Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrkpdl | Hacker News Reader

I’ve always felt the decline in Mac OS started on the day of the ‘Back To The Mac’ event in 2010. And has continued since. Symbolically this event made clear the iOS first focus of the company. And since then Mac OS updates have continued to be secondary/lesser to iOS.

Mac OS is still my system of choice, but I don’t have as much confidence in it as I would like.

The big thing from around fifteen years ago is the mixed modes for autosave, where they sort of half heartedly changed the language around save/save as and just sort of… left it. Some apps use their new (for the 2010s) auto save system and some don’t. And it’s up the the user to muddle through. Weird. And there are many half baked things like this in the OS now.

Mac hardware, on the other hand, has never been better than it is right now!

View on HN

> The big thing from around fifteen years ago is the mixed modes for autosave, where they sort of half heartedly changed the language around save/save as and just sort of… left it. Some apps use their new (for the 2010s) auto save system and some don’t.

I may be mistaken, but AFAIK, all Apple’s apps auto-save on quit and restore state on open. If so, what do you suggest they do about making third party applications do that as well?

I've had the preferences "close windows when quitting an application" and "ask to keep changes when closing documents" checked since the day they appeared in System Preferences.

With these two, most applications behave as they did in the pre-Lion document model.

> Mac hardware, on the other hand, has never been better than it is right now!

I thought the same until trying a framework laptop with Ubuntu. Mac is the “IBM” choice, no one gets fired for choosing it, but quite frankly there’s better options these days.

A framework laptop is very nice, and definitely has a lot of upsides, but it can't match screen, keyboard, trackpad, camera, or speaker quality with a MacBook Pro, not to mention the battery life.

Those may be nice for people who need them, and are ok with the software side.

for me, the screen on the framework is ok. I think there's little to gain with LCDs at this point. The trackpad on the framework is smaller, so it's better. A nicer camera requires a nicer piece of tape to cover it, I guess. Notification beeps do not require Atmos or whatever. I can pack a powerbank for trans-oceanic flights, but I'm usually at a desk if I work long stretches.

Having nicer stuff would be nice, but the value proposition does not work for me in light of the software situation.

1 - compromised hardware over better software is a trade-off you're willing to make and 2 - you believe that the Framework software experience is better than macOS

i can concede 2 (if true, I've not used a Framework laptop) but I don't understand point 1. packing a powerbank for example just feels ancient if you've used the arm chip macs. then again, I'm now pushing my trade-off

It's going to be a different experience for everyone. For example I never get why people care about the laptop weight. You put it in your backpack anyway, (unless it's a small handbag sized laptop situation then fair enough) it's not like anything below 5kg will be noticeable in reality. Yet for others is a big deal. Personal preferences...

that's fair. i do think it's personal preferences in the end.

"Packing a powerbank" was more of a hypothetical, as I've never actually had to.

My point was that it's a tradeoff between software preference, tech politics, price, and hardware features. I think it's pretty easy to understand. It's not like Apple has an insurmountable lead; there are some benefits for some use cases.

I concur. I have a Framework 13 I use as my personal laptop and a work-issued M3 MacBook Pro. While I love the freedom that my Framework 13 provides in terms of user serviceability and operating system choice, the MacBook Pro feels more premium, and it has absolutely amazing battery life.

What do people like about MacBook trackpads? I can't stand them because you can only do a "click" action at the bottom of the thing, but there's nothing tactile that would help you to find it.

And other laptops that imitate this are even worse. Like, where does the left button end, and right button start?

That's rarely a problem: bottom right corner is right and almost all the rest is left

I enabled the tap (System Settings) so I can "click" everywhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com