Apple marketers are just going to think that in another year you’re going to get annoyed by some Linux thing (yes, there will be something annoying) and buy a brand new $2000+ Mac.
These kind of posts get a lot of upvotes, but they do nothing to change corporate behavior.
Well, they should. I've been on Mac since System 6.0.7. I've had a Mac Clone. I've been mocked by more Windows users for "using a toy computer" than I can remember. I remember (and briefly used) BeOS. I remember The Mac Performa-series fiasco. The Copland failure. Steve's return. The launch of OS X.
In all those years, I have NEVER witnessed such widespread dissatisfaction among long-time, loyal users, heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. Users so frustrated with Apple's moronic decisions and the design of the OS that they are literally paying money to abandon it. I'm one of them. The frustration isn't rooted in nostalgia or resistance to change. It's the accumulation of what feels like contemptuous decision-making.
If that doesn't set off alarm bells in Cupertino, I guess it's just one more proof that parting ways is indeed the right call.
What leads you to believe that anything he mentioned is temporary?
I can't point at a bug that I've seen addressed in subsequent OS releases.
Seizure-inducing HDMI flickering from Night Shift. Finder Trash not supporting put-back _sometimes_. Printers becoming permanently "paused" sporadically, or worse, very consistently. Mouse lag/stuttering because you used "the wrong USB port." Apple photos libraries corrupting themselves with no recovery paths.
It would be strictly better to just not have the forum, then shouting sorrows into the void would feel more solitary.
Not once have I hit an issue that wasn't documented and left unresolved on Apple's for over 3 years.
I basically don’t care anymore. Timeline consistently pinkscreens my laptop.
I just don’t give a f anymore. I barely run any Apple software on my Mac.
The only reason I stop use it, is because I have not spent the energy into researching:
- performant + long battery laptop with a good build quality
- disk encryption + while on X attempts
- good trackpad
The rest, the os, the shortcuts, I can change or adapt.
The fine article made the same comparison.
I was on my way out the door before the Apple Silicon launch. They managed to briefly bring me back in, but the software is only getting worse. It's a shame too, because I do believe Apple has the best hardware.
But the hardware? The very first Mac I actually owned, a iiSi, was designed to suck the air for the fan through the slot for the $400 3.5" floppy. Wonder why it died? (The iivx quietly fixed that with a $1 piece of plastic.) ($400 was worth more 30 years ago... it could buy a dozen non-Apple floppies. When the mouse died I called them to get a replacement switch. 'We don't sell parts,' the support guy told me. 'Besides, it's only an $80 mouse.')
Later on I had heavily invested in external music hardware that worked with the serial port ... then that port just went away, no warning. I switched to a Power clone ... no failures for 7 years. Then I took a chance on an iMac. First the hard drive kept forgetting its partitions. Then, less than a year later, the screen started developing vertical color streaks; when hundreds of other users complained about the same problem on their forum, they shut down the forum. No options, out of warranty. Fool me twice ...
Debian (courtesy of the Asahi project) still wont let you down if you’re using an M1 or M2:
We all predict the future, consciously or not. We invest our time and effort into a system that we think has a good future.
Tahoe made me lose trust in Apple's software, and see its trajectory as a bad one that I didn't want to invest any more time into.
Then came Apple Silicon. And at least in my eyes, Apple hardware is the best it's been in a really long time.
There are some definite trainwrecks in the current state of Liquid Glass (especially on the Mac), and there have been other dubious choices and mounting bugs made over the last few years. But I've used both Windows 11 and a recent Linux distribution (Fedora, via Asahi Linux, running KDE Plasma), and while I like the latter it's just not enough to make me give up what I like on the Mac in terms of Mac-only applications and little life-bettering affordances I've internalized over the years I've been here. Yes, if the trajectory they're on now in software continues, I'll have to re-evaluate that -- but their hardware took a real turn for the better after Jony Ive and some of his deputies left. Alan Dye and some of his deputies left earlier this year, and I'm not going to count the new team out before giving them a chance to prove themselves.
They do eventually listen to their customers. Let's hope it doesn't take as long for these changes to get rolled back.
I'm kinda stuck with Mac at work. I don't mind it, but I run Linux on all my personal computers and find that is way better.
But I wonder if they have the ability to execute... anything, anymore. It's starting to look a little like Windows, which in a totally shameless and burlesque fashion has 3 or 4 design paradigms at the same time, jumbled together in a big stew.
We've had this for decades with Windows, and internal leaks confirming that it's all to do with turf wars between departmental heads.
As you say, it's an indication that Apple are going down the same road, and are unable to actually execute a vision anymore.
Just to put cards on the table, the problem Apple has is disillusionment. They've managed to disabuse people of the notion that Apple designs quality software that is useful in their lives.
People who have lost faith in Apple won't regain their faith even if Apple fixes all the Liquid Glass problems in six months. And that is not something that will happen. On top of that, people are anticipating AI features and a touch-optimized interface.
It's why Google Trends shows larger-than-ever numbers of people having iPhone battery issues, performance issues, and searching for how to switch to Android. "Macos to Linux" peaked after Tahoe, at 3x higher than its pre-LG peak, for example.
I gave up on Apple twelve years ago and I can't imagine ever buying another Mac.
I mean, all problems are temporary, time is money etc. etc. And there are signs that suggest that some of these problems (namely freedom to run your own software) are not going to get resolved soon. Is there something deeper in your thought that I missed?
> These kind of posts get a lot of upvotes, but they do nothing to change corporate behavior.
I don't understand, we are on a discussion forum. Of course writing comments here does not influence what Apple does, that's not what HN is for, I think (I hope) that everyone already assumes that. Why do you feel the need to point that out?