Why does nobody care that my USB 2.0 ports on my external USB-C docks die in about 20 minutes necessitating a reboot--again, only on macOS (and only on newer macOS versions--old ones work fine).
How many years did it take Apple to (sort of) fix their shittastic keyboards?
How garbagey is Xcode relative to any other IDE nowadays?
I can go on ... and on.
Macbooks may look pretty, but the software has been becoming increasingly garbage. And I use software to get my job done--the hardware merely needs to be sufficient (I generally customize my laptops to use an i5 (including mac)--which ducks a lot of the idiotic thermal issues).
I'm sitting on a Lenovo Carbon X1 with Linux full-time now. I finally got tired of fighting craptastic software from Apple. If I'm gonna fight software, I might as well be on Linux.
And, surprisingly, my experience on Linux has been better than the last year or two on macOS.
I would echo your experience. macOS has gone significantly downhill overall, in terms of sheer ugliness and hassle to use as a developer box. I'm think about the continual prompts for running software and allowing access to folders etc., incredible difficulty in getting non-macOS frameworks like SDL etc., to run.
It's no longer worth the hassle.
My work Razer Blade 15 runs CentOS 7. My MBP M1 runs Asahi. And this Lenovo is running Ubuntu 20.04. Gnome on all of them, and by and large, much much better experience than either current Windows or macOS.
Which mouse? I've always had bad experiences with Bluetooth mice, but have chalked it up to BT being a shit protocol for mice.
> Why does nobody care that my USB 2.0 ports on my external USB-C docks die in about 20 minutes necessitating a reboot--again, only on macOS (and only on newer macOS versions--old ones work fine).
Is it all USB 2.0 ports that die in that case, or just the ones on your external dock? Are you using an adapter of some sort as well?
> How many years did it take Apple to (sort of) fix their shittastic keyboards?
This seems a bit petty to me. I don't disagree, but if they fix it they fix it, and afaik they have. Lots of improvement to make, but I quite like the current ones as much as I can. Laptop keyboards across the board are only going to be barely passable imo, because the feedback to me is less important than scrunching my hands together in a way that fucks with my shoulders. This is true of full size mechanical keyboards as well. I think it's important, if you care, to re-evaluate every so often. If a restaurant I like makes a thing that sucks once or twice, I'll wait a bit and try it again a while later, and it's no longer that important that I didn't like it previously
I consider most of their "free" add-on software best-in-class or at least best-for-my-use case, with only a couple exceptions (including, yes, Xcode). The software is a whole lot of what keeps me on Mac hardware.
The underlying UNIX often seeps through the layers and it is simply an objectively worse UNIX than linux. Sure, its user space has plenty of cool features but even those are half-assed and buggy. Like, how come switching desktops is not smooth? Sure, I don’t have an M1, but a goddamn last-intel MBP, it should simply never lag at such a user-facing interaction. Sometimes I feel my T480 is better with gnome on input latency..
Agreed, but iOS is playing on easy mode: it sandboxes everything to a high degree, everything running on it went through some amount of checks to make sure they won't mess up the system, it routinely kills processes so apps must be written to resume properly from a cold start, and it (even today) has relatively limited multitasking. It both doesn't let programs do as much, and encourages or forces developers to employ practices that (I suspect) tend to improve program stability.
I owned a previous Macbook Air with a "shittastic" keyboard and never had an issue– although I'm glad I now have the new M1 with a better keyboard.
> Macbooks may look pretty, but the software has been becoming increasingly garbage.
I had the unfortunate displeasure of being issued a top of the line Windows 11 computer for work, and it was a horrible experience. Basic things that Mac OS gets right like search, recursively deleting files, and bash environments Windows either struggles with or requires workarounds.
> And, surprisingly, my experience on Linux has been better than the last year or two on macOS.
Linux is an incredible family of operating systems. Every few years I will try downloading and installing a few distros. I always run into issues with GPUs, sound cards, and WiFi. Once I get past those, I run into different sets of issues. One that sticks with me is the awful nested menus in XCFE.
Apple in some ways have allowed some behaviour in their MacOS to regress, but it is still the top choice for me. Mac OS is not garbage. I'm sorry to hear that you had an awful experience with it, but I am still very productive with it.
On a thinkpad with “standard” hardware, there is absolutely no driver problem of any kind.
I was a linux-on-the-desktop user for about a decade before switching to Mac, and like you, I try Linux out again from time to time. My experience is similar: I hit stuff I just don't have the time or patience to deal with anymore, every single time. Looking back, it only ever seemed good because I was somehow blind to how much time I was losing, and I'd learned to work around or ignore a bunch of broken stuff on my systems.
I feel this way about macOS.
How much time have I lost because the Bluetooth was screwy? How much time have I lost because the WiFi did something strange? How much time have I lost trying to do USB development and the OS got in the way? How many times have I had to blow away and reinstall all my printers because macOS got confused. On macOS, I have to install special apps to keep my laptop awake or to set it to the native screen resolution. How much weirdness have I had to debug because of App Dislocation?
It finally got driven home when I was trying to configure someone else from scratch on macOS. After the sixth "Hey, how do you deal with misfeature <X>?" followed by "Well, you need to download an app that does <Y>." I realized that I'm diddling with my macOS system as much as I diddled with my Linux systems.
At that point, I might as well choose Linux so that my diddling actually helps the wider community rather than simply going into the black hole of Apple and adding to their profits.
You may try Fedora, for me it just works (with an AMD graphic card), and Gnome is pretty usable, even ergonomics these days.
