[jeffkeen]

> I like using my linux desktop because I can set it up exactly how I want, and macOS just doesn't roll that way.

I'm not trying to have an argument here, but I've never really understood what is the "exactly how you want" that Mac OS doesn't provide? Would you mind sharing some details? Is it just a matter of not being familiar with the places to change the defaults to something more to your liking, or is it actually missing the ability to do something you need?

I've been a Mac user since the 80s, I write software for a living, and I understand that among tech folk there is a continental divide between convention and configuration, and I think that might translate to choice in OS, too. Seems to me that most Mac users are on the convention over configuration side, and most people who are anti-MacOS are the opposite; they want to configure every bit. Just wondering if that's the case here, too, or if there's more to it specifically.

[sushisource]

To some extent you're totally right. I can elaborate.

Some of it are technical choices Apple has made that make things hard. I like tiling window managers. The best (only?) one for OSX now requires you to go disable SIP to use it: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki/Disabling-System-I... -- this wouldn't be the case if Apple cared at all to support these sorts of use-cases, but they don't, so it suffers collateral damage from their attempts to improve security. (Again, totally reasonable business choice. Not a ton of people in this boat, but turns me off. Why can't I do this by clicking something in system prefs like when I open a downloaded app?)

Another one is, as a developer who once worked at a shop that shipped three-os software, their policies relating to macOS licensing are comical. It's almost like they don't want you to develop for Mac at all unless you're going to exclusively develop for Mac. We had moved everything to the cloud, but we still had a room full of stupid mac minis just to run our build farm. Ridiculous. The new news about mac minis in AWS is an ever-so-slight improvement.

Some of it is definitely the familiarity you describe. I don't want to have to get used to all the weird bsd-ish-but-not-really versions of the common CLI tools. I have no interest in learning apple script, etc. I'm being fairly obviously hypocritical because I was willing to learn a bunch about obscure config files on linux. But, my experience has often been that things I would be willing to invest to customize on macOS are simply not customizeable.

And, hey, perhaps I would've been willing to go through all that were it (reasonably) possible to run OSX on commodity hardware, but as a kid learning programming in the 90's macs were damn expensive compared to windows alternatives. So, I grew up on windows. It's still true. Today I could afford a Mac Pro, but it's a laughable value proposition (easily 3x-5x the cost for equivalent power) compared to building my own linux box (as to the 'your time is money!' counterargument people sometimes make here - it takes me about 2 hours to build a PC and my linux box hasn't panicked or booted improperly once). This used to make sense to me when the OS/hardware was more tightly integrated, but I don't really see how a macPro is any different than the equivalent PC you could build with the same CPU/GPU combos except more expensive and less flexible (admittedly, with a stunning case -- their manufacturing quality is incredible). Maybe they'll realize those benefits again with the M1, which is certainly cool.

Lastly, I'll never forgive them for starting the trend of eliminating 3.5mm jacks on phones.

TLDR; You're probably right. Macs aren't a great choice if you're a power user (read: control freak) with your PC.

[jeffkeen]

I'm actually right there with you with your development related digs on Apple. They're draconian, and it's only gotten worse in the Tim Cook era. The major beef I've had with them the last decade are the whole slew of absurd (imo) hardware/design decisions and tiny oversights that never would've flown under the old Apple. Losing the headphone port to get a slightly thinner phone nobody was asking for? Shipping those damn butterfly keyboards? Ditching MagSafe power cords for "USB C everywhere" (but not on phones and not all usb C cables are power cables)? Pushing the Touch Bar like it’s the solution to everything when it solves nothing? Da fuq? I could go on. Just one silly thing after the other while I imagine them all patting themselves on the back for a job well done while watching that money pour in. And the prices! Macs were always expensive but damn did this last set of Pro level laptops and desktops get stupid expensive.

It's almost like they put a numbers guy in the CEO role of a formerly design obsessed company and the metric turned from "is this insanely great?" to "will this get us to the _next_ trillion dollars?"

So yeah, as a lifelong Apple user I've had some major beef. There's plenty to complain about. But with that all being said, I’ve been pretty happy experience and productivity wise running an old 2013 MacBook Pro and and a tiny iPhone SE and never considered leaving the Apple ecosystem, because honestly… what’s the alternative? Windows feels like nonsense to me, Google is privacy nightmare, and going full Linux feels like… work. I'm sure it would be possible to carve out a nice system and find some linux gui that doesn't look like complete garbage, tweak my settings just right, and find all the free versions of the apps I need. But at the end of the day I don't think I'd get that "it just works" feeling I still get with Mac OS—for me I'd think it'd feel like a successfully completed science project.

So for me, even at their worst, Apple is still best. And this M1 news and the new iPhone form factors (the 12 mini, specifically) has given me some hope that maybe they haven't completely lost their way.

[least]

> Why can't I do this by clicking something in system prefs like when I open a downloaded app?

If you could change it in system preferences it'd defeat the entire point of SIP, which is to run the OS rootless. Your user isn't privileged enough to disable it which is why you need to boot into recovery mode in order to disable it. This feature isn't unique to MacOS, either [1].

And of course, if you don't like it, you can disable it once and never have to think about it again! At worst you're running with true root privileges, which isn't different from linux.

For what it's worth, Yabai's tiling actually works fine without disabling SIP. Your link enumerates the features that requires disabling SIP.

> But, my experience has often been that things I would be willing to invest to customize on macOS are simply not customizeable.

A lot of the time it's definitely more convoluted to customize MacOS though i am curious what sorts of things you are trying to customize that you couldn't.

> (as to the 'your time is money!' counterargument people sometimes make here - it takes me about 2 hours to build a PC and my linux box hasn't panicked or booted improperly once).

When people say "your time is money" with regards to using Linux, it's rarely about building a computer and generally has to do with using the OS itself. 

> TLDR; You're probably right. Macs aren't a great choice if you're a power user (read: control freak) with your PC.

I think it's more that it's not a great choice if you don't want to invest the same amount of time you've invested in learning how to be a power user in a different operating system.

[1] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/securi...

[sushisource]

I think your last point is definitely valid. Best counterpoint I could make there is investing the time in linux is probably more widely valuable/applicable in terms of being able to apply it on the job.

I learned a bunch of linux stuff for fun, and it's helped me a lot in my job. I dunno if I could say the same about macOS.