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Comment by doawoo | Hacker News Reader

I really agree with this article- I used Windows as my primary OS (not counting work machines) until about 2 years ago, the mess of non coherent design and CONSTANTLY resetting my user preferences every update (like shoving new buttons [see: ads] onto my taskbar) ultimately lead me to buying the first m1 mbp as my new personal machine.

Never looked back. I only boot up windows for occasional games now, and even then, old games started to stop working. Linux at this point has better backwards compatibility using Proton/Wine/etc.

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> like shoving new buttons [see: ads] onto my taskbar

searching for apps in the Windows menu used to take less than a second. Now it takes 5-10 seconds to fetch crap from the internet (ads and bing results), and mix it with local results.

And don't forget the never ending Sisyphean hell of trying to quickly jump to settings. Windows 7 NAILED this and 10 was mostly fine at it, but 11 has completely fucked the dog with this in particular, especially since all your PC's settings are now situated across three different locations, any of which can seemingly change things at the same time.

The search also used to find things. Not anymore…

I even went and disabled web search in the registry and it still takes forever.

It's also terrible. "Fr" will find FreeCAD, the program I want. "Fre" pulls up "advanced system settings" because there's some subsection about free disk space. "Free" brings back FreeCAD.

Every single thing I do that involves any level of interaction with Windows has found some way of pissing me off.

Yep, locally installed programs sometimes don't even show up anymore when I press WinKey + <string> because whatever ad server they're running on the backend doesn't respond and it hangs the search.

Meanwhile, Linux keeps getting better and better. I used to run Ubuntu 15 years ago, then went back to Windows for a while for software and because Windows 7 was okish. Now I'm back, and while Ubuntu may not be as good as it was 15 years ago, debian and other distributions are great, and getting awesome new releases left and right. Smartphone connectibility with KDE connect has blown me away. It's and interesting trajectory right now.

I really don't care about design to be honest but the fact that update after updte they keep changing where you find things and how they work pisses me off so much.

The good thing is that powertoys and WSL2 at the end of the day compensate for me enough.

But get into setting up some bluetooth device and you want to cry if it doesn't work at first shot. You want to find help online? Pretty much all guides speak about the same OS like Windows 10, and yet they are already outdated with everything having been moved away.

Those things, and the performance. My surface laptop is 3y old, constantly lagging on windows, but as good as new on Linux.

The thing is users have no choice, it makes a complete mockery of computer programming as a profession. The people that were quality oriented lost the people selling licenses won.

> CONSTANTLY resetting my user preferences every update (like shoving new buttons [see: ads] onto my taskbar) ultimately lead me to buying the first m1 mbp as my new personal machine.

Boy are you going to be disappointed when you discover that settings reset quite aggressively, especially in cases where Apple really thinks it knows better.

Want to keep bluetooth off? Both iPhone and macs will not abide.

Want to keep your passwords in local keychain? Nah, they will be automatically migrated to cloud keychain on next upgrade.

I’m guessing you must be referring to something niche? [parent post kindly edited to add examples]

I’ve been using macs since 2012 and never had any setting change on me.

I do not know what is niche here, but I added couple examples from latest upgrade.

Are they just not testing what some options do? If so, we might be better off just not giving those options.

iOS has a “feature” where wifi and Bluetooth will switch itself back on after a set period of time if you use control center to turn it off. If you use settings it behaves as you would expect.

I’m aware of that feature, but using proper option in settings will not retain off position after next OS update, which is what OP was discussing. This happens every update, so I’m quite sure it’s by design.

A warning for anyone who is using local keychain: Don't. Either give in to iCloud keychain or use a different secrets manager.

If you're using a Mac with a T1 or T2 security coprocessor or Apple Silicon, your local keychain can only be decrypted with a key stored in those chips. Your backups are useless. I figured this out the hard way when an Apple depot repair for a failed display flex somehow ended up with my logic board getting replaced as well. After reimaging from backup (SSD was integrated on the logic board), the keychain was unreadable and I lost several accounts without recovery options. AppleCare's response was, well, you should have backed up your files, even though I had...

A fair warning, but I similarly lost a secret after transferring to a new iPhone, even while using 3rd party password manager. Said manager likely used secure enclave and thus failed to work on new phone. Failure was very quiet, not even an error or anything, it just stopped generating codes.

I was able to restore it through external means, but this reinforced “have a non-proprietary backups” for me.

Oh no company is perfect that’s for sure. I don’t use anything deep integrated stuff like the iCloud Keychain, I mainly use my own password manager of choice etc.

The iOS Bluetooth/wifi never bothered me personally because I use those all the time anyway. Of course everyone’s use case is gonna differ, but for me macOS is far from doing things like pushing huge full page “finish setting up edge” or “buy office” when I log in so, I’m happy.

Let's keep this factual.

> Want to keep bluetooth off? Both iPhone and macs will not abide.

To turn off Bluetooth, go to settings, select Bluetooth, and turn the toggle off. It will abide.

> Nah, they will be automatically migrated to cloud keychain on next upgrade.

I never even heard of this happening despite having used Macs for over a decade.

> Let's keep this factual.

I will give you benefit of the doubt that you personally never had them, but both are factual based on my experience.

If you are interested you should be able find previous HN threads with same exact symptoms from other people.

> To turn off Bluetooth, go to settings, select Bluetooth, and turn the toggle off. It will abide.

It will abide for a while, but the next software update will turn it back on. This happens every single update.

I for one have stopped supporting Windows for friends and family. The last version I used myself was XP, but I could still muddle around to help people with later versions for a long time. Now I can't.

At least the move to using web browsers for everything really eases migration to easier platforms.

> Never looked back

From 2 years ago, I think you're still somewhat in the honeymoon period.

The real fun begins when they rewrite system apps in a new framework, and kill the mechanism your favorite system extension was using.

I’m not new to macOS by any means, used it for work for far more than 2 years - so I do know this pain, but I’m not a huge system extension user so I’m probably an outlier

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