Context: this is a legit screenshot I took on my workplace around 1.5 years ago. Hopefully it's been patched by now? Completely ridiculous behavior
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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I know nobody asked, but the reputation Macs have amongst IT industry professionals is insanely annoying to me. I guess it's a difference between what I like in a laptop versus what other people like in them.
I've seen developers working for FAANGs unironically praise the M1 Macbooks as work machines. And I'm just sitting here, like...why? You are locked into an inferior operating system that becomes progressively more janky the deeper you get into its configuration. I have one and the damn thing has an option to change the "modifier key" for the fucking mouse, so you can change your mouse's modifier key to its ctrl or shift key, apparently. Y'know, in case your standard 20 dollar Logitech wired mouse, like the one I'm using, has shift and modifier keys. Just super useful /s. It randomly had slack muted after installing it, so I could never get message notifications until I figured out what to alter after digging through the guts of its terrible system configuration UI. It can't remember the order of attached displays and half the time I have to rearrange them after resuming it from hibernation. If you want to do basic window manager things, like press the meta key (also referred to as the windows key on non-macbooks) + direction arrow to have a window snap to a quadrant of your screen, you have to install a 3rd party application with Homebrew. Its keyboard is that weird, unresponsive, flat form factor that makes it a nightmare to actually use as a portable device. With any luck you don't have to compile anything for it, because...you probably won't be able to. Perhaps most annoying is the fact that, even if you want to use it as a full desktop replacement and plug in 3 monitors with the same resolution into it at a desk (most Macs have at least passable 3rd party dock support), the Mac just won't let you. It only lets you plug in 2 and it duplicates one of those two onto the 3rd one. If you want to plug in 3, you technically can: you just have to download 3rd party displaylink drivers, which, knowing Apple, probably won't fucking work and might permanently fuck up your display.
I get that it's a relatively powerful computer for the ludicrous amount of battery life it gives you, but that's purely because it's an extremely optimized ARM based processor that's only designed to work with this specific operating system. I also get that machines running Linux also have their own problems, but you aren't paying for whatever Linux distro you're running (probably) and you also have the power to change things with a little bit of effort. If I'm buying a machine like an M1, where the OS is presumably part of the whole "package," it should just work well out of the box.
Beyond those complaints, it's got good speakers and never produces any heat. Honestly, the only good things about the machines are those hardware elements: the speakers, battery life, and lack of heat. If they could run linux and had decent keyboards, I might like them. But Apple is practically an antonym for FOSS at this point. I also have a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, which is physically a worse machine: it gets hot, has a fraction of the battery life, etc. But you can install any Linux distro (that isn't Nix based, sadly) to it without issue and its keyboard makes it actually tolerable to code on for extended periods. I wonder if the people that really like the M1s like them because it's the laptop equivalent of an iPhone.
I believe many of the display issues were fixed with the M2. And you don't need brew to install a window manager, although the fact that brew lets you treat it like a linux box is great.
The system configuration is more about what you're used to than anything else. I haven't used Windows in a couple of decades, and I absolutely hate it. Can't even think of going back. The modern version looks like a tablet OS trying to pass as a desktop OS. Give me a Windows machine and the first thing I'll do is wipe it clean and install Ubuntu. But I'm also sure Windows is great for you. So it's what we're used to. Nothing wrong with it.
I have an M2 and it has literally every display issue I've talked about here.
I hate Windows. I have a single Windows machine that I use for a few specific things and then like...5 linux machines. And then the M2.
Ok, you know better. I had heard that the M2 was able to handle more external displays than the M1, but haven't tried it myself as in my current setup I can't even use one external display. Last time I was able to use external displays I had two, but I was using an Intel version.
I loved win XP, but it's been steeply down hill since then, to this unbearable toddler ui. So I'm with you on that one. I've been on *nix for 20+ years now.
Please tell me more.
My new job gave me a Mac. First one I've used ... that has a colour screen, and boy have things (and myself) changed in the interim. I spent the entire first day figuring out what the buttons even do. Am I really expected to use the mouse (well, trackpad) this much? The first port replicator I bought only did one screen, I'm hoping the one now in the mail does better...
I use rectangle for window snapping. It supports basic side snapping, more advanced layouts, and configurable keyboard bindings. It’s open source and you can install it from their website, it’s just a .app. I think I installed it via brew cask but that was just because it’s convenient.
https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle
It's rectangle, not in the app store but you can download it like bamboo said.
It never produces heat. Until it does and my word does it. I've been getting the slack issues and display issues as well. Also found out today the provided calendar hasn't actually been sending off my invite responses to anyone and got called in for not letting people know which meetings I was attending.
I wonder if the reason mine never produces any heat is because I use it as a 2500 dollar Slack and Outlook machine. Any true dev work takes place on my Thinkpad running Endeavor. Also Slack is like the poster child for Javascript tech debt because it was written in Electron. It'll run literally anywhere, but make you wish it didn't because it'll hoard your system's resources like a fucking dragon. Damn thing is bloated as hell and it won't even let you schedule statuses in case you're out of office for specific hours on set days. We should all go back to IRC. It's not pretty, but at least you can automate shit on IRC without having to beg a third party company like Slack for an API token and without taking up 14 gigs of RAM in order to render a clown emoji.
Fuck Slack
I use Mac for work (post audio) and Gentoo for fun on an Intel machine.
MacOS does not do well if you dig in to it like it's a Linux box.
I'm forced to use a Mac for work as well and have the damn Slack bug. What's the solution!?
For me, it was the "Allow Notifications" setting for the "Slack" app in the "Notifications & Focus" dialog of "System Preferences." And apparently like most terrible Mac related things, if it isn't working as you would expect by default, then that just means its "working as designed."
Thanks so much!
Get slack to fix their bug?
The absolutely number one thing that allowed me to actually use the thing though was Yabai+SKHD. Tiled windows and the full customization of hotkeys make this thing so much more usable and, frankly - surprisingly - it’s grown on me.
For your next laptop you should try the framework and laptop, theyre very cool
The vast majority of comments here complaining about Mac and macOS specifically seem to stem from really, really not understanding much about them. This comment is unfortunately not any different.
The FAANG companies that fight tooth and nail to hire the best people who can basically work wherever they want because of their skill like Macs? Surely, they're the dumb ones.
Originally, and for quite a while (probably early 2000's) Macs shipped with a one button mouse, and there was no concept of a "right-click." Originally, they were pretty dogmatic that the OS should be simple enough that one button was enough. You shouldn't need to hide functionality in a context menu, it should be available through the standard UI. Eventually, that lost out, but they decided they wanted to make context menus* (or other "right-click" actions) a power user feature, rather than a default. So the decided to make it make sense for all of the machines that had always shipped with one button mice, you could hold ctrl and then click an item and you'd get the context menu. For decades now, they support right click, but if you built up years of muscle memory around ctrl+clicking instead, you still can.
You like the meta key? Probably better thank Apple. Apple has had a "meta" key basically forever, only it's been called "command." I'm old enough to remember when more manufacturers started to add their own meta keys. If you go grab an older keyboard, you'll probably find they also have a "context menu" button, which is basically a "right-click" and you almost def won't find one now.
Lots of people in this thread seem to really, really like being able to window snap, which I kind of get but also generally disagree with. macOS (again, going back a thousand years) has a different philosophy when it comes to managing windows. On [MS] Windows, pretty much all software aims for full screen, and users def do the same. Window snapping now means you have a convenient way to see 2 whole things. If you really, really want window snapping similar to how MS does it, there are a hojillion ways to accomplish this with very simple app installs. macOS has instead tried to make it so that you can manage multiple apps/windows easily without full screen, going back to tiny, tiny screens.
But let's talk about "basic window manager things" for a sec. Windows has easily, and I mean easily had the worst window management generally for like 2 decades. Windows 10 and Windows 11 help catch up to things I switched off of Windows and to Linux for in like, 2004. Expose, or "Task View" as it's now called in Windows started in macOS, and was adopted in Linux in the mid 2000's. Not until Windows 10, and not even the first version, do we get that. Ditto for virtual desktops. In Windows, I can press alt-tab and switch between any open app. In macOS, I can press cmd+tab and switch between any open app, but I can also press cmd-` and switch between an app's windows. In Windows, I can minimize windows to the task bar just as I can in macOS. However, I can also just choose to hide all app windows, or hide all windows except the app I'm looking at. And on macOS, I can use hot corners (which Windows barely touches with its "show desktop" hotcorner, sort of) which I can configure however I want. I can throw my mouse in any corner of the screen and get more "basic window manager things" than exist on Windows.
If you have one the bad butterfly keyboards, yes. If not, this is nonsense. All laptop keyboards are bad, mac versions (with the very large caveat that the butterfly keyboards were insanely stupid/bad) are generally better.
How is this supposed to be a negative? If we zoom out a little, this comment might as well be "oh sure, you can get your fancy graphic effects when you use a, what did you call it? graphics processing unit?" And even then, this is still not really accurately understanding why Apple has absolutely dominated CPU in mobile, and then is crushing in the class of laptop/desktop processors it competes in.**
Aside from darwin, the kernel macOS runs on, Webkit, the browser engine that Chrome forked from, or passkeys, the thing that might replace passwords, you're still really wrong.
How about screens? Trackpad? Physical material, etc?
"I can get vastly less done, and it's going to be more uncomfortable the entire time."
Lots of misunderstanding here, but I'm already a phone book in.
* really, they probably never would have added right clicks, but as more software adopted right click actions, especially cross platform stuff like Adobe software, they pretty much had to.
** they've basically ceded the extreme high end. If you really want the most performant CPU and power\heat aren't a concern, it's not Apple.
This is a perfect example of corporate apologia combined with not really understanding the sentiment to which you are replying. Hell, I even started my rant by saying "I guess it’s a difference between what I like in a laptop versus what other people like in them." Also there is something really pathetic about being defensive of a corporate product about which another person has elements that they find annoying or unintuitive. Nothing you have said counters any factual observation about the behavior of the system and can be effectively dismissed on the basis that the foundational premise of every statement is "well no system is perfect." Yeah, there are flaws with everything. I happen to dislike the specific flaws with Mac more than I dislike the specific flaws of most Linux distros or Windows. Windows largely gets a pass on the basis that I'm not forced to use it for work or any kind of power user shit. I'm expected to do that with a Mac, which amplifies the amount of negative feelings I have towards it. Familiarity breeds contempt. This is not a new facet of reality only I've discovered, hopefully. If I had to work on a Windows machine fulltime I'd probably hate it about as much as I do the Mac. But then again, it would be kind of weird to come into a thread specifically about Macs and start ranting about Windows sucking. Which is what you're doing in a lot of this reply. So...yeah, maybe go outside and touch some grass because somebody doesn't like your favorite OS and elected to comment in a thread where that was the topic of discussion.
That said, a few specific points:
You can't disagree with people liking something. You can dislike something yourself, but someone else enjoying a particular feature is super weird and comes across as bizarrely authoritative.
There's not even an argument to make here. You're just wrong. Comparative to the Macs, there are other manufacturers that produce far better quality keyboards than those found on pretty much any Macbook.
It's because the battery quality is an extension of having a very specific operating system running on a very specific processor. It's an incredibly tight coupling of software and hardware. Yes, it's highly optimized, but the optimization comes at the cost of having to use their shitty operating system. Linux will run on almost anything. You don't get the level of efficiency, maybe, but you do have control. I value control over the things I own and use over virtually everything else.
Well, first of all, darwin is based on FreeBSD, which was already open source, so, not like they blazed new trails there. That said, let's ignore Apple's walled garden ecosystem and their longstanding opposition to right to repair, which they only caved on recently because of pending legislation. Or the fact that Apple hardware is effectively non-modifiable after purchase by design. You mentioned something about graphics cards. You know what's neat about graphics cards? The ones that aren't integrated can be replaced or changed. Good luck changing something yourself in a fucking Mac. There's also a lot of open source projects that have been restricted from the App store because open source licenses are generally incompatible with App Store TOS. And, while Darwin might be open source, a ton of components for iOS and their iPadOS are not. And before you say, "well, what about Microsoft, huuuuuuuh?" Yeah, they suck too. Multiple, different things can be bad for the same reason.
Screens are overly glossy for my taste. Trackpad quality is average, although the physical buttons for the trackpad have this weird "thocky" response that makes them feel as cheap and shitty as their awful keyboard. Physical material is also average. These are things I left out because I personally don't care about them very much.
I guess you ignored the part where I said good things that I like about that specific device which allows me to be more productive on it than on my Mac. Or is your entire post purely an exercise in misrepresentation and intellectual dishonesty? Which would be appropriate for something written in praise of Apple products.
You can install Linux on Apple Silicon Macs. Check out Asahi Linux.
Not trying to be rude, but this is terrible advice. Asahi Linux is nowhere near ready for use on a work computer.
Telling someone to check something out isn't the same as saying they should use it. You were stating falsehoods that paint Apple products in a bad light.
It's also quite usable. The reason it's in beta is because certain features don't work.
Dog, I'm not even gonna bother. The jokes write themselves.
Depends on what your use case is. If you don't need the features that are still being worked on then it's fairly stable and usable.
Lots of x86 systems also have driver issues with Linux.
Asahi actually came up with a conformant OpenGL ES driver for the M1+2s before Apple has.
Nice
Last I heard it's still in beta, which isn't advisable if it's your main work machine
Yes I am aware. It's made a lot of progress though. I wanted to point out that it's an option.
Does it bother you that you can’t grasp a simple feature like Mouse Keys?
https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mh27469/14.0/mac/14.0
Your rant is completely misguided but I thought I would at least point out something useful.
Oh wow, a Mac enthusiast with abysmal reading comprehension skills. How rare /s.
No I read and understood. Saying an accessibility feature, which needs to enabled, is hidden in the “abysmal” UI means that I’m not one lacking understanding. I even cited the evidence by linking the User Guide page for Mouse Keys.
No, you were discussing a feature I wasn't even talking about. I have two working hands and no need for any accessibility features. I explicitly referred to a pointless mouse setting - as in a setting that is completely useless for an attached peripheral mouse device. As in, it lets you select a mouse, once again - like an attached, peripheral Logitech mouse, from a dropdown and apply specific, useless settings to that device which only make sense for a keyboard. Because it either can't distinguish between a pointer device and a keyboard for that setting, or, more likely, the UI developers didn't even bother to try and apply any kind of device filtering for it. So, I will reiterate: a Mac enthusiast with abysmal reading comprehension skills; how rare!
If the mouse has hot keys it likely presents to the system as a keyboard as well.
That's fair, but it's a $20 Logitech mouse, so...not really. And I'd give that a pass on Linux. But on a Mac? Yeah....nah. That shit's made by a massive corporation that utilizes slave labor. They don't get a pass.
20 Logitech mouse? What do you mean? Also why do you hate mac so much? Is Microsoft not also a greedy evil corporation?
Of course it is, but the thread is, wait for it, about Macs. If there's a thread complaining about Windows and Microsoft, you'll definitely find me there, on topic. Until then, I'm not going to engage with whataboutisms.
Okay now you're making sense.
Oh look a mouthy idiot on a tech forum who doesn’t understand that third parties supply drivers for third party - how incredibly boring, just like the mouthy idiot. https://sensible-side-buttons.archagon.net/
Okay, but you were still wrong though and have bad reading comprehension skills.
you kinda answered your own question in this rant. once theres a comparable alternative a lot of people will naturally move to that. though a lot of people still will want a half bitten fruit on their device