Speaking of NixOS’ use of 9P, what if you want to, for whatever inexplicable reason, use macOS, but make it immutable? Immutable Linux distributions are getting a lot of attention lately, and similar concepts are used by Android and iOS, so it makes sense for people stuck on macOS to want similar functionality. Apple doesn’t offer anything to make this happen, but of course, there’s always Nix.
And I literally do mean always. Only try out Nix if you’re willing to first be sucked into a pit of despair and madness before coming out enlightened on the other end – I managed to only narrowly avoid this very thing happening to me last year, so be advised. Nix is no laughing matter.
Anyway, yes, you can use Nix to make macOS immutable.
But managing a good working environment on macOS has long been a game of “hope for the best.” We’ve all been there: a
curl | shhere, a manualbrew installthere, and six months later, you’re staring at a brokenPATHand a Python environment that seems to have developed its own consciousness.I’ve spent a lot of time recently moving my entire workflow into a declarative system using nix. From my zsh setup to my odin toolchain, here is why the transition from the imperative world of Homebrew to the immutable world of nix-darwin has been both a revelation and a fight.
↫ Carette Antonin
Of course it’s been a fight – it’s Nix, after all – but it’s quite impressive and awesome that Nix can be used in this way. I would rather discover what electricity from light sockets tastes like than descend into this particular flavour of Nix madness, but if you’re really sick of macOS being a pile of trash for – among a lot of other things – homebrew and similar bolted-on systems held together by duct tape and spit, this might be a solution for you.
Gotta love the OSNews hatred against macOS, which must be based on Thom not being able to afford a modern macbook to review what it’s actually like
After 15 years of using Linux, macOS and Windows daily and professionally, let me tell you this: Linux is a failure on the desktop, with frequent broken updates, audio suddenly not working, hopelessly bad gpu implementations, bizarre kernel crashes, and the list goes on. Windows is just bad, and about to become an AI vehicle. Not to mention every Windows Update cycle being a scary moment. Maybe it works, maybe you’re about to hit a reboot loop.
macOS? It just works. I made a local account on my first mac 15 years ago, and I’ve upgraded it through several hw upgrades and countless OS upgrades without issues. I don’t like Apple, but I love the macOS/macbook combo. It’s fantastic. The HW performance is incredible.
As for nix on macos: it works great, as does homebrew
acney9,
Welcome first time poster 🙂
I understand someone can come to linux and have a negative opinion about it…fair enough! But your post comes across as extremely biased to me because it doesn’t recognize that the same is true of macos too. As a long time linux and unix user, I’ve used macs and been dissatisfied with them.
To me Homebrew felt like a second class experience and I ran into bumps. As usual a lot of it comes down to what you need and what you are accustomed to. If macos is better for you, that’s great, use it. However it doesn’t mean everyone else can or should agree with you. I say to each their own!
Thom has been anti Apple a long time. Its not about affordiality, he has an axe to grind. Just wait until you hear him go on about Xorg! its exhausting, but Osnews isn’t adevertised to be bias free, so you are going to get his opinion. Usually he’s right, but sometimes…he’s not.
I’m also anti Apple in more than one sense. But their laptop/OS combo is just unbeatable today (if you can afford it)
Apple’s laptops have always had a higher initial cost, but the old saying applies. Buy for price, buy twice! (or buy 4 times if you buy HP…) My sister in law has a 12 year old Mac Book that she still uses.
I’ve been using ISC, FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux, and macOS for a long time (Windows only for gaming and taxes.)
macOS has the best overall experience and I feel at home when using it. It’s like FreeBSD with good graphics and applications,
I have bought Little Snitch, the best application firewall I’ve seen, and iStat as well as a few other apps. Buying good apps is OK.
I even switched to iOS last year after being on Android since version 1.5 as a developer.
Thanks, Apple, for making great things!
Disclaimer: I know I sound like a fanboy, but I mean it.
a_very_dumb_nickname,
It seems like macos feels like home for you. and I am happy for you but it’s still subjective. We have different preferences and backgrounds. I’m more accustomed to GNU tools and on macos everything has slight incompatibilities – the opposite may be true as well. Code doesn’t always compile/build/run clearly out of the box. and frankly I had a lot of trouble porting a postgresql project to macos. I’m sure it was my fault and if I were a daily macos driver things would have gone smoother, but I think macos users forget that macos can be foreign to non-macos users and it’s not the case that macos always works and/or is easy for all.
All the platforms have fanboys. I view computers more as practical tools though with no interest in evangelism so I’ve never been big on “my fav platform is better than yours” arguments.
Our company use psql in many projects and everyone uses macos for dev. Sounds like a skill issue, happy to help out.
acney9,
I got someone more skilled than me to help me fix it., so yes, it was a skill issue on macos. While you might have meant that as an insult to me, it still makes my point that some professionals find linux preferable just as you find macos preferable. There’s nothing wrong with either opinion, but do you accept that your opinions don’t apply to everyone else? Because you should.
I appreciate Linux and I even have a home server on Proxmox. Because it’s good to have some services at home, and it’s also good to have Linux.
What I want to say is that there is a laptop/desktop experience, and a server. For the server, Linux is enough, but for a laptop, you need more from the OS.
You don’t just need an easy porting environment. You need an environment where you can achieve your best productivity, and Linux’s UX is simply a mess.
Alfman,
also, you could use something like orbstack.dev to have a very good aarch64 Linux experience in the terminal if you need Linux for your job.
There is almost no cost in terms of CPU usage for a VM.
a_very_dumb_nickname,
You’re speaking as though Linux is a singular choice, but there’s a lot of desktop choices: some simple, some are more innovative, some are clones of other desktops, etc. You don’t have to like them all, but I wouldn’t categorically write them all off under “UX is simply a mess”. I like XFCE for example, pretty simple and clean and they’re not always needlessly reinventing the wheel.
If anything I find there’s too much choice, and choice itself might be offputting for a new user. But on the other hand, a lot of users coming from other platforms come to linux because of the choice since commercial platforms have been clamping down on user choices.
I’m not trying to sell linux to anyone who doesn’t want it. If it was not already clear, I am against one person making conclusions on behalf of other people, that’s something I find objectionable. But I’ll still point out there are those of us who find linux to be the best choice for us and that’s all that matters. Of course we can discuss everyone’s opinions, but nobody should be thinking that their opinions overrides anyone else’s.
If it works for you then more power to you, it does sound useful. Still, even though apple’s x86 emulation performs better than average, x86 emulation still has a cost. Also buying more expensive & less upgradable hardware just to run my commodity x86 software doesn’t have much appeal for me personally. Apple’s offerings don’t stack up on GPU grounds for raytracing and cuda workloads. Apple used to offer eGPUs as an upgrade option, but apple’s ditched them entirely. Of course this may not matter for casual users, but as someone who does use those features it would be a downgrade for me. Even if apple didn’t limit my hardware choices, it’s still not a given that I’d prefer apple’s software over what I am accustomed to.
Again, I understand these are just “me concerns”, but that’s the point…everybody has their own reasons for making their own choices.
> it doesn’t recognize that the same is true of macos too.
It’s not, I split my time equally on all three and get to observe all kinds of issues on Linux and Windows that just doesn’t appear on macOS. Sure, it’s not perfect, but it’s eons ahead as a desktop OS.
acney9,
That’s exactly the bias I was pointing out though. You’re entitled to your opinions of course, but not recognizing that other people have different opinions isn’t a reasonable view.
There’s no bias here, sir. You clearly can’t read. I use all three major OS’s daily without prejudice and I’m just reporting facts. Linux and Windows are crap desktop OSs for many reasons, while macOS is not.
acney9,
Use whatever you prefer, it’s totally your choice. Your opinions are not an issue, however they are your subjective opinions are not objective facts! You seem to be taking personal offense to our pointing it out, but come on now…even someone who shares your preference for macos should able to agree that it’s fair for others to have different preferences.
I was a Mac user for 10+ years (2008 to about 2020) and I totally agree with Thom.
I dreaded every MacOS update since it always broke my environment and now I have 100% ditched Apple and don’t want anything to do with them ever again.
I’m really happy with Linux though!
LMAO, what a poser
Rather a poser than a troll.
MacOS was great back in the Snow Leopard days (I really loved it) but for every update it got worse and worse and when I stopped using it – it sucked really bad.
The hardware is nice but the OS is not.
The hardware/OS combo is fantastic. You just need to grok it.
And you’re banned. Giving the troll some time to dig their own grave always works out.
Things are overall going to shit and, after having macos as my main OS all the way from 9.1 to Mojave, now I split my time between HEAVILY sanitized Windows 11 and FreeBSD.
macos used to be amazing. Full UNIX power + super polished interface (expose changed my life when it first came out!)+ access to applications like MS Office and Photoshop (one must still pay his bills) but now half of the computer is locked down and Apple is not consistent in providing the goods.
I relied professionally on Aperture for my photo management workflow. Think vaults, integration with applescript, face recognition. I trusted Apple. Migrating away from it took me well over a year working 3-4 hours a week on it. Also suddenly nuking things like 32-bit support and arbitrariliy removing firewire support from the OS. Why? Am I going to throw in the trash a multiple-thousand euro audio interface or film scanner because Apple decided that they can’t spare 3 hours/year of development time to keep the library running as it was on newer OS?
I open my film scanner software on Windows 11 and it works PERFECTLY. It was last updated in 2005 or so. You can even see in the task manager Windows Image Aquisition 32 to 64 bit API translation interface coming up in task manager. So to all the crap Microsoft has been doing with Windows, if I need to operate my scanner, this is where I go.
And “yadayadayada should buy new stuff”. No, thanks. I’d rather (maybe) retire someday. I got sick of Apple deciding that my phone or my watch or my multicore 64GB of RAM workstation is ewaste. I am not keen on paying rent to Apple without good reason, especially if this rent is a 5000 EUR computer every couple of years. Sorry, but no.
For all the rest? FreeBSD or Linux work fine and has as many quirks as macos or Windows do, sans enshittification.
Shiunbird,
That’s just it. Regardless of which system you are on, change can be frustrating and it takes time & effort. Sometimes it feels better to stick with what you’ve got, not because it’s the best but because at least you know it and the benefits of switching, even if real, can be hard to justify the frustration of switching.
Unrelated to macos, but sometimes I work with some clients who are eager to switch software because their existing software stack is awful, and it hurts them on a regular basis. Other times they’ll stick with an existing software stack that isn’t good per say, but it’s good enough.
That annoys me too.I hate having to throw out peripherals over driver/OS incompatibilities.
I don’t know what kind of obscure or weird Linux distro you’ve used, but none of what you said is true. I’ve been on my current Linux distro for about 7 years and I’ve done multiple OS and hardware upgrades, without a hitch! I’ve never seen a kernel crash in all those years, my audio has always worked and the last “broken” update I’ve had is years ago. You sound like you have absolutely no clue how to work with/manage Linux and definitely used a distro that is not for you! And that is that!
Linux has been my daily driver for 26 years now and in all those years I’ve had to reinstall it only twice. For me and many, the “year of Linux desktop” lies far in the past
I’ve had the kinds of experiences many have complained about on here, but I can break that down to a couple of categories.
1. “Linux” lately has been quite stable, and Wayland is finally “ready” (mostly.) Bazzite is almost ready. (There is one zram issue they really need to fix: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/issues/3409 <– that's a deadly bug, and it would take seconds to fix it.) This has been stable through a year and a half of updates, with only the very occasional problem. But yeah, it has done things like broken the vsync on KDE for a week or so. That DOES happen on Linux.
2. In most cases where I've had real problems with updates, it's been on non-immutable systems using 3rd level derivatives of one of the big baseline operating systems. I'm talking about problems due to trying to get something working – some hardware, or less popular software package – that isn't in the Pop!_OS apt repos (third level.) So you go upstream, and mess something up with Ubunbu or Debian apt repositories. This is a problem with many Ubuntu derivatives, and so I avoid them like the plague. (Also, Debian is easy these days, so I just use that.)
3. Issues with failing hardware. I had a miserable experience with Nobara on one of my old laptops. It turns out, the SSD was failing, so the darn thing kept getting corrupted. I thought it was Nobara, since it would generally fail after an update, but it wasn't. Yet, Nobara is a 2nd level distro, similar to Ubuntu.
Anyway – I really like Silverblue and Bazzite (and Steam OS) – immutable is the way.
I hate immutable distros with a passion! It constantly gets in the way and makes the whole experience less flexible. Besides, it’s my OS on my PC and I decide how or what to configure. Immutable is good in special cases where you don’t want many people using it to modify core settings but on a desktop, this is a no-go for me.
Thats an interesting perspective, but I have to mostly disagree. I have felt that to be an issue with SteamOS, but not with bazzite at all. There are ways to add or modify what I need, even in the immutable base. I use homebrew for most user space packages, and when I do need to change something in the system, it’s relatively easy to use ostree commands to add the layers I need without risk of messing up the core operating system. But its been rare I need to do that because of homebrew and distrobox.
I used to say that about macOS and it was my favorite desktop OS for a very long time, from the PPC days through the release of the M1. It’s always had its issues fitting into my workflow fully, but by and large it was the most complete hardware/software package you could get in an off-the-shelf system and was a pleasure to use most of the time. It was also my go-to for music production as a lot of that ecosystem is Mac-centric.
Lately though, “it just works” is absolutely not the case, with legitimate but unsigned software needing archaic incantations at the command line to be blessed to run, no true superuser account without major hacks, and the iOS-ification of the desktop interface even when it makes absolutely no sense. Why design a desktop operating system with touch-device controls? Why transparent windows and popups that are a nightmare for accessibility? Why a user-hostile instead of user-friendly approach like in the old days?
“It just works” now only is true if you don’t dare to step outside of what Apple wants you to do with the machine. It is not yours, no matter how much you paid for it; it’s theirs and they will remind you of that fact every single time you try to do something that isn’t approved by Apple.
When that is combined with how absolutely shitty of a company Apple itself is, macOS is now at the very bottom of my list of favorite OSes. I still love the idea of it, but the implementation is horribly broken for anyone needing to actually own their computer and have it do real work.
You can still disable that walled garden stuff in macos. They have relegated the option to disable the gate keeper to the terminal – and I am 1000% on board with this. As I type this my father just got scammed by people trying to steal his money – again. I don’t want him to be able to turn that feature on – ever. I want it to be to technical, and so scary, that it triggers heaps of hesitation deep within his heart. I should point out- the younger generations, they are on track to be EVEN WORSE than our boomer parents, when it comes to understanding all this. A coworker’s parents just wiped out their entire hard drive following prompts from Chat GPT. I’m 1000% on board with hiding these switches – 10,000%.
That said, if they do ever fully remove the ability to do that, then yes, you’ll have a strong point here.
You’re right that there is a delicate balance between legitimate security concerns and ease of use. I would agree with your position 100% if that was the only reason for Gatekeeper, but we have to be completely honest here. Apple’s goal with it is to eventually lock the desktop down the same way the mobile OS is locked down, and prevent installing anything they don’t profit from. And for their part, Microsoft needs to catch up with Apple when it comes to legitimate security on the desktop, but even if they tried they would screw it up like they always do. In short, I’m not bashing Apple’s methods in this one instance, I’m bashing their intent.
CaptainN-,
I agree with Morgan. we need to be extremely careful about the slippery slope aspects in play. Security features that were once optional can become mandatory once enough of the user base has gotten herded into the corral. Consider microsoft requiring online accounts for windows. It started out being optional, then even after it was officially required MS still left in bypass methods, slowly but consistently turning the screw making it incrementally harder to avoid capture.
https://www.techpowerup.com/341656/microsoft-blocks-online-account-bypass-on-windows-11
This is justified as an important step for keeping users secure.
Most of us can agree this strategy is harmful for consumers in the long run, but the reason it works is because they don’t lock the gate all of a sudden. By slowly engineering incremental lockdowns over time they can gradually reach their intended goal while significantly reducing the immediate backlash. Someone who reasons they can bypass the control mechanisms right now may chose to dismiss criticisms in the moment, helping corporations fortify their control further. But every inch lost leaves consumers with a weaker hand to fight it in the future. The corps know this, and it’s a big part of the strategy. Once they have the majority of the user base locked in, the power users may find that tech companies no longer care about power user freedoms. I don’t put this beneath executives at any corporation, be it apple, microsoft, google, etc. I was kind of blindsided by google’s intent to kill sideloading on android. Although they backed off after backlash, I think their intentions are still maligned and we have to stay vigilant.
Its not a slippery slope to me. Its binary. We can either enable any source for installs or we can’t. If they do eventually lock it down (binary), that’s the end for the entire platform, full stop.
But I dont mind making it terminal only for advanced users. End users are growing less technical over time, not more technical. At this point even the desktop metaphor is failing them (they can’t tell the difference between a browser pop-up and a system prompt). Its not acceptable to just ignore these real world problems that have real world, sometimes dire consequences for mistakes, IMHO.
But as I said, if they ever do lock it down for real, that’s the end. No apologies. Take off, nuke it from orbit.
Just to clarify – I don’t use macos on any of my personal machines. I just don’t agree with the criticisms of macos specifically. I find it a lovely platform, about 20 times better than Windows. But I use Linux – Bazzite, currently. And I won’t touch Windows ever again (save for a small partition I have just in case I need to update firmware on some device or another.)
CaptainN-,
It’d be the end of the platform for you perhaps. but do you think apple cares? Restrictive devices & services has been their bread and butter and they know it. You could leave but you would be an outlier. Most of the user-base, having become accustomed to the restrictions will accept it as the new normal. Owner rights can be taken away just like that.
While I’m glad you are against restrictions & walled gardens, I am concerned that your reluctance to criticize apple for it enables them to continue in the very direction that leads to these restrictions & walled gardens becoming more ingrained. I feel this parallels the increasing alarm over Trump authoritarianism by people who had the power to vote against it but did not when they had the chance. This is what is meant by the slippery slope. Maybe the problem is that more people don’t recognize their own role in enabling poor outcomes, Still, the concessions and excuses we make to not take action today can leave us far worse off in the end game. whether we recognize it soon enough or not.
Yes, both can be true though. You can like an operating system and the company behind it can also be plotting ways to gain more control over owners. Unfortunately for consumers all the tech giants keep trying to chip away at owner rights, even if slowly.
I’m not able to completely avoid it… I come back to it for work and windows only software such as for my oscilliscope. But I do my best not to be dependent on it and on the whole I use linux wherever I can.
Well yes, I mostly speak for myself! I’d never use it again – but also, I doubt whatever market share for workstations they command now would remain if they did that. The group I’m with are developers. There’s absolutely no way developers would go for something like this. Unless I’m completely nuts. I think it would cost Apple i tangible ways to do that. (And no, I’m not confident they wouldn’t do something that stupid – see my comments about games – a market they could easily dominate if they simply wanted to make better decisions.)
CaptainN-,
Apple will sell developers computers of course but it’s such a tiny market for apple that apple doesn’t have to care about them. Developers forced to have a macos computers to do IOS development will continue to do so. But the fact is that developers are not apple’s bread and butter. Unless it’s a $8k+ macpro, apple probably won’t be bothered to create products designed for developers.
More coercive macos restrictions, should they come to pass, would likely resemble those in IOS. Companies and developers would need to buy into some apple partner program to unlock certain access rights that aren’t available to the general public. This is how most walled gardens end up. So if you say “I want more access”, they’ll turn around and tell you to sign up for membership in a program that offers more access…at a cost.
It’s true they haven’t done well with games. If they were willing to pay up they could get some exclusives. But rather than build up these critical partnerships apple has been very dismissive towards the major game studios. I think that apple’s stance has done more to harm apple’s standing with gamers than anything that benefited apple.
When it comes to hardcore gaming specs, apple’s modern M- architecture isn’t that competitive due to the lack of a dedicated GPU. While apple’s iGPUs may be the best on the market, they are still iGPUs and suffer from the same CPU/GPU saturation issues that have plagued all iGPUs. So apple’s hardware isn’t in a strong position to win the gaming benchmarks. On the other hand though, this hard core gamer culture has kind of gotten ridiculous. I see youtube reviewers focusing so much on a game’s technical aspects and pixel comparisons and ignoring a game’s ability to simply pass the fun test, haha. Apple doesn’t need to have the best benchmarks to offer fun games. But it’s the hardcore gamers who seem to be pushing the high expectations.
I don’t agree that their MX architecture isn’t powerful enough for games (especially their Pro tier), and better – it could easily scale. They just won’t do it.
I actually threw some ideas at ChatGPT – it ended up arguing a position more similar to what you are saying – that Apple want platform control, not general computing, so they strategically wouldn’t do this. I agree – I also think it’s stupid, and self defeating.
If interested, a Chat GPT thread https://chatgpt.com/share/69710541-f220-8010-a4bb-31356be4420c
CaptainN-,
I didn’t mean to say it’s not powerful enough for games. If anything I was trying to make the case that games don’t need so much hardware to be fun. However for the hardcore gamers who want the best, apple’s GPUs are less powerful than discrete consumer GPUs. It’s especially noticeable when the CPU and GPU are loaded simultaneously. It’s one of the fundamental shortcomings of integrated GPUs.
IMHO apple’s design is compelling for LLM because the GPU can access all of system memory – where else can one find a consumer grade GPU that can access 128GB+? Also the unified memory can make it so that programmers don’t need to treat CPU and GPU memory as distinct address spaces, which could make it nicer to work with in software. But it also creates more contention between CPU and GPU and apple’s CPU and GPU do perform worse when operating at the same time. So while there are some advantages to apple’s unified architecture, for typical games the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.
Discrete GPUs with dedicated resources and independent cooling that are very clearly advantageous over iGPUs. But discrete GPUs have disadvantages too, notably they communicate with the CPU via a “slow” PCI bus (PCIE gen 5 x16 = 128GB/s) compared to apple’s M4 Max chips…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M4
The thing is PCI bandwidth just isn’t a significant bottleneck for typical games. There’s way more bandwidth than needed to load assets and dispatch heavy compute kernels to the GPU. Heck, even using PCIEx8 instead of PCIEx16 doesn’t make any noticeable difference for most applications because the bandwidth wasn’t even close to being saturated.
https://linustechtips.com/topic/1459410-testing-a-x16-graphics-card-in-x8-results-in-no-performance-difference/
Wow, that’s a very long discussion….haha. While I am fascinated by the technology behind LLMs and chatGPT, I’m still quite hesitant to use it in place of traditional sources.
I concede these arguments about discrete GPUs being better at compute kind of betrays my own opinion about modern hardware being overkill for average gaming anyway. It’s quite telling that the upcoming steam machine is going to have surprisingly low end specs, focusing much more on “value”. This will likely bug hardcore gamers who favor cutting edge hardware that pushes boundaries. However steam may be doing a favor for average gamers who’d rather focus on gameplay and less on hardware requirements.
I mean, this conversation is just for fun. 🙂
I’ll point out though – PS4/5, the recent Xboxes, Switch 1/2, Steam Deck – these are ALL iGPUs, with shared system memory (and ALL AMD, except Switch). Only Steam’s forthcoming Steam Machine (the Gabe Box) uses a dGPU (also AMD). There’s no reason iGPU can’t be fast – plenty fast enough for gaming – and I’ve gamed on my work provided M1 Max – that thing is FAST – even when emulating x86_64 for something like Cyberpunk, using duct-taped translation layers like cross over and whiskey (RIP). Performance is NOT a problem, and that’s on an M1 – they are on M5 now. Just imagine if they scaled a device just for gaming.
And yeah, Chat GPT is long winded. There’s an algorithm reason for that – but yeah, LONG.
CaptainN-,
Yes I’ll agree that iGPUs are “fast enough” for most gamers. This isn’t the same as saying the best iGPUs can match the performance of the best discrete GPUs brethren though. It’s not really a close call, however in light of the fact that hardware advances have been going up against diminish returns, iGPUs shouldn’t be considered a dealbreaker. Hardcore gamers who pride themselves in running max settings at 4K may disagree, but IMHO once differences are marginal and you have to pause and look very closely to see the difference between settings, then who cares. Haha.
I say this in terms of gaming. However in terms of GPU heavy applications like blender and cuda, I do value the higher performance of discrete GPUs. Not only that, but discrete GPUs offer a compelling upgrade path. Apple stumbles badly here. Short of selling your entire rig (including the soldered storage drive), you have no upgrade path.
Yeah I agree on Apple stumbling on dGPU add-in support. Calling their workstation boxes “pro” machines, without a PCIe slot, with real third party GPU support, is absurd. But here again, I’d make the argument that they COULD release a decent game focused mini-box, with a GPU slot, and make a play for gamers. They just won’t, for myopic reasons (and rent-seeking, yes). It’s a self-own, IMO, and no, I’m not humble about it – I think it’s objectively stupid. There is an argument that offering a gaming box like that would eat their Pro sales, but I doubt that – the people who buy those would still buy the more expensive ones – the people who buy those aren’t thinking about cost. (And I doubt that’s a very big market – they haven’t even updated it beyond M2.)
CaptainN-
Yeah, obviously we agree they could do better.
If apple announced support for discrete GPUs, it would highlight the performance discrepancy between their iGPU and 3rd party discrete GPUs, which is probably not something they care to admit.
On a more technical level though, I do see obstacles with the way apple painted themselves into a corner with unified memory. While it can be a nice feature, realistically it closes doors when it comes to scaling up. Allowing programs to share memory between any CPU/GPU core increases the the contention of shared resources. By contrast dGPUs easily scale up thanks to their dedicated resources. The PCI bus is mostly used for dispatching and not within the computational path.
The author of this next link exhibits some apple bias in framing unified memory in a way that highlights the benefits but not it’s cons and also omits information that reveals just how much of a lead nvidia have. Nevertheless it does a good job in documenting the technical differences so I’m linking it here anyway.
https://akashicmarga.github.io/2024/10/22/Metal-GPU-Kernels.html
The point being if apple reintroduces official support for GPUs with non-unified memory, that leads to developers going back to writing software for non-unified memory (obviously). This naturally softens developer interest in writing software that can only run on apple’s unified memory architecture. I’d bet that apple feel this is counterproductive to their own interests.
It’s still absolutely the case that it just works
Apple is a shit company, yes, but their macOS/macbook combo is unbeatable. Linux is a joke desktop OS and only people with no money, needy “I use arch btw” community clowns, and corporate haters use it. That’s fine by me, but doesn’t change the fact that Linux is butt.
I get that macOS works for your use case and there’s nothing wrong with that, nor with you for continuing to use it. By all means, use what works for you. By the same token, other people use what works for them. But to resort to childish insults to demean and belittle people who choose software you don’t like? Grow the fuck up dude. This isn’t high school, you’re not in the cool clique because you use a Mac, and resorting to slinging personal attacks against other people just because they happen to work differently from you renders your entire argument invalid.
Linux clowns spend eons learning how to configure shit so that it barely works as a desktop OS, and that investment in time must be defended at all cost.
I don’t use mac to be cool, because I use mac, linux and windows. You would know this if you read the original comment.
I run macOS on modern hardware, and my opinion doesn’t differ much from Thom’s. I do have a slightly different perspective since I support a school district full of modern Macbooks, though, since every issue I experience is amplified dozens or even hundreds of times.
There was a recent update to macOS 15 that, when installed, removed all printers for a number of our users. No idea why it did it, or why it only affected a handful of users, so really the only way to deal with it is just to wait for a support ticket to come in on a per-user basis.
It is really common for macOS to randomly decide that logging in as a new network user on a machine is no longer possible, so its connection to Active Directory has to be removed and re-added for that to work again. This doesn’t happen with the Windows machines.
More and more features are losing the ability to be configured via the command line, as well. Windows, on the other hand, is gaining more and more command-line configurability.
Then again, most problem related to Active Directory belongs to Active Directory. It’s a bugfest like no other.
Except all the other gear that interacts with AD works fine. It’s just macOS that has this issue.
I get you have an OS preference, but damn, dude, don’t make it your personality. Calling random people posers and unskilled because they have a different experience than you isn’t a good look.
Wrong, AD is a shitshow and bugs out frequently even on…. you guessed it, Windows
Not a macOS problem. You’re just a poser.
This is a weird bit of hate for what has for me always been a stable platform. macos doesn’t require constantly reinstalling it like Windows does, because, well, it doesn’t break, really. It has its issues and oddities, but it’s relatively easy to fix almost anything, so long as you don’t treat it like Windows. Also, homebrew is stable – really stable. I don’t know what you are talking about here. It’s so stable, it’s used on Bazzite. This ranty hate filled post was one of the stranger ones, Thom.
That said, the dumbest possible decisions ever made in all of tech, is the collective set of decisions that Apple keeps making, over and over again, around gaming. They could dominate that space, but they just keep shooting themselves in the face. It’s bizarre, and worthy of some kind of hate, and it’s just so dumb.
yeah, Apple does a lot of dumb sh•t, but the base OS and hardware is just stellar, which is what I need
I should clarify one little thing in my position – I love macos, and don’t find what they’ve done so far in it, to cross any lines (though I understand the concern.) BUT – they HAVE crossed a line in their hardware. I use macos at work, only because my company issues laptops. I would NOT buy one, personally. There is only 1 reason – soldered SSD. That’s unacceptable. There are technical reasons to explain soldered RAM – I get that. AMD is requiring that with Strix Halo. That is valid. But there is ZERO reason to make it so damn hard to service or upgrade your SSD, and it crosses a line for me. I’d never buy one those machines with my own money because of that. AND – because Apple did that, it does lend some credibility to the “concern” people have about Apple’s intent with macos.
My MacOS setup has been through all OS upgrades all the way back to 2001, when I switched from Linux –I guess I was tired of editing Xorg/XFree86 modelines–
A stable, well thought UI and the power of Unix + brew underneath.
I *sold* my powerbook titanium G4 in 2015, 14 years of usage, and bought used iMac Late 2009 and a MacBook 2013 which I am still using, and then a 2017. iMac.
Just installed EndeavourOS on the MacBook, and upgraded iMac with OpenCore patcher, everything runs beautifully.
Still a happy user, and MacOS integration with the iPhone is fantastic.
As the gear is for me only, I have no use for immutable; in case, I can go back owing to MacOS or btrfs snapshots, that is enough.
zorobo,
Yeah those days were very unfriendly, haha. Although in fairness modern linux users would have no idea what you’re talking about.
Cool.
This is one of those things that I get the consumer appeal, but I’m wary of the vendor locking aspects. A lot of these features are designed to subtly rope us further into the ecosystem while making it harder to BYOD and have them play well together. Unfortunately it’s hard as a consumer to buck this trend because they’re all doing it.