For Years Mac OS was "the promised land" with acceptable defaults and way for power user to customise almost everything (https://macgui.com/downloads/?cat_id=10). Even iPhone was designed with idea of web apps. After invention of Apple App Store things slowly started to rot. And now we are in moment where after one or two Mac OS iterations you will be totally closed in predictable UX patterns inside walled garden for Security reasons, etc.
I am a long time Apple user and I understand that this platform is not for me anymore. Apple undoubtedly will have expansion of user base, M2 will be monster of processor and will eliminate the idea of Mac Pro tower. But trade off will be: no user control over software and hardware. For general user base this is not a problem. They feel at home because this is nothing new for them. This is iPhone and iPad experience all over.
So what is the solution? The solution for me is to relearn computing. Actually things that I cannot live behind (yet) are Affinity Designer and Logic.
Linux is the way for power user. Arch, Gentoo, Debian, Fedora. Plenty of choices.
I discovered that learning Emacs is investment in future in which I will not depend on corporate idea of "user interface". As a long time designer I sketch and draw on paper with pencil and ink brush. In the past I successfully shipped designs with Inkscape (people were unaware of SVG) so in near future
my work (if is any left) will be done without new Apple.
Even Linux has its issues. The groups competing for "the one right way" to do things. And the ever present issue that you are one update away from breaking something.
I haven't used gnome since I tried version 2, and KDE was before then. I spent years on icewn, blackbox and fluxbox, but now I'm happy enough with xfce.
I haven't customised things like colours on my user interface since the days on windows 3.1 though. Mouse focus, click to hover, highlight to copy, various keyboard shortcuts for sticking windows in the right place (top left, bottom right, full screen, half screen, etc) sure, but colours?
No need to be snarky. KDE is perfectly fine and suits my needs. The window handling is amazing and I can fix sizes, positions, z-indeces, transparency, and tiling however I want without anybody telling me that I'm using it wrong. The same is valid for other free window managers like fluxbox or xfce.
I am aware of this. But at least there is no one with "Hands gathered for prayer" to babysit me with good intentions(by creating vertical integration and using slaves to maximise profit --- https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...). And there is always option to save image of working setup to restore from. This is personal decision and it is a result of slow and painful realisation of reality imposed by Apple ideas for UX over pro user base. And it is simple, it's a choice in experience, when I drive my car I know that I am in control and have responsibility. I just want this feeling to be present when I work - this is my computer and I have a right to control it. Apple idea of personal computer is to be a "licensed dongle" for software access. Yep, it is not exciting experience for me.
> Isn't that exactly the point? Multiple groups can develop their "right way" and you can pick and choose which way you prefer.
In theory. In reality you just end up having to deal with all of them simultaneously to get your workflow going because you're using tools from different authors who all have their opinion of what "the right way" is.
> As for being "one update away from breaking" this is an issue on any OS, at least with Linux you have the choice not to update or even roll back.
Again, in theory but not in practice. Because of the repo/pacakge manager model that Linux systems insist on using, and because there's no such thing as a separation between 'system' and 'application', failure to update often means you are unable to use up-to-date software entirely. Well, unless you want to set up a build environment and compile your own version of that software, which is utterly ridiculous.
> you're using tools from different authors who all have their opinion of what "the right way" is.
This is in fact an issue on any platform right now.
> there's no such thing as a separation between 'system' and 'application', failure to update often means you are unable to use up-to-date software entirely.
I think the entire 'web apps' thing was lying dodge for Steve Jobs until they were actually ready to put out a real API with iPhoneOS 2.0 . The iPhone 1 in many ways was rushed, and once they saw how much traction it got, iPhone 2.0 opened the floodgates.
API v1 was hacky and rushed and it changed a lot in v2.
Nah, the hype on webapps was huge at the time. Even when native apps appeared on mobile and were on another planet of performance, a lot of people insisted webapps were the real future. That’s the movement that eventually gave us Electron and similar runtimes. This goes all the back to the late ‘90s, see for example this influential essay from Spolsky in 2004 [0]: “The new API is HTML, and the new winners in the application development marketplace will be the people who can make HTML sing.”
If anything, the steer to traditional native development was a classic example of Jobs being ready to deny everything he had sworn on until a minute before, just because he had found a new option that was more favorable to his profits.
I am a long time Apple user and I understand that this platform is not for me anymore. Apple undoubtedly will have expansion of user base, M2 will be monster of processor and will eliminate the idea of Mac Pro tower. But trade off will be: no user control over software and hardware. For general user base this is not a problem. They feel at home because this is nothing new for them. This is iPhone and iPad experience all over.
So what is the solution? The solution for me is to relearn computing. Actually things that I cannot live behind (yet) are Affinity Designer and Logic.
Linux is the way for power user. Arch, Gentoo, Debian, Fedora. Plenty of choices.
I discovered that learning Emacs is investment in future in which I will not depend on corporate idea of "user interface". As a long time designer I sketch and draw on paper with pencil and ink brush. In the past I successfully shipped designs with Inkscape (people were unaware of SVG) so in near future my work (if is any left) will be done without new Apple.