I have been a Mac user off and on (mostly on) since College. Bitter also became a convert. Since Tim Cook has taken over Apple, it’s been downhill from there. Not only has Apple’s quality control suffered under Cook, but the company has become overly political, and taken sides in the culture wars. Everyone knew Steve Jobs was a hippie, but he was careful to keep Apple out of controversial issues. Now Apple has decided to purge firearm emojis from their operating system, and replace them with water guns. Yeah, fuck you Tim Cook.
This weekend I did something I hadn’t done in years: installed Windows on one of my Macs. I did not do this for full time purposes: there’s a game I’m playing that works on both Windows, Mac, and Linux. But it turns out that Apple’s OpenGL support on Nvidia hardware has been a hot mess since Yosemite. The creators of the game apologize profusely for the problems, but the fact is that the constant crashing and weird screen artifacts are caused by bugs in Apple’s NVidia drivers. Additionally, I lose about 10fps over Windows, again, because of bad OpenGL support on the Mac. These aren’t the only persisting quality control issues Apple has been having. I could go on, and on.
So I may start transitioning to the PC world. For me it almost feels like selling out, but I’m not sure Microsoft is the evil empire they used to be. Now that’s Facebook and Google. Apple, I worry, is headed for tough times again. I was still loyal during the reign of Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio. I have been through tough times with Apple, but they have become “The Man.” They have abandoned me as a user, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t also abandon them. If I move to the Windows or back to the Desktop Linux world (Linux on the Desktop honestly still sucks), I’m certainly not going to pay the price premium for Apple’s hardware.
Congratulations Tim Cook. I’ve stood by a lot of suck from Apple, but you’re a sucky bridge too far.
Try Linux Mint. I have been able to replace every Microsoft program, with the exception of Excel, which I run just fine with the Crossover emulator.
Libre Office is a great Linux replacement for the entire Microsoft Office suite, and it saves in Excel compatible formats.
The only programs that won’t run on Linux are TurboTax and Quicken.
“Apple has stood up to the bullying tactics of the NRA and gun industry by showing that there are many more life-affirming ways to express oneself than with a gun,†said Leah Barrett, NYAGV’s Executive Director on Monday.
I would like to hear how exactly the NRA has been bullying Apple.
Did Apple also remove the bomb emoji, or have they caved to bullying from ISIS?
I think Microsoft has realized that their money is no longer really coming from the Operating System itself. Instead, it is coming from other revenue streams. This is why they are less evil.
I really love Windows 10. And, I love the fact that I have a lot more options when getting a new computer. I looked at getting an iMac. I found the customization options less than thrilling. And, I did not care for the price. I can build a system that has a lot more power (or buy one) for the same money.
As an aside, you are seeing a lot of media pros turning away from Apple too. Where I work it was Macs only 5 years ago. Now, there are only 4 people using Macs.
We give all our new employees a choice. Four years ago it was nearly universally a Mac. I haven’t had a new employee ask for a Mac in more than two years. It’s becoming what older workers prefer.
Ignoring of course, that Microsoft is using Windows 10 to mine your computer for personal data, which it is selling to marketing firms.
You can disable all that.
This doesn’t bug me for some reason. Maybe because I don’t see anyone over 14 using emojis
Hey, if you have an iphone. Check to see if the b*mb emoji is still there. (like on android)
Yep! 🔫 💣
💣. 💣
With the Anniversary update to Win10, you get a bash shell, which is remarkable. Back in the day, you would have called someone crazy if they told you that Windows of the future would run Ubuntu as a subsystem.
I agree about Linux desktops not being that good. The one thing I consistently walk away from gnome or others with is a new respect for how complex it is to build a great GUI OS.
Well, take heart though – win10 pro is a solid OS, the gaming has always been better in PC land, nothing beats Office on the PC for productivity suites, and personally I’ve always loved Visual Studio as an IDE, if that applies; and the hardware is just incredible these days. Look into a Gigabyte Brix i7 with a Samsung 950 pro M.2 NVME drive, for example. Just super cool equipment options.
Oh, Microsoft is still evil, but they have become somewhat less evil. Compared to F*ceb**k and G**gle these days, however, they are downright angelic.
I’ve not worked on or played with Windows 10 much, but I hear good things (especially if you manage to turn off the built-in spyware; it’s on by default, but turning it off is an option in Win 10 … or so I’m told).
Add in the infinitely wider selection of compatible hardware and software, and it’s hard to go wrong.
If you ignore the fact that they now force Cortana and the MS Store on anyone who doesn’t have the Enterprise version of Win10 sure. Basically, they’ve made it so turning off the spyware is impossible unless you’re willing to pay them their pound of flesh yearly or use a separate hardware firewall and constantly update the IPs their telemetry tries to phone.
That’s one nice thing about Vulkan, it means that I won’t have to update to a new Windows past 7 until at least 2025.
I remember reading an essay years ago (perhaps from someone named Paul Graham) that made the case that no one was afraid of MicroSoft: they have gone the way of IBM. But it isn’t that they’ve become less evil, so much as they’ve become less relevant.
I bought a Surface Pro 4 earlier this year, and am really blown away by the whole package. It’s the size of a legal pad and is quite the usable little machine. Win10 is pretty decent as well.
OTOH, the Mac GUI never really got my interest; though for a number of years I thought Apple made some slick hardware.
As I understand it, Apple’s hardware has never been all that great. The great “slick” user experience is because their hardware and software integrate so seamlessly and efficiently; the software is designed to run on a very specific hardware set — and nothing else — but as long as the hardware is right everything works beautifully despite it being technically “weaker”, at least on paper.
As Apple tightly controls both the hardware specifications and software quality, that should be expected, but that seems to have fallen off somewhat in recent years.
I mean I used Boot Camp and ran windows on it. Still pretty slick. The iPad I have, though, is no better than the same gen Nexus I also have
There’s nothing special about Apple’s hardware anymore. You can run Mac OS on a PC if you use the right EFI emulators.
That’s like saying there’s nothing particularly special about the hardware in an Alienware vs a Dell. From a certain point of view, you’re correct.
(Example chosen deliberately)
I’ve always found Apple UI choices to be evil, every time I encountered an Apple machine. I particularly despise having a menu on top of the screen. I understand the UI philosophy for that, but I’ve grown up with Windows 3.1/Windows 95 and later KDE (I’ve never liked Gnome that much — probably because I don’t like Mac stuff), and having a menu tied to each window makes sense to me.
This becomes even more so, when we live in a world with multiple huge monitors, where it isn’t nearly as convenient to get to the top of the screen as it used to be.
Having said that, I’ve fallen in love with using the command line, Tmux (or Screen in a pinch), and Vim. The combination allows for interesting workflows, even on remote servers.
I find the insistence that the single mouse button be overloaded by use of modifiers rather than adding buttons to be even more of an evil than the menu bar at the top. Which I also detest. Along with the lack of keyboard accelerators and emphasis on mouse-first.
The Mouse is the big issue I have going back to Windows. The mouse in Windows is far less powerful than I’m used to.
I guess I haven’t internalized the power of the Mouse in OSX – but I never thought you could do that much more with the mouse in OSX than in Windows, nor that the Windows Mouse was more clunky than the OSX one.
The single button issue hasn’t been an issue for years. That was the old mac. The new Mac OS versions have right click. The big issue I miss on Windows is gesturing. There are ways to hack Windows to get some of the same style gesturing, but you can’t get all of them. I also miss full screen apps and easy and well-done multiple desktops. The Windows interface is still more clunky, but it’s gotten better, and Apple’s quality control isn’t what it used to be. Most of their recent Mac OS releases have been a mess. Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!
Last I checked (admittedly a few years back) you had to buy non-apple to get a second+ button.
Gestures. I like gestures in theory, at least on a touchpad or a touchscreen. On an actual freestanding mouse, I’d rather use buttons and wheels. And logitech has this funky scrollwheel that either ratchets or freescrolls depending on velocity of the wheel, which I adore
The latest versions of Linux Mint are quite good, IMO. My desktop PC is on Mint 17 (XFCE, but Cinnamon is good too), but is about to get upgraded to Mint 18. My laptop is on Windows 7 because I still have some Windows applications I run, but I plan to transition that to Linux as well as soon as Microsoft drops support for 7.
I have messed around with Windows 10 some in a desktop environment, and it’s promising, but Microsoft lost me when they set it up as industrial-grade spyware/adware and then tried to hijack my computer to force-upgrade me. When I have to edit my #@$%! registry to keep a corporation from making major changes to *my* computer without my consent, that is a serious abuse of user trust, IMO.
As for “bullying tactics”, who just bullied Apple into changing its emoji? Barrett’s NYAGV. They’re blind to their own hypocrisy.
Standard tactic of the left: accuse us of being them. Rich political donors? Special interest lobby group? Exploit misery of others for profit? All things they do and they know it, so to cover up their own misdeeds they say we’re the ones doing it.
This makes me like Apple *more*.
Last year, an organization called New Yorkers Against Gun Violence started a campaign to get Apple to replace its version of the pistol emoji. It launched a site, disarmtheiphone.com, and sent an open letter to remove the firearm emoji “as a symbolic gesture to limit gun accessibility.â€
Ah, magical thinking.
I got fed up with Apple for almost entirely UX-related reasons last year and bought an MS Surface. It was less expensive, and is a perfect tool for writing and work-related stuff. More importantly, the driving UX philosophy does not appear to have been “our customers are clearly complete idiots, and couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag,” like Apple seems to have followed.
The Surface comes with me everywhere during the day. My MacBook is now more or less a toy computer used primarily for checking e-mail and web surfing while I’m sitting on my couch at home in the evening.
I still prefer Apple phones, though.
You can keep your iOS. It’s Apple’s way or nothing there.
And, frankly, that’s fine with me. Phones are mostly toys for me. I’ve been unimpressed with the utility of any of them for anything serious. If I need to do real work, I have the Surface.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/04/microsoft-new-real-gun-emoji/
“Before this, the company’s representation for a gun looked more like a space toy, while the new image is a more realistic silver-and-grey revolver.”
“When asked for the reason behind this change, a Microsoft spokesperson told us, “Our intent with every glyph is to align with the global Unicode standard, and the previous design did not map to industry designs or our customers’ expectations of the emoji definition. We will continue to work with the Unicode Consortium to refine and update glyphs that reflects customer needs, feedback and supports a consistent system that works across the digital world.””
Heh.
Windows 10 has seriously screwed up my work laptop. From incompatible drivers to some quirk that caused the OS to effectively remove my Office suite, Win10 had continued to be a royal PITA for several months. Not to mention that I was perfectly happy with 8.1, and one night, with no permission, Win10 hijacked my computer and decided to just go ahead and install itself.
My laptop now barely works. When I get some time, I need to move all of my working files, photos, etc. to another drive. Install the new SSD I bought and format it, install Win10 from a DVD (I’ve read multiple times that the downloaded “update” is fraught with issues), then reinstall everything. It’ll take a couple of days to crawl out of this Microsoft mess.
And I’m not even that much of a Microsoft hater. In fact, I even worked for them for about 10 years.