A great example is the gaming PC vs gaming console war. PC gamers often seem to refuse to admit there's untold little quirks you have to deal with when using a general-purpose operating system and modular hardware to play games. They don't notice the workarounds they are continuously employing, because it's become a reflex.
People are just too eager to jump on behalf on Apple - "but why you would rather not do this instead" (Why? Because I was looking for something else and I mentioned it for heaven's sake!) and these hacks and workarounds stack up while "Apple products and services just work" stays where it was in such Apple users' imaginations.
This is frustratingly weird and quite niche to Apple's user-fans.
For instance Apple's online services - the whole iCloud charade is a living and growing mess.
The SMS sync between phone and mac and in fact difference of basic UX options ("you can't select multiple messages on Catalina Messages app - not sure if it is added in later versions -- if you delete an SMS on phone it will still be synced to your mac Messages). And there apps are opaque in the guise of "simplicity" you just end up getting frustrated. I can go on for hours. Now as an Apple fan - but why would you not want those SMS to sync to mac as well? Yes, even if you delete them! What's the use of multiple message selection on mac Messages app - that's bad use case! Yes, yes, even though it is supported on iPhone - you don't get it!
The problem is the essential duopoly - Android and iOS - rock and a hard place.
Not just a reflex, a cargo-cult reflex.
Look at the litany of optimization/debugging nonsense that is parroted across the internet. Registry fiddling, disabling Windows services, setting core affinities, divination by chicken bones, all sorts of nonsense - the impact of which is, of course, not ever empirically measured.
Then there was another game where I had to install a different DLL to get it to run.
Then there was IL2 Sturmovik that was just plain broken for a long time on more recent versions of Windows. I of course didn't discover this until after the refund window...
Like, manual transmission people think of the constant need to manage it yourself as just how driving is supposed to be.
It's a big problem in Linux, where things can totally break and nobody bats an eye.
"Though initial iterations of the software for the original Xbox and Xbox 360 were based on heavily modified versions of Windows, the newer consoles feature operating systems that are highly compatible with Microsoft's desktop operating systems, allowing for shared applications and ease-of-development between personal computers and the Xbox line." Wikipedia
> and modular hardware
This is true. There are, e.g., fake GPUs that will make your experience quite bad. I always buy pre-build PCs from my favorite tech store, and I have personally avoided the problem. But Steam forums show that some people is not so fortunate. Also there is people trying to run modern games in very old PCs, consoles solve that problem by not running new games in previous generation consoles.
Which war was that? A bunch of teenagers and man-children arguing online between PC vs console superiority is in no way a 'war' and is anything but a great example for "workarounds become a reflex". Online squabbles between rabid fanboys and brand loyalists should be left alone and not be used in logical debates.
>PC gamers often seem to refuse to admit there's untold little quirks you have to deal with when using a general-purpose operating system and modular hardware to play games.
I highly doubt your broad generalization is accurate. Do you have any sources for your claims? Every PC owner and gamer I know both online and IRL openly admits this hobby is not a smooth sailing endeavor. Again, I would love to see your sources for your claims, otherwise I feel HN is degrading into reddit where people make broad fact-less generalizations with no arguments and others upvote regardless because it gives them self-approval and dopamine hits.
>They don't notice the workarounds they are continuously employing, because it's become a reflex.
My personal example would be MacOS, when I, an outsider who never regularly used MacOS, point out various UX quirks that trip me up and cause issues for me rather than make my life easier as I was promised, I saw that everyone I know who is a long time user of MacOS got so used to the quirks that they formed some workarounds that turned into reflexes and just became part of the experience and not viewed as issue anymore but as tolerated and expected behavior. Basically for them MacOS is simpler because they already know the quirks and workarounds inside and out, not because it's objectively simpler than the alternatives. Same goes for long time users of Linux and Windows if you're coming from the other side.
So in the end it's not about one being objectively better than the other, it's about people always will have more issues with the things they don't know very well and be subjectively biased towards the things they already know and like. It's the nature of humanity.
