Hacker News Reader

Comment by Bud | Hacker News Reader

In what ways, specifically, is macOS "3-5 years behind everything else"? I consider that a ludicrous statement.

You do realize that macOS isn't the only piece of software that Apple makes?

So, specifically, Siri is definitely 3-5 years behind alexa/google assistant, I won't engage with someone who claims otherwise. iMessage is garbage unless everyone you talk to is on apple hardware. Maps was garbage until recently though I still get bad directions (thanks carplay!). Icloud works alright but there are better _and_ cheaper solutions...

So ludicrous, I know.

Would love to know the operating system that is 5 years ahead of MacOS! Clearly they must have revolutionary features.

I dunno, DragonflyBSD?

Linux desktop environments are you usually far ahead of anyone else in terms of actual innovation and not social tricks (like the way iMessage works.)

They’re just usually not as sexy.

Can you give any specific examples?

Workspaces and virtual desktops where the best for a long time. There’s a lot of very impressive stuff the KDE people do, I don’t use it because personally I prefer a ver very simple DE.

Bring sexy, aka user friendly, is a large part of an OS in terms of GUI.

User friendliness and sexiness are different enough that I would actually consider them orthogonal.

The "way iMessage works" is not a "social trick". End-to-end encryption, reliability, multimedia features, and a commitment to user privacy are not "social tricks".

Do OSs have "revolutionary" features? Take MacOS from 5 years ago and compare it to today's, what revolutionary features did it get?

Under "nice to have" and took forever for other OSs to get them:

- TrueOS (I think that is the name of PCBSD now?) has lifepresever: snapshots, rollback etc. nicely integrated. Similarly for linux (snapper) or nixOS.

- virtual desktops took forever to finally be included in windows.

- MacOS continuity is a nice copy of kde connect.

- Sidecar is a nice copy of astropad etc.

- Things like Linux on DeX, whatever windows calls its implementation, MaruOS, Motorola Atrix... have been tried again and again, but are still not there yet.

- Windows had pen support since XP, but the app ecosystem is basically only OneNote and a few art apps. In contrast apple has been dragging their feet forever before finally offering their pencil, but quickly got a much bigger ecosystem of apps tailored to it. Maybe 10X will finally change that, but I am not optimistic anymore.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com