Yikes. Why anyone would willingly develop for Apple platforms is beyond me. But then I also don't understand why some some people like using the crap^WmacOS. To each their own I guess. Hardware does look nice though, too bad about their software.
Well, mainly because it's a better unix than Linux for the desktop, and I'd rather pull my eyes out of their sockets with a rusty screwdriver than use Windows.
Other than developing my own (without using any other OS...) which is a ... significant ... task, there's not much other option. YMMV.
It was a better linux for the desktop back during the snow leopard day but it's slowly gotten worse at the same time that linux became better.
Now the only advantages they have is the hardware. The os is buggy doesn't respect apple's own human interface guidelines and is increasingly locked down. Gone are the days of simbl extensions, customizability and a clean nice coherent stable os with few bugs.
I switch between Tahoe, fedora and pop_os on a daily basis. Tahoe in its complete design madness is still in a league of its own when it comes to basic UX IMHO. Just the fact that the keymappings for undo/redo are consistent between apps puts it’s way ahead of Linux when considering the whole ecosystem. Linux is a clear winner in tech and tooling thought, which is why I use both.
MacOS is a better desktop in the sense that the desktop is locked down. GNOME trie to be the same as MacOS but being the default desktop for nerds and build for people who lives the Apple way makes it a bit schizofrenic.
As a Linux lifer I agree that the hard diamond surface of the Mac desktop has a solid feeling to it. The Linux way is harder and also more brittle. Windows and Linux are both better than MacOS even as a desktop as long as you do not look at the in the wrong way. The thing is I have only minor problems doing that on either Linux or Windows, but the walled garden of the Mac, Android and iOS is a joke.
MacOS is designed to be a somewhat stable desktop, that is good. It is not a better Unix, it is a political stance that means hacking will forever die.
I don’t know anything about “hard/brittle” analogies for operating systems. What I do know is that Linux distributions don’t seem to have a coherent strategy for building an operating system with sensible defaults and a consistent design that makes it easy to use for non-technical users.
Linux developers seem to almost-universally believe that if the user doesn’t like it or it doesn’t make sense then the user will fix it themselves either via configuration files or patching the source code. That model works fine for users with a lot of knowledge and time on their hands. In other words, it’s an operating system for hobbyists.
MacOS, for all its faults, is still pretty easy to use (though not even close to the ease of use of Classic Mac OS 9 and earlier).
Apple developers seem to almost-universally believe that if the user doesn’t like it or it doesn’t make sense then the user will... just have to learn to live with it.
I never said the Mac was perfect. Far from it. But it has sensible defaults which the vast majority of users find acceptable and easy enough to use.
Linux users, on the other hand, seem to spend more time customizing their operating system and sharing screenshots of it than actually getting work done.
You are encouraged to play with footguns on Linux, I do not do it and none of my family do it works fine for us. On "Linux desktop" one of the things you are not encouraged to play with is installation of programs. The Linux way is preferable that is why Apple and all the other are walking down the same path.
Not being able to install things sucks, but when you do you will easily destroy your nice shiny brittle desktop. The pebkac is strong here, but making the users enemies is a bad solution, this is why Google, Apple and MS are all bad desktops.
As I said I have been a Linux user my whole life. I know it works as a desktop but it works best with either people who do not care about instaling stuff, or thise who care enough to get it working.
you’re welcome to your opinion of course, mine differs.
I’ve been using Linux since it came on a root and boot floppy. I remain completely unimpressed with its desktop design, ease of use, and (especially) accessibility. It’s a fantastic server OS.
It might be "better unix" (whatever that means), but it sure as hell is not better. Locked down, buggy, and difficult / impossible to navigate by keyboard. And I need to install (and trust) a 3rd party app to get a multi value clipboard? Yeah right, better. I'd prefer Windows, and I'm not fan of the ad-OS either.
The advantage is you can just develop it once and publish, rather than pushing things through multiple different packaging processes, and a MacOS person might be more likely to spend money.
Isn't that a losing proposition? Or do you get 50 times the value out of it too? In my experience the more verbose the code is, the less thought out it is. Lots of changes? Cool, now polish some more and come back when it's below 100 lines change, excluding tests and docs. I don't dare touch it before.
I agree, but i'm shouting at the cloud. Stuff needs to be done, it seems to work at first, so either i just abandon quality and let things rot, or i read everything and underline each time the code smell.
I too use AI, but mostly to generate scripts (the most usefull use of AI is 100-200 line scripts imho), test _cases_ (i write the test itself, the data inside is generated) and HTML/CSS/JS shenanigans (the logic i code, the presentation i'm inferior to any random guy on the internet, so i might as well use an AI). I also use it for stuff that never end in repository, for exploration/proof of concept and outside of scope tests (i like to understand how stuff work, that helps), or to summarize Powerpoint presentations so i can do actual work during 60-person "meetings" and still get the point.
So like we went from assembler to higher level programming languages, we will now move to specifications for LLMs? Interesting thought... Maybe, once the "compilers" get good enough, but for mission critical systems they are not nearly good enough yet.
Right. I work in aerospace software, and I do not know if this option would ever be on the table. It certainly isn't now.
So I think this question needs to be asked in the context of particular projects, not as an industry-wide yes or no answer. Does your particular project still need humans involved at the code level? Even just for review? If so, then you probably ought to retain human-oriented software design and coding techniques. If not, then, whatever. Doesn't matter. Aim for whatever efficiency metric you like.
It’s also pretty close to Steve Jobs initial vision of computing in the future (https://stevejobsarchive.com/stories/objects-of-our-life, 1983) but my point is that whatever it is we call AI now became reality so much faster than anyone really saw coming. Even if the pace slows down, and it didn’t yet, things are improving so massively all the time that the world can’t keep up changing to accommodate.
I found an easier way that Works For Me (TM). I describe the problem to LLM and ask it to solve it step by step, but strictly in the Ask mode, not Agent. Then I copy or even type the linws to the code. If I wouldn't write the line myself, it doesn't go in, and I iterate some more.
I do allow it to write the tests (lots of typing there), but I break them manually to see how they fail. And I do think about what the tests should cover before asking LLM to tell me (it does come up with some great ideas, but it also doesn't cover all the aspects I find important).
Great tool, but it is very easy to be led astray if you are not careful.
I have (had?) a Google account tied to my email (which is on a domain I own). Not sure if I ever gave them my phone number, initially. Tried to login a few years back, correct password, but they insisted on me entering my phone. Finally I did - and they can't let me in because my "provider is not supported" and they can't send an SMS with the code, so I'm locked out. Tried every few months since then, no go. Fortunately I didn't lose much (except some family photos), but it is annoying as hell. I wouldn't trust Google with anything important. And yes, I tried with an brand new number on a new phone, unrelated provider. No dice. According to reddit I'm far from alone in this. So if you rely on a Google account for anything... Well, good luck!
Signal allows you to do local chat export for backup, as opposed to WhatsApp (which only allows backup to Google account on android). That's actually my biggest complaint against WhatsApp and Viber: why don't you allow local backup, or backup to something I control?
Correction, in case you're interested: Whatsapp does (and has always done) allow local file backups. I know because they are just there on the storage:
Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Backups/
I also know because for many years I was VERY cloud-averse so for several iterations of smartphone purchases I did migrate my chat backups between phones (plain copy-paste of files with a computer) without issues.
reply