What exactly are you moving on to? Ubuntu? Windows?
Behind macOS is the most valuable company in the world adding fixes, features and security patches. There isn’t any other computing solution today that can deliver what Apple does.
My long-term solution is building my own desktop environment that is inspired by the classic Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, but also takes ideas from OpenDoc, Smalltalk environments, the Symbolics Genera Lisp machine OS, and Plan 9 (itself influenced by Project Oberon when it comes to the GUI) to form an environment that encourages flexible, programmable tools built from smaller components but can be arranged to create complete software solutions, kind of like how a painter arranges colors and tools. Unfortunately I’m still early in the design phase and I have no code to share, and this is also a side project since I work full-time as a researcher and thus I can’t devote my full time to this, but I hope that by 2024 I’ll have an early version working and released.
I am inspired by the vision of personal computing pioneers like Alan Kay, and I hate to see personal computing being transformed from user empowerment to platforms for selling services and serving ads to a captive audience.
It's like we're going from 'bicycles for the mind' to 'mass transit for the mind', where more people than ever are going places, but the bus doesn't go exactly where you want at the time you want to go there, the seats aren't adjustable, the other passengers are sometimes annoying or even dangerous, and nothing is under your control or at your convenience.
I'm also beginning to see that those of us who were lucky enough to experience the individual empowerment granted by the original vision of personal computing must work to keep it going, else we end up with the kind of world that personal computing was reacting against.
Good luck with your project.
I've considered just building a true maclike DE myself but the process of getting a garden variety traditional floating window manager for Wayland set up makes my head spin, even with things like wl-roots existing. It doesn't feel the least bit accessible to someone used to building consumer-facing native desktop/mobile apps.
How come macOS magically just happened to work the way you liked it to? Answer: It didn’t, you just adjusted yourself to use macOS, but now you’ve ossified and think everything not what you grew up with is unnatural.
The only intuitive interface is the nipple. And even grasping that interface can be a difficult task for a baby.
(After reading that, I have to append; no pun intended.)
I’m a tech junkie, I’ve had it all. Doesn’t get better than Apple
We noticed.
I’ve used all the platforms. Windows and android are incompetent, poorly designed, serve the user LAST, poorly updated, insecure, spying on you, and annoying AF to use. Worse than nothing. Worse than no computer or phone at all.
If you can't listen, your punishment is to keep using imitation product. Harsh. But it is what it is.
The only OS I don't have much experience with is iOS. I've stayed with Android the whole time - largely with Samsung. A high end Samsung phone is an absolute powerhouse, while also looking pretty sleek, if I may say so. I personally think that iOS and iPhones are quite limiting in certain ways. But I would never knock on someone for using iOS. The OS and the phone look very nice and trendy, the whole experience is very well optimized and, at least in the U.S., you'll get certain social perks by having one. Even for older folks, it could be a great choice, because their grandkids will be able to fix most problems that could arise in their phones.
Let me revisit a prior point about iPhones - they're not very customizable. On my Samsung, I have a number of customizations: a custom "launcher" ("Nova"), which enables me to tweak things like icon sizes, density, and many many other things (my favorite feature is to use a custom icon set). I could easily keep naming countless other aspects that Android allows me to customize, even if I only customize a few of them. The default experience of a Samsung phone is quite solid, other than maybe having a few too many Samsung-specific apps pre-installed (though at least I never buy through a carrier, so I don't have to worry about any of that bloat). But it's very trivial to nerf them by disabling them or even simply uninstalling them using "pm-uninstall" through ADB. For me, it takes maybe 20 minutes total to apply various tweaks I like to a brand new phone. I have them all written down neatly and they haven't changed much for a while, so applying those customizations is not bother for me at all. But for others? It would be an unimaginable punishment. Many people prefer to buy an iPhone not only for all the benefits I listed out earlier, but also because it is more restrictive. Because of this, you don't have to deal with any of the 'pain' of trying to decide what should be customized and whether you should do so in the first place. But would I judge anyone for taking either route: 1) a Samsung that you customize to a reasonable extent - without rooting or unlocking the bootloader - vs 2) an iPhone that is effectively at stock settings, other than the apps you've downloaded? No, I absolutely would not. Which brings me to my last point..
I think we live in amazing times in terms of technology (aside from the obvious issues related to privacy and social media, which are discussed at great lengths here and elsewhere). We have many choices in terms of hardware and software and our devices can do things we could hardly fathom a few decades ago. I rather arbitrarily chose to focus on smart phones in my rant, but I could have easily discussed laptops, desktops, servers, or some other type of device to make the same point. So I say, "Live and let live."
That's what you're missing.
You're required to sign in for updates so they can track you. No software patches without monitoring, I guess.
No way to remove iTunes or stop Safari from trying to take over again and again. Even if you don't want music to open that way.
Steve Balmer would be proud.
Remember 2005-8 when you tried Ubuntu for the first time and were wowed with Compiz Fusion compared to the drab Windows XP/Vista/etc window management?
That's the feeling you get every time you step away from MacOs finder and the atrocious Mac window manager.
You shouldn't need a 3rd party plugin to manage window placement. It shouldn't be difficult to navigate to a directory via a path or run a program or have the file browser automatically resize its icon view. But that's Mac.
This hasn't been my experience. macOS still incessantly bothers you about OS updates even if you decline signing into an Apple account during first-boot, and you can download major release updaters independently from the Mac Store (e.g. using the script from OSX-KVM).
Command-Shift-G my friend.
> or run a program
Spotlight? (Command-space) Or Mission Control? (Control-space for me, but I think I customized that)
> have the file browser automatically resize its icon view
You want a window to automatically make the icons bigger if you resize the window to be bigger? No idea how to make that happen.
If it’s a feature you want, and there are multiple ways of handling it, why not go with a third party app with a windows placement scheme that works for you? I do.
>It shouldn't be difficult to navigate to a directory via a path or run a program
It’s not. I bet I can run any program on my Mac in 6 keystrokes or less. I easily navigate via paths.
>have the file browser automatically resize its icon view.
Personally this sounds like an extreme edge case preference to me. I would hate this behavior
fwiw safari is the no 1 worst browser i have ever used, as a developer. it's hot garbage. not the renderer, the browser itself and its dev tools.
plus you need an apple account and a 10 trillion gb xcode install just to port your chrome extension to safari, what a joke.
and every couple of years apple decides to drop backwards compatibility for X number of products/services you've been happily using because they need to sell new machines or something.