messages, Outlook - Here you've got a fair point. Outlook in particular is a pain point; there are workarounds to get it working in Thunderbird and Evolution, but they're just that - workarounds. Anything beyond basic email will need the web app; fortunately the web app isn't _terrible_, but yeah. Fair complaint.

Xcode - If your goal is to build Mac / iOS apps, there is no substitute thanks to Apple's EULA. For everything else, pick your poison; there are more code editors and IDEs on Linux than one can count, many of them excellent. Personally I'm happy with Sublime Text (paid, worth every penny) and a Terminator window, but I hear VSCode is also excellent, which is odd considering that's a Microsoft endeavor. (Now if we could just get them to port Outlook...)

> Google Chrome or Chromium (depending on how open you like things) can keep pace with Safari in terms of general usability and extension ecosystem

Google Chrome's extension ecosystem is undoubtably far, far ahead of what Safari has. As for usability, and…

> I found Google Chrome to be more performant than Safari on the regular

People use Safari because it integrates so well with macOS, is performant, and doesn't kill resources (CPU, RAM, battery, you name it). No other browser comes close, even on other platforms. Apple's just spent too much time here optimizing their browser that nobody else can match it (maybe Edge on Windows?).

> There are MANY good terminal clients for Linux.

iTerm just has everything and the kitchen sink. Like, it has some flaws, but it just does so many things that I haven't seen any other emulator do. Plus the author is really smart (he's at the top of the comments currently, if you want to check his stuff out)

> Xcode

Xcode can be surprisingly nice for C/C++ development, when it decides it wants to work.

> I haven't seen any other emulator do

Check back with Konsole.

I don't think I know all features, but just the things I know it does, because I use them:

- Tabs, obviously. Movable between windows, too.

- Arbitrary in-window splitting (tiling)

- Monitors

- Broadcasting

- Signals

- Profiles, obviously.

- Copy stuff as HTML & export whole scrollback as HTML and also print it / convert to PDF

- Can basically configure everything

Also peep Tilix. It's like the GTK answer to Konsole: super configurable yet accessible, with a sharp GUI. I think its arguably better than Konsole, except it doesn't scale as well as Konsole in Plasma (Plasma scaling is wretched).

Give QT Creator a try. It's really a nice integrated C/C++ dev environment. Plus it's entirely cross-platform.

> (maybe Edge on Windows?)

Edge feels like poor man's Safari. However the rest of Mac OS (in terms of GUI, not underlying OS) feels like poor man's Windows. :D

Their Safari comment implies the need isn't due to a preference for Chrome, but rather for front-end testing. So yes, Chrome might make a fine daily driver, but those of us who have to occasionally code for the web need access to all of these browsers.

Frankly, no. If you (as a user) choose to use a platform-specific browser then that's your problem.

Even IE will at least provide a free VM image these days.

> Outlook in particular is a pain point

That depends on the environment. I assume you're talking about Outlook as a frontend for an enterprise Exchange setup?

If your mail server admin configures IMAP and SMTP correctly, it's a breeze to get it set up (you will need SSL though). Use "DOMAIN\user.name" as username together with your AD password (and for team/shared mailboxes, use DOMAIN\user.name\mailbox.name, where mailbox.name is the cn or sAMAccountName attribute of the mailbox AD entry). Thunderbird can handle everyday emailing as well as responding to calendar events that way; I'm not sure about integrating "real" calendar stuff. Auto-completion of mail addresses must be done separately in Thunderbird, you'll need the AD structure information (root DN, plus the DN of your AD account so you can log in).

What you'll miss is forwarding rules access, but that can be done via webmail if the need arises.

Safari and iTunes?!

I recently switched my primary machine to Linux and was pleasantly surprised to learn that 1Password has a web version (which does require a subscription) and the 1Password X extension for Chrome and Firefox to go with that.

The idea of swapping away from macOS seems more enticing by the day, given the development directions of macOS (this is just one of the many nails; the main one is that Apple is likely going to merge macOS with iOS [or the other way around]).

Discord works perfectly fine in a web browser. IIRC the platform-specific clients are just running a web browser themselves. Would rather use PWA then.

As for iTerm, you don't need that when you use i3 but perhaps you can specify the features you need.

1Password, I recommend Bitwarden. Cheaper, open source, you can even run an open source backend.

Messages, no idea why you want that. I only use WhatsApp for IM, and even that is just a web app.

For development I recommend Sublime Text. You can use it for free, though I did buy it (as someone else commented; worth every penny).

Skype for Linux is actually fallen behind to the other ports. Though I don't use Skype I heard complaints about that.

I made the switch to Linux (Netrunner Rolling with KDE) in the last year and have not looked back. It is definitely not for everyone as some things just have no good replacements, but it suits all my needs.

I do a ton of things in the browser, love the availability of a good Terminal at my fingertips (same as macOS), develop webapps and love the simple availability of a full local web server stack to develop on and so on. I use LibreOffice for my very few "Office" needs. I use Firefox as my primary browser (moved away from Chrome to Firefox before I made the switch to Linux). I use Visual Studio Code as my primary editor. I use Krita for my very few photo editing needs - simple stuff really like cropping or color picking. That's about it. Everything else happens in the Browser or on the command line.

As Netrunner is a derivative of Manjaro and thus Arch it's very simple to access a plethora of packages from their AUR system. It's like Brew on steroids.

Have been really happy with the switch!

USB-C still hasn’t arrived as the definitive standard.

Apple isn’t quite big enough to force an industry change in personal computers.

USB-C clearly is the way forward.

The USB-C only Mac Book was released 3 years ago.

PC’s have been slowly adopting it. Give it a couple of more years.

I'm not sure. As more devices and peripherals have gained USB-C, lots of horror stories of chargers frying devices and other catastrophic failures have shown up. This isn't my wheelhouse, but just from the reading I've done, it sounds like USB-C is a difficult-to-implement standard and that peripheral makers are more interested in getting something out the door quickly and cheaply. With the amount of power that USB-C can drive, this is risky.

If the end result is that you can't tell if plugging into your friend's charger is going to blow up your phone (or video game console), I think USB-C is going to fall apart.

Cheap chargers and cables that aren't compliant are not unique to USB-C, and why we have things like UL. There are a lot of people using quite frankly dangerous USB-A chargers for their cell phones because they found them obnoxiously cheap.

If you want to use usb 3.1 gen 2 speeds, you pretty much have to use Type C. The only other alternative is a full usb type a connector or the awkward micro b connector (which is rate).

Doesn't almost every external HD have micro B?

Actually Apple is definitely big enough to force change—they've done it multiple times in the past. Apple helped push the original USB standard into common use with the original iMac. Obviously it would have happened eventually, but the iMac made the transition occur much faster than it would have otherwise.

The problem with the USB-C standard is that USB-A now transcends far beyond the personal computer industry. It's now a power adapter standard for mobile phones and all sorts of gizmos, gadgets and accessories for the home and car. USB-A isn't going anywhere for a long time.

> Apple helped push the original USB standard into common use with the original iMac.

I don't think that's true. USB became ubiquitous because literally every PC included it after 1998. Yes, it might have helped that USB also worked with Macs, unlike previous connectors.

The USB port did start appearing on some PCs before the iMac—largely because Intel put it in its chipsets—but it was practically abandonware with precious few peripherals prior to the iMac. When the flood of peripherals did arrive, many of them were styled with translucent cables and casings to match the iMac, even when sold for Windows PCs.

> Actually Apple is definitely big enough to force change—they've done it multiple times in the past.

In many cases it's arguable whether Apple forced a change or it was a case of Apple "skating where the puck is going" and doing something that was inevitably going to happen given time.

I conceded as much in the paragraph you quoted from. What Apple did is force the market to move faster that it would have otherwise.[0]

Similarly, if Tesla never existed the electric car would still have been an inevitability. Perhaps it would have taken another decade to emerge. Perhaps two decades. But it would have eventually. On electric propulsion, Tesla is most definitely just "skating where the puck is going."

In both cases—Tesla and Apple—they're not just skating where the puck is going, they're also in control of the puck, even if only a little bit.

[0] And thinking about it further, I shouldn't have conceded the assumption that USB's dominance was inevitable. It seems that way in hindsight but was it really? It could have fizzled like Firewire. It is entirely possible that new incremental standards—perhaps an ultra-fast nine pin serial port protocol—could have filled the gap before another connector emerged to dominate.

I'd argue it is both. Apple isn't going to convince an industry to move to a closed standard, however they may accelerate the move to new open standards. For instance, moving away from floppy disks to compact disk media, and moving from serial/parallel/PS2 ports to USB.

Often these technologies are stuck until there is a first big adopter. Now Google, Apple Macs, and most of Android is behind USB-C for instance, there will be a lot more accessories that use it. Right now IMHO it is being held back mostly by cost - micro-usb and an A to micro-B cable are still the cheapest parts.

The funny thing is that with MacOs, they're NOT a big player at all..

With MacOS, I believe, they still know they're the best. As much as I'd want to move away from Apple because of their recent maneuvers, there's nothing that comes close to MacOS - it just works great. Users will see more appreciation if other Unix-like operating systems will catch up on their GUI. Once a BSD or Linux (I'd really want it to be a BSD!) gets a great UI, I'm switching.

GNOME is great, I personally like it as much as macOS. Try running it on Fedora. The latest Ubuntu also ships GNOME by default but I haven't tried it and I'm not sure if it's a tweaked version (if it's tweaked it's surely for the worse).

Gnome really is great. It's very simple though. If you transition to a search based launcher then you won't go back.

Try out Deepin - I prefer it to any gui. I hear good things about the latest KDE too.

First time I heard about Deepin. Looked at a few vids and it looks good.

Another sign that a lot of innovation comes from China currently... The Matebook Pro X looks great also.

Well, the dock is the worst task manager/launcher of any major desktop UI, for starters.

I don't see how they could "know they're the best" when Windows is the best. If you want the CLI tools from 1979 that come with your Mac, you can easily add them to Windows, the best and most widely used desktop operating system on the planet.

Seriously, there's nothing that comes close to Windows - it just works great and the manufacturer doesn't pull the rug out from under your feet every 5 years like Apple does. If there were something better I'd switch to that too, but there's not.

And even worse than outdated CLI -- the keyboard is a tool from like two hundred years ago (barely changed from movable type tech). Can't believe all these computers still use such old technology. Just because it works is a terrible reason for not updating it.

Hmmm, well I'd say that beyond a very superficial comparison with "keyboards" from 200 years ago (if there even were such a thing), modern keyboards have changed a lot and for good reason.

I'm sure glad that my ancestors decided to move out of their caves.

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