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Comment by blauditore

4 years ago

So many comments in here, but I haven't seen a single one mentioning a simple solution: Vote with your feet.

For years now, I've seen a large portion of the HN crowd praising Apple for its (alleged) respect of privacy and cursing at Microsoft for Windows "calling home" all the time. Now that this has happened, the only comments I see are "heads should roll", and "we must complain and be heard by high-level execs", but never "let's move away". This just reinforces my impression of the Apple ecosystem as something akin to a cult: Once you get in, you never get out again.

There are good alternatives - many people, including software engineers, use non-apple solutions on a daily basis and they are still productive. Why not give Linux a shot, or gasp even Windows? The age-old argument of "MS is evil, Apple good" is moot. Companies are generally not good or evil, they are profit-oriented. If the market demands privacy, they care about it, otherwise probably not so much.

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blauditore

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vhanda  4 years ago

It's isn't so easy. There is often a large cost of moving. Eg - I use `sketch` for designing. I can move to Figma, but it'll be a learning curve and the performance just isn't the same.

Additionally, in order to move to Linux I need to find a good alternative to many other software that I'm using. Most commercial software only target Windows or OSX.

For the record, I've written large parts of KDE, so I'm acutely familiar with running Linux as a Desktop Environment.

have_faith  4 years ago

> This just reinforces my impression of the Apple ecosystem as something akin to a cult

That's very uncharitable. Suggesting Windows as a potential alternative also sounds slightly comical given their history with Windows 10 and many people's required workflows, required because of work or other outside influence, make Linux less tenable.

A lot of people seem to suggest that if you have something to complain about then you should be moving on to something else, a vibe of 'appeal to perfection'. I think this is the same mentality that drives the distro hopping phenomenon. I'm not brainwashed because I live with the flaws of my OS choice and complain when things are changed that I don't like.

framecowbird  4 years ago

I'm not sure which comments you are reading: one of the top threads that almost fills the whole first page is a long discussion about alternatives to macbooks...

breakfastduck  4 years ago

I can't vote with my feet (nor do I really want to), because there's no alternative I enjoy using as a desktop OS.

Windows is no better for telemetry, and the user experience doesn't at all fit well with how I work.

Linux I prefer to Windows but generally find the desktop experience lacking.

mizzao  4 years ago

I've been using Windows 10 with WSL2 and found it a surprisingly effective development environment with all of the Linux goodies accessible. And games are available without a reboot or VM!

def_true_false  4 years ago

Many complain, few will act. Virtue signalling about Windows is zero cost, unless one is a Windows user. Most people just don't care about privacy enough to do anything (ANY thing) inconvenient.

zero_deg_kevin  4 years ago

No there are not good alternatives.

Linux only makes sense as a desktop operating system if your top priority is telling people online that you use Linux as your desktop operating system.

  • higerordermap  4 years ago

    I mean, it's easier to do most kinds of programming on linux than windows. Stuff works more "out-of-the-box" than on windows.

    For other things? Maybe. Some nice GUI applicatipns are, while in theory be run on Windows through cygwin, work well on Linux as well.

    And some people just like performance / look-and-feel. Windows is often sluggish, while most Non-GNOME IDEs are pretty fast on usual hardware.

    Then there is updates problem. I have had Windows downloading updates even if network was marked as metered in past.Some LTS distro is often better. Unless you use Fedora or Arch, updates should be minimum.

    I don't want to imply Linux desktop is mature enough for all people. Just reminded there are valid reasons tech savvy people prefer it.

    As they say, nothing is black and white.