[array_key_first]

ChromeOS is a very competent, fast, and easy-to-use operating system. For my family, it's basically perfect. It's virtually unbreakable and anyone can pick it up quickly.

Windows is a hot mess and frankly I wouldn't recommend it to anyone outside of gamers. For the technically competent, there's nothing to gain on Windows, and it will just get in the way. For the those less technically inclined, Windows means complexity and viruses. Also most Windows laptops suck major ass.

MacOS is better, especially if you have an iPhone. But even MacOS is a bit too complex for the less technically inclined. If you have an android phone, then a chromebook is 100% the way to go for those people. Also, chromebooks get crazy software support these days, on par with macbooks.

[kelnos]

> ChromeOS is a very competent, fast, and easy-to-use operating system.

It also locks you into the cloud services of an advertising company that loves harvesting your data to help find new ways to sell you things.

[suriya-ganesh]

I see this too often. But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes. Most people just want get stuff done in a competent, fast and easy-to-use operating system.

>It also locks you into the cloud services of an advertising company

this is pretty much any company these days. microsoft is guilty of the same.

[shimman]

Users absolutely care, what a terrible comment. Users have ZERO choice. Tech companies are not regulated, tech companies abuse their monopolies at their users detriment, and tech companies do not have consumer councils to help mitigate these issues.

What it actually appears to be is we have a market where undemocratic business leaders are deciding the direction of technology in a country that only seems to benefit them and not the population.

What a terrible mindset to have and I sincerely hope you never have any capacity to yield power in your life.

[mcmcmc]

They do have a choice, they just don’t want to a) pay for anything or b) be cut off online society

[shimman]

Man you clearly need to talk to people outside of Google. I'm glad the vast majority of Americans hate tech companies and their leaders if this is the mindshare they purport: "you don't have a choice, fuck you."

Great attitude that goes well with voters.

[mcmcmc]

How did I not describe a choice? If you don’t want to be tracked and manipulated, don’t drink the free beer. Turn off JavaScript. Pay for a search engine. Run your own mail server. Host your own fediverse node. Accept that life will be harder. Don’t be so naive as to think for profit companies aren’t going to milk everything they can from addicts who can’t quit their “free” services. Go start a co-op or something if you want to change it, but you can’t compete. And the reason is because they offer it for free and hide what you’re really trading for it in the EULA.

If you think I’m not mad about it, you’re not reading between the lines. I’m just a realist. This is what Peter Thiel meant by “free email was not enough”.

[turtlebits]

Until your google account gets locked for some unknown reason and you there is 0 support and recourse. And now you can't even log into your own computer.

[random2021]

The is so rare. Such things can happen even with bank accounts (if you are a foreigner in many countries).

If you use your own Ubuntu/Debian or even RMS certified disro same can happen. An upgrade and you see only a xorg blinking cursor.

[opan]

>If you use your own Ubuntu/Debian or even RMS certified disro same can happen. An upgrade and you see only a xorg blinking cursor.

This can be fixed yourself, whether that's hopping into a TTY or having to boot a live environment and chroot in. You aren't at the mercy of some major company's support people.

Even without fixing it you should be able to get at the files on the drive for use on another machine, or backing them up if you're gonna reinstall.

[random2021]

Keep boot live environment? You always carry USB? Learn security. Chroot?

You don't learn or understand modern bootc?

[prepend]

It can’t happen to my macbook.

This happened recently to my kid and it was a nightmare of a week trying to resolve it.

I’d rather tie my identity to an org with customer service.

[faust201]

this does not mean anything logical. Billions use android. Some will be affected due to any company or ID etc.

Pretty sure you can visit your local apple store and see many people asking for shattered screen or lost iphone. They did lose their accounts.

Moreover even if you use macbook - if you lose google or apple ID situation is same. (for the majority) appstore is important. See your comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48111545#48123885 you are happy to give everything to iCloud but don't like Google?

I can also store all my data in hetzner cloud. Use chromebook only as a hardware. If Google account is blocked then use Guest session. No account needed. Your turn?

[Forgeties79]

>But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes.

Like them I think I am also surprised not because that isn't the case, but because it's wild to see that take on HN, which skews way more towards privacy/owning your compute.

[suriya-ganesh]

I've been working in the privacy space for ~4 years now and have worked across, homomorphic encryption, Federated Learning and finetuning.

I've also run multiple user studies on privacy during my time doing a master's in privacy at CMU. almost 10/10 times users will choose, easy to use and accessible over complex and more control over their data.

In fact, for one of the Mag7 we proved that, users only want to have the feeling of safety and don't really care what gets done with the data.

very unfortunate, but this is the world we live in.

[mcmcmc]

They don’t care because they don’t understand, or don’t want to. It’s a scary thing to confront the fact that you are psychologically and demographically profiled so that people can manipulate you to extract as much of your money and attention as possible.

[socalgal2]

So is Apple. Went to the Apple store recently. To buy something they told me scan a QR code. The code popped up

"Get Start and Personalize Your Apple Store Visit" and a big button "Share Now"

Under the button in small text was a link to "customize" which said they were going to harvest your contact info, your carrier account, your phone model and applecare info, the list of all devices you own, the list of all your subscriptions, your purchase history, your reservation history.

They said all of it was for ads (to make more customized recommendations)

So much for "Apple = Privacy"

[customguy]

> I see this too often. But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes.

And when it's brought up where people do know, there's always these attempts at gatekeeping by speaking for the average user like a priest would speak for God.

The person who asked that cares, and didn't ask "the average, realistic user", because you can't ask an abstract concept questions.

[jeroenhd]

So does Windows. macOS locks you into a company that hoovers up your data but pinky promises not to sell it and will fight tooth and nail to have prevent others from doing the exact same thing on their operating system.

If you care about privacy, Linux and BSDs are the only options, but actually good out-of-the-box Linux laptops are few and far between.

Except for Chromebooks, of course.

[retired]

Big difference is that you can use macOS without a user account. Can't do that with Windows without some hidden terminal magic.

[sneezychl]

MacOS doesn't have to force it, users will gladly sign into their iCloud account. Virtually nobody uses the Windows Store, but the Mac App Store is a necessity given how restricted 3rd party apps are on macOS now.

[retired]

Since when is the Mac App Store a necessity? It's still possible to download DMGs straight from the internet and install the .app by dragging it to /Applications

The only restriction to 3rd party apps are unsigned apps. Very rare these days, mainly small hobby projects. You can still activate them through the System Settings.

[Marsymars]

Unsigned apps are a pain, but you can have your app signed without being in the macOS App Store. Nearly all my apps are signed and non-App Store. e.g. Homebrew requires Casks be signed, so anything you can install via Homebrew is a single line to install without additional restrictions.

[Marsymars]

Though if you want to get rid of the persistent nag on your Dock to log in to your Apple account, that's a significantly higher level of magic than what it takes to use Windows without an MS account.

(I just installed Windows a week ago without an MS account, and it was a 30 second step during setup to skip an MS account. The steps to get rid of the macOS nag are daunting enough that I just live with it permanently.)

[prepend]

There’s a pretty big difference as Apple can’t access the data stored in iDrive. Only you can locally.

Big difference from google and microsoft where everything you type and do is being tracked and fed into ads.

[noprocrasted]

That’s no better than Windows (without a lot of effort and a constant game of cat and mouse only achievable by technical users). At least Google’s cloud services tend to actually be good, if you made peace with the tracking and privacy concerns.

[toast0]

Apparently you can create a local account on a chrome device [1], although I can't vouch for the process; otherwise cloud auth is tied to Google, yes. You could use a guest account for everything, if your really want; but then you lose out on persistence.

But as long as you accept that everything you do is in a browser; which is reality for the vast majority of computer users, there's no real lock-in. You can just as easily use the browser version of Microsoft Office as the browser version of Google Docs.

You're certainly locked into Google for the browser and for updates, unless you do a lot of work. But it's been a while since it was common to get commercial OS updates from a 3rd party.

[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/how-use-chromebook-without-go...

[array_key_first]

Yes, this is true, and I myself am degoogled. Mostly, except YouTube, but I am off Gmail and stuff these days.

But, we need to pick our battles. For most people the reality is they have a Google account anyway, and they will log into and sync on any device. So, it makes no difference.

[random2021]

Does it matter?

Your friend using Android or iOS may have typed your exact address, phone, signal id, gps, etc on her Google/apple account. And now?

If you fly to use you are giving more info.

Are you running your own bank? Pepper are you? What happens when you join job (tons of papers?)

[serf]

wild that we're talking about which OS locks you up more w.r.t an apple product.

[andybak]

Counterpoint. I use Windows and MacOS daily and they are both awful (and occasionally wonderful) for different reasons. Windows on a laptop sucks simply because I can't close the lid and put it in my bag without it catching fire, but apart from that I don't care too much either way.

I use Linux CLI all the time but every time I've tried to use a Linux desktop as a daily driver, it's stopped working one day for reasons that are beyond my ability to care enough to figure out.

[fwipsy]

I used to think so too, but when my extremely-non-techy mother's Chromebook died, she was able to switch from chrome OS to Ubuntu with minimal fuss. Chrome OS has some specific features, but if you just need a web browser Ubuntu works fine.

[sneak]

You say this only because she hasn’t been ransomwared yet, which is impossible on ChromeOS.

[array_key_first]

It's also very rare on Linux. On Linux, 99% of software comes from trusted repositories. The odds of randomware existing in the Ubuntu repos is low.

It's not the wild wild West like Windows. There are structural reasons why Linux desktops are less susceptible to malware, as well as the obvious marketshare issue.

[fwipsy]

It's also a non-issue if you use Ubuntu like chrome OS. She doesn't have any data stored locally.

More generally, this feels roughly equivalent to saying "it's better to live in a tent than a house, because a house will crush you when an earthquake happens."

[commandersaki]

I support a lot of old folk on laptops that are less technically inclined. All they want is Windows because familiarity, despite Microsoft making things unfamiliar every release.

[dinkumthinkum]

MacOS is too complex? What web site even is this?

[array_key_first]

Sorry, I mean for some users who can barely use computers as it is, so mostly the elderly. For us obviously it's not too complex. But for some, it is, and it's also largely overkill because some groups don't want to run software anyway. They just need a file browser and web browser.