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Comment by gimboland | Hacker News Reader

> Everyting else seems to be cross platform and runs ok on Windows, or even linux.

Yes, but then you have to run Windows or Linux.

I think that people don't (on the whole) get Macs in order to run particular software, but many (myself included) do get Macs in order to run MacOS. (Silky smooth trackpads don't hurt, either.)

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This. I can’t stand Windows. Using it in anything than the most shallow of user scenarios feels like an archeology expedition. When you need to do something with the network card (as an example, or a printer) you find remnants of Windows 7, XP, 2000 or even NT. The UI is a mess and version 10 has put lipstick on a pig.

The tools I use in my work aren’t really available in a good form on Linux, so MacOS it is. Also, I have quite a lot of software already that would be both hard an expensive to replace, but I wouldn’t go back to Windows, ever, then I would rather live with the limitations of Linux.

> The UI is a mess and version 10 has put lipstick on a pig.

This is exactly how I've always felt about the Mac OS UI. Small example of why I feel this way: There are many windows on a Mac that you can open that you then cannot switch back to with the keyboard alone. Try it out - on an unmodified macOS open "About this Mac" then alt-tab to some other program. Now try to get back to "About this Mac" with your keyboard the same way you switched away from it. And it's the same for any window you open from a menu-bar.

Macs fail so horribly on such a very, very, very basic interaction and the entire OS is filled with shit like this. I could literally fill an entire blog with examples of how badly the macOS fails users, but that would mean I'd have to use my Macs more often for things other than just compiling iOS apps. No fucking thanks!

Windows is a mecca of consistency where it really matters compared to this garbage. Sure, you can complain about the rare times that you're exposed to 2 different control panels (yawn) but if you fuck up very basic things like window management like macOS does it's much, much worse IMO.

I feel like really good marketing, sex appeal, status symbolism, herd immunity (at least in Silicon Valley) and of course the fact that macOS is a very stable, low-maintenance Unix keep a lot of people blind to the glaring inconsistencies in the macOS UI.

Nope, none of that, at least imho. It’s a damn good Unix workstation, like I’ve been using for the last 30 years, and you get excellent commercial app support. That’s all that’s necessary for me.

That’s the thing. Mac and Windows both have their major UI failures and both suck in their own shitty ways but at the end of the day Mac is built on a good solid platform while Windows underneath the hood is... Windows.

It’s not even comparable.

> And it's the same for any window you open from a menu-bar.

Most windows can be switched to by switching to the app with Cmd+Tab, then cycling windows with Cmd+`. The "About this Mac" window is an outlier because it isn't associated with an application.

Small anecdote, but I definitely am exposed to multiple versions of control panel daily.

I have not had a consistent user interface with Windows since 2012 with the release of Metro.

Exactly. The last coherent release of Windows was 7. From that point on it was only downhill.

“About this Mac” is not an application. It is a non-modal dialog box that does not stay open when you move away. What kind of use case do you have where you need it to stay open?

It makes sense now that you describe it as a dialog box instead of a "magic app that doesn't show up in the cmd-tab switcher", which is how I thought of it before. If it were any other app and I wanted to find the dialog again, I would cmd-tab to the app. I guess the problem is that whatever app it belongs to (Dock.app?) has no place in the cmd-tab switcher.

(on my Mojave machine, it does stay open when I move away from it, when I cmd-tab to something else and then a third something else, "About this Mac" is still visible.)

Ubuntu et al aren't that bad at all honestly. UIs have gotten better over the years..

But the trackpad and screens (and the handling of the screen by MacOS which is leagues beyond Windows / Linux) alone are worth the price tags in Macs.

I really like Linux and would use it happily, but beyond all the software you can't get for Linux, things like trackpad and screen support are just great on the Mac, especially multiple, screens with HiDPI.

An underestimated benefit of Linux vs MacOS especially if they go for ARM is that Wine is getting really, really good. One more than one occasion I downloaded an exe by accident and used it flawlessly.

Wine is indeed very good these days. It's amazing how much Windows software it will run.

And if Wine doesn't cut it, KVM with Gnome Boxes works amazingly well and is super easy to use. I had to do that for my tax software last year.

The major Linux desktop environments seem to be perpetually stuck in a weird almost-good-enough-but-not-quite state where all the broad strokes are right, but the fine details are marred with small quirks and papercuts. So close yet so far. It’s a bit frustrating.

I've been thoroughly pleased with KDE 5 as my primary desktop for quite a while now. It's clean, consistent and looks good.

It does adhere to the Windows style of taskbar and window management by default, so of course YMMV.

For the same price as a macbook, you can get a more powerful Dell that will run bloated apps faster than macbook runs "lean". Then again you can also slightly tweak Linux for any low latency scenario that is needed.

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