macOS becomes iOS: Safari video controls
underpassapp.com
underpassapp.com
The culture of products not under the control of the customer does the same thing. A culture that sees this as normal is a depressed culture.
To test whether the mice are depressed, researchers give them something rewarding that requires a little effort to get (e.g., sugary water vs. plain water).
The depressed mice give up. They are apathetic.
I imagine the mice believe that there is no way to change things. That might be true for the mice but it's not true for us.
Everything was pushing me in the direction of buying a new laptop (with a small discount relative to the new price) and transferring everything across.
If the mice had to deal with an intermittently disappearing cursor, and erratic hover behaviour on a 2 year old M2 Mac with the latest version of Sequoia .. that would probably illicit a very different response.
Are mice known to spill blood?
For example like will my wifi work today. Will my laptop still have any battery when I open it. Is today the day I surprise boot to tty and have to figure out what changed before I can start working.
I'll stick with the year-to-year unpredictability of apple over the day-to-day unpredictability of linux.
A Linux system stays the same unless you change it.
I also personally disagree that updates break system by the way. I have used Arch for more than a decade and has yet to experience one of this alleged frequent disturbance.
What I'm talking about is changes because of updates, yes. Auto updates, or ones I did, or an update to specific software that caused a library update to break something else. All that counts as "me changing it" sure. Like I said I guess I need a system a little less prone to breaking because of my actions. I'm a programmer not a linux admin.
Not updating your system is not a magic solution either. I ran Linux Mint for 9mo and twice during that time I ended up in a bizarre situation:
1. the menu bar, or whatever it’s called (taskbar/dock equivalent) had disappeared on boot and I spent about 2 hours trying to get it back
2. the system simply wouldn’t boot into Cinnamon anymore; I ended up reinstalling
Bought a MBP and while it has some annoying quirks I don’t have any crazy ruined-my-day issues anymore.
(macOS is my daily driver too, but I wouldn't mind having that feature)
In practice, even with a rolling release distro I have not had things break on an update in a very long time (not at all on my current install, which is two years old), and with stable distros its literally been 20 years since something did not boot.
Any OS seems to have some bugs on updates.
I have heard battery life is better so not arguing about that, but its rarely that I will not wake my laptop for more than a day or two so its not a problem I experience either.
On MacOS, I more often have to give up and live with the annoyances.
Hardware is the the big exception. None of my PCs have had nearly as good build quality or battery life (on Linux, at least) as a Macbook. Maybe I should try a Framework.
There are also more footguns and rabbit holes. Overall, I am about as happy with Linux than with macOS (I use both daily), but I would not say that one is really more empowering than the other.
I like tinkering with KDE but it’s full of inconsistencies and instability in a way than even the worst Finder I’ve used was not (e.g. the whole desktop freezing when adding a widget to the desktop with a brand new install). Never mind the Russian roulette that is updating nVidia’s drivers.
On the other hand on macOS it’s easier to get to things that are actually productive.
The argument apparently being that any change at all, if it was first made on iOS, must inherently be a sign that the two platforms are merging. Now, I don't really have an opinion about this behavior (I imagine it makes it easier for the controls to always be legible, regardless of what the video content looks like?), but I'd assume that any logic that holds for it being a good idea when applied on iOS would apply just as well on macOS. It doesn't have to be a sign that they're merging, just that similar reasons to make a change can exist in both places.
As such it seems like a particularly strange adjustment to hang a "macOS is turning into iOS" rant on. Particularly when there's things like "iPadOS just got macOS-style windowing and menu bars!" sitting right there.
You know, it's frustrating when people just flippantly assume that someone who has been a professional Mac developer for 19 years could be so stupid. I'm not stupid.
Did you notice when I said in the blog post, "as we've seen repeatedly [emphasis added] since then" and "Apple is continuing [emphasis added] to merge iOS and macOS"? Also when I said, referring to the embedded video, "This rhetorical question was presumably in response to widespread criticism." So the impression that Apple was merging iOS and macOS was already out there years ago.
My criticism should be understood in the context, which is that Apple has been merging iOS and macOS for years, in many different ways, and this is just the latest example. I couldn't even enumerate all of the examples, because there have been so many. So no, the argument does not hang on this one example. It's an argument I've been making since at least Mac OS X Lion, 14 years ago.
I don't expect you to know my full history. However, I expect comments to follow the HN guidelines, which say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
> I'd assume that any logic that holds for it being a good idea when applied on iOS would apply just as well on macOS.
Why would you assume this? The two platforms are very different in physical characteristics.
This is a principal objection to merging the platforms, especially merging the user interfaces. What makes sense for a tiny touch screen doesn't necessarily make sense for a much larger screen with keyboard and mouse input.
Jeff, they're a pair of closely-related operating systems that share a lot of common subsystems, and always have been. I don't want to say they'll never unify them more closely, but that's not something they seem to me to be doing. If you've been saying they've been merging them for 14 years, then they're really not making much progress on that.
> Why would you assume this? The two platforms are very different in physical characteristics.
Are you saying that the make-controls-more-visible argument doesn't apply? Because although I just threw that one out there without much thought, it really does seem reasonable on any device to me.
Yes. But then you're admitting that there are prior examples, not just this latest example.
> And thus dismissed those off-hand references as largely irrelevant to the main content of your post?
My opinions in the post, whether you agree with them or not, were indeed largely irrelevant to main content, which was highlighting the change of behavior.
You could have chosen to ignore those opinions, if you believe they were largely irrelevant. You chose not only to address my opinions but to turn them into a straw man. (Note that the HN guidelines also say, "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.") You don't have to agree with my opinions, but again, my opinions are part of a larger context, which you now acknoweldge. My opinions did not arise out of the blue with the video controls change.
...I'm admitting that people making this argument have suggested there were things that supported it before. Acknowledging that people have made prior claims I disagree with doesn't seem relevant?
> You could have chosen to ignore those opinions, if you believe they were largely irrelevant.
It was your opening paragraph that talked about merging the OSes. There's a reason I responded to it by assuming you thought the rest of your post supported your opening statement.
If you'd like, we really could just talk about whether the change to the video player behavior is a reasonable thing to apply to both platforms. I think it probably is, on balance, for the aforementioned control-visibility reasons. You?
(Though, sadly, I have to go pick up a child from school, so the rapid back-and-forth will have to cease for a bit.)
No, I'm not implying that. Whichever side of the controversy you stand on, apparently the opposite side from me, you have to admit, and seemingly are admitting, that many people have been arguing for years that iOS and macOS are merging.
My point is that if you're trying to interpret my views, you can't dismiss the prior examples as irrelevant. You may think my views are false, but my views are nonetheless based on the prior examples. You initially invented a straw man view out of thin air that I do not believe myself: "The argument apparently being that..."
> It was your opening paragraph that talked about merging the OSes. There's a reason I responded to it by assuming you thought the rest of your post supported your opening statement.
I think you misunderstood the purpose of the post, which was simply to highlight the latest abomination, not to make a larger argument.
A 391 word blog post is almost never going to be a comprehensive argument for anything. So if you're thinking "That's your argument???" well no, of course it's not. I don't have the time or desire to make every little blog post into a book-length treatise just so that random internet commenters don't assume I'm an idiot. (Some probably would anyway, so it would be wasted effort.)
> If you'd like, we really could just talk about whether the change to the video player behavior is a reasonable thing to apply to both platforms. I think it probably is, on balance, for the aforementioned control-visibility reasons. You?
I've never seen an case where the visibility/legibility of the controls were a problem. Do you have any examples?
The irony is that Tahoe has made many things on macOS less legibile, which of course is a matter of great public controversy now.
> A 391 word blog post is almost never going to be a comprehensive argument for anything. So if you're thinking "That's your argument???" well no, of course it's not.
Putting aside my disagreement with the larger argument.... If you want people who see your posts from the HN frontpage to go do independent research about the history of your ideas on the topic before responding, you're going to be left a frustrated and unhappy person. Really, you're lucky when people are replying to the actual content of your post rather than just the title and other people's comments. :-D
> I've never seen an case where the visibility/legibility of the controls were a problem. Do you have any examples?
Just looking at your comparison screenshots in your post, my focus is drawn to the control-icons much better in the Tahoe one. In the Sequoia screenshot the button-outlines draw more of my focus because of how they stand out, and that actually makes me take longer to parse what their contents are. The Tahoe version thus feels easier to quickly use to me.
This might be a personal thing to do with how our respective brains process visual information, but I think the Tahoe one is a genuine usability improvement.
That seems like a really strange way of putting it. What does your willingness have to do with it? I, the article author, am right here. Thus, you can just ask me what I meant. To insist on putting words in my mouth that I don't believe would be absurd, especially when it's directly to my face.
> the argument being that a change made on iOS later coming to macOS supports the idea that the platforms are merging
This incorrectly assumes that an argument was being made. I already said: "I think you misunderstood the purpose of the post, which was simply to highlight the latest abomination, not to make a larger argument."
In fact, the second paragraph of the blog post, immediately after the embedded video, already takes for granted that Apple is merging iOS and macOS: "this denial [No.] did not age well."
> If you want people who see your posts from the HN frontpage...
Well, I didn't submit my post to HN. I'm not sure I wanted it to be on the front page.
> to go do independent research about the history of your ideas on the topic before responding
I already addressed this earlier in the thread: "I don't expect you to know my full history. However, I expect comments to follow the HN guidelines".
> Really, you're lucky when people are replying to the actual content of your post rather than just the title and other people's comments.
I replied to you. What other people write in their comments is a separate matter. You're responsible for the content of your own comments about my article.
> Just looking at your comparison screenshots in your post, my focus is drawn to the control-icons much better in the Tahoe one.
It's important to note, however, that the controls themselves are brighter on Tahoe, independent of the background. Try cutting and pasting the controls from the Tahoe screenshot onto the Sequoia screenshot. You don't have to darken the video in order to achieve brighter controls.
The other issue, I would say the main issue, is that the controls remain on top of the video for several seconds after you're done manipulating them. So you keep having a darkened video for several seconds every time you adjust something, which is a degraded viewing experience. This happens even with play/pause.
I think it's a fair summary of what I understand your overall position to be. Specifically:
> This incorrectly assumes that an argument was being made. I already said: "I think you misunderstood the purpose of the post, which was simply to highlight the latest abomination, not to make a larger argument."
This is just "I'm not making an argument that they're merging, I'm stating it as an underlying assumption" which, again, distinction-without-a-difference.
It seems reasonable to, in this comment section over here, talk about the broader point of your opening assumption in the post. I don't have to accept your priors to talk about it, particularly not when the audience I was talking to was "readers of Hacker News, who may not have even considered this are-the-OSes-merging question before".
I don't think me disagreeing with you about the validity of your arguments violates any HN guidelines, though dang is certainly free to correct me.
Plus, even if I were to grant said underlying assumption as an inviolable topic that cannot be breached in discussion of this specific post, I'd then disagree that this is an example of it.
> Well, I didn't submit my post to HN. I'm not sure I wanted it to be on the front page.
I don't think I've ever seen you in HN comments for one of your posts not being somewhat-upset about people's responses to them. It's not the worst policy to avoid reading social media discussion about your posts, if it's making you unhappy.
> You don't have to darken the video in order to achieve brighter controls.
Sorry, I was apparently unclear about what my issue with Sequoia was, so let me rephrase. It's not the brightness, it's the outline. When I look at the Sequoia screenshot, I find my visual processing goes through two steps -- first I notice the overall button shapes, and second I identify their contents. Brightening the icons in Tahoe probably does help, but it's the reduction of the visual impact of the button-borders that really speeds my comprehension up.
> The other issue, I would say the main issue, is that the controls remain on top of the video for several seconds after you're done manipulating them.
They vanish instantly when you move the cursor off the video, which I reflexively do anyway because I don't want my cursor covering something I'm watching. (And in full-screen, the only time you couldn't do this, the background-darkening doesn't happen.)
In retrospect, if there's one thing missing from the post, it's an elaboration of how terrible it is to dim the videos. I thought that would go without saying. The terribleness of dimming videos is the elephant in the room.
When the post is viewed in this light (pun intended), the fundamental question becomes, why did Apple make this change? The post is not trying to argue for the thesis that iOS and macOS are merging; rather, the post is trying to explain why we got video dimming on macOS.
At first I thought it was just part of Liquid Glass, which wouldn't be surprising, because Liquid Glass makes a lot of things harder to see. Video dimming would be a natural accompaniment. However, I then discovered that video dimming in iOS predated Liquid Glass by years, so the explanation was apparently not Liquid Glass. Thus, I concluded that video dimming was added to macOS to copy iOS, as Apple has done with many other features.
If there's an argument in the article, that's it.
> I don't think me disagreeing with you about the validity of your arguments violates any HN guidelines
That's not what I said.
My point is that you did not respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what I said but rather a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Specifically, the following is a stupid argument that only a stupid person would make: "The argument apparently being that any change at all, if it was first made on iOS, must inherently be a sign that the two platforms are merging." Your reply treated me like an idiot.
> I don't think I've ever seen you in HN comments for one of your posts not being somewhat-upset about people's responses to them.
There's a logical explanation: the post itself already says what I wanted to say, so there's no reason for me to comment on my own post except to correct misinterpretations of the post. If the conversation is going well, and people understand what I wrote, then there's nothing for me to add.
I upvote some comments, but you wouldn't see that.
> it's the reduction of the visual impact of the button-borders that really speeds my comprehension up
Ok, but I'm not sure why this couldn't be achieved without dimming the video.
In any case, have you ever complained about the video controls until now? I've never heard anyone make this complaint before. Who was asking for this change before it happened?
I would emphasize that the goal is to watch the video, not to watch the controls. Apple could make it even easier for you to process the controls by completely blanking out the video, leaving only the controls, but that would be even worse, not better.
> They vanish instantly when you move the cursor off the video
This is an inconvenient workaround and not a solution to the problem.
It's not just the vanish time, though. There's no reason to darken the video when you're adjusting the volume. And if you want to pause a video and look at the still frame, it's darkened unless you move the mouse away, then you have to move the mouse back. And if you're moving the video timeline control, the video is darkened the whole time.
> In any case, have you ever complained about the video controls until now? I've never heard anyone make this complaint before. Who was asking for this change before it happened?
I don't think this matters. It's an improvement. Does every change to a product have to be driven by active complaints? Doing so feels like a way to get everything to just "good enough".
> I would emphasize that the goal is to watch the video, not to watch the controls.
Sort of. The goal is mostly to watch the video, sure, but sometimes the goal is to use the controls. When the goal is to watch the controls, it's best if they can be used as quickly as possible, so you can get right back to watching the video. For me, this change supports that.
> Apple could make it even easier for you to process the controls by completely blanking out the video, leaving only the controls, but that would be even worse, not better.
Yes, so I'm glad they found a happy medium where I can more-easily comprehend the controls and still see the video. Good call, Apple!
> This is an inconvenient workaround and not a solution to the problem.
Isn't it? I admit that it conforming to my prior behavior, because I never want to have the video covered up by the cursor, makes me find it not inconvenient at all... but I'm unlikely to be the only one with that preference. Plus, "the mouse recently moved and is now hovering over the video" feels like a pretty reasonable cue that the user might intend to interact with the controls, so Apple choosing to make it easy for me to quickly get the control I want the moment my cursor moves onto the video feels like it's making my video-watching experience better. And in the unlikely case that I was to overcome my distaste and just leave the cursor there, hey, it's only a few seconds before it hides the controls anyway.
This is a more detailed, informative critique of the Tahoe change than is in the post, where all that's specifically written as evaluation is,
>Seriously, why??? I thought Liquid Glass was supposed to “bring greater focus to content”? Darkening videos brings less focus to content!
Correct. The post was not intended to be an informative critique. Some people seem to be completely misinterpreting the purpose of the post and then claiming I'm some kind of idiot for failing to do what they mistakenly believe I was doing rather than what I was actually doing, merely raising awareness of the change among my followers (who are already sympathetic to my views).
You are assuming they are assuming you are stupid. AFAICT they are only disagreeing with you.
> So no, the argument does not hang on this one example. It's an argument I've been making since at least Mac OS X Lion, 14 years ago.
You've inverted what the parent said. They were not suggesting the "merging argument" was hinging on your one UI complaint, but that you are hanging the "merging rant" on this UI adjustment:
> As such it seems like a particularly strange adjustment to hang a "macOS is turning into iOS" rant on
>> I'd assume that any logic that holds for it being a good idea when applied on iOS would apply just as well on macOS.
> Why would you assume this? The two platforms are very different in physical characteristics.
> This is a principal objection to merging the platforms, especially merging the user interfaces. What makes sense for a tiny touch screen doesn't necessarily make sense for a much larger screen with keyboard and mouse input.
This is very disingenuous, you are taking the parents comment out of context and then generalising it in order to reject it where it's obviously going to be false.
> I don't expect you to know my full history. However, I expect comments to follow the HN guidelines, which say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
In the very same post you have broken that guideline. You've taken the most uncharitable, inverted, and mis contextualized interpretation of the parents arguments, made assumptions about their characterisation of you, and thrown up roadblocks like hn guidelines in bad faith.
Ironically the only way the parent has broken such a guideline is in the world of your missinterpretation of their arguments, it's as if you are trying to manufacture such a situation. It's difficult to believe you are not being disingenuous because your attempts to deflect are so excessive.
[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/lickable-buttons/
... i'll just show myself out
Craig Federighi was a strong proponent of the latter camp but maybe he’s just getting on in years. Goes to show that key people being good and caring a lot can be all that stops things from backsliding.
So the battle for macOS is being slowly lost. Lucky we have KDE.
If it keeps going this way my next laptop won’t have that fruit logo. And that is a real shame.
Now I like the hardware enough, but have been gradually annoyed enough with the OS that I'd much rather be running Linux. At least I can just turn off most of the "modern" features, but I'm in that "keeping an eye out for potential alternatives" phase.
There are plenty of mandatory features we unfortunately can't uninstall. I can't think of a scenario where I want Apple music on my work laptop.
But to be honest, I’m still using Bitwig on a Mac for my studio despite having switched everywhere else to Linux
I expect it will happen within a few years after Xcode for iPad is released. MacOS is simply too open for Apple's business goals.
Or do you really think that all their apps and toolsets will run on whatever you are saying is the future of macOS.
"We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company" skit perfectly applies to Apple these days ( https://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76aphonecompany.phtml ).
A middle manager from Apple will easily toss all of Hollywood under the bus if it gets them a checkbox "shipped new toggle switch experience" and a promotion. And the upper management at Apple long since stopped caring about that.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Final Cut Pro X? I thought not. It's not a story Apple fanboys would tell you...
As more MBP fundamentals are ported to iPad Pro, that will naturally convert more Mac users to iPads, especially the iPhone generation.
Today when you generate a PDF from you own content (from Apple Notes app) you are asked about opening links you click on. I thought that they were surely joking and there would be a way to disable that behavior. But no, this is intended and there is no way to disable that. It makes the Preview app a pain in the ass as a PDF reader, which means you have to replace it and begs the question of even using Apple software in the first place.
The answer is that there are fewer and fewer reasons. I mean if you are OK feeling like a child biking around on a cycle with training wheels while an overbearing parent keeps nagging you, it might be for you. Otherwise, the experience is really more like a prison/walled garden and the funny thing is that you paid for it !
people complain if the apps don't all have fine grained permissions. and then complain when they have to agree to stuff all the time. and then complain they got "hacked". damned if you do, damned if you don't.
The funny thing is that since people who are subject to security problems will allow them regardless, defeating the entire purpose of the measures.
Computer security is just a people problem; you can't solve it by child proofing stuff. Imagine a car that would prevent you going over the speed limit or ask permission every time you want to do so...
But in that case, that's just beyond stupid, there is no permission for you to act on. They could have a per-document setting or an app level setting to allow opening links in PDFs without requiring the user to agree EVERY SINGLE TIME. On a document that was generated on the computer reading it. It's just complete incompetence.
That's exactly why I encouraged my parents to get iPhones.
This is certainly happening. However, as long as you can still install your preferred browser with its own rendering engine or a different PDF reader, the situation isn't so bad.
Of course I say macOS is getting along fine for me, but I'm posting this comment from my workstation PC running Ubuntu 24.04. I'm pleasantly surprised by how much better my Linux experience is now than it was in 2013. It seems from my personal experience so far like a free desktop OS that can run a web browser and play games better than the paid alternatives is a solved problem. I find this machine much less frustrating than my M4 Macbook Air- many of the "security" behaviors are just annoyances.
I mean this has been the conversation since the early days of Mac OS. I didn't get back to Mac until Snow Leopard but I remember the uproar over removing Java in 10.7
I mean now you cannot open a 3rd party software without going into settings to allow opening, another regression on previously needing to right click, open. The next step is forbidding any unsigned software altogether. And finally, forbidding any software that doesn't come from their fully controlled App Store.
It's really way beyond not shipping a software component directly in the system...
There were large software vendors who had not yet started on a strategy around the deprecation of Java until it was removed from the OS. They didn't look like they even noticed it had been removed in betas and come up with a plan on what to tell customers.
Or they don't have any usability studies. A hard regression in efficiency in many places.
E.g. Safari in iOS 26 forces you to do 50% more button presses. E.g. if you want to close a tab, you need to press one button more these days. Also one button press more to see the current tabs. These are likely the most used scenarios when you use the browser and they add one button press more?
Somewhere along the line Apple products became luxury goods that were appealing due to their visual design. I am particularly fond of Apple’s early 2000s design, with beautiful hardware such as the iMac G4 and the Power Mac G4 Cube running early Mac OS X. Apple still makes very visually-appealing hardware and software. However, I feel that under Tim Cook Apple has heavily leaned into its visual appeal at the expense of what made Apple great: the emphasis on usability.
At the rate it's going, there isn't going to be a single app from Apple that I want to keep using, quite soon.
By the way, the PDF export for Notes is ridiculously bad. It's an old note and there is some migration bug, all the links have the same target. I haven't bothered to investigate yet, but the plan is to stop using Notes as well, so whatever.
"Why is this slower? Why do I have to burn time massaging the interface instead of doing it fast and continuing with my life? What a waste..." said the user.
Over the last two decades "the user is the product, milking machines to 110%!!!" has leaked all over the computing world, infecting where the user is (and will be forever, let's hope) the user.
So much of the ecosystem doesn’t “just work” anymore and now instead of fixing those issues, they are actively working to make my computing experience worse. I’ve hade enough.
The more I investigate the current state of Linux desktops, the more excited I get. It seems like Linux is actually good for general use now, and I’ll have so many more options to make my technology fit me instead of the other way around.
The list is endless, really. Everything looks "delightful" as fuck. Mac and iOS fonts, colors and text padding are immaculate, so it gives the impression of solidity and competence that isn't really there. A lot of things "mostly work" but aren't reliable, so I can't rely on them. They can list them as "features" but if I can't rely on them, I can't use them, because I don't want to deal with constant frustration. They act like all their systems are this one integrated whole that works well together, but it doesn't.
I don't think that everything will "just work" on Linux, but at least I won't be paying a premium for the privilege of having my needs as a disabled person ignored. I'll be able to customize my experience to meet my basic accessibility needs without fighting against a company that seems to hate me.
I also noticed worsened reliability in the heart rate tracking of my Apple Watch in recent workouts. It must have happened in one of the recent updates because it was fine previously. I could say it's programmed obsolescence but I'm sure I would be accused of conspiracy theory. But it is hard to interpret the failing reliability otherwise when it suspiciously happens after updates and around new hardware release. In any case, I don't think the Apple Watch is a very good product for the price, so whatever, the next watch will be focused on sports and the competition has made great alternatives.
I completely share the sentiment that everything looks good but doesn't work that well in practice. There are so many random issues that make the hardware prices very unpalatable.
Ah well, everything changes, not always for the better. The pain is in transitioning to something else, but that's something that is very true for most tech related things since we can't ever agree on proper standardisation.
Android Auto does the same thing for me, despite having auto-play disabled. One possible explanation I've seen online is that some infotainment systems send an unsolicited "play" signal to your device. For Android that seems to mean it will send "play" to the most recently used app that supports audio playback.
Android has the same issue with Google's keyboard, which will go back and change things you've typed correctly to be obviously wrong for no clear reason. I swear it used to work much better.
At least on Android alternative keyboards are easier to use. I have no idea how they both have such an awful implementation of it.
Edit: LOL, how could I forget Siri. I don't use it often - generally only in the car to switch music - but it's terrible at understanding what song/album I'm asking for. Tried repeatedly to get it to play the "Mob Song" from Beauty and the Beast and I got some death metal instead. Completely useless.
I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox and realized that kerning is completely broken. I can only assume that it's because of some setting that I changed but I'd rather reinstall the whole machine than go on a wild goose chase...
And that doesn't even get into the hardware situation, where the number of laptops with long battery life and everything working without quirks can seemingly be counted on one hand.
What's wrong with cinnamon for you?
This is the opposite of my Linux experience, especially in comparison with MacOS. Linux, especially when using KDE, offers customization up the wazoo. The out of the box experience may be a less than optimal, but investing time customizing your installation[0] is very rewarding. Almost anything that can be done on/by your DE can be bound to a shortcut or automated. You'd have to purchase MacOS tools to come close to the configurability of KDE (e.g. window positioning)
1. Or copying your config directory.
Trust me, it’s macOS enough. I switched from a 16” M2 Max MBP to a HP Elitebook G1A Ultra with Fedora. It’s been a dream.
the laptop battery life issue is a real thing -- I kicked the can by getting an M1 MacBook Pro instead of a Framework for my most recent upgrade.
I’m shocked at how much “just works” like a Mac. It wasn’t like this even a short amount of time ago.
I’m really happy with the hardware too and all it needs is more battery life. Nothing an external battery doesn’t solve (and the framework is a lighter machine so the difference is moot).
Everything works. Fingerprint reader authenticating commercial apps like 1Password, graphics drivers are a part of the kernel and I’m enjoying Windows games on Steam, firmware gets updates from the OS instead of messing around in the BIOS like on Windows, KDE Connect is like AirDrop for Linux, it’s literally a better experience than Windows and Mac if you ask me.
I don’t mind that KDE resembles Windows, I personally think it’s a lot like Windows but without the dumbassery. And of course you can theme it and change settings to have it act more like a Mac (or go with Gnome).
As for battery life, it being crappy makes me wonder why I’m even bothering with laptops at all. More than half of their selling point is being portable, which needing to be tethered frequently heavily impinges upon. The sacrifices that come with the portable form factor just aren’t worth it for 3-5h life with real world usage.
I can confirm that there is nothing that comes close. Gnome is an abomination even if it might be appealing on the surface. KDE is still very rough around the edges, despite making a lot of progress with each version. I used XFCE for a long time because it can be tweaked to a reasonably useable state and it is light on resources. KDE can be occasionally dog slow on a $12k workstation with a 64-core Threadripper pro and 256 GB of RAM for a reason I cannot imagine. Using my Mac Studio is a much better experience overall.
Jabs aside, GNOME is pretty nice compared to where it used to be. Everything still takes a few iterations of touching, but not as many as it used to. Some things are frustratingly unsolvable (see: advanced monitor features), but at least it is a full replacement for Windows on the same hardware. Oh, and contemporary linux distress have audio drivers that appear to work out of the box without having to build the kernel.
When it comes to laptops: it'd be great if anyone made something that competes with a MacBook. It's been a long time. At this point I can only assume there is an economic reason rather than a technical one that Windows and Linux laptops are so bad.
You need to define what's a MacBook for you. I'm not a fan of the form factor, but I've seen dozens of clones of it for years now and kinda wonder where a Surface Laptop for instance fails for you.
You can find some that are 80% in the first two categories. There is nothing remotely in the same league in the last two.
Sounds to me like you never tried any. Which is fair if you're not trying to move away from macs in the first place, but if you're actively looking for alternatives there's a lot you are missing.
Every. Single. Year. “Apple is taking away my laptop I’m switching to Linux.”
I’m grateful to you all though — I think your constant griping every year probably does at least apply some pressure on Apple to focus on keeping macOS good at what it does: provide a pleasant but still powerful desktop experience for those who just want to do stuff and not spend hours under the hood making some Linux flavor usable.
The reason it’s especially stupid for Apple is because half of their new design system is about making content front & center.
That's why the entire thrust of Liquid Glass was bad and dumb from the start. "The controls will get out of the way of your content....so we put them floating in front of your content" just absolutely braindead. There was a way to get them out of the way, give them their own space!
No. The change was made in iOS first, and then the same exact change was brought to macOS, as has happened many times now over the years.
I read a few of the stories on HN about it and was braced for a bad experience. But honestly - a few icons changing (don't care); the border radius of finder, the only Apple app I use much, changing (don't care).
https://bsky.app/profile/infrequently.org/post/3lztots6lgc35
Question: does anyone have anything good to say about Liquid Glass?
Overall, particularly on my phone, it's just giving me an occasional pleasant burst of "ooh, shiny". On my laptop, I admittedly barely notice anything has changed.
(I don't personally have any legibility issues with it, though I'm willing to believe that's down to individual usage patterns.)
2) I vastly prefer it displaying buttons as buttons, instead of as just undifferentiated text on a screen. In the past I've sometimes been frustrated that an app didn't have a feature I wanted, only to learn that it actually had that feature, hidden behind what I'd assumed was just a text label but was actually a button. This is an enormous freaking improvement.
3) I very much prefer the new UI patterns in other places. For example, when highlighting text on iOS, the old UI gives a horizontally scrolling list of options with arrow keys to rotate through them. The new UI replaces that with a ">" More button that pops up a vertical list of all available actions. Again, this is an enormous freaking improvement.
I like the appearance of Liquid Glass, but that could go either way. I think the actual UI implementation behind the graphics is so much better than before.
And even if I think they utterly botched the concept and execution, I will always cheer the death of "minimullizm" that destroyed Aqua. I've absolutely loathed how macOS looks since Big Sur.
They are making the iPadOS the mother platform for developing most things - scale down to iOS, or add a few extra changes for visionOS/macOS. iPadOS is gaining features to bring it closer to parity to macOS to make this delta smaller, and macOS is gradually becoming styled more to match iPadOS so apps look at home if the layout and graphic assets were mostly kept the same.
This started around macOS 11, with some major design changes along with Catalyst and SwiftUI to help developers.
This is an irrational and especially dishonest and rant article.
My experience with iOS 26 + liquid glass (ew) on my phone has been terrible. Feels like a step backward. I am dreading upgrading my macbook bc I love it the way it is. Regrettable.