Comment by pkulak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pkulak | Hacker News Reader

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This seems off to me. I remember when I was using Mac, if I got a new machine, I had at least a day of downtime. Everything is minor, but it totally adds up. You've got to run around to dozens of websites, download, and click through menus to install Docker/Homebrew/IntelliJ/etc. Then there are all the nanny systems you have to turn off every time you hit them the first time. Oh, gotta give the console access to the filesystem. Half the binaries you download aren't signed to Apple's liking, so you gotta work around each one of those, and how you work around it changes with every major version of MacOS. Hell, just dragging, holding and releasing the 2-dozen useless default apps the hell out of the Dock takes a solid minute. Did you sign in to iCloud yet, btw? Siri would love to be enabled to, if you have a moment. Your home folder isn't in the finder, just a bunch of iCloud stuff and the Desktop. Do you remember how to option-click in the magic spot to find it and make a shortcut? It's death by a million cuts.

That said, I'm not gonna pretend that Linux is some utopia and everything works immediately. But there's no way it's worse. I have a script that takes any machine from a formatted drive to a working OS exactly how I need it, unattended, in about 20 minutes. That's extreme, but everyone at least has a list of the packages they need that they can copy paste install into the terminal as soon as the installer is done.

MacOS is a lot easier if you restore from a Time Machine backup. In four hours I can buy a new machine and be logged in and working like nothing happened. Done that plenty of times.

I think the biggest thing I can point to is how well Apple products work for the average person. I buy new ones every 2~3 years and keep N-1 as a spare. N-2 goes to someone who has asked me too many PC support questions.

Everyone I've given an apple laptop has eventually bought a new one. They bitched about the price, but they were ultimately willing to pay for it. My dad worked for IBM for many years and was not happy I "wasted money" on my first mac in college. Ten years later after him still saying that, I gave him a laptop. That was a few years ago and last month he bought a new M1 Air. Meanwhile, a number of the people he works with have converted to Apple laptops because they've seen how well his works.

I am on my 4th macbook in 7 years, I have not had to install any program twice and all my settings so far have carried over between devices, with the sole exception of security settings. Maybe I got absurdly lucky but I have never had this little issues with switching devices thanks to migration assistant.

Ah yeah, I guess I've never done the migration assistant thing. Seems dirty not to start with a clean slate, but maybe that's just my hangup.

But, you can also just copy your home directory on Linux for the same kinda process.

I do think that's where you're hurting yourself. I've been using Macs since before OS X came out, and in the OS X era I have never had long downtime when switching to a new machine. In the old days before Migration Assistant, you'd just clone the drive. These days you use Migration Assistant. I do understand the "dirty" sentiment, but in reality I've been upgrading via cloning or Migration Assistant for close to 20 years now with never a clean install, and it's worked well.

Absolutely not hurting myself. I love Linux. :D I don't think I'll ever switch back. I actually understand how every aspect of my machine works, and this feeling of control is absolutely addictive.

I kinda lost the thread at this point, but I was just trying to make the point the Macs aren't magically usable out of the box, at least for power users.

> Absolutely not hurting myself. I love Linux. :D I don't think I'll ever switch back. I actually understand how every aspect of my machine works, and this feeling of control is absolutely addictive.

This is exactly the reason for the feeling of empowerment I got when I moved to FreeBSD/KDE after Mac. I didn't realise just how closed down macOS had gotten over time. This was the number one reason for my move but the extent of it still surprised me. Everything I want differently now is just easy, documented and usually even has a GUI button ready for the clicking. Whereas in macOS it's just "this is how it works, get used to it" now.

Apple is working so hard to lock the underpinnings of the OS down now and even if you can still change things to work your way you have to jump through so many hoops it becomes really annoying. And as well as that whatever option you used to get there is bound to get changed or removed without notice.

I just realized I'm not happy just going along with other people's choices. I hate 'going with the flow'. I recognise any the specific annoyances you mentioned in your post higher up in the thread.

You can copy your home directory on macOS, too, I do it every time I get a new machine and it works fine. I just `cp -a` my home directory onto the external drive and do the same back off. I do have to chown -R the directory sometimes, if the UID is different for some reason. Obviously you need to reinstall the applications, but that is mostly just dragging them into /Applications. Not too much different from `apt-get install`ing them, really.

I have dozens of GUI programs—commercial and open-source—and even more command line programs and I'm like 99% sure the only one I installed in any way other than `brew install [name]` was homebrew itself. Oh, wait, not quite true: Apple's software (Numbers, Pages, Keynote, et c.) I manage through the App Store. That's it.

The fact that Brew's package selection is one of the most complete that exists (I think Arch's and Gentoo's get fairly close, maybe with a few not-enabled-by-default ones added in?), is one of the main reasons I like it so much.

Depends on what you’re used to and what your needs are. I can have a Mac in reasonably usable shape in 30-45m, whereas getting Linux configured to my liking (especially under KDE) quickly turns into a multi-hour affair and ends in an unsatisfying state because of all the little things that can’t be the way I like unless I start digging into source code or writing my own desktop bits.

> Depends on what you’re used to and what your needs are. I can have a Mac in reasonably usable shape in 30-45m, whereas getting Linux configured to my liking (especially under KDE) quickly turns into a multi-hour affair and ends in an unsatisfying state because of all the little things that can’t be the way I like unless I start digging into source code or writing my own desktop bits.

That only works well if macOS is in fact exactly how you like things. Because it's a lot less configurable than KDE and the whole source code thing is not an option at all :)

I agree, if you want a Mac then don't try to make Linux like one because you'll never get close enough.

I mean I've had 2 mac's so far and I've reset the first one a handful of times it never took me more than about 1 - 2 hours to get up and running with Homebrew (a package manager for Mac). Although I will agree the Mac installer is highly unintuitive.

I never felt that way, its pretty easy, early version installs breaks stuff, and I have to deal with any UI and features they added in.

You partition your computer to just try the new version as well? Pretty handy.

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