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Comment by LeoNatan25 | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s new strategy seems to be, instead of having products that sell themselves for their clear benefits, just flood either YouTube casuals or Twitter “celebrities” (depending on target segment) with the highest end config machine and expect praise.

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Please point me to a succesful hardware company that has ever let their products sell themselves. I simply don't understand what your gripe is. Providing review units for members of the press is completely standard. Every company does it, and Apple has done it always. The only difference is that it is now bloggers and YouTubers customer's look to for buying recommendations, instead of the Walt Mossbergs of yore.

True, I used to go out of my way to find unbiased and honest reviews from "real" people that weren't "seeded" by manufacturers.

The problem is that many others did the same, so these honest reviewers gained followers, that gave them exposure and eventually they get approached by the PR departments which would like to "lend" them top end review samples for an undisclosed amount of time. Well before the press NDA, of course. Lately I find myself buying paper magazines again.

That being said the new Mac Mini does seem like a great product.

You realise that every single thing reviewed in a paper magazine is a loaner review unit, unless it's Consumer Reports, Which?, or one of about three others? It's an industry standard.

That's why I subscribe to Consumer Reports even though it sucks in many ways.

Sure, but the authors of larger magazines typically do not get to keep (or even use) the product for their own private purposes, so they're not nearly as invested and have far less reason to be biased.

I've heard many companies "forget" to ask for their seeded samples back, particularly those sent to so-called influencers.

Pretty much every computer manufacturer provides review units, and always has. In fact, if anything, Apple's known for being a little on the stingy side here; for some of their product releases only the biggest publications have gotten early review units, whereas some vendors hand them out far more freely.

Can't say there was too much criticism on this review.

Well, you know, we waited years for a new Mac mini replacement, and we got one that is very disappointing on the low end, very expensive on the high end, no clear future support, missing features from previous iterations, but hey, it’s amazing machine because Apple finally graced us with it and I got it for free, so let me overlook that 2500$ price tag.

I really wish that devs out there, including the HN community, give PCs and Windows another chance.

The PC specs are amazing, value for your money is excellent, the OS is beautiful - the biggest obstacle now is so much open source documentation explains how to install or build on a linux based machine, ignoring the Windows users and making them feel like sh*t for working on a Windows box.

If more dev's offered docs around building/compiling on Windows, and Windows support, that would be excellent...

Cons: Windows update.

I'll pass.

What advantages does Windows offer over Linux other than gaming?

Software and drivers that consistently work without the need for fiddling. Every year I give Linux a chance, and every year I quickly sober up.

I have dual booted Ubuntu for ~3 years on my MacBook Pro (13” late 2013 model) and used it as my main OS.

I had to install a webcam driver but other than that everything just worked(TM)

Yes, especially on Mac, high DPI on Linux is still garbage to this day. It's not really good on Windows either, but at least with Windows 10, it is somewhat serviceable. On Linux, support is so abysmal, it is really comical in 2018. Moreover, it seems the dev community still hasn't "seen the light" in high DPI displays, and will often dismiss or backlog required changes for support. In 2018.

HiDPI worked / works great in UbuntuGNOME. I spend most of my time in a text editor, terminal or browser, but even things like games for my kid (Tux and Tux Kart) supported HiDPI without requiring any magic tricks.

/edit setting a different scalefactor on my external (non-HiDPI) monitor was frustrating in that it worked... sometimes

For me setting up Linux got easier than Windows a few years ago. There are other problems that stop me using the platform but drivers isn't it anymore.

That's if you are on supported hardware. If your sound/wifi/disk storage/modern GPU lacks support, you are SOL for a long time and have to resort to experimental drivers that may or may not be stable and may or may not be working as expected. Meanwhile, practically all hardware has Windows drivers.

Tired meme, Windows drivers are the only ones you have to "fiddle" with out of band, I can't even think of another OS where going to a third-party website to download an executable is how you install drivers for the machine. (Not OSX, not BSD, not Linux).

Buy any desktop in any supermarket in the world and it's going to work out of the box with the latest Ubuntu. This has been the case for 5 years now.

If you have some weird hardware that needs a kernel module that isn't enabled by default or packaged as a kms for your distro, then sure I can definitely see some awkwardness there, but for instance I haven't had so much as a wifi problem in 10 years.

Definitely a stark contrast to Windows where you have to go to the manufacturer website for each component of your machine if you're not using the bloated OS that comes pre-installed.

What meme? I was speaking about personal experience.

> but for instance I

"I" being the key word there. On the other hand, I have had issues with Linux drivers every year.

What distro, what type of machine? Because I’ve been prolific in my purchase of brand new hardware and I have had only the most minute of issues.

I think it must strongly depend on your use case and exact hardware, because those exact reasons in my case are an argument against windows. I have to download and install what in order to get driver support? How many tray icons can one person possibly need? It's the worst in my experience with printers and scanners; "please install this 300MB package which will constantly run in the background and annoy you at the least convenient time to replace your ink - oh, and in three months we're going to completely change the interface and replace it with something that doesn't even support feature that you're using". Or, hear me out, I could install CUPS and xsane (or another sane frontend) and be done. Driver support is indeed hit-or-miss, but when it hits there's absolutely no work at all. (Exception: if your printer isn't already supported, you can often find and download a single small file to add support; CUPS is beautiful)

I agree with you that a lot of vendor software is garbage. If the hardware you use is supported by your Linux distro of choice, I'd agree it could be a better experience than installing any driver. But at least there is always a driver. That has not been the case for desktops and laptops I have had in recent years. Always something missing in plethora of Linux distributions, and the ways to solve those issues are not straightforward even for a 10-year experience software engineer. That is not something I want to think about when buying new hardware.

I think the advantage right now is largely in a few select sectors right now, and mainly due to ecosystem.

Music production is a big one from my perspective -- currently, if you are looking at the tools and plugins that are the most popular in the professional world, your practical choice is basically between Macintosh or Windows.

The majority of DAW plugin synths / effects currently are not compiled for Linux, and I do not believe many popular DAWs (stuff like Ableton Live, Logic, Cubase, etc.) are currently supported yet either. I have heard that if you keep it light weight, some audio plugins will run just fine under something like WINE. But for a heavy-hitting plugin like, say, Spectrasonics Omnisphere, I have heard that emulation is too slow to be practical.

There are certainly native Linux DAWs and plugins out there, you can probably go quite far with Ardour or the Linux version of Reaper, and there's a few plugins too (u-He has some native Linux builds of their excellent synthesizer plugins for instance). It's just that the native ecosystem out there is quite a bit smaller, unfortunately.

I find WSL can really help in this regard. It's being actively developed by Microsoft and they're making the interop between WSL and windows better over time (a good example of this is https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/11/05/what... on what's new in October)

So what I tend to do is use linux install paths and do my scripting work in WSL, with my more GUI/Corp apps in windows.

All they need to do now is get raw network sockets working and finish off Linux Docker engine support in WSL and I'll be sorted!

I do prefer the macOS ecosystem overall and distinctly dislike the UX mess that is Windows 10. I have been using Windows for decades now, and feel very comfortable with it, and I still maintain a desktop tower for gaming and intensive work, but if I had the option to switch to a macOS machine I would. There just isn't a Mac hardware out there that fits my needs. But each year I feel Apple is making the Mac ecosystem worse and worse. At some point the software advantage will not be worth it.

That being said, if someone likes Windows 10 now, there really is little reason to remain on Mac hardware. Practically, most creative software exists on Windows.

I like PCs.

The PC specs are amazing, value for your money is excellent, and now is so much open source documentation explains how to install or build on a linux based machine.

And outside of laptops, a custom PC can still be built with whatever specs needed.

Pity that it's so hard to source W10 Enterprise LTSC (previously LTSB), you can bypass pretty much all Windows Update woes that way, miss out completely on Cortana and Edge, and avoid having "features" no-one asked for rammed down your throat every few months.

Despite Microsoft's FUD[0] ("The Long Term Servicing Channel, which is designed to be used only for specialized devices (which typically don't run Office) such as those that control medical equipment or ATM machines"), it also appears to run Just Fine[tm] on the latest desktop hardware[1]

It's the only version of W10 I'll go near.

[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/w... [1] I've had W10 LTSB 2016 running for months on two home-built Ryzen boxes (1x 2700X + 1x 2400G)

It's my impression that most Mac (and Linux) users have given Windows a chance. Maybe not the very latest versions, but most Mac users I know (including myself) have switched from Windows at some point in the past. I don't doubt that Windows is less infuriating than it was when I left in 1998, but nothing its more modern incarnations appeals to me in a way that would even make me consider switching back. "Not so infuriating anymore" is a weak value proposition. There is also an element of "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me".

At the same time, I am perfectly happy with my Macs; I still absolutely love macOS, my work 5k iMac is a delight to use, and my private 2010 MacBook Pro is still going strong (although as of Mojave, it can no longer run the latest OS). My 2008 Mac Mini is nearing end-of-life, but only because I can't justify upgrading its internal storage to an SSD when the computer is stuck on Mountain Lion. I worry about the price hikes, but OTOH, as long as I can expect getting 8-10 years useful life out of a system, I don't mind paying the Apple Tax.

Windows makes sense for game devs, Android devs, and Windows app devs. It’s my impression that HN devs are mostly web devs, with some mobile devs. Windows is not best for those types of devs.

IOS devs need to run Xcode.

Server devs can and usually should use remote servers for development. So their local machine’s OS doesn’t matter. It could be Windows, but they are mostly ssh-ing to Linux boxes or VMs for work.

Those units are not given out for free. Apple get them back after the review period. It would be a massive conflict of interest otherwise.

There is still massive conflict of interest. They want to continue getting these review units, and Apple is known for "being offended" and blacklisting people from media events and review units.

None of the reviews I've seen from "general public" "reviewers", in the year or so Apple has been doing it, have provided real criticism. It's always "fine", always "great", big issues are glossed upon.

At the very least, Apple picks their target "reviewers" very well based on their bias for Apple products. That's fine in and of itself, but it creates a bad image when these people get their review units before even the media reviewers.

If you listened to Marcos podcasts, you'd know that he has been very critical of the most of the Macs that have come out in recent years. He remains critical of most of their laptops. That doesn't mean there is not still a conflict of interest in principle. But in practice, I would say he has a track record that proves, that he is not afraid to bite the hand that feeds him.[1] With or without conflicts of interest, there's really no substitute for getting to know a reviewer to find out if you generally share that person's sense of what is valuable and not.

[1] Maybe it really isn't the hand that feeds him. Marco's primary gig is his podcast player for iOS.

In Marco's defence he has slated Apple for what they are doing to the laptop line for the last few years. If he didn't like it I am certain he would have given a bad review.

ATP and Overcast (not to mention Tumblr) are successful enough that he doesn't need to be on Apple's good list to make ends meet.

I wasn't looking to start a fight with specific people. I just dislike the general direction Apple Mac products are heading in, as well as their marketing efforts.

Ah, fair enough

That has always been Apple's MO. Ever since their "Think Different" marketing campaign, where they realized they can convince the sheep to follow if they associate with the brightest minds and celebrities (e.g., put an Apple logo next to Einstein, next to an astronaut, etc.) without actually offering a better product.

It's always been a fashion statement to own an Apple product...

What bothers me is how the technical community, both software engineers and academics, have fallen into this trap.

A new Win10 pc is a much better development machine. Sorry, but I do prefer to Think Different and don't care about what is fashionable, but make my choices based on specs, utility and value.

Win10 is known for autoupgrades now. It’s another thing than just telemetry.

Right. I guess, for me at least, before it might have existed to an extent, but since machine we’re good value and it was celebs that did the marketing, this didn’t bother me much. Now it seems to me like they are desperately trying to push those things in crowds where I do not want to see being corrupted like this, namely the technical community and engineers.

Since I am part of this aforementioned technical community, I will spend a few extra dollars in order to get: 1) high resolution screen, 2) large track pad that works well, 3) native "unix like" shell, 4) sleep that works 100% reliably when I close the lid.

I don't consider it a fashion statement, I just want it to work. After 20+ years I don't like to tinker with my desktop anymore. I would go back to Gnu/Linux for desktop, but finding the right hardware with the above specs is a challenge if not impossible (I have yet to find a track pad driver that works as well as Apples).

I have not reevaluated in 2018, If there is anything better I would like to hear specific examples of hardware and OS combinations?

> native "unix like" shell

Funnily enough, IIRC Darwin isn't unix-like - it's an actual certified UNIX™:) Although in the modern ecosystem, perhaps it's more appropriate and useful to say that it's a Linux-like :-)

Most people I've heard this rant from, when further questioned, have barely touched a Mac and don't know anything about macOS to be able to substantively trash it.

Approximately how many cumulative weeks have you spent in OS X / macOS?

I unfortunately took a job at a company that thought they were being fashionable and progressive by forcing each employee to use a Mac. They saw it as a benefit. It was idiotic.

95% of their workforce was using Excel for reporting tasks. But, of course, this was Mac Office 20xx (08, 12?), when the rest of the world was on Office2016+. Half the features weren't available, or required people to hold down 8 keys simultaneously to work.

they can convince the sheep to follow

Baaa

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