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Comment by harshitaneja | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. I hate that M1 is so good. I got an M1 macbook pro when my older laptop broke and I needed to temporarily deal with some iOS work. I bought it thinking I would regret it and have to replace it with another machine especially being used to 15inch devices. But it turned out to be such a great experience using this device without ever worrying about charging and rosetta2 worked so much better than expected.

I hate that this device is so great that when I look at other options with linux support I just get drawn back to this. It is really frustrating to have such a great hardware be limited by the software, rather the userspace(kernel and drivers seem solid). MacOS is just so frustrating at times. Asahi team's linux support can't come fast enough.

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What do you feel like you're missing in userspace?

- A good (not Homebrew and not quite Macports) package manager.

- Ways to permanently disable Gatekeeper

- Some kind of quick setup. On Linux I use a bootstrapping script, MacOS does not offer the same extensibility.

- Real virtualization support like QEMU

- Real container support (if I set up another local Docker host on a Mac I swear to god...)

- Up-to-date coreutils

- A way to install Git without dragging along a few gigs of dependencies

- Ways to monitor my network usage and ensure Apple isn't spying on me

- Real encryption (eg. Apple/NSA isn't holding a master key)

- CUDA support

- 32-bit app execution

- A way to disable the hash that gets sent to Apple every time I open an app

That's just the starter kit, if I sat down with some pen and paper I could probably keep going ad-infinitum.

- A good (not Homebrew and not quite Macports) package manager.

nix?

- Some kind of quick setup. On Linux I use a bootstrapping script, MacOS does not offer the same extensibility.

Apple mdm implies that the hooks exist, although I know notthing of using that and it very well might be insufficient.

- Real virtualization support like QEMU

Isn't hyperkit decent?

I agree with the general thrust of your comment, though; just unsure of some details.

> - Ways to monitor my network usage and ensure Apple isn't spying on me

This may not be complete monitoring, but Little Snitch (from obdev.at) can monitor outgoing connections, alert you and let you to block or allow those. Last year when macOS Big Sur was released, this didn’t work for a while for Apple’s programs, but that was later changed by Apple.

I feel you, but for me it's not a list of deficiencies in OSX. I came from Linux then used OSX almost exclusively (because work) for about 4 years and I still hate it. I agree the list of things above are real problems, but you could solve all of them and I'd still hate it.

For me it basically it comes down to this:

Macs are just similar enough to the Linux to fool me into thinking I know what I'm doing. But then things are just subtly different such that nothing quite works. It's like, if you were Satan and your Q4 objective was to design a computer that you could give to me -- a "computer expert" -- to make me feel like a moron every time I try to do literally anything at all on it... Apple computers pretty much hit it out of the park.

It's also a lot of little usability things. I thought Apple was supposed to be the usability king? Yet it patently cannot handle simple things like:

* I want "natural" scrolling on the touchpad, but "regular" scrolling when using a plugged-in mouse with a mousewheel. The options are in TWO DIFFERENT settings windows, but changing one changes the other. Why? Even Linux, not famed as the Usability King, had this figured out in 2012.

* I want one of my monitors to be vertical. When I plug them in, it's a coin-toss as to whether or not it will remember which one it is. 50% of the time I have to tilt my head 90 degrees and set the 270* monitor to 0* and the 0* monitor to 270*. In the end I wrote an apple-script to do this automatically and bound it to a keyboard key.

> I want "natural" scrolling on the touchpad, but "regular" scrolling when using a plugged-in mouse with a mousewheel. The options are in TWO DIFFERENT settings windows, but changing one changes the other. Why? Even Linux, not famed as the Usability King, had this figured out in 2012.

This also drives me bonkers. The reason I think it is still this way is that at Apple everyone is using the Magic Mouse which has touch scrolling on it (you scroll like a trackpad with your finger) and so presumably most never toggle this. Another example of pain if you go off the happy path the apple developers use and keep tidy and clean.

I have this exact preference as well, and my solution was this little utility app: https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/ Being a Mac user for many years, I’ve found that there’s almost always been some simple app that I’ve been able to find that can fit my UX preferences.

Wait, are you saying that if you set up FileVault to not use your iCloud account, Apple still holds a master key? I thought that was the whole point of using your own recovery key

Seconding this question!

2017 article says Apple doesn't have a copy without iCloud enabled, https://www.macworld.com/article/229963/want-to-recover-a-fi...

I can't respond in good faith without access to the source code. Everything that I would tell you is just conjecture based on either trust or hatred of Apple, which is equally useless to the consumer. Use your best judgement.

What do you want to do that homebrew doesn’t do well?

Re: package managers, have really enjoyed pkgsrc. Only wish there were more prebuilt packages.

Most of the important ones like package managers, containers, not calling home etc are mentioned by the others. So I will mention things I don't think are discussed enough by linux switchers.

The one I didn't think I would yearn for but am really reminded of everyday are- desktop environments and window managers. My friends couldn't stop praising the UX but even after a long time trying to get used to it I still am annoyed by the application switching keyboard shortcuts, lack of ability to set system wide shortcuts for launching basic things like terminal. I won't talk about the lack of some cli applications I loved because I expected that when I moved(and it is better than I thought). I have tried iterm2, hyperswitch, rectangle. I understand that different systems have different behaviours and I can't expect it to behave the same but I have observed my friends, and others and the level of keyboard driven userflow I can achieve even in something like windows just seems worse here. It's not that it isn't possible but rather the behaviour has subtle quirks that I can't always rely on it. And lastly animations and latency. Even after turning all animations, it just is slow. I was used to having applications open before my keyboard would even leave the shortcut key and here I find myself waiting for things to start. I thought I was being nitpicky until I had to use my 2014 model haswell laptop for something and it just was such a breeze compared to the provenly faster processor and storage of m1. What's everyone's experience like?

Command+space t<Enter> for terminal (at first you’ll have to type “terminal”, but after 10 or so it becomes the first result for “t”).

The same for other aplications.

You can also, from terminal, do a open -a application_name if you want.

This is a very poor replacement for something that really should be instant and cerebral like app shortcuts.

This is what I use and it is part of muscle memory now. But this is a part of thousand cuts that make the experience less than amazing.

My friends couldn't stop praising the UX but even after a long time trying to get used to it I still am annoyed by the application switching keyboard shortcuts, lack of ability to set system wide shortcuts for launching basic things like terminal.

Hammerspoon is the answer to all of these. The common solution is to rebind caps lock (using Karabiner Elements) to be “hyper” (cmd + alt + shift + ctrl) and then bind global keyboard shortcuts with that using Hammerspoon.

I vaguely remember having tried hammerspoon but can't remember why I didn't continue using it. Will give it a proper shot. Thanks!

Okay. Just tried hammerspoon and I love it. Love the documentation as well. Thanks.

If someone were complaining about inability to configure keyboard shortcuts on Linux and you recommended a solution like Hammerspoon, it'd invite an onslaught of ‘this is why Linux is too overcomplicated and annoying for normal people’ comments.

Setting global keyboard shortcuts on Linux doesn't require you to learn a whole-ass LUA API. It's just there, for all the popular DEs.

Oh I absolutely agree. MacOS in general is not very good for power users out of the box.

Use iTerm2 and set the “hotkey”. That gives instant switch to terminal with one key.

Can you give other examples of command line app problems or keyboard driven workflow problems you’re having? I expect people here will be able to show you how to solve them.

Even on Linux I rarely bother hitting a hotkey to open a terminal. Why? Because I have it load on startup and almost never close it.

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