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Comment by gnfargbl | Hacker News Reader

As a long-term Linux user, I have been forced on occasion over the last few years to use MacOS. I am at an almost complete loss as to what anyone sees in it. Standard utilities that work seamlessly on Linux are regularly broken, there's a weird security system that requires me to do all sorts of boot-time nonsense just to have control over my own machine... and now, apparently, they're violating the first rule of kernel development by breaking userspace.

The hardware is nice, but as a platform, I just don't get it.

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Please don't take HN on generic flamewar tangents. Platform flamewars, like programming language flamewars, quickly suck up all the oxygen in a thread, but they're fundamentally repetitive and boring.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

They are, and I apologize for starting one. It wasn't my intent.

For what it is worth, I found quite a few of the replies enlightening as to why others choose to use the platform. But: I take your point that it derailed the conversation.

Appreciated!

I've been using Linux regularly for 20+ years at this point, since Debian Slink. I've used it on gigantic servers, workstations, laptops, and embedded devices – it's wonderful.

But my day-to-day development machine is a Mac, and has been for a long time. This was originally because I was both a graphic designer and a developer, and needed access to tools like Photoshop and InDesign while still having a UNIX development environment, and the Mac was great at both of these. This basically still applies – I have access to lots of really well-designed native applications that I use all the time, and a full UNIX development environment that I use every day.

I really haven't encountered the issues you talk about in a serious way – the most frequent thing is forgetting that I don't have the GNU version of some CLI tools and need to use different flags. Certainly no encounters with a "weird security system". I have a working development environment, running on nice hardware, that gives me access to everything I want – it's hard to find a reason to make a change to this.

I do sometimes come back to working with Linux in a desktop capacity – most recently Ubuntu on a NUC when I shipped my MacBook back for repair. It is broadly fine, but it's still just a bit more irritating. Multiple monitor support was buggy, as was high-DPI support and Bluetooth. No doubt a different distribution and/or some tweaking could resolve these issues and leave me with a development environment that was equivalent to what I already have – but I'd still be missing other tools that I like, not to mention all the niceties of the wider ecosystem.

Honestly it's more likely to be the hardware that makes me change. I don't have the same complaints as others do about recent product lines, but I'm definitely one of those people in Apple's market gap in the "high-end-non-workstation-non-integrated-desktop" area. I'd fork quite a lot of money for something like a 16-core desktop machine, but probably not the £8k Apple wants for the Mac Pro. We'll see what happens over the next few years though.

> Certainly no encounters with a "weird security system"

You didn't use mac during the notarization system outage? I coulndn't even use my keyboard and mouse (the one on macbook, NOT bluetooth one) for 2-5 minutes after lid was opened.

Never had such issue with Linux, yeah, bluetooth ones might stop working but wired keyboard (or laptop open) works always.

Yesterday out of the blue my wifes AirPods Pro stopped working with macbook AND iPhone at the same time - they rejected connection (or actually on mac it looked like they are connected but the sound was coming out of speakers not the pods) and the same situation with iPhone. I had to reset AirPods to make it work.

And don't get me started on the completly stupid difference between ctrl+c and cmd+c. One (the standard for everything except macos) is used in terminal and the other in every other app.

For me macbook would be great for one thing: installing Linux on it, if it only had the ctrl key in the correct place (that is at the left corner of the keyboard not next to Fn).

Go figure... I actually like that the terminal has its classic Ctrl+ characters unimpeded by the GUI layer, which has its own namespace behind Cmd+

How do you copy text out of your virtual terminal?

The Fn key placement on the other hand... I’m with you.

You select it. No further steps required.

If configured, sure, and if you use the mouse for all text selection. And also if configured, middle-click can paste.

Now how about Cut (Cmd+X vs Ctrl+Shift+X)?

I don't have an alternative for Cut, unfortunately. How do you select text in your virtual terminal with the keyboard?

> How do you select text in your virtual terminal with the keyboard?

with xsel(1x) or xclip(1)

https://github.com/kfish/xsel

https://github.com/astrand/xclip

tmux lets select with just the keyboard, even when tmux is on a remote server and you are using it through ssh, you can select to your local clipboard. This is for iTerm, don't know about other terminals. No idea how this works, just tested in Terminal.app and it works too.

So every time you slip slightly with the mouse while clicking, you destroy the clipboard contents.

True, but if you mess up the selection step, you won't be able to copy to the clipboard what you wanted with a keyboard shortcut, either.

No, they mean that selecting text is a common activity that doesn’t necessarily imply I want to copy it into my paste buffer. If I want to keep the contents of my paste buffer, I have to force myself to remember not to highlight anything, or I have to go back and find the original text to copy again.

The number of times I’ve accidentally obliterated important and hard-to-relocate paste buffer contents on Linux by a wayward mouse action easily numbers in the thousands.

> copy it into my paste buffer

Selecting text never copies anything. Selections are just metadata that points back to the X client app that "owns" the selection and presumably also has the selected data. Selecting text simply sets the owner of the PRIMARY selection to the current X client, and "pasting" with middle click is asks the current owner of the PRIMARY selection to copy the selected data into the window targeted by the click.

From ICCCM[1]:

>> Selections communicate between an owner and a requestor. The owner has the data representing the value of its selection, and the requestor receives it. A requestor wishing to obtain the value of a selection provides the following:

    The name of the selection
    The name of a property
    A window
    The atom representing the data type required
    Optionally, some parameters for the request

>> If the selection is currently owned, the owner receives an event and is expected to do the following:

    Convert the contents of the selection to the requested data type
    Place this data in the named property on the named window
    Send the requestor an event to let it know the property is available

> If I want to keep the contents of my paste buffer, I have to force myself to remember not to highlight anything,

You're having this problem because you're using the PRIMARY selection when you should be using the CLIPBOARD selection which is more durable and intended[2] for data transfer and copy/paste-like semantics.

The Copy/Paste actions traditionally found in the "Edit" menu usually interact with the CLIPBOARD selection. This should be completely orthogonal to the middle-click feature and other interactions with the PRIMARY selection. You should be able to mix usage of both selections. Try this:

    select text "foo"
    use Copy from the Edit menu   # CLIPBOARD now points to "foo"
    select different text "bar"   #   PRIMARY now points to "bar"
    move to an editable window
    use Paste from the Edit menu  # pastes "foo"
    middle click the same window  # pastes "bar"

Unfortunately, confusion about the X server using selections instead of a global buffer is not well explained.

[1] https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/xorg-docs/specs/ICCCM...

[2] https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/xorg-docs/specs/ICCCM...

The fact that you need a wall of text with multiple external sources to explain that I'm using copy and paste wrong is pretty conclusive supporting evidence in my favor.

If I have to read pages of documentation to understand how to do something that is utterly trivial and intuitive on every other major operating system, your approach is broken.

I'm just trying to help your "obliterated ... by a wayward mouse action" problem.

As I said at the end of the post, the actual behavior of some X Window System features are poorly explained and not obvious. The unexplained differences from the de fact standard behavior new users expect is as major usability problem. However...

> utterly trivial and intuitive on every other major operating system

It's worth remembering that when the standards document referenced in my previous [1] was originally written... a lot of those "major operating systems" didn't exist. In 1987, MS Windows was on version 1.0. I'm not sure it even supported any clipboard-like features. In that era, minimizing memory usage and network traffic were important, design goals.

> intuitive

"The only 'intuitive' interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned." -- Bruce Ediger, on X interfaces

(ref: /usr/share/fortune/linux)

> I'm just trying to help your "obliterated ... by a wayward mouse action" problem.

That's fine and I do appreciate the information, but from the perspective of the overall discussion I think the point stands that the X approach to this is completely broken from a user perspective.

> It's worth remembering that when the standards document referenced in my previous [1] was originally written... a lot of those "major operating systems" didn't exist.

That's completely understandable, but we've had over thirty years to adapt. This argument is the same one that keeps Emacs greybeards defending M-k and M-y despite the fact that there hasn't been a Meta key on a single keyboard I've used in my 30 years of computing.

At some point you have to accept that the rest of the computing world has agreed upon a different standard than yours, and you either need to take steps to accommodate that or die.

That's not to say you can't try out new things while still abiding by existing standards (for instance, with advanced features like pastebuffer history), but that's completely different from clinging on to inferior historical approaches when everyone else has moved on.

> You didn't use mac during the notarization system outage?

This has happened literally once in the history of macOS.

> And don't get me started on the completly stupid difference between ctrl+c and cmd+c.

Ctrl-C and Cmd-C are completely different actions. What is weird is that some OSes use the same keyboard combination for them.

You know, this is about the one thing I do like about macOS. Cmd+C/V should indeed be the universal sequence for copy/paste.

I particularly hate the way GNOME terminal uses Shift+Ctrl+C/V for this, because if you accidentally hit Shift+Ctrl+C in Chrome then it opens Developer Tools.

It’s also much more ergonomic on hands and fingers.

This is classic Linux - a herd of small furry developers all trying to pull a large heavy object in different directions while not listening to what anyone else wants because pulling on things is fun.

MacOS is a large heavy object being pulled by a mysterious force in a direction no one is sure they want to go, but at least it mostly works, kind of, on good days. Except when it suddenly changes direction and runs you over.

Windows is a large heavy object with an embedded malevolent eyeball and a huge trail of wreckage behind it. People keep signing up for more wreckage, and it's really mystifying.

Yeah I switched to Linux on my primary work machine a few months ago and I am still flubbing the copy paste combos between the shell and gui apps.

I hope I am not shilling too much here , but hey you can try out my Kinto app over here if you'd like. You'll get the keymaps you want. https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto

You didn't use mac during the notarization system outage? I coulndn't even use my keyboard and mouse (the one on macbook, NOT bluetooth one) for 2-5 minutes after lid was opened.

True that this is a good example of a security system that affected people negatively – though ironically I was unaffected by this because I was on-site with a customer, working on an annoying network without internet connectivity. But yes – it's fair to say the ecosystem is not perfect.

And don't get me started on the completly stupid difference between ctrl+c and cmd+c. One (the standard for everything except macos) is used in terminal and the other in every other app.

This is not "completely stupid" – it's just a difference between platforms. The command key sends commands, and the control key sends control codes. The cmd+c combination will copy text in both the terminal and all other applications; ctrl+c will send an interrupt. If anything, this is one of the things that keeps tripping me up working on a Linux desktop after so long – I keep inadvertently sending ctrl+c instead of copying, because the control key is overloaded with both text manipulation commands and control characters! But this is just a muscle-memory and familiarity thing.

I have found it convenient that in both Linux and Mac terminals, highlighting text copies it, and middle-click pastes. I expect this is one reason why ctrl-c-for-copy isn't as much of a problem as you'd expect on Linux: most people copy/paste with the mouse only.

> And don't get me started on the completly stupid difference between ctrl+c and cmd+c. One (the standard for everything except macos) is used in terminal and the other in every other app.

This is completely backwards.

In Linux, Copy/Paste is Ctrl+Shift+C/V in various terminal programs, but Ctrl+C/V in other GUI programs

In MacOS/OSX/macOS since 1984, Copy/Paste has always been Cmd+C/V. ...because Copy/Paste are OS/GUI shell actions, and Control characters are not the same thing.

Microsoft broke this separation in Windows 1.0, and Linux has stupidly aped Microsoft ever since.

See also: Microsoft/Linux dialog boxes where the "Continue forward" option is located on the LHS (which in most locales notably including the original context, means "move backward").

great post! ty

The difference was that Mac keyboards had an extra modifier (pcs had ctl alt and shift, Macs had opt ctl cmd shift) key and pcs generally did not until the windows95 era.

Question: does Ctrl+Insert (copy) and Shift+Insert (paste) work in MacOS? (reason: I mostly copy/paste that way in Linux&Windows, in both shells and apps - I don't have a Mac)

Unluckily nowadays some notebooks don't have an insert-key, which makes me sad.

Question: does Ctrl+Insert (copy) and Shift+Insert (paste) work in MacOS?

No. Mostly because Apple keyboards don't have an Insert key.

(They do have a "Clear" key, which I wish more developers would support. But I think so many are on the laptop or small keyboard they don't realize all the buttons that are available.)

That's a convention per the app mostly and apps on macOS just don't need to use it.

I have linux (pop os) running directly on a macbook (basic dev work), and the different key combo for copy paste in terminal is one of my very few issues.

debating with myself whether to remap keys (and then fumble on other linux terminals), or to just learn the new key habit.

Checkout my project before going around and remapping all of your keys.. Kinto doesn't do anything like that. It will actually do all of the remappings you want via a single config file that you can easily add on to if you really need (I doubt it though) & you can disable it or uninstall it at any time. https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto or http://kinto.sh

Windows 1.0 was 1985, so a difference of a year is a bit silly. The majority of the world uses CTRL-C/V and has for decades, so that's the standard.

The use of Ctrl+C as a control character, to mean "ETX/end of text" goes back to ASCII at least, so 1960. And as Cancel/Interrupt to the late 1960s at DEC and of course Bell/UNIX.

Apple (really Xerox/PARC in this case) needed a key combination for "Copy" in their first GUI, and decided not to break the usability of that preexisting standard (and all of the other Control chars, some of which are still useful today).

Microsoft Windows came along shortly afterward. They copied Apple/Xerox's choice of C/X/V for Copy/Cut/Paste in the GUI, but they broke the well-established standard meaning of Ctrl+C in the process. (IIRC, this is especially ironic because they were also breaking the meaning of Ctrl+C from MS-DOS.)

And sure, Microsoft then went on to become dominant, and by virtue of their dominance created a huge number of people who believe that the misuse of Ctrl+C for Copy is "standard".

But it still breaks functionality. Then and today, 35+ years later.

"Copy" should be the same action in all applications. If it is not, the OS/GUI is failing the user.

As per usual though, Microsoft mostly will let you do what you want the way you want to do it by giving you an option, while Apple is busy breaking your things and trying to convince you that theirs is "the one true way". Here's the Microsoft option for letting you use Ctrl+C to copy in their terminal - https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/25590/how-to-enable-ctrlv-fo...

If you want the same on Linux, it's available.

But Ctrl+C to Copy is the broken part, so I do not want it! :)

Ctrl+C is a signal to the running application inside the terminal, and should be passed without interference by the terminal emulator.

> Apple is busy breaking your things and trying to convince you that theirs is "the one true way".

If by that you mean "doing things the reasonable way and not needing to offer workarounds for their failures", then we are in complete agreement. :)

I want OneModifierKeyButNotCtrl+C to Copy in all GUI applications including terminal emulators. I would settle for SomeModifierKeyCombinationNotCtrlAlone+C to Copy in all GUI applications including terminal emulators.

I don't know if Microsoft offers that, but Linux does not. Copy/paste between a web browser and a terminal window is an exercise in frustration.

> But Ctrl+C to Copy is the broken part, so I do not want it! :) Ctrl+C is a signal to the running application inside the terminal, and should be passed without interference by the terminal emulator.

No, detecting when some text is selected and performing a copy instead of sending the signal is the correct way to do this in 2020.

If you don't like that, every OS lets you remap keys.

> If by that you mean "doing things the reasonable way and not needing to offer workarounds for their failures", then we are in complete agreement. :)

I guess next you'll be telling me that never implementing a real "maximize" feature for application windows in your OS is reasonable. :) (And no... Alt + click on the green button does not maximize every window.) As usual, with a Mac you have to continually work around Apple by using apps that will probably not work after a big update if you want to do anything out side of the "Apple way".

> I want OneModifierKeyButNotCtrl+C to Copy in all GUI applications including terminal emulators. I would settle for SomeModifierKeyCombinationNotCtrlAlone+C to Copy in all GUI applications including terminal emulators.

And you can absolutely have that in Windows or Linux [0]. That's because both of them are easily orders of magnitude more flexible and have more options than any OS offered by Apple. Heck, I can't even turn off that idiotic marketing tactic of old, the startup chime, in my old 2012 Mac Pro.

Anyway - whatever you think is correct about Ctr+C, there's no denying that Macs are completely inflexible in many, many, many ways and the only reason you're on one if you've got strong opinions is because your opinions happen to align with what Apple thinks. If your opinion differs at all, you'll be the one bending. Enjoy that!

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=change+copy+paste+shortcuts+...

> No, detecting when some text is selected and performing a copy instead of sending the signal

Ugh, that sounds awful! The Copy action should always be the same action, and it should always copy only, and never do unexpected, possibly harmful, things.

Re: Maximize. FWIW I have always preferred the OSX implementation -- it allows me two different window sizes that I can choose myself, and toggle between them. But I'll concede that if you come from Windows, having one of those choices taken away from you feels more natural. :)

Re: OneModifierKeyButNotCtrl+C. I can't speak for Windows, but this does not work on Linux. You can screw around with xmodmap and some apps to your heart's content, but you will never configure a GUI/DE-wide key combination for Copy that works in all apps. This is what you get, for free, on all versions of MacOS, ever.

Unless your argument devolves to "source code is available". In which case: OK I guess.

Re: macOS inflexibility. I mean, sure. And sometimes flexibility is critical. Other times, carefully-chosen defaults and strong consistency is more important. Anyway Linux's flexibility does not provide a path to solve this specific UX design error, so it doesn't help me here.

Don't get me wrong. Linux is great, and I choose it and use it happily for many things. I choose other OSes (all Unixes though!) for other purposes.

I have specific requirements for my desktop/console/terminal environment which might not match yours. MacOS meets them with default configuration plus some minor tweaks (e.g. focus follows mouse). Linux is not flexible enough to meet those needs, so I do not choose it for that purpose. All good.

> This is what you get, for free, on all versions of MacOS, ever.

You're trading one slight discomfort (in your opinion) for a thousand others because the rest of macOS is abysmal. There's hidden, undiscoverable functionality everywhere, the window management is absolutely disgusting, the file management is sorely lacking, the amount of tweaking you have to do to get decent terminal utilities is sickening, the hardware choices are extremely limited and the tyrannical company that builds it works regularly to own you.

No amount of rationalization will convince me that it's a good OS for anything other than building iOS apps.

Thankfully at least I can run a better OS on the hardware once Apple stops supporting it. Unfortunately I still must jump over many Mac hardware obstructions just to get something resembling a normal BIOS so I can even boot something else. It's just disgusting when I have to do it. At least I never gave Apple any money though since I buy it all used.

They are the China of the technology world and I wouldn't be proud to support them at all even if their desktop OS was actually desirable. Still, they own half (or more) of the phones in use in the US so I have no choice but to deal with them.

So let's not convince you, you can still experience what it is like to have a potentially better hotkey layout via my project if you want to try it out.

https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto

Copy/Paste in terminals is one of my greatest Linux peeves. It’s one of those things that just doesn’t stick… I can swap between Ctrl and Command all day but throwing Shift in there screws it all up. Eventually I just started right-clicking in Linux terminals for that particular functionality.

Same, and as I mentioned above, writing this was my solution. https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto or http://kinto.sh

>You didn't use mac during the notarization system outage?

No, I didn't even know it was thing until I read about it here. However, I don't use a lot of apps from the AppStore, so I dont' know if that was a contributing factor. I'm also not one to close and launch apps regularly. Terminal, Browser, TextMate are open 100% of the time. I usually have Photoshop and/or Illustrator open in the background as well. Don't be a quitter, you don't have to be a starter.

>And don't get me started on the completly stupid difference between ctrl+c and cmd+c. One (the standard for everything except macos) is used in terminal and the other in every other app.

The Mac has had the Cmd key sincd the very first days of Apple. In fact, it was originally two separate keys: open-apple, closed-apple. It was around well before Linux was a glint in Linus' eye.

> However, I don't use a lot of apps from the AppStore

I don't have any from AppStore, besides those that are factory installed and as I wrote previously, after resume from suspend my keyboard and mouse werent' working I was thinking that this macbook just died (and it was only 1 week old).

Thank god I found out that it needed only simple block of notarization server to make this stupid "security" stop usability.

BTW. You could try to see what happens when you are far from WiFi (with poor connectivity) and try to wakup laptop from sleep - the same, keyboard and touchpad don't respond for 1-2 minutes.

I find it amusing how some Linux users completely ignore the myriad of problems users can find when using Linux on the desktop, from hardware incompatibilities to a much poorer experience in daily tasks (lack of commercial software like Adobe CS / MS Office, problems with hardware video decoding especially on popular platforms like Netflix, desktop environments like GNOME3 that like to remove features periodically) that they even can't understand why someone would use a different platform.

The OP isn't talking about Linux users as consumers though, but about Linux developers. So:

> lack of commercial software like Adobe CS / MS Office

Usually inconsequential for developers

> problems with hardware video decoding

Same

> desktop environments like GNOME3 that like to remove features periodically

This is subjective.

1) You can choose not to use Gnome

2) Personally, I've been using Gnome for the past ~6 years and I haven't noticed any significant feature reduction. I'm sure there've been many, I just haven't noticed (hence subjective).

> that they even can't understand why someone would use a different platform.

I fully understand why people want to use Apple for their consuming needs. I really don't understand why my fellow developers choose to go with Apple as their work machine. I then frequently see they have to fire up VMs/containers to do work that I can do natively. No idea what's the upside for work (dev, coding-heavy).

PS: I'm writing this from my personal Apple computer. When I'm up for my hardware refresh at work, I'll 100% go with another Linux-compatible Lenovo/Dell.

> I then frequently see they have to fire up VMs/containers to do work that I can do natively. No idea what's the upside for work (dev, coding-heavy).

When you figure it out, let the rest of us know, because this is exactly what I think about every one of the breathless articles about how great WSL is. Speak of the devil... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25965231

> I fully understand why people want to use Apple for their consuming needs. I really don't understand why my fellow developers choose to go with Apple as their work machine. I then frequently see they have to fire up VMs/containers to do work that I can do natively. No idea what's the upside for work (dev, coding-heavy).

Once we get a Linux laptop with great and fuss free hardware, then developers will continue buying Macbooks.

Great app support might be inconsequential for software development but not for quality of life. Programmers are people too.

If a programmer who happens to do music production or art as hobby for example, which do you think he would choose, a Macbook or a Linux laptop?

> If a programmer who happens to do music production or art as hobby for example, which do you think he would choose, a Macbook or a Linux laptop?

Don't the vast majority of companies have clauses in contracts that say whatever you create on your particular work laptop belongs to the company? I certainly have that in my contract.

In general, I would say that you're getting your work laptop for work. Work-related things should have a priority from hobbies. Having to have a VM for various thing is a strange trade off when you say the upside is producing music as a hobby.

A better example of useful-to-developers-software-that-isn't-available on Linux would be prototyping and UI design apps like Sketch, Principle, ProtoPie, Framer Desktop, and Origami Sudio. There’s a good list here (https://uxtools.co/tools/prototyping).

I’d also argue that the Adobe Creative Suite is a great grab bag of tools generally useful in communication and digital asset preparation crossing the gamut from bitmap, vector, video, and motion graphics, all of which have uses when working with software, especially user-facing applications.

>> Don't the vast majority of companies have clauses in contracts that say whatever you create on your particular work laptop belongs to the company? I certainly have that in my contract.

What do you think the chances are of your company actually being able to enforce said clauses?

>> Don't the vast majority of companies have clauses in contracts that say whatever you create on your particular work laptop belongs to the company? I certainly have that in my contract.

> What do you think the chances are of your company actually being able to enforce said clauses?

Moderate to Very high, depending on the jurisdiction you live in. Like I’ve seen it play out multiple times with colleagues even, and one took it to court even and lost.

> > lack of commercial software like Adobe CS / MS Office Usually inconsequential for developers

You're really focusing on a certain type of developer at that point (systems/kernel only?). As a developer of both front end and back end systems, I use Adobe and Office all the time.

I do both front end and back end development without either Adobe nor Office. I'm not sure what you're using these for, but you most certainly don't need them for your existence.

If the bar is 'need for existence' then sure almost no one needs those tools.

Sure, and no one needs GCC for their existence either, but that sets a pretty high bar, doesn't it?

Wouldn't a better bar for judging software choices be "does this make you more or less productive?" rather than "is this an existential necessity as a software developer"?

I’m in the same boat. I have to use a Mac for work and it’s fine. But doing personal projects on my personal laptop on Linux is just so much easier - containers are faster, Emacs is faster, upgrades don’t break things etc.

> > lack of commercial software like Adobe CS / MS Office

> Usually inconsequential for developers

I agree that most developers view it this way, but I find this perspective hard to understand. Why would a developer, whose craft is software, go out of there way to not understand and use the software most people use? Including of course their own coworkers? I understand that a lot of developers are content, and able to function, in a bubble of their own creating, but I would find that incredibly limiting, both from a productivity perspective, and in an understanding software as whole (and by extension the world) perspective.

> I fully understand why people want to use Apple for their consuming needs.

You do qualify this as being only about developers a bit later, but statements like this seem fundamentally out of touch with creative work on computers (i.e., illustrating my point from the previous paragraph). Logic, Final Cut, Media Composer, Pro Tools, Cinema 4D, the Adobe Creative Suite, Max/MSP, Reaktor are just a small sampling of important creative software that run on Mac but not Linux. Saying it's about "consuming" is patently ridiculous.

It's not that were going out of the way to not use them. If they worked on Linux we would have no problem using them at all.

The issue is that Linux is a free version of MacOS. I don't need a laptop to use it and I can just use a beefy desktop in my dev environment.

If I want to use a beefy computer my choices aren't Linux vs Mac, it's Linux vs Windows. And Windows is really annoying for a lot of us.

As for creative work, we are then forced to look for alternatives. With how costly Adobe is I wouldn't even use it on windows or mac tbh.

So no we're not trying to avoid anything. There's simply nothing for us.

I understand the viewpoint the way you're expressing it here completely. What I don't understand is when I see developers on Linux expressing confusion about why anyone would use macOS, as if there aren't obvious trade-offs to each platform.

Saying you'd rather spend less money, or just prioritizing other advantages of Linux over macOS, makes sense. But pretending it's not a big deal to give up most of the industry-defining creative and productivity software (notably excluding most developer tools) just doesn't make much sense to me.

Because as a developer, none of the software packages you listed matter to me. They are as far removed from my line of work as is notepad.exe.

You have to realize, that a lot of the software you listed is only relevant in the creative / media production industry. So, it is really not software that most people use.

MS Office and PowerPoint are not software developers use?

The image and sound editing software is useful for development too, if you're working on an app or game and need to process any assets for it.

That's because I was responding to replying to this comment:

> I fully understand why people want to use Apple for their consuming needs.

So I listed creative apps in contrast to their point about "consuming", but I could have listed Microsoft Office, or the iWork Suite.

I also think you're discounting how popular these apps actually are. Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, GarageBand, and iMovie are all in the top ten charts for the Mac App Store (an interesting tangential point here is about how mobile eating so many consumer software use cases has shifted laptops and desktops more towards creative use cases).

But the point is, familiarity with these apps is useful for software developers for a couple of reasons:

1. While they may not be developer tools, they are certainly related: User-facing apps all have a UI, and most involve media of some sort, whether it's photos, videos, icons, etc... Being able to work with those file formats is a great supporting skill for a software developer.

2. As a software developer, whose "art" is software, it's good to be able to use applications that other users prefer to use, just like, say, an interior designer might be interested in how people decorate their homes. As a software developer, I'm extremely interested in the what and why of the software people like to use.

I think it's because most software most people use works fine on Linux. E.g. browsers, email, steam, websites, etc.

The ones that don't aren't necessarily widely used software. They're just specialized software for specific fields. Another example is CAD, not necessarily something everyone uses.

I also wouldn't mind using my Mac as my main computer, the problem is that my 1080p 23inch monitors don't work well with them due to pixel density.

My comment here addresses these points https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25971182

>I fully understand why people want to use Apple for their consuming needs. I really don't understand why my fellow developers choose to go with Apple as their work machine.

Because many of your fellow developers do not have and don't want a separate machine for just conding? Why is this idea so alien for some people?

I've been using linux distros (mainly Ubuntu before unity nonsense and then arch and even maintained a package in AUR) since around 2006 to 2013-14. Every now and then I install Fedora\Ubuntu\Manjaro etc to see if anything got better to allow me to use it as a universal device should be used. Every time the answer is a firm NO.

In fact sometimes the disto won't even install because of some weird reasons. For example I only managed to install Fedora on my current PC (build mainly for gaming) after changing some GRUB options (and spending two hours searching all over the web for a needed recipe). What the hell is this?

As a sibling commenter said - Linux is still only good as close-to-targed (server) work machine. And it also has a few OSS tools for musicians and painters (like MuseScore and Krita). But that's it.

Installation is still a mess, updates are still unpredictable. Software distribution is still a nightmare. General consumer software availability is ... there is almost none.

If at some point my mac will become too unfriendly to work with as a dev tool (I don't see it coming really. Some people on HN usually treat some minor things as a catastrophe) - I will build a small dev server (or rent one).

>> I fully understand why people want to use Apple for their consuming needs. I really don't understand why my fellow developers choose to go with Apple as their work machine.

> Because many of your fellow developers do not have and don't want a separate machine for just conding? Why is this idea so alien for some people?

Well as a salaried employee, which I have been all my working life, you are generally required to have a seperate machine for work. So yes, this idea is pretty alien to me.

Different fields I guess. Cultural differences too maybe.

My first serious jobs in IT were in consulting (Hyperion Planning in oil and gas in Russia) and this one company (aside from Accenture were I've had a bit of experience) where the only places that required me to use the provided notebook for the job. Same for British Petroleum. Security reasons etc.

Not as single soft dev company I've worked since around 2012 required me to use their PCs (backend dev here) even though most of the do proived their macs or Thinkpads, or something else.

Anyway - many devs are self employed and\or work remotely. They don't use corporate tech at all. Corporate VPN to access the net? Sure. But that's it.

Honestly, I won't even consider a job offer that will restrict me to employer provided PC.

20 years ago I wanted to try graphics programming. Friend of Mine suggested Linux because it came with free software. Gimp. Six months of recompiling and reinstalling Linux lead to a career in server development. Linux took My dreams of graphic development and turned them into a much higher paying career.

I still have mixed feelings about it.

the terminal eats us all in the end

The lack of commercially supported software with restrictive licensing is certainly NOT A negative!!!

As a Linux user, you are basically safe because most likely all the applications you use are open-source and malicious intent in a program would result in your distribution removing it. As a macOS User I'm quite happy with the restrictions and sandbox of macOS, as I also occasionally use Windows and see whats going on there: 3rd Party Applications that you install scanning your harddrive and extracting calendar entries, contacts, heck even your Steam Game List just to upload it to the cloud and sell the data. 10 Years ago those app would be reported as mal-/adware by your Antivirus, but since this has become "the new default" nowadays you cannot trust any application on windows anymore - especially since the largest cooperations that you thought are trustworthy, like i.e. Adobe are in on this.

So yes, security on macOS is anoying sometimes ("Do you want to allow App X to access your Downloads folder?") but I can see why allowing software just arbitrary disk/network access nowaday is not a good idea anymore.

I see your point on the sandbox, and I agree that Windows is in many ways even worse as a consumer platform. I wasn't aware that things had gotten so bad there.

My complaint with MacOS is less about the existence of SIP (though I can't say I enjoy it) and more about things like bash, python and even SSH being regularly broken. (These are all actual problems that I've spent hours solving, not theoretical issues.) I don't understand why technical users voluntarily put up with this.

> bash, python and even SSH being regularly broken

Broken how? That's surprising - in my experience, the versions of these utilities on macos are often missing features relative to linux, but the differences are known and documented...

> bash, python and even SSH being regularly broken

Reference needed re: SSH, but as to Bash/Python/etc, did you know Apple bundles “old” versions of both? You should not be using the system provided ones imho if you are a developer.

Simple solution:

brew install bash gnutools python

That will very likely solve all your complaints listed, the second of which listed is for those who don’t understand BSD vs GNU/Linux userland CLI options aren’t universal.

> I see your point on the sandbox, and I agree that Windows is in many ways even worse as a consumer platform. I wasn't aware that things had gotten so bad there.

its because exaggeration

Not breaking userspace is the first rule of Linux kernel development, but macOS has never had that policy as far as I know. Apple care much more about being able to move fast and clean up bad interfaces in their software, which is a priority I value.

I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but I do know that Apple ultimately expects developers to pay attention to new releases and make sure their software behaves properly with them.

As for standard utilities being broken, I’ve never experienced that on macOS. I do know that Macs get their standard utilities from FreeBSD and not coreutils by default.

There are liberally millions of app, Apple can't expect all of them to be always up to date on day one, to even sw like postgres. You can't just change the semantic of an API, it's just wrong. Apple should introduce a new API, deprecate the older one and remove it two or three versions later minimum. They just don't care until people is going to buy their hw.

Traditionally, Apple does not guarantee total ABI stability. They push betas instead to allow people to fix the issues, and then support older releases for multiple years.

Yes, unmaintained software might or might not stay fully functional on macOS for long, but that's not an Apple priority.

Of Linux *kernel* to userspace ABI development.

The user-space ABIs are widely unstable. Try to run software compiled on Ubuntu 20.04 on 18.04 for example. On macOS, it's just the matter of using -mmacosx-version-min= to make sure that newer functions don't get used.

Or for that matter, even in the reverse case, things break.

Of course that doesn't work. Why would anyone expect it to? Install your baseline distro version in a chroot and set GCC's --sysroot, alternatively use a container, alternatively use a Flatpak SDK, problem solved.

The main problem with this is knowing which libraries have stable ABIs and which don't, which is only documented in a convenient way for enterprise distros (RHEL/SLES).

Making open() returning EINTR possible on regular FS is not really cleaning up bad interfaces. Is there even a precedent on any Unix for that behavior?

It's part of the documented POSIX interface, so correct code has to handle it: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/o...

Only if the signal that was caught isn't using SA_RESTART: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/s... ("If set, and a function specified as interruptible is interrupted by this signal, the function shall restart and shall not fail with [EINTR] unless otherwise specified.")

Therefore, correct code can also not handle EINTR as long as it uses SA_RESTART for all non-fatal signals. That's probably the most common case (nobody likes EINTR).

I have a linux Desktop, Windows, and Mac. I was recently trying to work out how I could do my media handling on the Linux Desktop (KDE). It didn't just work. I tried numerous apps and all of them failed to meet my expectations.

My non-development tasks... those things in life I use a computer for... are just harder on Linux desktops or have a poor experience.

MacOS, on the other hand, has a great experience for most of these everyday life kinds of activities. Even for many business activities it's better. Here I refer to the non-development parts of business.

If all you do is systems level coding than Linux is great. But, that's not the case for most folks.

After 6 years of using a Mac at work for development with OSS tools I switched to a SFF PC with Ubuntu with Gnome and never looked back. Everything is so smooth. Apt get this apt get that and I have working software. No need to homebrew development tools, install Xcode using an Apple account, withhold upgrades and fight evey iteration of the OS.

What activities do you mean by media handling?

> The hardware is nice, but as a platform, I just don't get it.

To me, that’s backward. The hardware is okay, the platform is amazing.

Nothing even comes close to the full ecosystem. Phone, tablet, headphones, watch, computer.

Occasionally, quite rarely in reality, something goes wrong. However, I don’t use bleeding edge versions of macOS and so I can’t even tell you the last time I actually experienced one of these problems that everyone on HN gets in an uproar about.

MacOS is a perfectly fine Unix, but a terrible Linux. If what you actually want is Linux, MacOS will always come up short.

I have been using Linux exclusively as my OS since 1997. Except for a 2-year hiatus some 8 years ago where I got a Mac and used Mac OS.

I can 100% relate to your experience. It was painful. There were oddities all over the place. Some software I was used to use was simply unavailable. Package managers... oh I missed apt so much... And it was much slower.

Let alone the main compelling factor for Linux for me: that it is open source, and that I can inspect anything, even the kernel, if I need to. Surely, you occasionally need to fix some driver or configuration "CLI-style", but I'm more than used with this.

But basically, with Linux I feel I control and own the system. With Mac is pretty much like Windows: they own you, and for the most part you don't know what's going on --except that MacOS is still orders of magnitude better than Windows.

I prefer Macports and macOS over Linux package managers because Macports is like a rolling-release package archive without the disadvantages of rolling release on Linux. On Linux, I can use Arch and have the latest of all software - which means I have the disadvantage of having to stay up-to-date on things like dhcpcd and systemd and coreutils. I don't want to have the latest versions of these things or spend time routinely upgrading them piecemeal.

Or I can use Debian stable and everything is stable, but if I want something new I have to compile it myself, or hope there's a backport.

With macOS and Macports I get a stable base system that Apple keeps up-to-date security-wise with monolithic updates that I don't have to worry about, and Macports has the latest for things like Emacs or even the GNU coreutils.

Yup Macports would upgrade everything and break stuff like FFI code. That is exactly why I prefer to use a Linux LTS release like Debian, Ubuntu or even openSuSE Leap with it's 18 month release cycle and uneventful upgrades that you can now even roll back.

You can use nix on "any" Linux distro with the unstable channel and get the most bleeding edge software from nixs binary cache, or Linuxbrew, flatpak, snap, appimage.

> which means I have the disadvantage of having to stay up-to-date on things like dhcpcd and systemd and coreutils

In the past 8 years of regularly updating my rolling release Linux systems, I have spent significantly more time reading headlines about macOS releases breaking software, than I have spent staying up-to-date with dhcpcd, systemd and coreutils. They are ridiculously stable.

I’m a full stack dev and I occasionally need to use a bunch of graphical and design apps. Occasionally enough that Linux isn’t practical, anyway.

On the data programming side of things I don’t see much issue with it either, though. The issue on this article would’ve definitely bit me as I run like a dozen Postgres instances but I haven’t updated to BigSur - I’m never in a rush to do so.

The only thing I miss from my Linux days is the package manager, maybe? Brew is third-party and doesn’t feel as tight as some of the Linux counterparts.

Perhaps by “anyone” you mean developers? I can think of innumerable reasons why regular mom and dad users use MacOS over Linux.

I do, and I should have said so. I forget that macOS actually has a large consumer following, because I usually encounter it with startups who have chosen it as their standard fit for developers.

I just ssh into my Linux boxes from macOS. Problem solved (for me, at least).

So you've overcome the issues macOS threw at you. What's the upside? What does it give you?

Photoshop, if that’s your thing?

pretty sure you can use photoshop via wine on linux distros

Apple's integration / syncing between other Apple devices is quite a nice feature.

I regularly take/make phone calls from my desktop or laptop, routed via my phone. Same with SMS. All of my contact details (and photos/etc) are synced with my phone, tablet, desktop and laptop. My logins/passwords are synced between all devices. I can seamlessly switch devices and pick up open browser tabs. Plus I use Apple software that isn't available on other platforms (Logic Pro specifically here).

Sure many of these can likely be done on other platforms too, but on macOS these things (and more) are seamless and don't require any other software, nor configuration (beyond setting up one's iCloud login on each device).

Don't get me wrong: I'm a developer, and use Linux in local VMs and on local and remote servers. But all of these Apple features targeted at 'normal users' are quite nice, and one quickly gets used to them. But perhaps not everyone's cup of tea.

The hardware is nice, and until a couple years ago there was nothing available in the PC world that matched it, but it's the best mainstream GUI experience on the market today. I use macOS, Windows, and Linux every day. Windows and Linux's GUIs lack little affordances like a document icon on a window that you can drag and drop.

Plus there is nothing equivalent to OmniFocus outside of macOS, and that is one of the tools I depend on most heavily.

On the other hand macOS and Windows are missing little affordances like the selection buffer, middle click paste, focus follows mouse..

I manage literally 100k+ Linux nodes for my day job. I don't want to manage any more than I need to, so my workstation is a Mac.

How are you managing them? Which distro are they running? Is there any difference between managing 1k and 100k operating systems?

Support for Microsoft Office, Adobe CC, and historically a POSIX environment were an enticing combo. Recently it’s gone off the rails and become miserable to hack around in.

They didn't break userspace. Your opinions as a "long-term Linux user" are effectively useless.

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