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Comment by culturestate | Hacker News Reader

The other commenter makes good points re: the cognitive cost of switching platforms, but let me give you another point of view: the Apple ecosystem is, actually, shockingly good.

My Apple Watch unlocks all of my Macs. When I join a new WiFi network on my iPhone, those credentials are immediately available to my iPad. When my iPhone rings, it pauses video playing on my Apple TV until I ignore the call. To send a link from my iPad to a friend on WhatsApp, I can copy the link on my iPad and paste it into WhatsApp on my iPhone - automatically. I can use my iPhone as a remote camera to insert a photo into a Notes document on my Mac with one action. The list goes on.

Yes, there are absolutely problems and Apple has made some dumb choices (I don't mind the butterfly keyboards but I hate the razor-sharp palmrests...), but overall it's incredibly cohesive in a way that I feel lots of people don't really grasp.

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Let me add a few more:

1) SMS/iMessages synced across all devices and able to send from any of the devices e.g. Mac or non-4G iPad.

2) 2FA codes received on your iPhone are automatically populated in Safari text fields on your Mac.

3) Safari window opened on an iPhone will appear as an icon on the Mac so you can easily pick up where you left off. Works for a number of other apps as well. And in every direction.

4) AirDrop is really great for quick, adhoc file transfers.

The built-in messaging platform (iMessage & FaceTime) is brilliant. Microsoft shoud've done the same since they bought Skype (and back then Skype was actually good software) but instead they decided to turn it to garbage.

I don't understand how Microsoft or Google managed to screw up messaging so bad.

It is a level of utter incompetence (especially from Google) that surely is unrivalled. I mean what Apple has implemented really isn't all that complex.

Google is somewhat understandable, they don't really want to be in that business (also their corporate culture encourages short-lived projects).

But Microsoft? Why the hell did they even buy Skype? Same story with LinkedIn - the entire product is garbage now.

I mean, LinkedIn was always bad, but what changes were you talking about? I can't recall noticing anything different on the site in nearly a decade. Only thing I can think of is the ability to accept all invited.

They used to have a good native iOS app back in the early days. They now replaced that with an Apache Cordova or React Native app (actually it’s probably too shitty to be a React Native app).

It is the worst pile of shit I have ever used. I’ve used non-native apps like that before but this is the worst I’ve seen so far.

And of course, the app has the usual dark patterns around trying to get you to share your contacts, add a photo (there’s a persistent banner at the top of the feed asking you to add a photo and follow some “sources” - hashtags full of spam that is - even though I’ve had the account for 2 years now so they clearly should know I am not going to do any of those things no matter how many times they ask).

Microsoft also has Lync (now renamed to Skype for Business in what must be one of the worst naming decisions since Javascript). Then there is Teams, of course.

When I switched from macOS to linux, the things I missed the most were AirDrop and being able to text from my computer. I'll admit I still haven't found substitutes for either that are nearly as nice.

KDE Connect?

I don't use it anymore but I think this covers some of it.

Looks like a neat project but it's only available for Android phones.

I use Message for Web for texting from my computer, but then when I switched from macos to linux, I also switched from iphone to android.

Just a data point, I desperately hoped the SMS iMessages thing worked (my wife can thumb type way faster.. how to get competitive edge..) but never worked between a iPhone SE and MBP for me. The messages just never showed up on the MBP despite all the tutorials I followed. That’s great that it worked for you but let’s not pretend SMS conveniences should inform purchasing choices for computationally intensive data analysis projects.

The use case was server side data analysis. If it’s important work the researcher should get the much much more powerful server and run Linux like most sane people do. Who cares if your server can pair with your Apple Watch or use WhatsApp.

For all we know, the researcher could've also mistaken their real RAM requirements and 64GB would give them equal performance. I'd rather walk them through the options and then let them make the decision that they're most comfortable with, rather than mandating something that they don't want and which might make them less efficient as a result.

The research project in question will use as much RAM as is available, and we already have 128gb machines available, and access to larger. Why, for just running some MATLAB scripts through SSH would you need to stay with the Apple ecosystem for that?

I have no idea. Could be some OS X package oddity, or maybe they just like to AirDrop stuff to themselves?

In any case, I suspect if you do a little discovery with that person - what specific problem are you trying to solve by staying with a Mac? - you'll find the answer. You might even be able to convince them to change their order if you find it's something that can be easily worked around in a way they hadn't thought of.

As someone who has been on the researcher's side of this conversation, I can tell you that I'm always happy to discuss my reasoning with someone in your position who's genuinely trying to help me. On the flip side, I get very annoyed when they're just being obstinate because they disagree with my choice on spec (and this is an endemic problem in corporate purchasing orgs.)

Yeah I get your point of view. I have a MBP. I also maintain a HPC cluster. I didn’t blindside this person with a refusal, rather I asked what use he had for a maxed out iMac pro. When he said it would be used essentially as a shared server for remotely running data analyses, I explained the other options (dell server mentioned above).

As the IT guy I also have to deal with when these macs break or they are misconfigured, which happens a lot more easily than the Windows machines because the latter are in a domain and managed. The Mac guys are way too “I know what I’m doing” until they can’t get the printer working.

If Mac didn’t involve huge increases in price and integration pains for the organization I would be less negative but that’s how it is.

Also since you mentioned research, in my domain people buy those MacBooks because they can, because they are a status symbol, just to run Word and read PDFs, because all the big people in our field have macs. I see this as a cult to be honest.

Have you considered that, alternatively, those people choose Macs because they find them nice to use or that they prefer OS X to Windows? The Apple cult definitely exists, but the anti-Apple cult is equally real and to be honest they both blow my mind.

Yep. I still think it’s a cargo cult effect: I can just hear them thinking “if I use a Mac I will have a higher impact factor” lol

Thanks! I thought I’d drown in the Apple fans here

But on the other hand, iCloud is shit. The rules for what photos sync where, and which ones are safe to delete from my phone are puzzling, to say the least. Music syncing rarely goes smoothly because some tracks, for some unknown reason, can't be copied due to DRM. Podcast management is a nightmare, partially because the app is so badly designed, but that is compounded by podcasts not being on the device you want them to be on. (I have gotten into situations where I can't download a podcast because the app thinks it shouldn't or doesn't need to or who the hell knows.) Family sharing is a joke. Very difficult to know who can see what, (which has led to mild embarrassment at times).

That palm rest corner is razor sharp even compared to earlier MBP designs, and it finally made me get a silicone palm/lower arm rest.

It is probably the best purchase I’ve made the last few years, I’m so happy with it every single day and it just makes working with laptops such a joy.

Make sure to get an extra wide one, mine is something like 70cm wide and I can keep my mouse and laptop a good distance apart and have the silicone support under both my arms.

Wait what? You're using a palm rest, therefore the laptop is on you desk. And you don't have a real keyboard and mouse plugged into it?

I use a separate mouse when I’m at my own desk, but not when I’m in a classroom or something like that.

My desk isn’t really deep enough for both a laptop, a keyboard, and my arms to fit comfortably on it.

> When my iPhone rings, it pauses video playing on my Apple TV until I ignore the call. To send a link from my iPad to a friend on WhatsApp, I can copy the link on my iPad and paste it into WhatsApp on my iPhone - automatically.

I get what you appreciate, but its not for everyone. I like my tools smart but still 100% predictive by me. Like one device erasing the clipboard of another device.

> I get what you appreciate, but its not for everyone

I know you didn't mean it this way, but for illustrative purposes this is precisely the kind of reasoning people use to downplay the value of an ecosystem, whether it's Apple or Google or (eventually, I assume) Samsung.

"I don't want this, therefore it's not a valuable thing."

Of course no product will be (or should be) the be-all, end-all solution for everyone in the world. The fact that it isn't shouldn't be a mark against it or against the people who choose it, though.

Come to think of it, this is applicable to a huge number of products and strategies in our industry.

I’m sure you’ve enumerated a number of “user stories” of PMs in Apple but none of that should apply to a public sector research project involving computationally intensive data analysis. This guy needs a dual socket Xeon with tons of ram and none of the BS

I get what you're saying, but...if more people in tech thought of themselves as PMs (whose primary job, sidetracked though it may be in some places, is to develop a sense of empathy for their customers...) we'd all be in a better place.

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