Just because it’s better than windows doesn’t make it good

The first desktop version, Mac OS X 10.0, was released on March 24, 2001. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and all releases from OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion to macOS 14 Sonoma are UNIX 03 certified
I don't like MacOS, but it's actually able to be called UNIX.
- I'm surprised you don't lose Unix certification with crap like case insensitive filesystem defaults.
  
  I don't want to be like Stack Overflow, but tbh you have some design problems if you rely on case sensitive filesystems.
  
  Both HFS Plus and APFS can have case sensitivity enabled, it's optional.
  Enabling it has had a tendency to break third party Mac software though. Adobe used to be a particularly bad offender there.
- Being able to be called Unix just means paying for certification. No more, no less.
  
  Well you still have to check all the boxes, you pay for the license the same way you can study and take certain exams but have to pay for the certificate.

I mean Mac OS has its place. There's a reason so many music producers and coders choose that OS. It's a rock solid stable approach for those use cases.
That being said, personally I would always prefer Linux but that's mostly because I don't do those things.
I don't even particularly hate windows, I just like PopOS better
- I'm a dev and I mainly see issues with removed... Every update breaks some tools the cli tools are ancient, homebrew is slow as hell and breaks quite often, docker is really slow and costs money if you don't know how to avoid that, it's very expensive to get to a certain amount of RAM that costs nothing on PC and so on.
  
  Homebrew recently broke for me permanently on a macbook because it was made in 2013 and is now blocked from upgrading, so xcode no longer can be upgraded...Which means lots of other shit also no longer works. Including homebrew. Soon have to put a distro on it, I guess.
  
  Docker costs money? What?
  
  I wonder what highly offensive word you wrote in the first line, the only thing I know for sure is that it was clearly filled with misogynistic hate (thanks Lemmy.ml!)
  It's baffling to me that the devs would choose to cripple their own instance. I have not once seen someone use a blocked word in the context where it would be harmful - it is literally always just confusing and annoying.
- Genuine question, how is MacOS better for coders? I think those that do usually choose it because they're used to it or their company offered either a bulky ThinkPad or a Mac and they wanted something thin and light.
  Everytime I see tutorials for setting up or building something there will be a simple Linux install command, downloading a zip for windows (or if you're lucky you can find it on Choco), and then there will be the multiparagraph homebrew setup.
  
  Macs are pretty solid for coding. You don't need to tinker with them, most of the time stuff just works. On the other hand, I spent lots of time to make sure stuff just works well on my Dell or ThinkPad with Ubuntu or pop.
  For software, I've found that some software doesn't give you much help if you get into problems on Linux.
  And there is always something with Linux that doesn't work for me. Like my Dell laptop with pop!os doesn't charge over usb-C from Dell monitor (it worked on windows). Touchscreen doesn't always work after waking up. I had ThinkPad with awful fan control on linux and hibernation issues. I had issues with scaling with external screens.
  
  macOS offers a lot of stability, it's reliable, predictable, boring even. It works out of the box and stays that way, it survives upgrades, and rarely crashes.
  The release cycle is steady, and changes are generally gradual and incremental. Mac users don't usually have to worry about a new release breaking their system or their workflow because a developer wants to reinvent the wheel or a UI designer wants to make their mark. The only big shifts have been processor transitions.
  The Mac ecosystem also allows users to have a foot in both the proprietary and open source ecosystems on a single platform. Being able to run, say, web development environments and Adobe CS for example, can be a lot easier than farting around with Wine or WSL.
  Granted, there's plenty of downsides to the Mac as well, but the platform definitely has merits.
  
  I don't really think it's better. They're fine for coding.
  They're basically the corporate default because they're easier for companies to buy and remotely administer, they've got good VPN software, good resale value, etc.
  
  I code daily on mine, by choice. I also have no issue coding on Linux and will happily spend all day in a CLI. Homebrew is just as easy as using apt or what have you, at least in my personal experience.
  It isn't always perfect.There was a bit of head scratching over shared libraries one time, until I figured out what stupidity I had to do to make Apple happy, but that is the only notable thing I can remember.
  However, coding on Windows can be super painful depending on the language, especially with all of the backwards paths. The only coding work I enjoy doing on Windows is C#. Worst case WSL2 is around when I need some sanity.
  No matter what, I have any of them available to me and the battery life on a MacBook Air is amazing. The corporate laptop is actually a decent machine and the size and weight is pretty good, especially considering the monstrous bricks the previous models were. Mobile workstation woes I guess. The most amusing part is AutoCAD 2024 running smoothly on the Mac. I never knew it could be that snappy.
  
  Windows is a nightmare for development. Linux is generally not an option, so a UNIX based system is still easier than windows

Not sure why the Linux community is convinced macOS is better than Windows. macOS has the same big issues Windows has (Spyware, ads, and the inability to delete the built in browser) while having worse issues like not supporting openGL/Vulkan, not allowing the user to install old apps, the inability to install hardware, and the small issue of only a select few Linux distros that work with it. Windows isn't good, but it's still better than macOS in most regards.
- User experience is better on macOS vs Windows/gnu+linux newbie distros. Imho.
  
  I bought a Mac laptop once and lasted about 3 months before running back to Linux. Mac OS may be great for some people, but it's definitely not for everyone. It was also hell to pull my photos out of their damn software.
  The machine was ok though.
- (Spyware, ads, and the inability to delete the built in browser)
  Ads for Apple services, yes. I don't approve of that. But this is otherwise bullshit. I can delete any app I want. And I have to opt-in for Apple to get my crashlogs. And there aren't ads for third-party bullshit.
  And Linux is even better. Both OSes are great by comparison. And good on their own. We will never have perfect software.
  
  What about Apple Music, ever deleted that one ?

MacOS is UNIX™

So is there a linux circlejerk? Cause you’re just ridiculous with your tribalist shit…
- Yeah, macos is pretty based. I don't own a Mac product but I have and they were great.
  
  Based on what?
- Yeah its called lemmy.
- I use both Linux and MacOS. MacOS is pretty good, but it's also very weird in the Unix world.
  
  “Very weird to the UNIX world”??? It’s the only one that’s actually UNIX.
  The only complaints on this entire post are down to people that have no idea what they’re doing. It’s full-on Dunning-Krueger. There are plenty of training wheels, but they are trivial to disable/bypass if needed. People need to get a lot more comfortable with justifying their preferences with “I don’t like it” rather than inventing problems and proving their own ignorance.
  
  I honestly don't see why, when I'm looking for help on some problem on a mac, I'll happily open a Linux forum, and throw whatever commands I need into the terminal. Works like a charm every time. Just replace apt with brew or some other reasonable package manager (idk if macports or whatever is actually any decent, never tried it)

I know a lot of people like macOS, and I'm sure they get a lot done with it. For me however, it's easily my least favorite popular OS. That's even considering the terminal running zsh by default, which is miles ahead of Windows.
A quirk that recently bit us at work is that Safari has a maximum allowed version based off your OS version. Now if it was just me as a user, I'd download a 3rd party browser. However, as a developer, I have to build solutions that work for every "reasonable" browser. This means I can't use features that every modern browser has, including Safari, because Safari from 4 years ago didn't have it.
- This used to be the case with IE. you’re always going to have to support at least one legacy browser.that’s one of the few real benefits of everyone moving to chromium based browsers.
  
  Yeah, thankfully I never had to develop with IE in mind. Though I have heard a lot of people dislike it for that reason.
  You're totally right about that being a benefit to everyone moving to chromium. Thankfully Firefox has kept pretty up to date with new features/standards too.
- at my last workplace we used a service called browserstack which cost something like 10$ a month, it allows you to run almost any combination of os/browser versions. you can even set it up to access a local server if you’re running one on your device machine for example. took out all the headache of running the specific ie version that the client was reporting bugs on it worked great but you can definitely find similar services to suit your use case
  
  Thanks for the callout! We actually use browerstack too, but only for exceptions like that one. It's not part of our typical process. Really cool software

As a macOS user I don't agree.
- Me: "ls ~/Downloads", mac-gui: Would you like to give "Terminal" access to the "Downloads" folder?
  
  Ok, it's true that you have to spend 15 mins after setting up to "install developer tools", and remove some safety rails. However, the mac doesn't prevent you from doing that, and doesn't really even try to make it hard (if you've ever touched a terminal before). Once it's set up, you're good to go..
  
  I really like it, and I miss it on Linux. On Linux, I have to trust that each and every sh/bash script, package install script, or some stuff you download from internet are actually safe and don't access your private stuff. On mac I get the prompt when some software needs to access a specific folder.
  
  click yes when this happens. this one is a freebie.
- As a carrot I half-agree.
- FYI https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS

I vividly remember when a friend of mine who runs a small graphic design studio was sent an archive file macOS couldn't open natively and asked me for help. Never having used a Mac and without any clue as to which tools the stupid app shop (which was rather new at the time) held, I couldn't for the life.of me get the blasted thing to obey me, until I found a terminal. I then installed build utils and compiled the frickin' unpacker I needed myself since it only had Linux binaries. Worked like a charm.
- I think it's gotten better, but I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the countless times MacOS was too stupid to recognize a file type, and absolutely rejected all attempts to tell it what it was. I almost always found a way around it, but it would sometimes take dozens of minutes of fighting with the OS; these times almost made me long for Windows.
  Apple's position that users are fucking idiots may be usually justified, but they consistently violate the "... and make the uncommon possible" rule. The philosophy that the OS is always right is frustrating.
  
  Our phones aren't bad at reception, you are holding them wrong
- I can agree that fighting apples UI's can get frustrating (i.e. playing the "try to find the right button" game). What makes me think macs are great is that you get all the freedom you could wish for in a terminal that is unix-compliant, while also getting the reliability of a hugely widespread OS that a bunch of good developers are paid to maintain. With the new macs you also get the apple silicon hardware, which is great.
  I think most people that use macs indeed do need the safety rails, but at the same time they bother me. I know how to disable them within 15 mins of setting up my computer, but if I'm helping someone with an issue, I sometimes first need to spend some time disabling safety nets and installing the tools I need. Also: Shoving iCloud storage down my throat is shit. They should stop that.
- Next time, just install hombrew 😇 in the terminal, of course

What is wrong with the Mac? Is the only device that that makes me feel attached to Linux somehow.
- There's nothing wrong with it if you like it. At work, our servers are windows and I hate them. IN my home lab, I have a couple of guinea pig windows servers to play with and my actual home stack run on various flavors of linux - mainly ubuntu and centos. My gaming rig is windows because i just want to play the game, not play learn how to make the game run. And my workstation that I sit in front of and work at every day is a Mac because at work my job is to fix other people's shit, and I don't want to have to fix my own workstation in the middle of a client's fire like my old windows workstation did to me many a time. I also don't want to have to learn weird ways to do basic tasks when I'm on the clock like I do with my linux laptop. Every OS has a way that is shines, and if your use case aligns don't let anybody make you feel bad about it.
- Linux but perverted version
  
  Well if you put it like that I just want it more…

Why is BSD listed twice?

I mean macos is Unix certified. But *nix systems are better.

unpopular opinion. homebrew is better than apt or yum.
- Probably why it's an option on some distros
- Sorry you're wrong 😛
  Homebrew only supports one user (AFAIK). We had shared iMacs at work, and some stuff was installed using homebrew with the permissions modified so everyone could access what was installed. One night I got bored at work and upgraded some things... Which changed the permissions back to only the user that installed the cask (or whatever) and broke the terminal and other things for everyone else. My coworker was pissed the next time he saw me.
  Any sane Linux package manager (I'm not counting Snap and FlatPak) installs stuff system-wide and all users can access the installed packages.
  Linux is inherently a multi-user OS but Apple apparently stripped that feature from OS X.
  
  Of course things are going to break if you take something that's meant to be installed per-user and open up one user's installation to everyone else on the system. Not Brew's fault your company's IT used it outside spec.

But it's not better than windows.
- Gotta disagree, the gestures are actually amazing. Only pain point is gaming, but I don't really do that, and the dev experience is pretty good compared to windows too. Installing programs is as easy as it should be on windows. Fuck msi installers

I don't mind MacOS

Eh, as long as you don't update it its extremely stable. And it's a UNIX system so you can still do shenanigans if you're still inclined.
- That is an interesting sentence: as long as you don’t update it’s extremely stable
  But this is more about macOS having no package manager (officially), telemetry and such
  
  I know, and trust me, I hate Apple for essentially breaking my computer after an update. But I had my MacBook for 6 years now, use it daily, and have no hiccups other wise.
  Yeah, back when I was playing around with terminal not having a package manager was a huge pain in the ass.
  
  I still don’t get the love for package managers.
  As a windows and Mac user who has tried to use Linux multiple times I can’t stand the centralized managers. They never have what I need and then it ends up out of date and not working.
  Is there some hidden benefit I’m missing? Because sourcing from the developer seems like the much better way to do it like Mac and Windows.

snow leopard was damn near perfect, then they fucked it up

Apple bad! Give me points

It's better than Windows if you like having products all made by the same company

From a product design POV there's something to be said about having control over every aspect of the system. I can see why people enjoy using apple stuff. It's not for me though.

OSX is fine for daily use, but I'd pick Windows over it simply for hardware compatibility.

Had to show a person today how to install Nextcloud. Literally Nextcloud and we couldnt find a way to move to the home folder. Its somewhere in a menu but damn macos is fucking weird, like a toy.
I always thought it was like "the apple unix" or "the better ios which doesnt suck" but actually it seems just as locked down and childish like a toy.
People are used to that?? Damn we are fucked
- As Richard Stallman said: Steve Jobs created a cage and made it so shiny that millions of people want to be trapped in it (From memory so not exact, just search Richard Stallman Apple fanboys are fools)
- MacOS gets much more fluid to use when you memorize the keyboard commands. Command+Shift+G in the Finder brings up a menu where you can type any path you want, including
- Are you saying you couldn't get the home folder to open? Or you couldn't locate the folder?
  Isn't it just the in the shortcut pane, the username with the picture of a house? To you try to open the 'go' menu and select 'home'?
  
  Yes Nextcloud (for some reason) can put itself in the shortcut pane, but for some damn child-proofing reason the home folder is not there??
- cd ~/ && open .
  idk how hard or unintuitive that is?

- The BSDs are still FOSS unlike OS X, OS X was derived from FreeBSD. I definitely wouldn't say that the BSDs are better than Linux though.
- I've administered BSD servers professionally and I have to say that it was one of the nicest, most consistent, operating systems I've worked with. I've worked with Linux since the mid-90s and done more than my fair share of Windows Server/AD admin. and I would gladly manage a room full of BSD hosts again.

MacOS is way worse than Windows.
- mac is way more new user friendly and polished though
  
  Depriving the user of information is helpful until you hide information they want.
  
  The primary goal of MacOS is to prevent your eight-year-old from messing it up too much.
  
  How's MacOS user friendly?
- Yep

macOS is certainly not better than Windows.
- [citation needed]
  
  Trust me bro
- That's just, like, your opinion, man
- You're getting ratio'd but you're right. Core parts of the user experience are steaming piles of dogshit while people praise MacOS for its many gimmicks.
  Finder is an absolute pile of shit and gets first time users addicted to bad habits. It takes digging through hidden settings to even make it match the out of the box functionality that Windows Explorer offers and it still can't match the full potential of Explorer for file management. The integrated search is unpredictable and fuzzy so they went and made Spotlight its own thing.
  Window management is a nightmare if you're actually trying to do multiple things at once without switching windows. Mac OS has not implemented window snapping for years and they still managed to make it suck when they did. Not once have they considered stealing great ideas from the tiling window managers, Apple simply decided to reinvent the wheel and make it square.
  Got multiple applications running at the same time while minimized? Lol, get fucked. The only way to know what's actually running at a glance is the shitty little dot below the dock icon and restoring a specific window takes either way too many clicks or requires you to know the magic keyboard shortcut for untangling your windows (another gimmick they added later in order to actually make the OS ~~usable~~ bearable).
  Got any sort of issue during startup? Here, take this black screen with a single icon. Not even a slight hint as to what the actual problem might be and if you should worry about it. MacOS might seem like a stable OS but that is mainly because it is very well integrated with the limited set of hardware it can actually run on. If any real issues do come up, the troubleshooting experience is basically just a giant "get fucked" sign pointing to the nearest Apple store.
  Sometimes simplicity is a good thing, but usually designing something to be accessible means severely limiting the amount of depth you can go into as an experienced user. Every aspect of the OS and the tools that come with it share this overall problem that there's just not much depth to what you can do with it. Can't have a steep learning curve if there's just nothing to learn.
  And I feel like none of these are unreasonable. I like using the right tools for the right jobs, which is why I run Windows for heavy productivity and engineering work. Desktop Linux has come a long way but it just doesn't (yet) have the required toolset to support engineering workflows. While programming of any kind and getting more complex data wrangling done is best done using Linux. My server needs are also best covered by Linux as most distributions can be run without all the bloat that Windows comes with. And I am sure as shit not paying for Windows Server.
  I just can't find a valid reason for using MacOS. It seems to combine the worst of both worlds into an OS that's like a trial experience of actually using a computer to get things done.
  
  What out of the box functionality are you missing? As for search, from context I'm going to assume you are not being sarcastic. Windows search has to be the single worst search I've ever fucking encountered. Say I made a picture of a bird. I called it bird.jpg, and saved it in my pictures folder. Now, I type 'bird' into explorer search, and it gives me a fucking DLL FILE called matrixRRT.dll. I waited literal minutes for this? Literally the advice on all over the internet for making windows search better is to use something else instead.
  *Agreed, window snapping is better in Windows.
  *It's been a hot minute since I used anything other than Expose to choose which window I want (Which is great, btw) but don't you just click and hold on the dock icon?
  *Agreed, more troubleshooting on startup would be handy. But to be fair, I've had way more startup issues with my windows box than my Mac. In fact, the last Mac startup issue I think I had would have been about six years ago. Whereas I've probably had six in the last year alone on the Windows machine. Sample size of one, of course. shrug
  *Have you met my good friend, the command line?

MacOS is way more often worse than Windows than how Linux does it.
Linux sometimes have important settings hidden in config files that are different in every distro. Sometimes an API is legit worse in Linux, than in Windows.
MacOS has a lot of things that cannot be set at all, constantly deprecated APIs, not to mention it's locked into overpriced hardware. CoreAudio was only better than the Windows native offerings until XAudio came, and Pipewire for Linux seems promising from at least a developer standpoint.
- MacOS is way more often worse than Windows than how Linux does it.
  Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
  
  they don't think it be like it is, but it do
  
  Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse, all depending on your usecase.
- They also charge developers for the privilege of compiling their programs for Apple platforms* (and using one of the worst IDEs known to man).
  ^(*Yes, you can technically compile apps with a free account, but AFAIK they will be restricted to only run on the developer's machines unless you shell out $99 a year.)
  
  wat? You have the whole gcc suite on macOS. What kind of black magic are you trying to compile? I've cross-compiled a bunch of libraries for mac on intel and arm chips without much issues..?
  
  Just move to EU - we’re getting side loading