[bmitc]

Homebrew is a nightmare. Nearly every development tool on macOS requires some sort of workaround, usually found in the depths of forums or StackOverflow. Apple has also positioned macOS to be the absolute worst platform for graphics libraries. They only support Metal and an outdated version of OpenGL which they'll remove entirely at one point. Windows directly supports DirectX, Vulkan, and OpenGL.

Go ahead and try to rename iTunes because there's no other way to keep it from opening when your non-Apple Bluetooth headphones connect. Good luck.

There's not even a built-in way to uninstall programs in macOS. It's bizarre.

Or the fact that macOS doesn't implement basic protocols for external monitors, making macOS work terribly with non-Apple monitors.

[lm411]

> There's not even a built-in way to uninstall programs in macOS. It's bizarre.

You literally just drag the app to the trash can. Properly sandboxed Mac apps are a delight to uninstall.

Yes, some apps are more difficult, but those are usually Windows apps that are crudely ported to MacOS and that's on the developers for not creating proper MacOS apps.

[bmitc]

Yes. Everyone knows that. But that doesn't uninstall the application. It just deletes the top files. It doesn't remove any caching or configurations or other files in other parts of the system like a Windows uninstaller does. To do that on macOS, there are third-party apps that provide this functionality.

[ricardobeat]

This is by design. Mac apps don't leave tons of trash around like their windows counterparts. Only some config files, always in a standard location. So when you reinstall, everything just works. Your data lives in iCloud or the documents folder, and is not meant to be deleted when you uninstall.

[bmitc]

I don't recall that being true.

[int_19h]

Windows uninstallers generally don't remove configurations and cached data, either.

[bmitc]

Not in my experience, the majority of the time. Those that don't are usually Linux ported apps that don't utilize the install functionality properly. The point is that the OS provides the tools to do so.

[int_19h]

Not removing settings is in fact the standard and expected behavior for MSI-based installers (i.e. those using OS-provided tools). The framework is very paranoid about tracking the origin of every artifact (files, registry keys etc), and removing something in the uninstaller that installer did not add is considered a huge no-no. It is also what users generally expect - if they uninstall and later reinstall, they want their settings to be there.

Providing the ability to remove settings is something that has to be explicitly implemented (because the installer infrastructure cannot track files created outside of the installer), so relatively few apps actually do that. Those that do pretty much always do it as an opt-in. In my 30 years of Windows use, I don't recall a single example to the contrary.

[blacksmith_tb]

Installing is varied on macOS, but there's certainly a default way to uninstall applications - just drag the application to the Trash. That said I have some sympathy for your complaint, since things that have you run an installer can sprinkle themselves all over the filesystem, and though they leave a trail, there isn't a standard way to reverse that (I find AppCleaner pretty handy for removing all the parts in those cases).

[jwells89]

To nitpick a bit, IIRC Windows itself doesn’t support Vulkan, that’s left to GPU vendors.

[bmitc]

Thanks for the correction. That appears to be right, but Windows allows it.

[Klonoar]

So what re: workarounds? It’s not Linux, it will never be Linux. Systems are allowed to be different and do different things.

[bmitc]

Well that's fine, but Windows isn't Linux but everybody treats it like such, hating on it for not being Linux while people often praise macOS for being "Unix". For macOS, it doesn't have the installer system that Windows has, so solutions like Homebrew are created to try and graft Linux things on it. Usually, the trouble is that Apple has made some asinine decision with the default tooling installed or some other strange limitation.

And because Apple is constantly breaking software, it creates a lot of churn on macOS. From PowerPC to Intel to Arm, from ObjectiveC to Swift, from Cocoa to Metal, etc., they're constantly upheaving the ecosystem and OS. Meanwhile, it provides very little to the end user other than normally increasing the size of Apple's walled garden.

[Klonoar]

> Well that's fine, but Windows isn't Linux but everybody treats it like such, hating on it for not being Linux while people often praise macOS for being "Unix".

Because even being partly Unix (or technically, full Unix) is easier to deal with than Windows entirely different stack. ;P

> For macOS, it doesn't have the installer system that Windows has, so solutions like Homebrew are created to try and graft Linux things on it.

No? Homebrew was just the creation of someone who didn't like the way MacPorts did it back in the day. MacPorts is literally the FreeBSD ports tree cloned to work on macOS, and back in the day was partly funded by Apple.

(MacPorts arguably worked around the macOS-isms better than Homebrew does, but people chased Homebrew and here we are.)

> Usually, the trouble is that Apple has made some asinine decision with the default tooling installed or some other strange limitation.

Unless you can actually note one of those choices or limitations, this isn't much of a point.

> And because Apple is constantly breaking software, it creates a lot of churn on macOS. From PowerPC to Intel to Arm, from ObjectiveC to Swift, from Cocoa to Metal, etc., they're constantly upheaving the ecosystem and OS.

PowerPC to Intel to Arm happened over the space of multiple decades, and "Cocoa to Metal" doesn't even make sense in the context of tech stacks.

Your entire comment is just complaining because an alternative solution doesn't fit your built-in mental model of how things should work.

[shepherdjerred]

Homebrew is one of my favorite pieces of software

[joemi]

> Go ahead and try to rename iTunes because there's no other way to keep it from opening when your non-Apple Bluetooth headphones connect. Good luck.

I have non-Apple bluetooth headphones (Sennheisers) and this isn't something that happens on my M1 MacBook Pro. Is this a common issue for other people?

[bmitc]

A quick search will verify its commonality, and like most Apple issues, it's been ongoing for years.

[joemi]

Huh. Weird. I've had my sennheisers for years, through multiple OS updates, and I've always been surprised by just how well using them works on my macbook pro. Until this thread, I had never even heard of the problem.