If MacOS is a path through the gloomy forest, Windows 10 is a carnival in an open field

[blissinfinite67]

I too have loved (past tense) Apple and their hardware and software but no longer is that unconditional.

Where Windows tries too hard to be backwards compatible, Apple has traditionally just thrown that concept out the window expecting their faithful to just chuck it all and buy anew. I’ve gotten frustrated over the years keeping up with that BS. If I maintain all their OS updates, my desktop (and phone and pad) has a three year life-span. Too short for the amount of money it costs. OSX started out pretty wonderful as did iTunes and their hardware of the early 2000’s but it’s all become control and bloat. IMHO has become no better than MS int hat regard though they still are a step above in usability. Don’t even get me started with Adobe (i know, different topic).

Linux, in theory, seems to be the best option, but I don’t have the time or energy to constantly fiddle with that stuff anymore.

[NickSay]

carnival

Because of the shady types barking at every turn?

Isn’t Apple more like a glass and stainless steel corridor that rarely branches

[Ambiguity]

I haven’t used KDE for a few years (I switch up distros every once in a while, and I haven’t used it since my OpenSuse days), but at the time I remember it being more polished that the alternatives.

These days I’ve been using GNOME (on Arch) and it’s very frustrating, because it’s almost insanely great. It probably would be great if the devs weren’t such arrogant gnome-holes.

[RickMycroft]

Windows is a carnival … or worse.

[anon67050589]

@clifyt

When someone switches, it pretty much means they are willing to throw away all the internal knowledge, muscle memory, apps that only work within the ecology (or more importantly, work WELL), and doing it because something in their personal world is wrong – not because of the OS. At this point in technology, if you can’t figure out how to make a desktop OS work for you after a decade, that’s on you.

I’d like to provide a different possibility…

I’ve been on computers a lot longer than most here, because I’ve worked on and off in various areas of the financial industry. In the early years it was all proprietary hard- and software, but then in addition to the technical machines we all started having PCs with DOS on our desks for more mundane tasks. Having learned Pascal at the beginning of the 80’s, I was comfortable working in that environment, manipulating the DOS to do what I wanted, but I always felt the OS to be cumbersome, something to fight against. Once software across the board had progressed to the point where I could easily work on a Mac and still be able to communicate/share with Microsoft users (a little before the turn of the century, I think?), I went full Mac and never went back.

It’s not that I couldn’t use Microsoft products, or didn’t value the stored knowledge I had built up (and I’m kinesthetic, so muscle memory is a big thing for me)…I changed because I wanted an OS that I felt worked better for me. It’s literally like picking something up with your left hand and going “ohhhhh, that feels a lot more right”.

[clifyt]

@nungesser

but that it feels like the folks who made it aren’t living and working with MacBookPros. They’re doing things that make sense on paper and sound awesome in presentations (“We’ll reduce the thickness by X% and add this new TouchBar!”) but not things that are actually awesome, things that make users stand up and clap.

Honestly, the only thing I despise on the new MacBook is the fucking keyboard. The space between keys is almost halved…I randomly hit keys EVERYWHERE. I’m looking at my old 15" comparing it to my 13" and realizing that the keyboard has the exact dimensions (10.75 inches across / 3.5 from space to the numbers)…but the distance between keys is so small now. It is the ONLY thing that makes this new machine a pain in the ass to use. I rarely use the touchbar with the exception of siri / fingerprint, but even this isn’t bad. Every single day, more apps use the touchbar and I’m seeing uses that I hadn’t seen before. It may take a while for this to catch on. I’m certainly not using it for typing suggestions, but for other things? It is VERY useful. And I expect it will be far more useful in the future…I’m just waiting for Logic Pro to get this feature as I’ve seen how awesome it is on Garage Band and this is a toy in comparison…

[anon67050589]

@gracchus

computer technology still isn’t intuitive for people aged 55+

…who weren’t involved in computers in the early years. Who do you think developed everything you’re using now???

[IpoNokaoi]

Yea, I love it.

[gracchus]

Most people aren’t techies. I made (and, in a different way, still make) a lot of money because of that. There are certainly people in their 60s and 70s and 80s who know more about computers than I ever will (sometimes inventing technologies), but they’re a small portion of the elder population. As for younger people, a lot of them have grown up with technology and find it intuitive in a way that a Gen X geek like myself didn’t.

[daneel]

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

[clifyt]

@anon67050589

Having learned Pascal at the beginning of the 80’s…

Think / Lightspeed? I used this in the mid-80s. It changed my entire way of thinking. It was what I used to do MOST of my cross platform development. It was great…I could develop DLLs and XCMD/XFNCs simultaneously and update apps just by dropping them onto the computer. I loved this language more than I do C variants…then again, my current life I rarely have a chance to code anyways…

[gracchus]

3 doesn’t apply to tech geeks, except the kind who become OS purists.

[Ambiguity]

@gracchus

By the same token, I won’t use locked-down Apple devices myself. Yes, it’s *nix underneath and I could use terminal to do what I need, but I can dual-boot to a Linux distro on my commodity Windows hardware to that…

I don’t think I could force myself to buy an Apple – walled garden and all that – but I have one for work, and I do like the hardware. I do spend most of my time in a virtual machine running Linux (like this very moment). Vagrant + VirtualBox + MacOS is a pretty nice environment. No dual-booting is required, and provided you’re not trying to game in Linux it’s pretty workable!

[Jorpho]

I’m thinking, Linux is the gloomy forest, but there is no path. If you look closely you can see a few trails that might have been used by animals: some fresh, some largely overgrown, some clearly not made by anything using conventional forms of locomotion, many terminating with no explanation in the middle of nowhere. Strange cries in arcane languages beckon from the darkness.

[cah]

> look Linux forest

@Jorpho

If you look closely you can see a few trails that might have been used by animals: some fresh, some largely overgrown, some clearly not made by anything using conventional forms of locomotion, many terminating with no explanation in the middle of nowhere. Strange cries in arcane languages beckon from the darkness.

> turn on lamp

Which lamp do you mean? You can see gLamp, xLamp, freeLamp, openLamp

> turn on freeLamp

You’ll have to build it first.

> build freeLamp

building freeLamp… build completed with exit code 143

> what is exit code 143?

A hollow voice says “RTFM”.

[RickMycroft]

I use Lazarus / Free Pascal for a lot of stuff. It’s cross-platform and works fine on my PC or Pis. Delphi was one of my last anchors to Windows, and now that’s been cut.

[gracchus]

[quote=“NickSay, post:22, topic:92243, full:true”]Isn’t Apple more like a glass and stainless steel corridor that rarely branches
[/quote]

So that’s the reason Colossal Cave Adventure ends so quickly on a modern Mac.

[anon73430903]

That’s BSD, isn’t it?

[agies]

@gracchus

Yes, it’s *nix underneath and I could use terminal to do what I need, but I can dual-boot to a Linux distro on my commodity Windows hardware to do that – at a fraction of the price and without Tim Cook constantly nagging me that the perfectly streamlined and expensive bonnet is bolted down for a reason.

Hell, you can install Bash on Windows 10 now.

[clifyt]

I meant more from what he was using in the '80s. I’ve moved past Pascal as it doesn’t integrate into the devices I use now. Back in the day, I had all my documentation from the Inside Macintosh stuff that was both Pascal and C (pre-OSX)…

I knew a lot of folks were using Delphi for creating music apps a few years back…it was a great platform for doing VSTs in…