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by teamski 2539 days ago
Imagine a random manufacturer, let's say HP, was the one bringing a touchbar to their notebooks. Some press, a lot of laughter but quickly, nobody would talk anymore about them and/or buy that notebooks.

With Apple, people keep on complaining OVER years. The touchbar, the prices, the crappy keyboards... the reason? IDK, maybe they are locked-in and can't move to another platform but there is only one single reason to be locked-in on macOS: if you develop apps for iOS, otherwise every other platform is currently way better and switching is a matter of days. Once I had the keyboard trouble on a $4K MBP I switched instantly and never returned to macOS.

3 comments

I'm addicted to CMD+C/CMD+V.

I've tried making it happen in Linuxes and windows, but always with failures in one app or another, or having to configure each individual application I use independently.

The keyboard is the reason I love mac for running my Linux clusters. If I didn't have that, I would have the fantastic UX features like instant scrolling. Scrolling anywhere else is a choppy and laggy nightmare for me.

Just put Ctrl on Caps and then ctrl+c and +v is on par or or even better. Don't know anyone who is using the original control. Even better: create a tap/hold key with Esc/Ctrl on Caps. Then you have a superior keyboard experience because the alt keys are better positioned and usable. On Macs you have just Cmd as the only sane/reachable modifier key compared to crtl and alt on Windows/Linux. However you could also somehow get this setup on a Mac with fiddling with Karabiner. But here again Windows' Autohotkey is superior.

Re choppy scrolling, I have a Windows precision touchpad on my notebook and it's super close to a MBP but what is even much better than a MBP touchpad: get a Logitech mouse with a free wheel eg the G502, best scrolling experience and buttersmooth.

I thought also there is nothing else than macOS but there is even more good stuff outside. eg window management on Windows or linux eg with i3 there is just 100x better. on macos it's a joke to nonexistent.

Pinkies suck. alt on windows was fine, but ctrl's keyboard mappings on windows / linux has always been a pain for me.
You are faster pressing Caps with your pinkie than Cmd with your thumb.
Nobody really cares what Dell or HP are putting out. All eyes have been on Apple for a long time and lots of people who have never even used a Mac have a lot to say about them.
I and many others care about high quality laptops. Dell XPS and Thinkpads being two examples.

There's an entire world of excellent, powerful and cost-effective hardware outside of Apple's bubble.

I, too, switch to another OS every time my keyboard has a problem.