Ask HN: New on macOS, what should I try/look into? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: New on macOS, what should I try/look into?

1 pointmartin_a4 comments

Hey everybody!

I got myself an "old" MacBook Pro (Mid-2018, i7) to see if MacOS could work out for me or if I should stick to other hard-/software.

I'd like to have a rather high level of compatibility/interoperability with Windows/Linux, so I'd prefer if I could use lots of tools that work very well cross-platform and not lock me into the Apple ecosystem too much.

Besides setting up the system (skipped Siri, iCloud, Apple ID etc. for now) I've so far only installed Firefox + Thunderbird, VS Code, Filezilla and Spotify. Next up would be the Affinity tools, but then I should be almost good to go for my daily stuff. OpenOffice would probably be another thing and something like Arduino, Nextcloud client...

But what should I really look into, what should I try that doesn't exist on other platforms or works just much better on MacOS?

the two best things for me about the MacOS are the integration with other apple devices/services and that things "just work". When I first started using it after using Linux for years I installed Thunderbird and the like. Now I use the Apple programs (Safari, Mail, etc). There are a lot of little niceties in things like Preview. I don't generally use Siri though.

The way it integrates with my other Apple devices, that it does point in time backups automatically, how well it suspends/resumes, long battery life - these are the killer features for me. For instance if my iPhone is in my pocket and I visit a site with SMS based 2FA the computer gets the code from the phone and offers to paste it into the prompt. There are a lot of little small things like that. A lot of them would involve using the Apple ecosystem, like Apple Music, iCloud, other apple devices, etc. Just my .02.

https://asahilinux.org/

Not really an answer to the original question, is it?

I didn't want to say it... ;-)

Nevertheless I think it's good that we have developments like these, so we can use different software on hardware than expected/enforced by the manufacturer.

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