[dsimmons]

Been using a Framework laptop for close to a year and loving every minute of it!

Installed 64GB of RAM and a high-performance 2TB NVMe for less than half of a comparable Macbook Pro. Plus, I get to run Linux! It worked right out of the box with almost zero configuration.

To be completely fair, the battery that it comes with is a bit on the small side, so that's the main criticism I have (battery life).

All told, I can't see myself ever going back to using an Apple laptop (voluntarily). I do get jealous of the M1/M2 processor specifically at times, but MacOS is a dumpster fire and I refuse to use it. Plus, having used a proper tiling window manager on a laptop now (i3), I can't imagine going back.

[nullwarp]

I'm with you, I have two Macbooks I deeply regret buying because at this point they just sit in a pile unused because they are just so annoying to use.

I'm in the market now for a replacement for my old 15" thinkpad that I've been using but just haven't really found anything. I seem to be in some weird middle ground that nobody caters too because everything is either 13" or 16".

[fsflover]

Did you consider Purism Librem 14?

[LeonenTheDK]

i3 really is the killer feature for me. I'm on an M1 Mac for work, and I wouldn't say MacOS is a dumpster fire, but I'm really missing i3. There are things I've tried that get close but it's not the same.

[dsimmons]

For what it's worth, my "dumpster fire" comment encompassed far more than just window management (and admittedly extended to Apple hardware and Apple the company). See my comments elsewhere in the thread if you're curious!

Re window management specifically: your "it's not the same" comment are my exact sentiments!

Even if you can hack together some other MacOS-specific window management solution, what I'm finding game-changing is my laptop and my desktop behaving in the exact same way (same OS, same dotfiles, same programs/bins/utils).

Not only "behaving" in the same way, but also configured in the same way (meaning I don't have to maintain two separate configurations for two entirely different managers).

I don't know, I realize my perspective isn't shared by everyone (and even the HN audience specifically), but I'll probably never go back to using a laptop without Linux on it. For a long time, I avoided going down that path because I knew how big of a PITA getting laptop device/drivers to work was (whereas it's generally far simpler on desktop), but that's become less and less the case over the years, to the point that I spend less time configuring Linux than I do overriding all of MacOS's default settings/configuration.

[rozab]

Have you tried yabai?

https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

[LeonenTheDK]

I have, as well as Amethyst. Yabai is what I've settled with, and it's absolutely usable for my work flow. I probably need to fiddle with it some more, but the thing with i3 is that most of the the default set up works great for me. Trying to emulate that in something else has been a pain.

Maybe I should just learn to be more flexible!

[nunez]

absolutely love amethyst! i wish I could long press a hotkey to remind me of my own hotkeys sometimes but as far as a non-linux tiling wm goes, this is the way.

[jackling]

What do you dislike about MacOS?

[yc202207214587]

Not OP but my biggest issue is: windowing system is extremely basic (no window snapping/tiling) and smooth scrolling doesn't work with 3rd party mice. I need smooth scrolling due to visual impairment and have to use the stupid Magic Mouse instead of my MX Master 3 when I'm on MacOS.

[noveltyaccount]

I tried MacOS recently for about a month and was shocked at how bad scrolling was with my Logitech MX Vertical mouse. The third-party app Mos solved it pretty much perfectly. Every once in a while scrolling would stop working altogether until I rebooted. Never figured it out, but it was maddening. https://mos.caldis.me/

[nunez]

get smoothscroll (paid app, i think $10) to fix the scrolling and Amethyst (foss) for tiling.

[dsimmons]

EDIT: I should point out that, although I don't like MacOS, I ditched Apple-related products first and foremost because of both the hardware itself and the company.

Every Apple product I've owned has failed in some spectacular way, and Apple's response is typically something along the lines of "You're SoL dude, you can either recycle it and buy a new product, or you can pay us something close to the value of the device to repair it" (because they solder everything unnecessarily).

Framework finally came along and showed that you can have a sleek, elegant (and modular!) design without soldering everything together in the name of reducing weight by 0.01kg or whatever (or making it a hair-width thinner).

Most recently, I had a 2019 Macbook Pro ($3K) that would frequently give me a "red screen of death" under load and crap out completely.

Before that, a brand new 2018 Macbook Pro I bought (for nearly $3K mind you) became unusable within an hour after taking it out of the box because of the faulty keyboard (several keys either didn't register key presses, or they would turn one key press into multiple occurrences of the same letter).

Before that, I had a Thunderbolt Display ($1K) that would fail intermittently, and it took 5 trips to the Apple store before they finally gave me a new one.

Before that, I had a 2014 Macbook Pro for which the screen started peeling off -- I had to buy a matte screen protector to even be able to see the screen.

I have several more examples as I go back in time further, but you get the gist! In all cases, they're widely known problems that Apple refuses to acknowledge, and assuming they're even willing to do anything about it, they want you to hand over your laptop to them for ~2 weeks in the meantime.

---

Original response:

I'll eventually get around to writing a blog post about this (tm) and HN isn't really the place to fully brain dump, but off of the top of my head, here's a few examples:

- My ".osx" dotfiles (then, now ".macos") would break with every OS upgrade. As an example, I preferred to set a very fast key repeat with a very short delay, and I remember one version of OSX/MacOS that just decided to start ignoring that completely (or resetting it every restart or something, I forget).

- As a TL;DR point that summarizes many frustrations, I'd end up changing almost all of the default settings, to the point that I realized that I wasn't their target customer. For instance, I'd promptly disable all of their elaborate transitions and animations (which effectively added a latency to interacting with the system), hide the dock in perpetuity, etc etc... I haven't used MacOS in a few years, so I'm unable to refresh myself on what else I would change.

- Their window management is SO stupid (IMHO), especially once you start incorporating monitors.

- At least historically (unsure now), there was no way to differentiate the scroll behavior with the trackpad vs an external mouse. I did like the "natural" scrolling or whatever, as it felt very intuitive having used smartphones for many years. However, any time I connected a wireless mouse (primarily for gaming), it'd behave the same way (completely unintuitive), and there was no way to change it to be different. So I'd then have to either design for the least common denominator ("scrollwheel behavior"), or change that setting every single time I used an external mouse and remember to revert it when I'm done. A small nit, but one of tens of examples of annoyances.

I could go on, but like I mentioned, this isn't really the place! Just a few examples as a taste :)

[freedomben]

I had many hardware issues with Macbooks as well. The final straw for me was when I bought an expensive Apple-made monitor, and 50% of the time when unplugging my MBP from it, the MBP screen would stay off/blank rather than receiving the handoff. The only way to recover was to hold the power button. On a $4,000 setup. Where the same company controls the entire stack, on both devices. Absolutely inexcusable to buy a product set so expensive and so unreliable. The insult to the injury though was people telling me I must be doing something wrong because Apple stuff "just works." (I literally just plugged and unplugged a cable)

[smoldesu]

Yep, the prevalance of broken things and asinine limitations is what ultimately pushed me back towards Linux/Android. If I'm going to have to install extra software to make my experience tolerable, I may at least use the platform where those extensions don't cost me extra money on top of the hardware premium I'm already settling...

[cokeandpepsi]

Apple made my wife pay $500 when we were tight on cash to fix the keyboard on her butterfly-edition macbook pro when two keys failed.. for the second time ( the first they did it for free under warranty)

I'm never touching one of their products if I don't have to again.. years later they had some class-action settlement where we could have I guess got money back but seriously screw that company where it matters they hang you out to dry