Comment by jbstack
1 day ago
I've never personally understood the point of macOS for power users (other than cases where you're required to use one e.g. for work). I can understand it for casual users who just want something simple that works for basic tasks, but what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't, and which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your machine the way you want? In Linux you'd solve OP's problem by just building up from a minimal distro like Arch or NixOS.
> I've never personally understood the point of macOS for power users
These threads always end up with veiled insults like this. Can you really not understand people who use Windows, Linux and Macs? They each have their strengths depending on what you are doing.
> which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your machine the way you want
I've use Macs since my first G4 PB, Linux for longer, and used to develop for Windows though it's been a very long time. I've never felt stopped for doing what I want.
> by just building up from a minimal distro like Arch or NixOS
Been there done that. I have too many other things that need to get done to build up a distro. I'm sure desktop Linux has improved since the last time I tried running it as my main computer, but I just not sure what the point is now.
I've recently heard that using Linux is an excuse to spend the day tinkering and ricing and do no productive work. It's the same kind of prejudice, but opposite.
I like the freedom to run my machine the way I want, but I also enjoy something that is reliable and seamless. My macbook air's battery lasts forever. It works flawlessly, almost always. "oh with nixos if you brick it you can rollback..." that's great, but it does not beat working great on the first try.
Having said that, I'm progressively migrating from MacOS to Linux as MacOS is starting to "get in the way" enough to bother me.
> Having said that, I'm progressively migrating from MacOS to Linux as MacOS is starting to "get in the way" enough to bother me.
Same here. macOS has been death by a thousand little cuts, and I'm finally accelerating my move away from it, as Apple locks it down more and more, and as they spend their engineering talent on crap I ultimately don't care about.
While I've switched most of my computers over to Linux, I still have not moved my daily driver over. There are so many silly little things Linux (and its various desktop environments) gets wrong and are just annoying enough to make me not want to use it every day, like scrolling with a trackpad.
NixOS is an extreme case, and I only mentioned it as a counter to the OP's article which was talking about the mammoth efforts required to remove unwanted processes. More generally, there are plenty of Linux distros which "just work" out of the box for most use cases.
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No insult intended. I genuinely wasn't aware of what advantages macOS offers for a power user (by which I mean someone who wants to do tasks more advanced than browsing, email, etc.). From quickly skimming the replies the common theme seems to be a mixture of battery efficiency, hardware compatibility, and Mac-only software.
> Been there done that. I have too many other things that need to get done to build up a distro.
Yes, but my comment wasn't made in isolation or directed at people with your objectives. The OP's article is about doing exactly this, but in the opposite direction (expending large amounts of effort to remove unneeded processes). See for example: "if we assume that we need to identify just 500 candidates, and each takes an average of one week to research, that would take over 10 person-years".
Starting with that as the baseline (as opposed to starting from your position which is that you're not interested in spending time on this issue), building up from zero is a lot more straightforward. And, if you use something like NixOS, you generally only have to do it once since the idea of "reinstalling" the OS (e.g. for new versions) largely goes away: subsequent effort is just about changing your mind about what software you want, or what version you want (as with any OS).
> what advantages macOS offers for a power user
The serious answer is that you get an "it-just-works"⁺ Unix-like operating system that gives you a development experience on-par with Linux.
If you are doing sysadmin stuff: you will not like macOS.
If you care about configuration for your window manager, desktop environment, or systemd services: you will not like macOS.
If you are a graphics engineer or a kernel engineer: you will (probably) not like macOS.
If you are a C++/Rust/Python/JavaScript/Java/mobile/desktop engineer who wants a rock-solid developer environment and doesn't care about the above: you will like macOS.
You get all the Unix tools you could ever want, whatever shell you want to use (Zsh, Fish, even PowerShell), clang/LLVM, etc.
Does that answer your question?
⁺: caveat being "it just works" is getting less and less true with every macOS release.
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> I genuinely wasn't aware of what advantages macOS offers
It's been out for a while.. why are you interested in the debate if you've come this far, have no idea, but want to lead with a counter-assertion?
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For me it's quite simple: It works and it stays out of my way.
I've owned a macbook since 2010, with a short break during the touchbar era when I got myself an XPS with windows which I dual-booted with ubuntu and later a system76 that comes with their own flavour of Ubuntu, called Pop! Os.
The situation in windows (windows 10 at the time) was abysmal. Completely incoherent UI, settings spread across different menus, ads in start menu, slow and broken search, constant nagging to update windows, to update the drivers, to tell me that the drivers have been updated, to install or update my antivirus, etc. These were not things that I installed myself, these were included with Dell's setup of the machine.
On the system76 laptop things were different. Things were calm, I could configure everything as I wanted and things worked. Until at some point I installed a new version of something, which had nothing to do with sound, but it broke sound, just as I was preparing to join a meeting, and just as we were going into the second phase of lockdowns in late 2020 so online meetings were here to stay.
My macbooks are reliable. I've got the M1 as soon as it came out and I never got a single issue with it. I've upgraded twice (I think) across major versions and everything worked. I don't have to worry about it leaving me hanging when I need it.
(And that's not taking into account things like build quality, touchpad quality, battery life, silence, etc)
In the end of the day, I do a lot of debugging as part of my work. When I don't work, I want to choose what I will be debugging, not have it forced on me.
And don't get me wrong: I see where Apple is going, I know that they're a greedy company that want to maintain their iron grip and have the final say on what we can and cannot do on our machines.
However, for me for the time being it's the least bad option.
I do like the build of Macbooks and especially the solid casing. Unfortunately I could never get used to MacOS even within 2.5 years and it was not quite as reliable for me as it is for many others.
XCode installations failing, Docker installation failing after an OS update never to work again without completely reinstalling OS, plugging in headphones would crash the Macbook (until OS update 6 months after I got it), video calls slowing to a halt, if sharing screen etc.
Also there were some things I just never got used to in Mac like window tabbing & minimize working in a Mac way. Maybe if I hadn't had a personal laptop that used Linux at the same time, I would have gotten used to it a little better, but I just plain hated the way it worked.
To be fair, I think it was still more reliable than varieties of Windows, especially the later ones! If tabbing worked more like under Windows and it allowed a bit more configuration, I might be using Mac these days.
That leaves Linux. Although it's not flawless neither after configuring Debian + i3, it works exactly like I want and the same installation has been reliably working for 5+ years. However, getting to the setup that just works certainly took several tries and depends on laptop compatibility, so... No ideal choices exist right now I think. Just luck and what someone is most used to in the end.
I’ve used Macs nearly exclusively for 13 years and have not gotten used to the window tabbing. I just fundamentally don’t think windows of the same application should be grouped together.
One problem with system76?
I have very few problems with linux, despite running a fairly unstable rolling release distro. MacOS does have problems. I have no idea whether its more of less reliable, but going on personal experience is not a good sample.
> It works and it stays out of my way.
This was reason for me as well. More than decade. Unfortunately it is not the case anymore.
Hardware is still best (in my opinion) but software is not.
"Power Users", whatever that might really mean use MacOS because it works. They use a Mac laptop because it always and instantly wakes from sleep. Because the audio always works, and is always low latency. Because they have work to do, and the OS is extremely reliable. Also because it is light, and the battery lasts for a very long time indeed.
My laptop has been up for 43 days, not very long in a server world, but excellent for a personal device that I use for development, hardware design and audio production. The last time it restarted was probably for an OS upgrade, but I can't recall.
My work linux laptop is also pretty reliable, but this is only because I never upgrade anything on it and only use it for development. Its battery life is terrible, so I only use it plugged into the wall. My work linux desktop has issues with bluetooth audio and graphics, neither of which I can be bothered to fix.
> My laptop has been up for 43 days
You made me check mine...40 days. Last reboot was likely for a macOS system update.
I can understand it for casual users who just want something simple that works for basic tasks, but what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't, and which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your machine the way you want?
I consider myself a power user. What I don't consider myself is a "configuration hobbyist" which some people seem to conflate with power users. I use my Mac to get all kinds of work done. I write shell scripts and I have tons of 3rd party command line tools and open source software that I've installed via Homebrew. What I don't have is a customized desktop environment with power meter widgets and stock tickers in the menu bar and anime girl desktop backgrounds.
I used Linux for 10 years and I got tired of updates breaking things and having to edit configuration files just to get the system back to "normal." The Mac just gives me "normal" and loads of productivity (as well as battery life) out of the box, and it doesn't compromise on the command line power that I want.
> but what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't
A laptop with an excellent screen, speakers, touchpad, desktop-class performance,, great battery life, and runs cool and silent, and a *nix like OS that can run the proprietary/commercial apps I need.
I work on macOS the same way I'd work on Linux; From the terminal with a package manager, docker, etc. Only now I get access to a few commercial apps that aren't on Linux, on hardware that's genuinely a joy to use.
There's no other laptop on the market that touches the apple silicon macbook pros. None. Every close alternative sacrifices something I care about. I tolerate macOS for the hardware, and I'll remain on macs until such hardware exists in Linux land.
Same. If the only computing happened on desktop PCs and laptops didn't exist, I'd use Linux.
But as it stands, going from a Macbook to Linux on a laptop is a downgrade. And you have to pay more for the pleasure of a worse experience.
And macOS is "Linux" since it's BSD-based and has a native Unix shell. If macOS were as different from "Linux" as Windows was, then I probably wouldn't put up with it either.
I’d use macOS. Application sandboxing, per directory access controls, signed read only root, xprotect and gatekeeper - security out of the box on common linux OSes is a joke compared to modern macOS.
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Perfectly working drivers.
As a power user, I want to use, not to fix, my tools.
I might tinker sometimes, but that is unrelated for me.
Exactly this. The question pretends that there is a whole group of "power users" who all do the same thing, but that couldn't be further from the truth IMO. There are users like me who program and don't want to spend forever configuring audio driers, etc. There are power users who like to tinker. And there are people who do a bit of both, to every extent on the scale.
> what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't
Your definition of power user may vary but for me:
I could probably use linux for a desktop machine, that would work ok. But it's a no-go for laptops. And I've tried... and try regularly...
What about Asahi?
It’s so tempting.
Aside from all the hardware that doesn't work.
More broadly, Linux doesn't appeal to me as a primary OS because there's no desktop environment that's a full equivalent of macOS, both in spirit and function. Existing DEs might have some vaguely Mac-like shape or can be configured to be slightly more Mac-like, but nothing gets you the full package (consistent application of a well thought out HIG, holistic approach to design, full embrace of progressive disclosure [as opposed to the extremes of IKEA minimalism or dumping everything and the kitchen sink], etc). Additionally, some things are bizarrely involved to set up despite being commonly needed (see virtualization under Fedora) or will randomly break once in a blue moon (usually after a system upgrade) and require diving beneath the hood to fix.
For laptops in particular, it's the absence of laptops that 1) are good at being laptops (great battery life and standby time, are solid but aren't bricks, are inaudible except when being pushed for extended periods, and don't throttle to netbook speeds when unplugged), 2) are designed to be Linux-first, and 3) aren't just a half-baked rebadge of pre-existing models from ODMs like Clevo/Tongfang/Compal.
Funny enough, the closest thing to a great Linux laptop is actually the Steam Deck. Nothing else on the market is as competently integrated. If Valve got into the laptop business I'd be interested.
I could see myself daily driving Linux on a custom built desktop long before I could on a laptop, but the aforementioned broad challenges remain.
Speaking purely on the software preferences, all of those feel like nice-to-haves. I like a well-tuned HiG and widget library as much as the next guy, but the majority of macOS's features are bloat to me. What am I supposed to do with Stage Manager or AppleTV+? Why is Safari allowed to send me notifications begging the user to boot it up and try the new features? Why does the Settings app show a persistent notification when I log out of iCloud?
There was a point in my life when I also thought I needed those creature comforts. Now I've spent 7 years without dailying macOS and I really don't miss it one bit. You could give me a $0.00 Apple Silicon M6 Ultra laptop with 4 days of battery life, and I'd probably still be reaching for my Thinkpad if I wanted to get work done. As a development OS, macOS is borderline intolerable.
> Why is Safari allowed to send me notifications begging the user to boot it up and try the new features?
For what it's worth I've been using macOS (and OS X) for 14 years, and you only get the notification once after a fresh install and you can click close and it's gone forever, sure Linux is better on this front, but I don't want to spend my whole life tinkering my os until it works. It's still a hell of a lot better than Microsoft consistently shoving Edge down your throat.
I don't need many newer macOS features myself. I'd be happy with an experience that's roughly adjacent to that of OS X 10.6 or 10.9, but that's not on offer either.
I do need a laptop that's good at its job, though. If a laptop sucks at its defining qualities, I'd be better served by a backpackable ITX build or maybe a one of those trendy mini-PCs, because at that point the form factor's tradeoffs are too great to justify.
> what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't, and which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your machine the way you want?
Primarily much better compatibility with graphical apps. Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite are two that many people need access to. Both have first-party offerings on macOS, and somewhat poor support via wine on Linux.
With Apple Silicon, the hardware is also particularly excellent. And only runs macOS well.
The big thing for me has always been (a) reliability of the hardware (b) good performance/battery trade off (c) nix-like environment.
In my prev. job I had a windows laptop with WSL2 though and I actually was super productive with that. But the laptop hardware offerings at the same price point are rubbish, just not very robust. Linux machines if you're in a corp and want one in the next 6 months are usually even more restrictive on hardware than they are on Windows.
I have a life and plan to live it, not spend all day configuring my computer to do basic things that macOS does perfectly.
"I've never personally understood" seems to be a lack of imagination.
You appear to have forgotten the state of linux until fairly recently. For literal decades, MacOS "just worked" and it meant that the user did not have to fight their OS to get shit done.
In the professional world where "I did not get any work done today because an update fucked my wifi card" is not a valid excuse, MacOS (and Windows to a lesser degree) triumphed. Large orgs who can afford a whole IT department might be fine deploying linux on their fleet of desktops, but there is always a tremendous amount of testing and validation behind the scenes to ensure that everything "just works". This just was not the case for the indy professional, or small tech startup.
Now, in the past 5 or so years two things happened: 1) linux reached a state where a "normie developer" could take a chance and install it on a work machine and be just fine, and 2) MacOS has regressed enough where OS updates are risky now, and the "it just works" slogan does not really apply any more.
2 days ago I saw a colleague not using his dock. Turns out he can’t update the dock firmware under Linux, and has to live with having a 20% chance of his laptop detecting external displays.
He recently gave up trying to have a wake from sleep that works well too.
I mean, Linux is great, but the paper cuts are still very numerous.
That’s taken it from a paper cut to a limb amputation.
There isn’t any app on windows or linux that can match what Preview does.
One thing you may not know about is you can map anything in the menu bar to a keyboard shortcut. The application doesn’t even know you did that. That’s an operating system feature that neither Windows nor Linux can implement reliably.
Accessibility is another one.
It’s like this all over the operating system. There’s a deep integration with the apps and the UI you wouldn’t notice unless you’re a power user.
> There isn’t any app on windows or linux that can match what Preview does.
And Quickview, and printing to a PDF. Maybe some equivalent exists in Linux/Windows now, but Preview is pretty amazing and something I take for granted every single day.
What does Preview do that's hard to match?
Genuine question. I've been a Mac user for decades and on balance think it's quite good, but Preview is one of the most deeply frustrating, buggy, and unintuitive pieces of software on the system--it's at the top of the list of things that I wish I could swap out for something--anything, MS paint would be fine--else that was as deeply integrated in Finder/image/PDF interactions.
I haven’t heard that many complaints about Preview. (Except for PDF forms. Absolute disaster. See 1.) But it’s not perfect and I can definitely appreciate that somebody would a very different opinion of it from my own.
So, I’m sharing my personal experience. This is what I see in it.
It handles both images and PDFs rather well (1) in the same application. And you use the same basic set of annotation tools on both.
I haven’t found anything that can match its combination of accuracy, performance, and features with PDFs. Especially when files get large. (I have a lot of large PDFs.)
And it doesn’t try to do all that much. But it does two very useful things I wouldn’t expect it to do.
- Easily add, remove, and re-order pages in PDFs.
- If you select multiple images in Finder, you can open them all in single Preview window and it acts like a PDF, with each image being a page in the thumbnail sidebar. You can rapidly go through a set of images this way.
I have a lot of high-resolution artwork and a professional grade printer. Preview does an excellent job of staying out of the way. It’s really easy and fast to chop up, resize, and convert images. The color adjustment is constantly useful when it comes to printing things that are too dark.
Exporting to different formats is pretty easy. It uses the system print dialog, which allows you to use all of those features.
1: It’s horrific with PDF forms. I’ve definitely had occasions when it looked filled out but emailed as a blank form. Completely unacceptable. I’ve often resorted generating a new PDF using the print dialog.
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> what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't ?
Photoshop, illustrator, Final Cut Pro, motion and more.
When I want I open terminal and can do anything I would ever want to do in Linux.
I’ve never spent one second of my life dealing with drivers or recompiling shit or version or so conflicts on a Mac.
Literally hundreds of hours of that on windows and Linux.
I'm a power user. I do FreeBSD kernel performance work for Netflix.
I have a macbook as my work laptop. I use it as a dumb terminal to my FreeBSD desktop, a platform for corp. video conferencing, and to surf the web. Any actual work happens on my desktop (Unless I'm working on something arm64 specific, and am using a VM on the laptop ... but then I'm probably ssh'ed in from my desktop.
Why the macbook? I have never gotten along with Windows (have tried on a few separate occasions). And I'm too lazy to put effort into getting Linux running well on a laptop, since that would still be just a dumb terminal for FreeBSD dev. And I'm not enough of a masochist to run FreeBSD on a laptop. So the macbook is the path of least resistance. It works well as a laptop (suspend / resume, connects to random wifi) and comes with a terminal and ssh client that require zero effort to get working.
At some age you realize that tinkering with your OS is a giant waste of time.
I just want a reliable thing that gets me A to B (car analogy) So what if the infotainment screen is too small or climate controls are annoying.
Sometimes having less choice is freeing.
> Sometimes having less choice is freeing.
Less choice is never freeing. I always want the choice available to me, even if I don't wind up going away from the default 99.99% of the time. It's my computer and I must remain in control, not some corporation.
A lot of users still like the mix of a good UI for most tasks, while being able to do a lot of power user stuff without an added layer. Plus many will choose macOS also for the hardware, which support for new chipsets is still rather WIP under Linux.
> A lot of users still like the mix of a good UI for most tasks
This is funny; it's actually the main reason why I asked for a PC when I was up for renewal at work, so I can run Linux on it.
I truly like the hardware of the mbp, especially the screen (don't care about battery life, I mostly use it at a desk with power nearby). The OS itself is fine, since it can easily run most of the tools I use. I also like how it handles special characters (I can easily type French on an US-ANSI keyboard) to the point that I've implemented that on my Linux and Windows machines.
But what kills it for me is the UI behavior. The window management drives me crazy, especially when multiple screens are involved. And there are quite a few aggravating issues, like being unable to control the audio output of my screen's speakers (connected through DP), being unable to turn off external screens (sometimes I just want to use the power of my monitor, which has an integrated KVM).
Yeah, I know there are programs trying to fix these, but I have to go out of my way trying to find them, and then they're hit and miss. On Linux, everything works as expected (though, granted, it's possible I've won the hardware-compatibility lottery, since it actually works better than on Windows).
I'm an occasional Mac user, whenever their hardware and software align to be useful.
Right now the m4 airs are a delight in regards to form factor, battery life, performance, and generally they look nice.
I have a powerful processor, enough ram, and a battery to drive it and damnit I want to do work on it.
Right now the world of laptops is dark. Any non-mac laptop running linux will have terrible standby battery life because OEMs have removed classic sleep modes for always-on mac-like sleeps, but without the polish and no way to re-enable the legacy sleep modes.
In a couple years, maybe the AI boom will die down and people will be able to afford RAM again, and maybe non-mac laptops will be nice to use again.
> I've never personally understood the point of macOS for power users
We are all users of power, electrical power specifically. And macOS, running on modern Mac hardware, is very power efficient.
(Yes it’s a dumb pun, but it also points to one reason that sophisticated users still choose macOS.)
Linux doesn't have stable APIs or ABIs, has a million ways of doing the same thing (each slightly broken in a different way), has trouble with modern hardware features like HDR or even high-DPI screens, and requires you to fiddle with the terminal and config files for simplest things. MacOS does not. It just works out of the box, mostly. And it even mostly respects you and your work, unlike modern Windows.
It just happens to be so that hardware which power users like to use comes with macOS installed.
I don't see why a power user would trust a desktop Linux distro. They are so unprofessional and take 0 accountability for breaking your system. As a power users I need to actually use my computer and not spend all day trying to fix my OS. Fixing the OS should be the vendor's responsibility. Not mine.
I have it not only because of hardware, but because of color matching for photography/processing RAW images. That's as close to 'professional' as I get to using macOS for personal use (photography is nothing more than a personal hobby, for me).
I also use macOS at work. Plainly, the machines offered are better (MBPs vs. Thinkpad T440s) and come with less impactful EDR. They're simply faster. I do need to fall back to my T440 every now and then. It's not a great experience. That's not the fault of Lenovo or Windows, though. It's just how IT manages the laptops.
But IMO Finder is a piece of trash. The Dock sucks (moves around monitors), how full screen apps are handed sucks... anyway, there's lots of UX issues with macOS. Generally there are 3rd party free and pay-for solutions for all of this... it's just that now I gotta get all this 3rd party stuff and due to the security model, often grant them high level privs.
I think "for work" is very definitely the reason for me. I've run Linux at home since 1994 or so.
As a sysadmin/devops person 90% of my life is emacs, a browser, and collection of terminals. When I get a job I get offered a choice between a windows laptop or a macbook. Sometimes, rarely, I'm allowed Linux, but usually they say "compliance" or that their security scanning software won't support it.
So I use macbooks for work, but I wouldn't pay for one personally. But they allow me to run terraform, git, shells, and similar things in the way that I'm comfortable with.
> I've never personally understood the point of macOS for power users
I am not sure how much I qualify, but here is my use case: it can run Photoshop and MS Office, it has Keynote, it can compile just about any software I use or I develop for my job (mostly Physics and computational Chemistry stuff). It has a sane command line. Honestly, it just works for more than simple tasks. The things for which it does not work is games (but that has nothing to do with the merits of the OS) and yes, customisation.
The alternatives are Windows (which I also use for other tasks), which is a nightmare to deal with and requires tons of faffing about to compile codes, and Linux (which is actually what I use most), which does not have a working Office and is very janky.
That is not even considering the fact that MacBooks are the best laptops by a mile (my Mac is a desktop, so it's not relevant to me).
> which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your machine the way you want?
I do run my Linux box like I want. I spent hours upon ours ricing it up and fine tuning everything I cared about. Stuff still occasionally breaks after a minor update and I regularly have to roll back because of a misbehaving NVIDIA driver (at least once a year). On my Mac, I don't need to tweak every aspect of KDE because the default is fine. I don't need to be able to change pid1 because launchd is fine (but nowadays so is systemd). I don't need to install drivers because everything that does not work out of the box can be tweaked with SteerMouse and Karabiner (honestly, I would kill to have something that works that well on Linux). The couple of utilities I use are much, much better than the Linux alternatives and break much less often. So in effect I don't sacrifice much, and the tradeoff is very good.
I won't even consider Windows. It's as customisable as macOS, but its default behaviour is terrible so here the tradeoff is absolutely not worth it.
I don't like the direction Apple is currently taking, so I will re-evaluate in the future, but for now my Mac is the most pleasant to use of my current computers.
> In Linux you'd solve OP's problem by just building up from a minimal distro like Arch or NixOS.
And then spending a week to make it work, and then spending hours at unpredictable times when an update breaks something. I know, I already do it on my Linux box. It has some good aspects, but also some bad ones, which is why I use a Mac at home.
For me: pro & creative apps. GIMP/Inkscape will never replace Photoshop/Illustrator/Affinity. Ableton, Logic, Pro Tools, etc. are not available on Linux and with the exception of REAPER, the alternatives are awful. And even with a Linux-compatible DAW, very few plugins are available on Linux.
On macOS, I can work on hobby software & graphics/music.
As far as I know, current Photoshop works fine under Linux woth wine [0].
[0]: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Adobe-Photoshop-2025-Wine-Patc...
This is a bit like claiming that a flat head screwdriver can sort of work with a Philips head screw… until it strips the head, you can’t see it and you don’t know how to fix it.
How's Bitwig these days? I've not checked it for years.
https://www.bitwig.com/
Not bad, but different DAWs cater to different workflows. To me (and most), Bitwig feels much more optimized for creating electronic music than recording guitar or drums. It wouldn't be my first choice for the latter workflow, where I'd prefer REAPER or Logic. You also still have the issue with plugin compatibility and that 99% of commercial plugin vendors don't support Linux.
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I used Linux exclusively for 13 years. Moved to Mac because I wanted a laptop that could give me 10+ hours of battery backup.
battery management, ARM chips, SoC ram, only decent trackpad in laptops, only good audio output in laptops (3V RMS for 150+ Ohm headphones. literally no other laptop has it), etc. These things are only possible on Macs because of economies of scale. But the most important part, to me, is software. again, economies of scale -- almost every polished app comes to Mac OS as the first OS because of the monetization potential per install. Then apps for Windows or Linux are often an afterthought or are non-native.
Mac OS is not great, no platform is perfect. Gotta think what is important to you. Are you using your machine as a thin client? Then maybe Linux is fine. Windows is obviously tragic -- zero advantages there.
about the article, Mac OS can be gutted via disabling SIP (I'm doing it on 1 macbook air), but we have so much compute and RAM that it doesn't make much sense for most use cases. I know that some companies do this with minis/studios to make makeshift servers.
In my experience, programmers fall into either of those categories:
1. Those that want to gain full control of their environment, customize to the max and peak in personal satisfaction and productivity, xor...
2. those that want their environment to just. work. and not spend days on end ricing a tiling WM that might instead preferably be spent on actually getting things done.
Linux users largely fall in category 1, Mac users into 2. I don't see this as a skill issue. Even Linux Torvalds famously has been using Fedora because he prefers to focus on more important aspects (i.e., kernel work) than building his own minimal distro from scratch, which starkly contrasts the last point you made.
IMO group 2 is much bigger than group 1, too. I'd find it a boring way of approaching technology personally, but try and find some actual arguments against the established workflows of group 2 apart from slight personal preferences. I can't, really.
I got tired of fiddling with Ubuntu settings. I got tired with updates making my desktop UX worse and having to battle to get things back to what I wanted. I got tired of struggling to get wifi to work.
Maybe more than any of that, though, I got tired of every laptop having bad build quality. Maybe the Dell XPS is good, but Lenovo and System76 (my last Linux machine) seemed significantly worse than a MBP. (I could maybe just run Linux on a MBP, but it's a lot more effort for little benefit.)
I would like to replicate my 2005 Ubuntu desktop environment, but when Ubuntu shipped Unity, it was a serious downgrade, and at the time I struggled to get back to something good. I'm now in a macOS middle ground without having to fight the damn thing.
I use a Mac because I have no desire to maintain a Linux box. The software I want is all there, it has a great *nix terminal, and the hardware quality is second to none. I work with computers all day - at home I just want to be able to focus on the task at hand.
I got my first MacBook around 2010 because I was tired of fixing suspend to RAM every few Nvidia driver updates on my ThinkPad. Then I paid for a commercial VM to seamlessly run some Windows software I needed for my freelance work as a translator, removing the need to dual boot two operating systems. Everything just worked, and I could focus on things I wanted to do instead of continuing to tinker with the OS itself. And after years of playing with many different Linux distros, I realised that I did get tired of that. Moreover, a few games that I played, actually had native Mac versions. What's not to like?
These days I do have a Tuxedo laptop for fooling around, and I don't even use laptops on the regular, which is probably why it works well enough. That and integrated Radeon graphics, I'm sure.
4 modifier keys vs 3. Can't go back. Maybe you can get your whole Linux env using 4 modifiers one application at a time, but my god would that be another thing that takes forever on top of everything else you need to configure. No ty.
This was such a big pain for me when switching back to windows / Linux. I’m not sure why it’s not talked about more. 4 modifiers is much better if you are a keyboard “power user” but don’t want to spend days crafting and maintaining a bespoke input system.
A more general point: you can be a “power user” and not have the time to learn about the absurd stack of technologies that is a Linux DE. You may even be a “power user” and not have a job / education related to computers! Shocking!
I'm a dad, I'm doing home improvement stuff, I have cat litter to scoop, I have a day job. I have like 15 minutes at a time to power use my personal computer. I spend it programming. Everything I need to do between opening the lid and typing programs is an affront.
It's the hardware.
I don't like MacOS, but you can't beat their silicon and the laptops "feel" better in general.
I had a system76 for a while and I loved pop OS but that hardware...
> what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't, and which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your machine the way you want?
Access to Apple ecosystem - iCloud e. t. c. If one uses iPhone it's quite convenient to have access to the same cloud services from a laptop. FindMy is a big one for me - if I lost or misplaced my phone I can use FindMy on Macbook to locate it. While it's technically possible to use FindMy via web you'll need the phone as 2FA which is not an option when I'm trying to find it.
For me, battery life and power management – even with the number of services that macOS runs. I run Asahi Linux when docked, but on the go I estimate I get a warmer lap and about ~1/2 hr less.
> what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't
https://www.apple.com/macos/continuity/
it's the commercial unix desktop that has commercial app support, cool looking hardware and great power optimizations that lead to great battery life. (also in the ai era, unified memory is pretty awesome)
personally i choose linux (kde) desktops and laptops where allowed because they've just gotten so good (and seem to only be getting better), but i get it.
honestly though i think it's a little sad. the execution just isn't where it used to be and honestly i think the modern macos experience is kinda trash. i would really like to pick one up and be like "oh wow this is so cool everything is so refined if i wasn't so bothered about needing vms and docker for everything i'd consider this" but instead it's more like "wow this is kinda old and crufty and weird and not all that great to be honest i miss kde it's more refined"
Define power user.
This is such a loaded term. I would hazard to guess your definition would include abilities which just arent possible on Mac which would by definition make it a bad choice. You can't replace the audio stack or run headless for example.
>but what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't
Flawless suspend/resume, best-in-class battery life, best-in-class touchpad drivers, lots of things "Just Work" that are painful and/or tedious on Linux.
It might be better to ask what Linux offers the laptop user that macos doesn't. I run Linux on my desktop boxes but wouldn't dream of daily-driving a Linux laptop.
>and which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your machine the way you want?
I consider myself a power user. I have never once felt unable to run the machine the way I want. You can disable SIP and Gatekeeper and whatever else if it pleases you. I still have a terminal and a package manager. If there's a particular utility that I need on Linux I just spin up a VM, but I can count on one hand the number of times I've needed to do that in the last 12 months.
I'm a power user who's past configuring things, instead I want them to just work on their own. I also hate to memorize commands but like using the mouse and click buttons.
As a mobile app dev, I'm forced to use macOS: no iOS SDK on Windows/Linux/etc
I'd love to know what's good ARM notebook which works fine with Linux.
it depends on whether you're a power user in terms of getting lots of actual work done, or you're a power user (and this seems much more common) in the sense that you spend lots of time tweaking your productivity setup.
It actually works, reasonably well, out of the box.
when i read threads like this i remember the ancient slashdot meme: this is surely the year of desktop linux
>what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't
Better security than any Linux distro.
> what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't,
Quite simply, an OS that you don't have to think about. I moved to MacOS from linux after seeing my co-founder use their Macbook basically without any problems, much longer battery life, nice conveniences like shared clipboard and wifi password sharing, airplay, Airpods integration, better screens and font rendering, perfect migrations to new hardware, etc.
While I learned a lot tinkering with linux for a decade, at some point you can't beat something that just works.
Out of the box, macOS is substantially more secure than any common linux OS.
"Power users" like to get their work done.
In LInux, you can spend a bunch of time configuring your system to get simple stuff setup. The opposite of "getting work done".
It was a marketing campaign ("Switch") during the rise of web programmers and web designers who didn't really know how computers worked, during the hot period of startups when all of them were making a lot of money for the first time and it was sold as a status symbol. Not having a MBP among web programmers was like having greentext among highschoolers.
Now, they didn't know how computers worked because they "didn't have time or interest to worry about that stuff, they wanted something that just worked" it wasn't because they were limited as computer professionals.
And of course, it was unix, so it was at least minimally usable for actual programmers, and then you got homebrew so you had package management and normal software available, and they all started using Linux VMs to run the important stuff, so in the end it was all Linux anyway.
With all that, there was no reason not for it to gradually become a totally adequate environment to work in. Plus you got to buy the exact same thing as everyone in your social group. Talk about the next one like you would talk about the next year of a sportscar model. Have it match your phone. Get excited when they did that yearly thing where they all got on stage and sold the new line, then read Daring Fireball's take.
Pixelmator Pro
Good luck running graphic design, music production, or video editing apps on Linux.
Less maintenance on my own kit after spending a day maintaining some else’s kit.
Linux userspace is utter chaos. When I’m pricing out lumber or other personal projects, I don’t want that held up by any number of fresh in memory Linux what-the-fresh-hell-is-this moments.
That is it. Will pay nearly whatever Apple commands to avoid having my personal (desktop) time invaded by Linux and the never ending reinventing solved problems and discovering new ones.
Upside though, Linux by now may actually have an even dozen of methods to configure a wired ethernet device. I quit counting.
> I've never personally understood the point of macOS for power users
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption
Haha right. They last so much longer than non-Mac laptops from a hardware PoV, and especially how long they end up being used. That's why they retain their second hand value so much better than Windows laptops, because you can buy a Macbook of a few years old, know exactly what you're getting and that it will last another few years unless you're extremely unlucky.
You can do that as long as you're comfortable with unfixable processor security vulnerabilities.
At this point, not-a-Mac often stands out more if you want to cite conspicuous consumption.
Nobody ever sees my Mac but me and the monitor is a horrible old Dell one with a thick black bezel. If we were talking about iPhones, I might agree with your point.
The same thing is true for laptops like Frameworks or Thinkpads running linux, just conspicuous to a different audience.