macOS Is Hot Garbage
medium.com
medium.com
And there it is.
Nobody likes change. If you hate it so much, go back.
Sure, it has its issues, but people who've been using it for a while are VASTLY more qualified to comment on that. If I'm used to skateboarding and I hate my first experience driving a car, should Toyota make a gap in the floor so I can push along with my foot?
At least MacOS is big enough that people don't launch gigantic misguided attempts at a replacement and derail their lives, like that guy who tried to make a "distraction-free" Slack alternative.
If I wrote a similar post as a Mac user a week into trying Linux it would be about 10 miles long.
1) When I accidentally bump the middle mouse button, it barfs up my clipboard contents where I didn't want it to. Linux knows about normal cut/copy/paste conventions but for some reason does it wrong here. Because Linux is hot garbage, obviously.
Here's a video of me spending several minutes trying one solution, realizing it nuked the middle mouse button completely and I can no longer middle click to open tabs, sorting out how to undo that, finding another solution, installing xbindkeys xsel and xdotool, setting up ~/.xbindkeysrc, realizing it doesn't work after I reboot, and then going back to google to figure out what systemd is and how to make something run on startup.
2) etc...
That being said, the author has gone out of their way to take the customization options that it does have and set them up in a way they don't like, apparently just to have something to complain about.
Take this screenshot: https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*YT_A3adukXXku33P2htLUw.jpe...
By default, the tab bar isn't shown when there's only one tab, so they've gone and enabled that. The path bar at the bottom is also not enabled by default. All you would normally have is the selected folder in the sidebar (when applicable), and the current folder in the title bar. But you can turn on other options if you want to complain about them existing.
But then he's steadfastly refused to change the icon organization settings, just to make sure he can complain about that too.
I don't think the author is coming into this with a healthy attitude for trying a new OS. I get along just fine in Mac, Windows, and (occasionally) Linux, and despite the occasional adjustment to different conventions I've never felt a need to write an angry blog post about how garbage anything different from my default is.
EDIT - taking a look at that screenshot again, it's from before the Big Sur redesign, so at least 3 releases old, and apparently from before the author ever used a mac. So he's gone and dug up someone else's old screenshot just to have something to whine about or what?
Apologies for taking the flame bait, oh well.
Although I agree with many things he stated. 15+ years on Mac I still think Windows's default layout and file alignment better than Finders.
My story with MacOS is this: After almost 20 years of using Linux on the desktop and for work, I had to change two years ago to MacOS due to requirements of my employer (not really, I just got sick of having to use Linux “illegally” in a partition on the shitty Dell Laptop with Windows that the company provided me initially with and then my manager suggested me to get a Macbook pro).
It was odd at the beginning but once I got the habit and understanding on how doing things, I have to say that is so far the most reliable desktop os I have used ever. It behaves always as I expect. No ugly surprises, no desktop crashes etc.
The only pain points I can complain are: - Inconsistent behaviour on maximizing/minimizing windows.
- Cannot change at once the wallpapers of all virtual desktops.
- Lack of keyboard shortcuts for certain things.
- Missing GNU cli tools (despite this is something that can be addresses via brew for a big part of them)
- The fact that you have to stick with what Apple wants you to stick with (This means, no deep customisations of the system)
- I personally don’t like to have the windows menu on the top bar, I prefer the per-windows approach.
Despite the mentioned points, I still thinking that its good things overpasses the bad.
(I actually ended up buying a Macbook pro for myself)
I think this blog speaks more to the authors inability to read a manual, or explore the settings pane with attention given how many of these problems are solveable with a Preferences change either via the GUI or command line.
I've read many manuals. For one point I even link to Apple's official documentation. Much of my article is behaviour I cannot change (including some I left out, such as command+tab grouping windows from apps and not being limited to the current workspace).
The fact that there are rough edges on other platforms is irrelevant, as is that "the user doesn't understand how macOS works". That the author hit these issues, was frustrated by them, and wasn't able to quickly identify a workaround, suggests that there is an opportunity for improvement, whether it's a functional or usability bug. Perhaps macOS isn't "hot garbage", but it's also got flaws that may be worthy of discussion by a community of hackers and product folk.
thenewuser1 said it best: pointing to others' flaws doesn't excuse your own. BMW improves their cars. They don't say, "just wait until you drive a shitty Honda".
It is really funny to see comments like this from Apple fans here. As if pointing to a much worse OS(in their view) excuses all the drawback in MacOS.
There is so much things that break, corner cases, basic features missing, unintuitive user interface in MacOS. It probably was good long back, but I don't think that is the case at present.
I could have argued most of the authors points, had Medium let me sign in :shakes_fists: