Wait, did Microsoft kill sleep?
thurrott.com
thurrott.com
I borrowed a Macbook and being able to snap the lid shut, carry it normally, then open it and just start typing was so freeing. It sounds like a small thing, but a small thing repeated many times throughout many days adds up.
My wife has a work-issued Dell and it is amazing how loud the fans get while it is sitting, unattended, with the lid closed. We notice it not infrequently… why did the TV get quieter? Oh, actually the background noise got louder.
It’s amazing that “sleep” is still an issue for Microsoft Windows computers today.
Worst situation I had was the last personal laptop, a Haswell-era Dell. The wifi would only come back on every-other sleep, so I'd put it to sleep, wake it, and put it to sleep again, which took all of like 3 seconds. For a bit I was carrying around a swank Alfa USB-WiFi adapter as a workaround, which had the benefit of also providing superb wifi performance, but I figured out the every-other-sleep pattern after a bunch of months & that was that. All in all such a minor caveat, such a small nit amid so much working great across such a long span of time & systems.
I once accidentally hibernated a machine & was shocked it just worked in Linux. It means shutdown & turn on are closer to 10s, but my god, zero battery drain is divine. The thought of a laptop that can't stay off for a month is absurd. My personal laptop has 3/4 a year of "uptime" on it. It should be like this.
If you're a Windows user who is fed up with Windows or hesitant to upgrade to Windows 11, I would encourage you to give macOS a try. Even if it's a hackintosh, the experience will be way better than you're used to on Windows.
I strongly encourage windows over macos, and Linux over Windows, if you can get away with the software supporting your use case.
You can still use Linux or Windows if you want. Just don't try to take the choice away from the rest of us.
There is nothing preventing me from installing any software I want on it (so long as it is supported by macOS of course). The best, easiest, safest, path of least resistance app install experience is of course through the App Store, but it is not mandatory to use. Windows also has an App Store since Windows 8. That being said, I can download and run any software I please on my Mac without Apple's permission. Notarization is only required to prevent a scary (but easily bypassed) warning from popping up. This is also similar on Windows. Software that has not been properly digitally signed will pop up a similar scary warning.
To top all of this off, macOS is a certified UNIX^tm system, which means I can easily compile software from source and use package managers like Homebrew. Apple has made no indications of removing any of this.
Additionally, they have put no barriers in place to prevent the installation of Linux on Apple Silicon Macs via the Asahi Linux project, so that is always available as the nuclear option if Apple goes full lockdown on my devices.
Not some bastardized WSL1/2 or powershell.
The macOS toolchain sucks and typing in gsed all the time sucks even more.
Ah yes, and then plenty of scripts that assume BSD sed break.
WSL is close enough to linux that a lot of docs just add in a little note for WSL users to follow linux instructions instead of windows.
There's no getting around it, we have to individually learn all of the systems that we're on. Every time I'm on a linux system (I mostly use BSD) I'm badly thrown by systemd. This is my fault--I need to learn it--but it's always annoying to have to relearn how to do basic tasks on a similar yet different system.
However the need for a package manager is obvious, even Windows (itself, not WSL) has come around to recognizing this. Yet we still have to rely on a complete third party for such on mac (thankfully, we have open source options, at the bare minimum). Surely Apple can come up with something! Especially since afaik the brew maintainer failed to get past the interview process at Apple, surely they can do better!
Is this really your litmus test? What other Company/Manufacturer do you hold to the same level as Apple?
Any developer that creates 3rd party software that’s not hired by the OEM must be shit?
Perhaps don't leap to negative conclusions so abruptly.
Perhaps don't leap to negative conclusions so abruptly.
You’re correct I completely took your words out of context and weaponized my frustration. I apologize.
Maybe, but the things they do with your lacking choice are 10000x better than what Windows does.
I've found OSX to be the best in that regard, there's a single place to find apps to purchase and download, and they Just Work. OS updates Just Work. I plug in peripherals and they Just Work.
The same for my iPhone - much better experience than Android.
I used to think user choice was important, and then I realized I was sacrificing user experience for a freedom that I never exercised.
Once given up this is a freedom you will never get back, and when a government leverages this control to do something like erasing apps off your machine or tracking what you do there will be no choice left but to accept it.
Demand usability and choice from your products. The apples of the world have established a false dichotomy.
I don't recognize your values as contributing the the computing universe. I don't recognize them as hackerly.
Yes.
But this can all be turned off through settings, GPO or this: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
But Windows now? Holy cow, in Windows it feels like they're trying to screw with me at this stage. MacOS issues mostly seem like the people at Apple are trying to make a good product that their users will like. Microsoft seems like serving their end users is secondary to another goal (advertising revenue?) Mind blowing.
Some people are commented about macOS being more locked down. I don't know what the current status is on Windows with regard to this, but the OS is a lot more locked down than an equivalent linux system. You can't dump onto the filesystem wherever you want. This improves system integrity and makes the devices more secure, you might not think this is worth it, but this point is inarguable.
For the moment at least, I have been able to install any utility I want and have not felt constrained in the slightest. It's not a problem for me to install things into the non-system directories and modify my $PATH variable and the like. If this changes, I guess I'd have to regrettably move back to Linux, but while we should be attentive, there's no reason to hate macOS for what we fear it may become instead of what it is.
Linus Tech Tips video about it from a few months ago:
Edit: Or is Intel to blame here? I don't know.
Edit2: Or maybe Lenovo or all 3? Didn't this work in the past pretty flawlessly
Last edit: ok, ranting about this actually made me look for solutions again (I did when I first got the notebook. Couldn't find anything). As it turns out you supposedly can (Cannot test rn) switch to Linux Sleep (s3) in the BIOS. If this turns out to be true, I take everything back.
As for why? As many know from the history of Linux support for sleep, it's not always been great. Every device in the system has to support it, and there's a risk of corrupting state when execution resumes. It's much easier to keep the system running in a lower power mode. That's true of all of the device drivers and firmware on the system too.
It's frankly shoddy work though that it works so poorly that the order in which one unplugs their laptop and closes the screen affects whether it correctly enters S0ix. I can't believe issues like that have made it out of QA on laptops over and over again, resulting in laptops overheating and reaching 0% charge. The Linus Tech Tips video here goes into the details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHKKcd3sx2c