I've only used MacOS for a year and only recently (maybe that matters), and I get all the same crappy inconsistent behaviour I do on Linux and did on Windows ~20 years ago when I last used it.
Apple has the benefit of controlling both hw and sw and still manage to mess it up.
Random crashes, slowdowns for long running sessions, crappy UI (eg those labels not checking their checkboxes in Settings), network weirdness (both USB ethernet dongles/hubs and internal WiFi), my USB audio interface picking up garbled audio which requires reselecting audio interface for it to fix itself...
Maybe I am doing something different, but it's even worse than Linux for the most part.
You haven't used Windows in quite a while have you ? Past Windows 7 it's been sliding downhill into bullshit UX, crapware, backend migration to Linux almost exclusively, etc.
Random things on top of my head :
MacOS doesn't come with candy crush, Instagram, TikTok, Spotify etc. prepopulating your start menu. Phone home telemetry and ads in OS ? Yummy
Dealing with Windows dev environment is always a PITA eventually - unless you're doing stuff where Windows is first class citizen (like games). For backend stuff it's almost implicit that you're running on Linux in prod and macos is well supported because it's fairly similar. On Windows it's always some path issues, stuff randomly breaking between updates, missing/incompatible CLI, etc.
Brew is pretty good. Chocolatey is garbage.
MacOS is fairly visually consistent. Windows regularly has me in Windows XP era screens, reached through 3 inconsistent UX steps developed along the way. Even Linux is better in this regard.
I like Linux when it works. Mac works more often. Windows is just a dumpster fire at this point.
>For backend stuff it's almost implicit that you're running on Linux in prod and macos is well supported because it's fairly similar.
Then Windows would be better than MacOS in this regard because WSL2 is exactly Linux, not just "fairly similar" to Linux.
>stuff randomly breaking between updates
What stuff broke for you between updates? Our entire DS team develops in windows + WSL2 and nothing broke for them in ~5 years. Maybe they know how to use a computer.
Ultimately just use what you like and what makes you productive, no need to crusade for some big corporation. The OS is just a tool for your job, like a hammer.
And who do I trust more - company that bundles third party crap ware and openly talks about OS ads as monetization avenue. Or a company selling me xxxx$ machine and wanting to sell me a next one with the OS in the future. As much as I dislike Apple walled garden - their incentive structure is way more aligned with me than Microsoft desktop.
> Then Windows would be better than MacOS in this regard because WSL2 is exactly Linux, not just "fairly similar" to Linux.
Haven't seen that be better than a VM.
Doing anything WSL on Windows FS is dog slow and vice versa, split toolsets conflicts (different git config between host and guest, different SSH). Just SSH into a VM - it's a way better experience - the boundaries are clear and the editors know the implications of working on a remote machine.
Not saying you can't use Windows, but you can also eat from a trough - I just prefer not to.
You throw a lot of stones considering how fragile your glass house is. Apples is the same company that wanted to scan your phone, that you bought and own, for child porn and report you to the authorities if something was found.
How you or anyone can blindly trust them after that is beyond me. Trust no major corporation regardless of how shiny their products are is my life motto.
>Haven't seen that be better than a VM.
It is, that's why people use it. Look up tutorials online.
Why? If your only feedback is "stuff randomly breaks" and unable to provide more on-point technical specifics, maybe you're not qualified enough. No shame in that. If I tell my mechanic "something randomly breaks on my car" he'll also know I'm clueless, and that's alright, not everyone's a car mechanic.
Windows 11'a main sin is Edge IMO. The start menu junk is shitty, but can be dealt with in matters of minutes. On the dev part, WSL2 basically make the point moot, an actual debian is way easier to deal with than brew.
Now have you tried uninstalling Apple Music ? or found a way to disable it from launching everytime you press the play button on your headset with no media player running ?
In the last few years I've looked at every macos updates with more an more dread of things that will stop working and generic enshitification. Windows stays more "in your face" on the cheap marketing stuff, but it also brought in a lot more improvements than macos did in the last 10 years, so I don't as much difference in experience as in the past.
Linux works more often for me than Mac, but I also have two decades of experience using it, so it may just be that I am more comfortable.
With so many webtech-apps (Slack, Google calendar...) and non-native UI browsers (Firefox/Chrome), visual consistency is lost anyway, so I stopped caring (the best experience I had was with GNOME in 2.* early HIG/a11y days when I used Epiphany as the web browser) — oh yeah, I use Emacs too, so there's that :)
Still, most common Mac-as-Linux approach with Docker Desktop is an incompatible emulation layer (eg. local UIDs are transformed into root UID on Mac, whereas they are not on Linux, so you get weird permission errors if you develop on Mac and rebuild/redeploy on Linux).
> MacOS is fairly visually consistent. Windows regularly has me in Windows XP era screens, reached through 3 inconsistent UX steps developed along the way.
I take that as a feature and is the whole crux of this discussion. I don't need ODBC or many such archaic features but if someday I need to use it, I trust it will be working.
> Dealing with Windows dev environment is always a PITA eventually - unless you're doing stuff where Windows is first class citizen (like games). For backend stuff it's almost implicit that you're running on Linux in prod and macos is well supported because it's fairly similar. On Windows it's always some path issues, stuff randomly breaking between updates, missing/incompatible CLI, etc.
YMMV but my experience is the opposite. Windows is a perfectly usable dev environment. The only time I face issues is when developers don’t choose to use cross platform tools.
> Chocolatey is garbage.
I’ll give you this one, but that’s why anyone serious on Windows is using scoop.
> Random crashes, slowdowns for long running sessions
I've been using Macs for a decade, and the only time I had this happen was on corporate laptops with antivirus software installed. Antivirus software are poorly written and they used to have constantly crashing kernel extensions. Apple has been deprecating kernel extensions in recent years, so the situation is improving. But the performance hit caused by antivirus crapware is unfortunately still a thing.
There's B2B Windows and B2C Windows. B2C is the license sold to OEMs, who will fill up the OS image with bloatware anyway to make a few extra bucks. Microsoft is just getting in on that now.
B2B Windows is the stuff you would see for enterprise buyers with strict IT policies. Your experience will be mostly unchanged from "classic Windows".
Apple employs “Release Managers”, where a single person is ultimately responsible for deciding which features ship in new projects.
Apple also, due to the hardware business, adheres to a release schedule where features must all be consolidated onto single branches (“convergence”), rather than letting individual teams ship incrementally.
That may be so, but all the annoyances I have with windows don't seem hardware-support related. The laggy menus, the clock in the taskbar that slides to the right outside of view, etc. This can't possibly be related to the fact I have a shiny, brand-new Wi-Fi card.
How this usually happens is that there's a notification indication. I'd click on the clock to show the notification center, dismiss the notification, and the clock would slide "too much" to the right, so that almost half of it is outside the screen.
A quick google search doesn't bring my issue up (I'll try to take a screenshot next time it happens, but I'm usually too annoyed of having to use windows to think about it). But it did bring up a separate issue, where the right-hand side icons area (system tray?) and the clock are moved down so that only the top of the date is showing. I've never had that one.
I think these are lag-related, as in things move when something opens. But if the thing before didn't complete or something, the new thing happening doesn't get to remove the old one as expected.
The other day, on a PC that was doing whatever it is that windows does when the CPU fan goes full tilt while pretending to be asleep (complete with the blinking power light), after waking it up, I managed to have both the notification center and the quick settings displayed. I mistakenly clicked on the notification, then immediately on the settings. The notification panel took forever to show up, and it showed while the settings panel was still showing.
Those issues are because some exec in Microsoft decided that they can monetize user data and since users already don't care their data being monetized by Google, then they themselves not monetizing it as well, means leaving money on the table since users don't care anyway.
That's the logic. Using Windows web components is similar to using Google products.
Apple has the benefit of controlling both hw and sw and still manage to mess it up.
Random crashes, slowdowns for long running sessions, crappy UI (eg those labels not checking their checkboxes in Settings), network weirdness (both USB ethernet dongles/hubs and internal WiFi), my USB audio interface picking up garbled audio which requires reselecting audio interface for it to fix itself...
Maybe I am doing something different, but it's even worse than Linux for the most part.