[Philipp__]

You really start appreciating macOS when you go and install Linux on laptop and use it for a month. I had a same issue, I was in Apple camp for 10 years (as of this year). And I was like things suck now, Snow Leopard days yada yada yada... And then I installed Arch. Oh god... I mean, the worst thing is I can use Linux only as pure text/terminal UI. Although Gnome looks more polished than ever, whole UI/UX thing on Linux just can't be compared to macOS and Cocoa.

What I didn't like with OPs post is that Apple isn't making machine specifically for you, nor for developers. Why their machines had so much success since Jobs return was that they were making machines that were equally loved by music/video/content creators, developers, mothers/fathers/grandparents, students etc etc... If you aren't satisfied with your dev. environment go spin up a VM, rent a server or just get other machine that will fulfill your needs.

Where this post gets right is keyboards. Reliability has been number one aspect that Apple created as part of their brand's identity. I won't buy new machine until they do something about those crappy keyboards. And I would like to see them move from Intel. I would like to see how Apple do their own in-house development on CPU, or go with AMD.

[addicted]

While you are right that Apple isn't making machines specifically for the OP, the Pro was intended specifically for people like the OP. And the new MBP seems to have very different design goals than ealier MBPs. An obvious example is the ports. Older MBPs were renowned for the many different types of ports they supported.

The new MBP seems to be geared towards people who use Macs for Office work, but want the most expensive version of a mac portable they can find. Before writing this comment I was gonna add that Apple's definition of Pro seems to have reduced to people who deal with videos and photos, but if they were catering to that audience they would have left the SD card reader in.

The main difference between the old Apple portable lineup and the new one appears to me that in the old one, the Macbook, Air and the Pro all had overlapping but different design goals. Today's devices all seem to have the same primary design goals, with the differences existing so they can be slotted in different price brackets.

[arebop]

The crappy GPUs make the MBPs much less appealing for video work than they used to be, compared to other laptops that are better able to cope with modern demands (4k, HDR, noise reduction, stabilization, etc.). So maybe scratch another profession off that list.

[closeparen]

Adobe Premier runs just fine on Windows, an ecosystem where raw power comes much cheaper. It wasn’t so much lackluster GPUs as the decline of Final Cut Pro.

[goalieca]

I actually don’t mind giving up the ports on the mbp when these self-powered USB c docks have (HDMI, 3xUSB3, sd, micro sd, gigabit Ethernet, and power)

The hubs are pretty small. And fit in travel bags nicely. They actually make pretty good dicking stations too

[misnome]

I felt this for a while, but then I went to do something on my old 2011 MacBook Air and it was a breath of fresh air to just plug things in (DisplayPort! USB-A!) and not have to go hunting for myriad dongles.

[pasbesoin]

I recall watching some professional photographers, some years ago, chasing George Cluny and some other celebrities filming on location (where I just happened to be, that day). I and a couple of them landed in a Starbucks at the same time. Out came the MacBook Pro. In went the media card. Debate, select, edit, maybe copyright/watermark/whatever, and off the photos went, to be some of the first available.

I suppose cameras may connect wirelessly now (?). Anyway, new format MacBook Pros don't seem to fit this scenario, nor others I see for real professional work portability, well.

Add to that the keyboard. I don't see how one keeps it "dust free" when running around chasing a story -- or work or whatever.

[matwood]

> In went the media card.

So these pros were all using SD cards and not CF cards? Not defending Apple, but putting in an SD card slot never made any sense to me because at that time the high end cameras often used CF cards. It also made an assumption that SD cards were never going to change. Plus, it wasted space for people who never needed to plug in some media card.

I would have much rather Apple added another USB connection in that space because it would have had much more flexibility.

[patrickg_zill]

A full page spread in a mass printed magazine like People is about 6 to 8 megapixels, i.e. they don't need to use the full 18 to 24 or more megapixels; most likely they crop heavily.

The CF cards are more expensive per megabyte and less compatible than SD cards.

Many pros shoot SD cards and never reuse them, giving themselves a backup just by copying the pics to their laptop and keeping the cards.

[justwalt]

Since it’s a laptop, wouldn’t it make more sense to target more of a serious-casual type audience, and therefore use SD cards? The professionals who are more likely to use CF cards would be more likely to have a dedicated desktop for it.

[pasbesoin]

My memory's had a bit longer to cook/regurgitate. Maybe they used a cable. If so (I am uncertain), sorry for my mis-recollection.

I would still worry about the keyboard situation.

[pdpi]

“At the time”? The 5D mark IV still has dual CF/SD slots, with CFast being the highest-performance alternative available

[cormman]

> And then I installed Arch

It's so cool to hate on Ubuntu, but it's the best desktop linux experience. You did yourself a disservice.

What shines for linux is the package manager as a 1rst class citizen. I've had all sorts of issues with `brew` and no issues with `apt`

[sk1pper]

I love Ubuntu. But I installed it on my MacBook and still had plenty of trouble with it. External monitor support is meh, plugging/unplugging them too quickly will cause issues. Plugging into a 1080p monitor alongside my MBP's retina monitor causes issues because I can't seem to run different DPI scaling factors on different monitors at the same time. Suspend didn't work at all at first, and didn't work reliably even after some hacking.

For a work machine, it comes down to reliability and a hassle-free experience for me.

[willtim]

Unfortunately Apple hardware is not particularly well supported by Linux.

[sk1pper]

Fair enough, suspend and some other small things are probably better on other machines. But the issues with external monitors and DPI scaling are gonna be present for all hardware.

[ghaff]

There are a few long-time MacOS design decisions that puzzle me. The lack of proper package management is one. Of course, the same might be said of Windows--although it's different enough from *nix that it's at least somewhat understandable.

The other one is the limitations of the Finder. There are better third-party apps but they don't integrate as first-class citizens.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

It's because package management is a bad paradigm for application management.

MacOS descended from NeXT, which had Application Bundles, but even before that MacOS Classic did the sensible thing and just used folders. You want to install an application, you just put the folder somewhere on your disk. No library conflicts, no web of dependencies to break, and it integrates easily with the file management metaphor personal computers have had since forever. Want two copies of the same application, but different versions? No problem. Want to move the application to another disk? No problem. Uninstallation is one delete away. Want to put it on a floppy and take it to a friend's computer and run it? You get the idea.

Turns out you don't need a package manager unless you intend to over-engineer application management to the insane level that the open source community has.

[ksk]

For simple apps that makes sense. But then you have apps that require kernel drivers. Or the app itself is a shared library. Or multiple users on the same system use the app, etc.

>Turns out you don't need a package manager unless you intend to over-engineer application management to the insane level that the open source community has.

You don't necessarily need a package manager, but you can't solve the problem with simple folders either.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> For simple apps that makes sense. But then you have apps that require kernel drivers.

A.k.a drivers. The app is just a control panel. MacOS classic used "extensions" for this, which were basically just app folders you put in a specially designated folder.

So the modern version of that could just be dropping a folder into a special location there kernel knows to search for drivers, and include a control panel app.

> Or the app itself is a shared library.

A.k.a not an app at all. Shared libraries only really make sense as part of a stable base system that developers can target and depend on, otherwise you get DLL hell and require something like a package manager and all its associated limitations for basically no benefit at all.

If your application uses a library and you don't want to compile it statically, just include a copy in the app folder, secure in the knowledge that it will never cause a conflict or break your application due to an update or some other application replacing it.

> Or multiple users on the same system use the app, etc.

Desktops, a.k.a "Personal Computers", don't really have much of a multi-user use case. They did briefly in the time after the internet became a big deal but before smart phones were invented, but that time is over. Know what we did on Windows 98? We just shared the system, it wasn't a big deal.

Even so, it's not like you need two copies of the application to have two different configurations.

None of this is anywhere near as complicated as the people who promote it like to pretend it is.

[ksk]

>So the modern version of that could just be dropping a folder into a special location there kernel knows to search for drivers, and include a control panel app.

Do you mean the kernel is going to load random files from a user writable location? That sounds like a security nightmare TBH. Also, then you can't safely lazy-load kernel drivers because you never know what the user has done to the folder. Or if the OS has to lock access to the folder then the user has no feedback as to why they can't "uninstall" stuff by simply deleting folders, etc, etc. There are dozens of problems. Turns out, people have already thought over those problems and proposed solutions :)

>otherwise you get DLL hell and require something like a package manager and all its associated limitations for basically no benefit at all.

You claiming there is no benefit to being able to install/remove/update third party shared libraries doesn't solve anything.

>just include a copy in the app folder, secure in the knowledge that it will never cause a conflict or break your application due to an update or some other application replacing it.

That assumes you have the rights to distribute the library and that the library is small enough.

>Desktops, a.k.a "Personal Computers", don't really have much of a multi-user use case.

Maybe not for you. For millions of other users, its a very important use case.

>None of this is anywhere near as complicated as the people who promote it like to pretend it is.

Well its certainly not complicated if you re-define the problems as non-problems.

[gowld]

Or if you like to have a secure machine that doesn't have 40 copies of a zero-day embedded in binaries across the system.

[ghaff]

Fair enough. And I suppose Apple's attitude is more or less along the line that if you want to use our pristine machine as a Unix desktop/laptop managing the random packages you install is on you.

I almost wrote and didn't, but it's also true, that app stores (whether iOS or MacOS) are also effectively a form of application virtualization/package management.

[pjmlp]

Not all UNIXes have package management.

[patrickg_zill]

Which one doesn't? Solaris, Irix, SCO and everyone else I can think of does.

[pjmlp]

Embedded UNIX like OSes, mainframes with POSIX system?

Last time I used Solaris, around 2004, it had single application packages, like rpm before yum, meaning I had to manually track down the dependencies from Sun repositories.

[majewsky]

From the top of my head, CoreOS. (It's built with Gentoo tooling, but intentionally ships without emerge etc. because you're supposed to use it as a base for Docker.)

[kbob]

I'm curious, what are the limitations of the Finder?

[sir_brickalot]

I have a few limitations/annoyances to contribute:

1. Try to dragndrop content from a child folder to the parent folder. There is a very VERY small area at the top of the window where you can drop your files. (got worse on 10.13)

2. Transfer of multiple files (multiple actions) is not managed successivly but simultaniously.

3. Constant loss of sidebar content, i.e. mounted drives.

4. Info about folder/s inconsistency: Open info for one folder 'Cmd+i', for multiple folders 'Cmd+Alt+i' if you want the overall size (and it doesnt' get highlighted) | Close info window for one folder 'Cmd+w', for multiple folders 'Cmd+Alt+i'.

5. No option to edit file/folder names in Save As... dialog

6. Save As... dialog again: click on a file by accident and your initial file name is gone.

7. I don't understand how people can use the columns sorting but that's personal taste I guess.

8. Missing native window snapping (half size, full size etc.).

MBP 2009 OS X 10.11 & Hackintosh macOS 10.13.4 and my background is years and years of M$.

There are things I love about the Finder, too. :)

[ghaff]

Look at something like Pathfinder instead. The ordering of folders makes more logical sense to me. There's more flexibility in navigating to frequently used locations. There are more options in the menu. Etc.

There's nothing really bad about Finder. It's just sort of meh for a tool that one uses all the time.

[blacksmith_tb]

Having a 'shelf' (with stack-like behavior) like Pathfinder does is very useful, it allows you to go into a dir in one tab, grab arbitrary files, park that selection temporarily, then switch to the destination and drop them. Yes, you can copy-n-paste (finally) in Finder.app, but without any way to to see what files are on the clipboard (short of pasting), and you can do two bunches at once. Of course, for lots of other file-moving, it's easier to use the command line anyhow (like matching on patterns). Pathfinder also filters and searches in the current dir, which Finder never seems to do...

[myrandomcomment]

The shelf here was a key part of the NeXTstep manager. Drives me nuts that Apple removed it.

[gowld]

What's wrong with Pathfinder that makes it not a "1st class citizen"?

[ghaff]

When you do something like Save As... within an application and the dialog box is the native Finder.

[biztos]

I don't know, I just tried out Lubuntu on an MBP and it was a shockingly bad experience. And I use Linux every day in the terminal.

After an hour of trying to figure out how to connect to my WiFi I gave up -- I was hoping to get a non-technical friend onto Linux on her very old laptop, and I though if I as a nerd can't figure out the most basic thing, the first thing you'd want to do with the OS, well...

Still looking for a Linux for older hardware that will not completely freak out non-technie folks from a Mac background. Xubunto was the same, with better icons.

[teamhappy]

What happened?

All you need to do is click on the little wifi icon in the status bar (or go to preferences -> network connections).

[vikeri]

I can recommend elementary os for people that would like a polished Linux distro

[tazjin]

> but it's the best desktop linux experience

This is extremely subjective. I'm a full-time EXWM (Emacs as a window manager) on NixOS user and my environment is customized[1][2] to work the way I want it to.

Default desktops can work great for you if your mindset and workflow align with the designer(s) of the UI - but in my opinion it is much more valuable to be able to (note: not forced to) customize everything about your environment to slowly tailor it to your needs.

TL;DR - there's no single "best desktop experience".

[1]: https://github.com/tazjin/nixos-config [2]: https://github.com/tazjin/emacs.d

[Kratisto]

I completely agree there is no best desktop. I think the statement is better suited as Ubuntu is the "best desktop experience for the average person". I think that's what most people really mean when having this discussion. The average person part is sort of implied.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Problem with that is that "average person" isn't defined by any kind of metrics or anything, it's just whatever the developer imagines it is, which is usually some drooling moron caricature (when they don't want to provide a feature) or themselves (when they've written something that harms others' workflows).

[tazjin]

What's an average person, though?

We're keeping this aura of mysticism around customized computer setups (obviously also because there's commercial interests against them).

I think many "average" people would have no greater difficulty learning a fast, simple, customizable mail client instead of Outlook for example.

[Bromskloss]

> It's so cool to hate on Ubuntu, but it's the best desktop linux experience.

Really? I feel like writing the article "The decline of Ubuntu".

[justwalt]

That sounds pretty cool.

[eosrei]

Preface: I am a full-time Linux user, who has used both Mac and Windows extensively. My systems run Ubuntu with MATE, but I'd accept Mint/Cinnamon or GNOME too.

Snow Leopard was nine years ago to be fair. The UI/UX of Linux has come a long way since then, but the UI/UX could be optimized further. What is wrong with it?

To cover the common issues first: WiFi - Was an issue, but hasn't been on my machines at least six years. Sleep - Was an issue, but hasn't been on my machines at least four years. I've had this machine up to 60 day uptime, so 50+ sleeps, only restarting for the kernel update for example. HiDPI - Still an issue, but the apologist says "It was new tech! Just like the other two." Progress is being made, but it will be a while until seamless.

Due to my familiarity (with all three OSs) my UI/UX views may be incorrect for new users. I don't want a flame war. I want to know what else needs to be done in Ubuntu 18.04 GNOME and/or Mint/MATE. I'll file issues, create bug reports, and perhaps fix some things myself. It's easier to see this forest from another forest.

Edit: Further down the comments I found "Bluetooth" I'm going to look into it.

[harperlee]

My biggest gripe with MacOS by far is that I can't hibernate. There is only this "sleep" mode that makes whatever it wants, with the promise that it will Just Work. I frequently find my laptop with an empty battery because who knows what. And a laptop that does not power up when you expect is the second worst kind of laptop (at least you don't lose the data, which would be the worst case).

When searching for solutions, internet delivers hypertechnical answers that are reminiscent of when I was dealing with a Linux laptop (pmset -g assertions browsing). To me, apple as a "Unix that Just Works" is a failure.

The hardware is high quality, but the brand-and-software premium price has stopped being a good deal for me.

[orbitur]

I gotta ask, because I've used MBPs for the last 10 years, and I'm surrounding by dozens of people using the same: but what is your setup? Are you on High Sierra?

Sleep used to be a problem for me and a lot of others... back in 2012. I would consistently have issues with my MBP "waking up" when unplugging it from the wall but not opening it; occasionally I would close my MBP and coincidentally hear the fans going full blast 30 minutes later. Definitely untrustworthy 5/6 years ago

But sleep is generally a solved problem, so I have to think you're on a pre-Retina machine or running an older OS, or you've got some kexts doing bad things.

[harperlee]

Unfortunately that's not the case; I've got a 2015 MacBook upgraded to High Sierra.

[gowld]

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/51725/do-macbooks-...

[blacksmith_tb]

Tweaking prefs could help, make sure 'App Nap' is off, and see what the pmset hibernatemode is set to, it sounds like you want mode '1'.

[deltron3030]

> The UI/UX of Linux has come a long way since then, but the UI/UX could be optimized further. What is wrong with it?

Only details. Inconsistent layout, spacing, fonts and icons, animations that don't help and introduce artificial weight and sluggishness. It seems like there isn't much time spend with prototyping, maybe because the prototyping tools didn't exist on Linux (now you can use Figma and others in the browser), and most devs won't switch to Macs for Linux UI design out of pride.

Transitions and stuff like that are tricky, if your UI framework can't handle non linear transitions, better ignore them completely, linearity doesn't work out and will always feel slower and of lesser quality as rendering as fast as possible, or perfectly dialed in non linearity.

[brightball]

I continued on with my 17" 2011 MBP for years and finally committed to switch to Linux last year when Apple's hardware policy became clear.

I didn't want to do toe-in-the-water trial, so I researched for a while until I settled on something and ended up with a Dell Precision 7710. I really wanted to have a support line I could call if there was a problem and the Dell Developer Edition option has been excellent for that.

It was not easy at first. I experimented with a lot of distros (Arch is not for the faint of heart) and ended up settling on Fedora 25 at the time. I really enjoyed it for about 6 months until I had to upgrade to Fedora 26 and my machine got frozen in this weird between-upgrades state.

After that I decided to give Mint 18.3 w/ Cinnamon a try and I've been a very happy camper ever since. It's been an absolute joy to work with. Timeshift is pretty great too.

19 just hit beta and I'm looking forward to the upgrade. When I have to get on a Mac now, it feels clunky and in-the-way. I was an avid Mac user for 10+ years...even appeared as the Mac in one of those local "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads"...but I'll say it right now, it would take a job requirement to get me to go back at this point.

[megaman22]

It's insane that they don't support a 17" option still. Those machines were beasts. If I could have afforded to spend twice the money on a laptop at the time, I would have gotten one - I still probably should have with the number of HPs and Dells and Asuss I've gone through since.

[brightball]

A friend of my just replaced his motherboard to keep it going. My laptop is my 3rd screen...not having a 17" is not at option as far as I'm concerned.

[noir_lord]

I went from a 17" Dell (1600x900) to a 14" Thinkpad (2560x1440) - It mattered a lot less than I expected and the hidpi is lovely.

[brightball]

The screen size wasn't the only motivation. I like my laptop to be a portable server. This thing has 3 HD (2 NVMe & 1 SSD), up to 64GB / ram, 4 USB 3.0 ports, 1 USB-C, 1 Mini-Display/Thunderbolt, 1 HDMI, SD card slot, ethernet port, finger print scanner and a smart card slot.

Plus the battery is replaceable.

I love my beast of a laptop with all the interchangeable parts.

[noir_lord]

I understand that, I went with a T470P which is an absurdly powerful little machine, i7-7700HQ, 32GB RAM, NVMe storage, no thunderbolt but I had no need for it also has HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet port, Fingerprint reader.

Happy with it for what I paid (lot of machine for the money).

[vardump]

Does it have ECC RAM? If it does, then that system sounds very tempting. I wouldn't dare to use it for work without ECC.

[matwood]

Spot on. I remember not long ago trying to replace my MBP with a linux box and asking/complaining about the HiDPI situation on linux on some forum. One the responses I received was no one needs HiDPI. Huh?

I'm hoping this is just a down period for Apple. They have had issues before and corrected them, so we'll see.

[dfox]

What is somewhat ironic is that X11 is DPI aware at least since R6 (early 90's or so). But most modern applications tend to ignore that because it caused "stuff to look wrong" (as in not exactly pixel-exact same everywhere). FWIW Windows' GDI also has some DPI awareness since forever, but it didn't really work well to the extent of even Windows components having totally broken UI for anything other than 75dpi (caused by mixing of units in UI definition).

[sbr464]

Elementary OS Linux supports HiDPI pretty well.

[bodi]

Disclaimer I bought and supported Elementary OS last year. It's definitely got potential. Then you run straight into the braindead lack of UI decisions or "opinionated design" and are just kind of like ugh.. Ok.

[bitL]

Linux Mint + Cinnamon (or even + Macbuntu + Docky if you want to feel like on Mac, including switching flat dock to 3D if you liked Mavericks), then in General settings choose HiDPI in the first option. I run like that for 3 years already, on 3x 4k monitors. You can thank me later ;-)

[awinder]

> Why their machines had so much success since Jobs return was that they were making machines that were equally loved by music/video/content creators, developers, mothers/fathers/grandparents, students etc etc... If you aren't satisfied with your dev. environment go spin up a VM, rent a server or just get other machine that will fulfill your needs.

So Apple used to make machines that delighted all audiences, they now don't, so one of those audience (developers) needs to get in line and change. O...k?

Apple should actually go out and understand why developers are lukewarm on their machines, and if they're not or just ignoring one of those audiences, then they're doing so at their own peril.

[mikhailt]

> Apple should actually go out and understand why developers are lukewarm on their machines, and if they're not or just ignoring one of those audiences, then they're doing so at their own peril.

They did but only recently, it's why they've redoing MacPro and released iMac Pro, which was a good step in a way but it didn't help. They've admitted to failing the devs on this in that rare interview last year when they were talking about Mac Pro.

The question is, will they apply the same lessons to MacBook Pro? They need to step up on the next generation and if they fail to do so, Microsoft is getting my money as I liked playing with Surface Book.

[yayana]

Your comment seems pretty accurate to me, and developers are especially relevant since they are forced to use OsX if they want to do anything for the other parts of the apple ecosystem. Parts that are apparently important enough to ignore desktop will begin to suffer from less 3rd party developers and more hostile cross platform developers..

The intern who has to make it work in Windows store then having to find and try to boot the iMac to sign the iPhone binaries is the fast death of desktop and the slow death of Apple's profit centers.

[wheels]

Odd. I've been waiting for a Macbook Pro that has something that excites me for a while (as my present one is 7 years old) and kind of gave up when the most recent Macbooks were announced.

I threw some more RAM and a 4 core CPU in a desktop that I'd previously been using as a PVR, and have gotten along with GNOME just fine. While a lot of folks dislike GNOME 3, I actually find it to be one of the more innovative and interesting desktops going around at the moment (including macOS and the various Windows iterations).

Oddly, the main thing I miss is that, while Mail.app has loads of annoyances, it still seems to do better with large IMAP folder better than anything on Linux except Thunderbird (which I find a bit clunky in the interface).

Were it not for music production software, I'd be very tempted to do a wholesale switch (in my case back to Linux, as it's what I used in the decade before I got my first Mac).

[cmsj]

"Were it not for" is exactly why Linux is such a sub-par desktop experience. GNOME/KDE are fine, but they're just the desktop shell, what is missing is high quality apps.

If all you need is a terminal and a browser, then sure, Linux has you more than covered, but the apps for just about everything else are either lacking in UX or features or both.

I ran nothing but Linux from 1997 to 2010 and I switched to macOS full time in 2011 when I came home from the birth of my son, and decided to take all of the photos of the pregnancy and birth, import them into iPhoto and use the book designer to order a big printed photo book. It was so nice to be able to do that at all, so easy to do, and the results so pleasing, that I immediately demoted my Linux partition to a VM and haven't looked back :)

[wheels]

As of the last few years, there are actually high quality apps for music production on the Linux desktop (BitWig, Tracktion), they're just not the apps that I've used for the last 15 years, and since I have a Mac, I'm not inclined to change. However, if there's not a Macbook I'm excited to drop €3000 on by the time that my current one dies (or stops getting updates), I'd consider spending the time to switch tools.

Notable there too is that my next Macbook will almost certainly be around €3000. My last one was €1300 plus another €80 to max out the RAM. That's a pretty massive difference for the top of the line 13" model.

[wilsonnb2]

Those music production apps have the same issue though - most plugins that people want to use don't support Linux, at least not natively and easily.

Progress has been made but there is still a long way to go.

[mprev]

Precisely. For me it was 2001 to 2012. In the six years since, I miss two things from Linux based desktops: being easily able to launch any application from the terminal and having a clock in the top bar that also has a calendar widget.

What I’ve gained is productivity in a whole bunch of non-dev scenarios. People moan about Creative Cloud or Office pricing but I now no longer have to make a hundred little compromises each day.

[watersb]

> launch any application from the terminal

I am not sure I understand the issue here, but is there some reason that 'open -a "ApplicationName"' does not work for you?

I can think of some things; I haven't tried but the app developer would need to provide an API to handle command-line options. Sometimes I examine an application's Scripting dictionary via the Script Editor or Automator, but in general I am not writing big shell scripts to drive applicaitons.

[mprev]

With Ubuntu, and other Linuxen I've used, it's a matter of typing "firefox" or whatever the app is called. So, sure, I can type the extra but what I like about the Linux world is that there's no distinction between terminal and GUI apps when it comes to launching from the terminal.

[emilsedgh]

> KDE and Gnome are not only desktop shells.

This is just not true. KDE and Gnome both have a huge app offering.

[brightball]

Now that Thunderbird is under active development again it should improve. The beta seems a good bit snappier.

[merinowool]

I don't know. I had to use Mac at work and I hated it. It seems like for every stupid thing you needed to install an app or something. I had to spend considerable amount of time to make os x usable in dev scenario, whereas when I compare it to Ubuntu, Ubuntu has everything working out of the box. I am glad I don't have to use OS X any more.

[willtim]

> whole UI/UX thing on Linux just can't be compared to macOS and Cocoa.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I much prefer the look and feel of my i3/polybar setup. As a professional developer, I am not the target audience for Apple's UI.

[pjmlp]

Those guys and gals creating Mac specific software are professional developers and pretty much the target audience of Apple's UI.

[pphysch]

They are "pretty much" not--it's the 10s of millions of non-developer consumers that drive Apple's UI/UX.

[pjmlp]

You should experience attending a WWDC, even if virtually.

[pphysch]

If we are talking developer tools, sure, they are developer oriented by definition.

The overall Apple UX is clearly inheriting from the other side of the spectrum. Headless Linux is massively popular among developers for a reason, and not because the average developer is stuck-up.

[pjmlp]

There are many developers on Apple systems that care about their exclusive Apple users, using macOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS native APIs.

They really care about the UI/UX that they provide to their users and what graphical tooling and OS APIs can make their jobs easy.

Then there those using Apple computers as pretty GNU/Linux replacements, doing development work that should actually be done in a GNU/Linux distribution.

Developer is not only someone coding away UNIX CLI apps.

[ilikehurdles]

Arch is an OS for people who like hacking together an OS. For a full desktop experience, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu flavors, Elementary, and many other distributions are probably a better way to go.

[peferron]

> You really start appreciating macOS when you go and install Linux on laptop and use it for a month

Actually, the opposite happened to me: I started really disliking macOS after switching to Ubuntu + i3 on my main development machine. That's on a desktop computer though, not a laptop, so I didn't run into any Linux issues regarding battery & sleep. The experience might not be as good on a laptop, especially if the hardware is worse than my 2015 rMBP, which unfortunately seems quite common for non-Mac laptops even today.

[albutr]

So far I've had a good experience with Kubuntu on an old Lenovo ideapad from ~7 years ago, after throwing a new SSD in to replace the old HDD. Everything so far has worked out of the box without any problems, I was able to get both MATLAB and Mendeley (the only two programs I was concerned would give me issues) up and running without any problem for my research, and I configured the desktop environment so it looks and functions almost identical to MacOS (at least for how I usually use MacOS, and with a few changes that I feel are more aesthetically pleasing).

I tried this because my main 2015 macbook pro somehow developed an swollen battery, which has caused the case to warp really badly (wobbles distractingly when typing). There are reports that this swelling can, predictably, lead to explosions [1]. The ETA for arrival+service of new battery was ~ a week, full cost to me, and no loaner program. Pretty ridiculous for a known hardware defect.

[1]https://medium.com/@dourvaris/my-2015-macbook-pro-retina-exp...

[albutr]

Pretty sure that no one will see this, but just to make a correction in case someone does, the new battery was totally covered even though the machine was out of warranty, and I dropped it off saturday afternoon and the machine was sent out, repaired, and ready to pick up tuesday morning. Surprisingly a really painless experience.

[bitL]

Get a Linux Mint/Cinnamon on a notebook with 3k/4k HiDPI screen, 32GB RAM, install MacBuntu & Docky, and then come back to tell us about your experience ;-) It doesn't feel like a wannabe Mac slap-on anymore. I use such setup for some local users and it is smooth as on a Mac. I even had people asking me during a video call where I shared my desktop what kind of macOS mod it was.

[simonebrunozzi]

Keyboard on Macbook Pro: it sucks big time. Can't believe how they shipped it this way.

[onyva]

Same here. It was the touch bar that did it for me. Didn’t mind the ports. Dell XPS with fedora 28 is so much faster, quieter and comfortable than any MacBook I had before (3 in total).

Last MacBook I had bricked on me while I was trying to shut it down while at the library. It didn’t shutdown but started heating up in my bagpack. I noticed the smell and was able to take it out and open the lid and let it die naturally.

Best thing about Apple though is still their ethical and generous customer service. Dell customer service is truly disgusting. At least in Germany. Would probably not buy a new Dell laptop but look for something else.

[yayana]

I don't know what to say about your comparisons.. I find all desktop OSes unusable at the moment and I think that is more embarrassing for Windows and OsX than Linux, since Linux has a lot of other places it can be besides desktop.

As a developer I am going back to pure window managers without the "environment" of gnome or KDE. For non-developers, Tablets seem to be dieing so I guess you are supposed to keep a larger phone at home.

[BlackjackCF]

Yup, agreed here.

I shared the sentiments that this post had. Then I got a XPS 15" and booted ElementaryOS on it and trying to deal with the resolution issues from the 4K display was just a huge headache.

Also, say what you will about the MBP, even though I paid $2k for my XPS, it still wasn't nearly as nice as the MBP's touchpad, etc. I would definitely still pay a premium for that MBP hardware.

[stcredzero]

> booted ElementaryOS on it and trying to deal with the resolution issues from the 4K display was just a huge headache

Jeez. The sentence, "I booted distro-X on it and trying to deal with the resolution issues from was just a huge headache," is still true in 2018. People were saying things like this about Linux 15 years ago!

[Symbiote]

Windows 10 has resolution issues with HiDPI displays.

I find KDE to be fine with a single 4K display. I think the difficulties come with mixing a standard and a HiDPI screen.

[davidp]

Agreed. Pre-Wayland, Linux/X typically needs to treat all your screens as viewports onto a single virtual screen, which of course has to have a single DPI.

This is a more common use case than some folks might imagine. My laptop screen is HiDPI, but as soon as I plug into a projector or screen sharing device that acts as a second display, things get realllllly weird: Linux/X does not know how to dynamically change screen DPI without logout/login. I work around it by just running my laptop screen at "low" DPI. I don't miss it TBH; I suspect that many people who do notice it have better eyesight than me (possibly an age thing).

Wayland is supposed to help with this to some extent, but it's not yet ready for prime time.

[jay-saint]

Definitely this, I have a Thinkpad with Ubuntu 18.04, built in 4k display with 2 external 2k displays. I spent way too much time trying to get it to work. I just resorted to change magnification each time I dock/undock

[lostmsu]

What kind of issues? O-o

[wlesieutre]

And 4K is an easy one if you just want doubled density 1080p! I tried to set up a fractional scale once on a Surface Pro (Windows defaults to 1.5x) and the answer is "Set 2x in the UI, then configure xrandr to scale it back down 0.75x"

This was a few years ago, maybe things have improved.

[ac29]

To be fair, ElementaryOS is based on software from 2015/16 (Ubuntu 16.04). HiDPI support in Linux is better (though still not perfect) in 2018.

[zlynx]

You should have tried Fedora with Wayland Gnome. Its been working pretty well with HiDPI since F-25 and it's F-28 now.

Fedora still has some issues with mixing 1x and 2x DPI screens, but heh, so does Windows.

And yeah, you still have to manually edit the fonts for the virtual consoles and the GRUB boot, if you care. Otherwise keep a magnifier handy to edit the boot commands. ;-)

[anothergoogler]

The problem is you expected an Arch Linux laptop install to "just work" when you were new to desktop Linux in general. Linux really isn't a "just work" desktop OS and it caters to power users. You might try Ubuntu as your first Linux distribution, but you will be continually frustrated if you expect a fresh Linux desktop install to fit like a glove.

[IOT_Apprentice]

How long has Linux been around? Why haven't "power user 10x developer/hackers" solved building a Linux desktop that fits like a glove? That works out of the box with modern hardware for wifi, video, audio, bluetooth etc.?

[Philipp__]

Used Gentoo and FreeBSD for years. I knew what i was up to with Arch. I’ve used it in high school for few years with different desktop env. So I think I was more than prepared for Linux experience. Operating systems are my fetish if I may say so. :P

[pphysch]

If you can't handle a terminal-only environment, or even see it as less preferable to a desktop (you can install any WM you please in 15 minutes), it seems a bit disingenuous to claim you are "more than prepared for Linux experience".

[farresito]

You don't go to Arch for the UI/UX. I have used Windows, Mac, and Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch). My experience with Arch (i3wm) has been vastly superior to anything I have used before. I would not trade it for anything. The thing about it is it caters to a certain group of people, and if you are not one of those, then you won't have a good time with it.

[bitofhope]

>the worst thing is I can use Linux only as pure text/terminal UI

Genuinely curious, but why on earth would you install Arch of all things, then? Surely you would have preferred any of the myriad distros that come with a desktop environment preinstalled?

Even on Arch, GNOME is just a pacman command away. You don't have to run i3 with anime wallpaper.

[chewz]

I had enough of macOS disaster so I have installed ChromeOS on my Macbook Pro Retina and Debian Stretch via crouton.

Never looked back - it is excellent combo of graphical environment of ChromeOS which really just works and Debian in terminal with zsh, Vim and all...

[liquidify]

I agree with you. To me the 2 primary blunders are the keyboard / touch-bar and the removal of the magsafe. But the other things together are indicative of a train on the wrong track.

[leephillips]

That's odd. After having to deal with MacOS for a while, I really appreciated Linux.

[dilatedmind]

i have both a mac book pro, and ubuntu running on a xps 13. the mac book has infintely better hardware: better keyboard, touchpad, screen, battery life.

I think the real issue is laptops suck. I would rather have a mechanical keyboard, real mouse, and a 24" screen at eye level.