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Comment by LAC-Tech | Hacker News Reader

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As bad as MacOS is the competition is generally worse. Windows and Linux laptops can't sleep/wake or power manage correctly, trackpad behavior is mediocre at best, bad HiDPI support, and so on. It's a lot easier to fix up some foibles in the desktop environment than it is to try and fix core OS issues.

macOS has the same sleep issues where sometimes it just doesn't. If you get a PC laptop that still supports S3 sleep in the BIOS it works fine. HiDPI support is a tradeoff. Windows can run into blurry apps but it works better on non 200ish PPI displays.

My M2 Macbook Air has been flawless about sleep, but I set "Wake for network access" to "Never" so maybe I'm just avoiding Apple's issues there. At least it can be disabled; with Windows Modern Standby it was impossible to completely prevent wakeup last I checked. And new laptops are dropping support for S3 sleep.

As for the HiDPI stuff, it's one example among many of Apple making sure basic functions work without friction. I don't even know what I traded off for that - my Macbook works with normal PPI screens just fine - but it was worth it. For another example, I recently had trouble pairing a bluetooth keyboard on Windows 11 because their new settings panel is missing functionality. In 2023, that is an absolutely wild issue to have.

For HiDPI because of the way Apple handles it something like a 27" 4K display (really the sweet spot of sharpness and price right now) will either have to be run at "Looks like 1080p" (which is huge at 27"), tiny native 4K or some non-integer scale leading to overall blurriness and problems from that (different thickness lines). To have it look really good you need a ~200ish PPI display which at 27" means 5K and all the added expense of that. It's not as big of a problem anymore but on lower end Intel Mac GPUs like the 2018 Mac Mini scaling a 4K display to "Look like 1440p" takes more than the GPU can really muster and animations lag horribly and drop frames all over the place. Windows does fractional scaling correctly, a straight line is a straight line, fonts are sharper and rendering 4K is always rendering 4K and not 5K taxing a crappy GPU. And sometimes you have to use a 3rd party app to even enable Apple's HiDPI support on some displays because for whatever reason Apple hasn't blessed it.

Apple also removed sub-pixel rendering in 10.14 so on non-HiDPI displays text looks particularly bad compared to Windows or Linux. They also for some mind boggling reason don't support volume control over HDMI/DP with most monitors which is infuriating.

And the fact you need to spend $2000+ to get a laptop from them that can handle 2+ external monitors is NUTS.

What issue did you have pairing a Bluetooth keyboard in Windows 11? I've done that and had no issues even with ones that want me to enter a pairing code.

Try it. Apple M-series laptops are by far the superior hardware on the market today.

TFA is about using a non-Apple mouse (because Apple mice are touch sensitive so you can do gestures on the mouse's surface).

The OS itself is a certified Unix with a proprietary layer on top. Honestly after years of using Linux I'm fine with that, because using Linux on an old Thinkpad might be fun but the UX is sub-par. Maybe next year will be the year of the Linux desktop but until then I've got better things to do than tweak my KDE config or wonder why wifi doesn't work after a suspend-resume.

For me it's that 90% of everything "just works" and works the way I would expect it to; but this makes the 10% remaining absolutely annoying.

“The Macintosh is the first personal computer worth criticizing.”

Alan Kay

—-

If the users and manufacturer care, then it’s worth criticizing. If no one cares, why bother?

I used PCs for decades before transitioning to Mac based laptops for work which I continued to use for the last 6 years. Due to the M1 laptops being poorly suited to my workflows, I have now changed back and am on a Linux powered Dell Precision laptop and am overall happy with the decision - though I had to compromise on a few things.

I dislike Apple and find a lot of their choices distasteful - but I just haven't been able to find a laptop that I could use portably that feels as nice (I like to work from cafes/libraries, so the docked experience doesn't matter - the Dell crushes in that context).

It's mostly the trackpad that does it, I can use a MBP trackpad for a full 8 hour work day and never think about reaching for a mouse.

By contrast, my Dell is better for my workflow in every way. Aside from the battery life, it compiles things in literally half the time, IO bound tasks are, no exaggeration, an order of magnitude faster.... but it feels so horrible to use.

The trackpad is physically exhausting to use and the speakers sound tinny like I am losing consciousness. The power adapter is enormous, heavy and essential.

I wish someone would just make a shameless 1:1 rip off of the MBP with first class Linux support. Haha, why is it so hard for OEMs to get the hint?

At the very least, OEMs like Dell could try using a MacBook and mimic the trackpad. Don't they have QA teams that tell them how bad it is?

> It's mostly the trackpad that does it, I can use a MBP trackpad for a full 8 hour work day and never think about reaching for a mouse.

This. Plus battery life. I don't generally spend whole days on my laptop, and for meeting someone for work for a couple hours you can just take the laptop, no charger, no mouse.

> I wish someone would just make a shameless 1:1 rip off of the MBP with first class Linux support. Haha, why is it so hard for OEMs to get the hint?

Isn't that - theoretically - the Dell Developer Edition something?

The problem is OEMs know to do hardware, not software. The trackpad in apples is made by the same manufacturer as in most of the oranges. It's the software that's different. Same for most of the other tweaks that make apples less annoying to use.

This. Macbooks are okayish computers but terrific laptops.

The MBP shines in things like screen quality, performance per watt and integration between every part of the laptop.

And it doesn't take much knowledge to tweak things a little bit further to enhance the experience outside the Apple bubble.

> OEMs like Dell could try using a MacBook and mimic the trackpad.

You know what's crazy about the trackpad situation? You can put Windows or Linux on a real live Macbook and the trackpad gets worse. Everybody except Apple just insists on being wrong about trackpads.

I think the Windows philosophy for UX is just "good enough so enterprise don't ditch Windows", which given its enterprise monopoly and very strong lock-in and almost complete lack of viable alternatives means they can do almost whatever (and looking at Windows 11, seems they do make use of that freedom). They don't have strong incentives to make their OS fun, as long as it sort of does the job. And even if they did try to fix trackpads, at the price point lots of corporate drone Windows laptops sell at, could they possibly include decent trackpad hardware?

Linux is kind of puzzling though, this has been a super glaring issue for what is now decades. Are the people who could fix this just set up to never ever leave the home row? Is it actually too hard for an open source endeavour like Desktop Linux?

With Bootcamp on the Intel MacBooks, Apple supplied trackpad drivers that made it about as good. There was also an open source trackpad driver that you could install.

Great hardware held back by its software

It's not "bad". It's that it's very opinionated towards its real target: Designers, "high level" developers (e.g. web), and office 365 users.

Of course it won't do the trick if you want to do something like linux or bsd development

I feel like all three major OSs are crap and have trade offs. It’s all about finding which one’s trade offs are ones you can live with. I can use any of the three, but each annoys me in different ways. I use macOS because I find it less annoying than Windows or Linux once I’ve set it up. The truly annoying bit is that each OS has a bit of exclusive software and a few exclusive features that are amazing… but I don’t want 3 OSs.

and the fact that among the 3, MacOS is the hardest to virtualize on any other platform (technically against their ToS to do so on non-Apple hardware too last I checked half a dozen years ago). This effectively puts a stop to most practical use within bigger companies; it’s a safer bet to just buy a few Mac minis and toss them on a rack shelf somewhere, and a lot less of a headache when that on person who figured out how to make it work leaves.

Well said. Mac OS is not the best - there is no best, they all suck. It's just the least annoying.

MacBook Pros definitely “do the trick” for hundreds of thousands of us software developers in Silicon Valley every day. Docker works fine on M1 MBPs and it’s not much of a chore to target amd64 with a Dockerfile eg

    FROM --platform=linux/amd64 python:3.7-alpine

Plenty of the software that runs the internet is written, compiled, and tested on MacBooks, even if it may get rebuilt for production on some x86_64 server or AWS instance (possibly even an ARM-based Graviton instance).

I agree that MacBooks have gotten less “pro” and now seem to cater to college kids who probably don’t need them more than they do to folks like Digital Imaging Technicians working on movie sets, but they’re still quite popular for the latter, even if some level of Windows and Linux machines have started taking up some of the roles (especially for things like VFX, see eg https://vfxplatform.com/ ) and sound and music recording / production / editing (plus Windows has had Cubase for a very long time, and before that, plenty of studios had Cubase for the Atari 520ST and Atari 1040ST back in the late 80s).

I say some of it is still just plain bad - and I say it as someone who is considering a MacBook this year:

For example: the keys that Macs have instead of page up, page down, home and end still feels like four different "surprise me" buttons in every app I tried them in.

Honestly, a MBP running Linux with full hardware support would be the best laptop on Earth

And, tbh, at least MacOS has Independent Virtual Desktops per monitor.

I'd sell my soul to have that on KDE

If you are OK with using a different window manager, Enlightenment has independent virtual desktops per monitor too.

Enlightenment versions since 17 have been a bit hit and miss for being stable vs. frustratingly buggy, though. Enlightenment 25 has been alright (version packaged in Bookworm (current Debian stable).

You don't have or hear any complaints about Windows 10/11?

Sounds like you're seeing what you want to see.

Lol. Have you ever tried to use a trackpad on Linux?

What specific complaints are you referring to?

Absolutely hilarious. You people just will not stop.

Who is complaining exactly? I think a developer identifying a weakness and building a tool to fix those weaknesses is great. Are you trying to say there aren't also tons of mouse tweaking software for Windows and Linux? Do you even know what this app does?

I typically buy gaming mice that don't necessarily have Mac support and just let macOS handle the mouse. It works sufficiently, not great but good enough for day to day stuff when I'm not using the trackpad.

I also use Windows for gaming and the built in mouse functionality is far from mind blowing. Not to mention that pretty much all 1st part mouse software on windows (and in general) is hot garbage. Ugly confusing UI, often slow and buggy and resource hogging.

For anyone interested in this App I would also suggest going to the Github page and checking the 3.0 Beta stuff which is completely different from the 2.0 version on their web page.

This app makes the scrolling really nice with a mouse it feels very much like the trackpad inertial scrolling.

The most interesting thing is you can assign different behaviors when you Click, Click and Hold, Double Click, Click and Drag, etc. various mouse buttons.

Other macOS mouse tweaking software I've tried are either too limited (ie. only adjusts scrolling, only adjusts mouse button assignment) or are way too complicated. I really don't want to have to keep track of multiple apps just to tweak the mouse. I like this app so far as it seem to cover everything with a nice simple UI.

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