10 Ways Mac OS is just BETTER

[Uttamattamakin]

5 hours ago, scotartt said:

 

Dude, i'm way older than you. You were ... 8 or 9 years old when i enrolled in computer science. When i built my first linux kernel (i.e. compiled it) I got a four-port serial card, put it in my PC, and then went dumpster diving up in the local tech park and came back with a couple of VT220 terminals which I RS-232'd to a couple of the serial ports. Instant multi-user local login.

 

Oh, do you know why you login to a "terminal" it used to be assigned an identifier like "ttyS0"? TTY means teletype. So .. you know how "vi" has two parts, "vi" and "ed" (ed's the bit you get when you type esc-:)? It's like that because it's meant to run on a teletype. You would "ed" somefile, then type ':g1" and the teletype would print line 1. Then you'd edit it e.g. s/mispeling/misspelling/ and voila! it would print the corrected line 1. You could even  "cat" the whole file and it would proceed to print, literally, on the teletype. No need for "more" or "less", those programs didn't make sense on a teletype.

 

Look at this command line output in terminal in a mac:

$ w
21:06  up 3 days, 19:39, 18 users, load averages: 1.38 1.54 1.64
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@  IDLE WHAT
xxxxxxx  console  -                Sun01   3days -
xxxxxxx  s000     -                Sun01    2:34 -bash

It's still called a "TTY".

 

I work in aviation, we still have data formats that are meant to be wrapped as "TYPE B" teletype messages. They are 5-bit (ONLY CAPS ALLOWED).

 

Oh, yeah, also one computer i worked on had old-fashioned "core" memory (Linus shows that off in that Saturn-V computer video). those magnetic cores are why you'll still find a file called "core" written to the storage when Linux does a "coredump".

 

Anyway, /bin/sh and its descendants like bash do not emulate the terminal. /bin/sh is a command interpreter, primarily. 

 

lmao, kids today, get off my lawn, etc.

Yeah..  I remember seeing people interact with old mini computers and such  with a type writer attached to them.   Most of these kids have no idea that the whole "terminal" and command line  interface comes from that.  NONE at all.  

Which is why I brought this up here.  We have developers saying they need Unix on their own personal computer to do their Dev work.  That this is something to love about Mac OS.  Developers who, often, have access to remote servers with more power.   This brings me to the KEY reason MacOS being based on Unix really is not a strength of the OS.

Unix / Linux  clearly has advantages since all successful smart phones, and web servers run on some variant of Unix or Linux.    For some reason it just doesn't make sense to do that on the Personal Computer.  The reason is HARDWARE.  MAC OS is what it is because it runs on carefully selected hardware for which it is optimized.   The same is true for iOS, and for Android, and for the UNIX / Linux builds that are ran on web servers. 

 

Windows has the ability to mold itself, like clay, to whatever computer you put it on. If Windows can boot on a device it will TRY to make itself work.That is what a strong OS would do. 

 

A strong OS is not so fragile that it will refuse to work unless you buy the hardware SPECIFICALLY FOR IT.   That is not a great thing about an OS.

[tridy]

On 8/7/2019 at 8:08 PM, Uttamattamakin said:

A strong OS is not so fragile that it will refuse to work unless you buy the hardware SPECIFICALLY FOR IT.   That is not a great thing about an OS.

It was a strange point in the video where Linus said that one can run Windows on Mac but there is no (official) way of running Mac on a PC. This is a perverted way of saying that you can only run Mac OS on Apple hardware.

[Uttamattamakin]

On 8/9/2019 at 7:46 AM, tridy said:

It was a strange point in the video where Linus said that one can run Windows on Mac but there is no (official) way of running Mac on a PC. This is a perverted way of saying that you can only run Mac OS on Apple hardware.

If you want the ease of use and to have a good time with it.  If you want to spend so much time with Kext files and fearing updates that will break your system hackintosh it.  

Hackintoshing is, in that respect, no different than running Linux (Or since I brought it up Sun Solaris UNIX.) 

[kirashi]

On 8/3/2019 at 11:52 PM, NeuesTestament said:

I disliked the video because it was just sloppy. For example the Virtual desktop part, Windows 10 has had Virtual desktops for a couple of years so this just isn't a reason MacOS is better anymore.

Same here, downvoted & reported for spreading misinformation, as parts of it are factually incorrect.

On 8/4/2019 at 12:03 AM, scotartt said:

I said this in the thread asking for opinions about this, and it's in the video, but iMessage is Apple's killer app.

 

I know there's Signal, and I have it installed, but only about three people I communicate with use it. iMessage just works ... go to send a "text" to a phone number, oh, bang, it's a blue bubble and all is good. Air Drop is also tremendous. 

 

Yes I know there's "apps" for all these things, but none are universal. Oh you got an iPhone, iPad or a Mac? I can securely message you and send you that funny pic I took of my cat without any further issues or pfaffing about.

While I cannot argue against iMessage "just working", it will continue to be useless to me unless it's supported on ALL platforms: Web, Windows, Linux, Android, MacOS, and iOS. A communications platform is only as good as how easy it is to access for me - if I can't get to it on whatever modern device I'm currently using, it's useless to me, regardless of it being iMessage, Allo, Duo, BBM, WhatsApp, etc.

On 8/5/2019 at 10:04 AM, TomvanWijnen said:

Meh, I personally love Windows 7 (mostly). I do indeed hate Windows 10 (it's awful in many ways imo), but am sadly forced to use it.  

No one is forcing you to use Windows 10 - there are plenty of currently developed Linux OS's available.

[TomvanWijnen]

13 hours ago, kirashi said:

No one is forcing you to use Windows 10 - there are plenty of currently developed Linux OS's available.

Yeah, you're technically true. I'm too stuck in what I've known and used my entire life, and while I'm unlazy enough to try to solve my issues, I'm too lazy to try to figure out a new OS (used Linux a couple of times 6-7 years ago, didn't click back then (no that's not why I'm not trying now)). There are also some things I want/need to use/do that I expect cannot be easily done on Linux, and I'll probably need to use some applications for university that don't naturally work on Linux. I'd love to move to it, but it's just not convenient for me, sadly.

 

13 hours ago, kirashi said:

While I cannot argue against iMessage "just working", it will continue to be useless to me unless it's supported on ALL platforms: Web, Windows, Linux, Android, MacOS, and iOS. A communications platform is only as good as how easy it is to access for me - if I can't get to it on whatever modern device I'm currently using, it's useless to me, regardless of it being iMessage, Allo, Duo, BBM, WhatsApp, etc.

That's probably why iMessage isn't used that much where I live, while WhatsApp is used by literally everyone.

[ImAlsoRan]

On 8/3/2019 at 3:28 PM, Faisal A said:

@ImAlsoRan Tech support is fantastic. Is that sarcasm ? 

This is just one case : 

 

Wasn't referencing the genius bar. Every time I call in I get put to somebody knowledgeable within 2-3 minutes, and they can walk me through the issue. Should've said "phone support". No, I hate the genius bar. I DIY fix hardware.

[Commodus]

On 8/9/2019 at 8:46 AM, tridy said:

It was a strange point in the video where Linus said that one can run Windows on Mac but there is no (official) way of running Mac on a PC. This is a perverted way of saying that you can only run Mac OS on Apple hardware.

Pardon replying to this so late after the fact, but I think there's something worth addressing here.

 

People will complain that you can't run macOS on non-Apple hardware, but part of why it works so well is because it only works on Apple hardware.

 

If Apple let you run its OS on any PC so long as there were drivers, it'd introduce the compatibility and driver issues that are more common on Windows.  Sorry, this app keeps crashing because you have this mainboard and this graphics card, or this feature won't work because of an audio driver bug... you get the idea.  And remember, Apple would be starting fresh on this front, so many devices wouldn't have support and might never get that support.

 

Don't get me wrong, it'd be great to build a custom Mac rig, but the dream and the reality are mutually incompatible at this point.

 

[tridy]

12 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Pardon replying to this so late after the fact, but I think there's something worth addressing here.

 

People will complain that you can't run macOS on non-Apple hardware, but part of why it works so well is because it only works on Apple hardware.

 

If Apple let you run its OS on any PC so long as there were drivers, it'd introduce the compatibility and driver issues that are more common on Windows.  Sorry, this app keeps crashing because you have this mainboard and this graphics card, or this feature won't work because of an audio driver bug... you get the idea.  And remember, Apple would be starting fresh on this front, so many devices wouldn't have support and might never get that support.

 

Don't get me wrong, it'd be great to build a custom Mac rig, but the dream and the reality are mutually incompatible at this point.

 

IMO:

 

I do not think it has to do with the technical/driver issues and it is a financial tool. As about the hardware and drivers, for example, ther are many USB devices that work on Mac, because there are standards. For example, standards for keyboards, mice (All modern USB keyboards and mice will work on Mac), printers and whatever else works with USB. It will give you the main/basic functionality that is common across the devices of the same type, but you will need to get the "real" drivers or software to get extra functionality. At the same time, the badly behaving usb hardware can crash MacOS in the same way it crashes Windows. Apple could earn money by testing and signing and allowing only "Apple Certified" hardware or something.

 

Apple is selling own hardware and your custom Mac rig is not in their business plan. Nothing personal.

 

the point was, however, that I wanted to make:

- you can run Windows on Apple hardware >> plus for Windows (Windows is allowing that)

- you cannot run Mac OS on PC hardware >> minus for Mac OS (Mac OS is preventing that)

 

and in the video it was the opposite

 

[Flying Sausages]

MacOS is good

 

But

 

Apple devices are bad and expensive.

 

I now realize why Chinese people are rich in America. They purchase legit Apple devices cheap in China using American currency, then come to America to sell it for double or triple profit.

[Faisal A]

On 8/17/2019 at 4:28 PM, ImAlsoRan said:

I DIY fix hardware

@ImAlsoRan  So you love apple, but apple hates you for fixing your own stuff instead of buying new.

Edited September 1, 2019 by Faisal A

[scotartt]

On 8/8/2019 at 4:08 AM, Uttamattamakin said:

Windows has the ability to mold itself, like clay, to whatever computer you put it on. If Windows can boot on a device it will TRY to make itself work.That is what a strong OS would do. 

 

A strong OS is not so fragile that it will refuse to work unless you buy the hardware SPECIFICALLY FOR IT.   That is not a great thing about an OS.

 

Gonna necro this thread a bit (three weeks). I think, that "macOS being unix at its core" and "what hardware the OS runs on" (which Windows is much better at) are two different things.  If Windows, in those days, was an option for me, I may well have stayed with it. At the time I switched, it wasn't. It was Linux or nothing, until I discovered that the Mac could run all the tooling I required at the time.

 

Sure, I could get a pretty good laptop experience with Linux nowadays. When I switched (from a mix of Linux and Windows on commodity PC hardware) to Mac, it wasn't really possible to get a great out of the box experience with Linux on a laptop. I specifically switched because I got sick of having to pfaff about with drivers and the like to make my laptops function properly. I was working in a development environment where Windows (even with cygwin) just couldn't run the tooling necessary (the software was of course, deployed to Linux instances running in the datacentre (before that job, the software I wrote ran on AIX and IRIX (IBM and Silicon Graphics versions of Unix, respectively)). Switching to Mac meany I got all the tooling I needed, mostly the same as I would use on Linux. If I were to switch now, of course I could get a good laptop with a good Linux experience ... you know, but too late for that. ;-) Plus I'd still be hosed for the all corporate guff like Office 365 which I have to use as part of my job.

 

My choice was: 1. be desktop only. 2. eternal struggle configuring Linux to run on a Laptop, and 3, get a Mac. Sure, the OS is hardware optimised for particular hardware. But from my 2017 Macbook Pro to the old 2010 iMac my wife still uses to rip Blu-Ray and DVD (hey, fair use purposes only there!), there's a pretty wide range of hardware. Even more if you consider that earlier versions of the OS ran on non-Intel processors, and looks increasingly likely that they will run on them again in the next couple of years. The Darwin kernel (at the heart of iOS and macOS) already runs on ARM (i.e. the A1-series Apple chips).

 

 

[Uttamattamakin]

5 hours ago, scotartt said:

My choice was: 1. be desktop only. 2. eternal struggle configuring Linux to run on a Laptop, and 3, get a Mac. 

 

 

I can respect your reasons for not wanting to try Linux because of that eternal struggle.  Using Linux in the early 00's up to maybe even 2010 one could not be sure if their wifi would work, or the sound, or the graphics or the printer or ...

 

There was always something.  Times have changed though. 

 

I ran Linux on a Microsoft Surface Pro 1 to write my MS Thesis in LaTeX.    Everything worked easily.   On my current Surface Pro everything works except the LTE modem so a basic consumer surface pro would work flawlessly.  On my laptop for gaming and CUDA GP GPU programming everything works.  (Getting Nvidia CUDA to work was causing problems until I realized it is designed to treat an EGPU as being strictly for compute.) 

I mean worked easily even without me needing to configure anything at all.   

 

The days of "win-modem" and "Win-printer" are gone. 

 

You are quite correct though.  Some things need MS office 365 and other things that are only found in the proprietary OS's.  That is why when I do use Linux most of the time I visualize my dual boot, and only boot to Linux for special occasions.  

[GoodBytes]

14 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

I can respect your reasons for not wanting to try Linux because of that eternal struggle.  Using Linux in the early 00's up to maybe even 2010 one could not be sure if their wifi would work, or the sound, or the graphics or the printer or ...

 

There was always something.  Times have changed though. 

 

I ran Linux on a Microsoft Surface Pro 1 to write my MS Thesis in LaTeX.    Everything worked easily.   On my current Surface Pro everything works except the LTE modem so a basic consumer surface pro would work flawlessly. 

Linux based distro doesn't have high-DPI support, nor pen support beside mouse emulation. So no, it doesn't run flawlessly on the Surface Pro 1.

LaTeX runs fine under Windows, and you can use the many web versions of it, even very good web based conversion too exists which are able to convert whatever format you want, including Office to Latex, and amaze your professor with your amazing LaTeX coding skills.

 

[Uttamattamakin]

14 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Linux based distro doesn't have high-DPI support, nor pen support beside mouse emulation. So no, it doesn't run flawlessly on the Surface Pro 1.

LaTeX runs fine under Windows, and you can use the many web versions of it, even very good web based conversion too exists which are able to convert whatever format you want, including Office to Latex, and amaze your professor with your amazing LaTeX coding skills.

 

Hi DPI support.... Yeah.  At least not in a straightforward way.  I have had good results with the latest versions of KDE and Gnome for display scaling.  Under Wayland it is a lot better BUT then NVIDIA does not have good open source drivers for Wayland. 

Having LaTeX online is just not the same as having it on your own computer.  On my own computer I can be sure I have the fonts, packages, and everything else I need to compile my documents.    The students who have amazed me so far.  

I had one student who I merely said the word LaTeX.  She installed it from source, and learned how to use it on her own.  Yeah... she was using a Macintosh.