Comment by highwaylights
5 days ago
> barely tolerate macOS
I guess it depends what you’re comparing it to but macOS is (for me) the best of a bad bunch of compromises. POSIX with app boundaries that are (mostly) respected, if not particularly granular. There’s nothing I really hate about the platform save for homebrew and being walled in to the ecosystem.
I actually love modern Linux with Gnome, and it has all the parts these days to be a great desktop operating system, but I find the freedom there undercuts a lot of the promises (Flatpaks are a good idea in theory that doesn’t work in practice as the sandboxes are overly liberal and overreach on most apps because no-one’s forced to justify why they need the permissions they do etc).
I spent so long on Windows that I really don’t miss it. The Window management was way better for so long, but the idioms drive me crazy (registry issues and programs still freely writing anywhere they like), and supporting everything forever has massive drawbacks to usability (although Winget sort of slightly helps with this but it’s not much better than homebrew).
> best of a bad bunch of compromises
That's exactly why I don't particularly care for it, but still use it.
My first choice would be Linux + a tiling WM. I used DWM for years before Apple Silicon, and have been on mac ever since the M1. These new machines are so nice that I can't go back to anything else now, whether I hate the software or not.
But macOS is just baffling. There's POSIX underneath, and it's mostly reliable, and it has a lot of little nice touches - being able to search the menu with Cmd+Shift+/, emacs keybindings in nearly every text field, etc. But then there's stuff that makes no sense. Why do I need a third party app for any sort of sane window management? (and even then, I haven't fully replicated my preferred way of working, only gotten close enough with Aerospace, and more recently Raycast). A third party app to set a keyboard shortcut to launch an application. I can't disable the animations for switching virtual desktops, and when you switch there's a lag before it's responsive again for keyboard input (I just want this to be instant).
So much of how macOS expects you to interact with it seems to be mouse/touchpad driven, and that's just not how I prefer to use my computer. At least with Raycast I now have shortcuts to launch and switch to apps (but not specific app windows because of the app/window separation in macOS). Yet even still, I can't set a keyboard shortcut to move a window to a different space. I have to click and hold the title bar and then press my shortcut for moving to that space to move the window - Apple decided that action MUST involve the mouse.
I also can't set window rules. I can't tell my terminal to always open on workspace 2, or mail.app to always open on workspace 4 at a specific size, etc. Making an app full screen also creates a new ephemeral space that can't be switched to with the usual Ctrl+NUM keyboard shortcut. I can't set a window to be always on top.
I'm more or less waiting for Asahi Linux to get support for DisplayPort ALT mode & M4 support, although I'm not holding my breath.
I do appreciate having access to the big commercial apps though on macOS, but ultimately I want my M4 macbook pro w/ Linux & hyprland.
Definitely agree about those nice touches. Just a few thoughts from my experience as of late.
- Window management wise the new tiling controls/keyboard shortcuts added last year have replaced third party tools for me. It's not as customisable as rectangle or moom but it covers halves and quarters which is mostly all I need. Additionally the "arrange" feature is nice letting you automatically tile N most recently used windows in a given layout.
- For window rules you can right click on an app in the dock and under options assign it to the current workspace and it should reopen there.
- 3rd party software like BetterTouchTool can "throw" windows to other spaces. But it did feel a bit hacky from memory (small but perceptible lag)
- The new spotlight features coming this year look quite promising for keyboard driven workflows.
So much this.
I’ve migrated a home server to a Mac mini. It was awful to achieve. Trying to get a machine to boot, connect network shares and start containers was a week long effort. I can do it in Ubuntu in about 10 minutes from a clean install.
So much is disgusting UI options hidden deep some in the (awful) settings app.
But the result is a server that is fast, powerful and using 6-7W per hour, compared to the old Nuc 9 it replaced that used 70W.
It’s just so good. The OS lets it down.
The new Intel NUCs are only like a hundred something dollars for an N150 CPU and come with 16 gigs of RAM and a SSD.
Why pay so much more to fight an uphill battle?
Unless you desperately need the hot garbage that is Xcode there isn't much reason to deal with Mac Minis running MacOS as a server. One update and it will suspend and be unwakeable without physical interaction.
2 replies →