Tell HN: macOS is degrading fast, and GNU/Linux is now better for most uses
&gt; Hiya! I&#x27;m going to clarify some of my issues below. I don&#x27;t intend this to come off in an argumentative tone.<p>Hi! I hope I hadn&#x27;t come across as argumentative either, it was not my intention. I appreciate you taking the time to respond.<p>I haven&#x27;t responded to every single point. The ones I skipped you can assume I either simply agree completely or otherwise didn&#x27;t have anything of value to add.<p>&gt; I&#x27;m talking about moving windows between &quot;Spaces&quot;, not separate monitors. I love Rectangle to bits, but AFAIK MacOS provides devs no API for moving between spaces.<p>I swear I was under the impression it did but I can&#x27;t find it now so I assume you&#x27;re right. My bad.<p>&gt; Once moved, the window will stay there until manually returned to its proper position.<p>Perhaps I&#x27;m misremembering this one as well but this is the kind of thing that would annoy me so I assumed it behaved the way I said. I just tried it with Pages though, and the behaviour was even worse - the child window just overflowed to the side of the screen, making part of it invisible unless I manually moved the window further to the centre of the screen. :(<p>&gt; When downloading certain applications from the internet, MacOS will prevent you from running it, with a dialogue window along the lines of &quot;We haven&#x27;t seen this file before, so we&#x27;ve put it in the trash for you.&quot;<p>I see. By default, macOS will check for signed binaries and try to validate that signature. If it fails either check (no sig, invalid sig) it asks if you want to cancel or bin the binary. I&#x27;m not sure but I think with recent macOS versions it also needs to be notarised in order to pass.<p>&gt; The dialogue window for an unfamiliar app is almost identical to one for known-bad malware.<p>That&#x27;s because macOS takes a zero-trust approach to executables. If it doesn&#x27;t pass the checks I mentioned above, it treats it as malware. The difference between known malware and unknown malware is just that - knowledge - so it wouldn&#x27;t make sense to treat it differently in either case.<p>There used to be a config option in system preferences to allow any executables. I&#x27;m sure the option still exists somewhere but if it does it&#x27;s hidden.<p>Cynics will say it&#x27;s because Apple wants to maximise the number of paid developers. Less cynical people will say it&#x27;s as a protection. Personally, I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s done out of malice but I don&#x27;t think the fact that more money comes in hurts them either.<p>&gt; There is a secreted location where you can ask the OS to run it anyways. Apps that you have recently attempted to open will be listed somewhere in the system settings.<p>I haven&#x27;t seen that. Usually if I want to run an unsigned binary I find it in Finder, right click and select Open. That makes a similar dialogue appear but with a button to override and open it anyway. The OS then sets the binary as trusted and doesn&#x27;t ask again.<p>Definitely not discoverable. Again, it&#x27;s either to maximise income or to better secure users. Or somewhere in between.<p>&gt; Xcode
&gt; the experience was surprising (sluggish, huge download).<p>Yep, agree. The 2 or 3 times I downloaded it I had a similar experience. That said, I don&#x27;t use it and don&#x27;t consider it part of the OS itself since it&#x27;s definitely not required unless you&#x27;re writing and&#x2F;or compiling native apps.<p>&gt; I understand Xcode updates also update system-wide Python and Git.<p>No idea but it wouldn&#x27;t bother me either. To me, these kinds of tools and languages existing system-wide are just a convenience for quickly running a script where I don&#x27;t care about dependencies or the language version, or to install Homebrew - which used to require git, although I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s the case anymore. Past that point, everything is installed for my user so I don&#x27;t really touch the system ones.<p>&gt; If you set the display to &quot;web colors&quot;, it won&#x27;t posterize to the web palette, it&#x27;ll instead map every non-web color to black. Rebooting in safe mode, resetting eeprom, etc. doesn&#x27;t fix it. (FWIW, I think this is only a soft-brick.)<p>That sounds like a pretty big fuck up... I wouldn&#x27;t even know how to do it though, so it&#x27;s at least a somewhat obscure way to brick your computer. :D<p>&gt; &quot;Affordances&quot; such as skeumorphs implying a button is a button, etc.<p>I don&#x27;t personally have an issue with how it is with regards to that but I believe you that some people might. I did prefer the buttons though, they&#x27;re definitely easier to spot and understand.<p>&gt; &quot;option&quot; key providing alternate options<p>Yeah, that&#x27;s a weird one. I frequently see myself experimenting with the option key when a menu is open just to see if there&#x27;s a hidden option somewhere. It also doesn&#x27;t help that in some places it changes as you press and release the button with the menu open, in other places it only shows the extra options if you press option as you&#x27;re clicking to open the menu (wifi, for instance).<p>&gt; five-key shortcut for screenshot with selection.<p>I agree these shortcuts are not discoverable but the Screenshot app is. Arguably, shortcuts are hard to make discoverable, especially system-wide ones.<p>&gt; Have you noticed a battery decline since the recent OS update in August&#x2F;September?<p>I haven&#x27;t, but I couldn&#x27;t anyway since this model was only released last month. :) I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ll ever get 18h out of it though due to everything I tend to have open all the time.<p>Here&#x27;s a weird thing though. I had left the laptop sleeping after typing my previous post. It had 69% battery like I mentioned. When I picked it up now, it had 74%. Not sure what&#x27;s going on exactly.<p>&gt; I think we ultimately share the same mindset. The best distro is one which requires the least amount of customization to get the stability&#x2F;features&#x2F;etc you want. Experiences like yours are what made MacOS so tantalizing<p>Indeed.<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong, there are things in macOS that bother me.<p>External display has been pretty hit-and-miss.<p>When I connect my trackball via bluetooth, it thinks it&#x27;s a keyboard - which it kind of is, since it has mappable buttons -, so it displays the keyboard setup dialogue which doesn&#x27;t go away since there&#x27;s no way to close it and still use the trackball, and I can&#x27;t get through it because the device doesn&#x27;t have the keys it wants me to press. At one point I figured out how to do it and it stopped but it was not a great experience.<p>I really wish this laptop had FaceID, or alternatively that I could buy an external TouchID sensor that didn&#x27;t come attached to a full keyboard.<p>I&#x27;ve had some weirdness around DNS resolution which I <i>think</i> might be a bug in Tailscale but I couldn&#x27;t figure out how to troubleshoot.<p>The new System Settings has had enough written and ranted about that I don&#x27;t think I need to repeat any of it. :D<p>There are other things I dislike but the tradeoffs are still widely in favour of macOS for me.