[HN Gopher] Can you slim macOS down?
___________________________________________________________________
Can you slim macOS down?
Author : ingve
Score : 147 points
Date : 2026-01-21 07:48 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eclecticlight.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (eclecticlight.co)
| tux3 wrote:
| If you don't like the conclusion, and you have an M1 or M2, see
| also https://alx.sh
|
| Asahi's not perfect, but there's no restrictions. You bought the
| computer, after all.
| patates wrote:
| Losing Thunderbolt is a bit too much, isn't it?
| chrisldgk wrote:
| That and losing the ability to connect displays via USB-C is
| what's keeping me from switching sadly. I love what the Asahi
| team is doing and I'm confident they'll get it figured out. I
| wish I could do something to help, but this type of
| programming is far beyond my skill level so there's not much
| I can do other than donate here and there.
| anschl wrote:
| DP over USB-C is coming soon:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OAiOfCcYFM&t=1681s
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| I thought development for it was not in a good place?
| prmoustache wrote:
| Looks pretty much stalled to me and with new versions coming
| every 1.x year it is unlikely to improve much.
|
| Seems ok enough if you want to use a M1 mini as desktop or
| server.
| peterisza wrote:
| Isn't the battery life shit? Maybe I'll try it
| jbstack wrote:
| I've never personally understood the point of macOS for power
| users (other than cases where you're required to use one e.g. for
| work). I can understand it for casual users who just want
| something simple that works for basic tasks, but what does macOS
| offer a power user that Linux doesn't, and which makes it worth
| sacrificing the ability to run your machine the way you want? In
| Linux you'd solve OP's problem by just building up from a minimal
| distro like Arch or NixOS.
| nxobject wrote:
| For me, battery life and power management - even with the
| number of services that macOS runs. I run Asahi Linux when
| docked, but on the go I estimate I get a warmer lap and about
| ~1/2 hr less.
| rado wrote:
| Pixelmator Pro
| eXpl0it3r wrote:
| A lot of users still like the mix of a good UI for most tasks,
| while being able to do a lot of power user stuff without an
| added layer. Plus many will choose macOS also for the hardware,
| which support for new chipsets is still rather WIP under Linux.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > A lot of users still like the mix of a good UI for most
| tasks
|
| This is funny; it's actually the main reason why I asked for
| a PC when I was up for renewal at work, so I can run Linux on
| it.
|
| I truly like the hardware of the mbp, especially the screen
| (don't care about battery life, I mostly use it at a desk
| with power nearby). The OS itself is fine, since it can
| easily run most of the tools I use. I also like how it
| handles special characters (I can easily type French on an
| US-ANSI keyboard) to the point that I've implemented that on
| my Linux and Windows machines.
|
| But what kills it for me is the UI behavior. The window
| management drives me crazy, especially when multiple screens
| are involved. And there are quite a few aggravating issues,
| like being unable to control the audio output of my screen's
| speakers (connected through DP), being unable to turn off
| external screens (sometimes I just want to use the power of
| my monitor, which has an integrated KVM).
|
| Yeah, I know there are programs trying to fix these, but I
| have to go out of my way trying to find them, and then
| they're hit and miss. On Linux, everything works as expected
| (though, granted, it's possible I've won the hardware-
| compatibility lottery, since it actually works better than on
| Windows).
| physicsguy wrote:
| The big thing for me has always been (a) reliability of the
| hardware (b) good performance/battery trade off (c) nix-like
| environment.
|
| In my prev. job I had a windows laptop with WSL2 though and I
| actually was super productive with that. But the laptop
| hardware offerings at the same price point are rubbish, just
| not very robust. Linux machines if you're in a corp and want
| one in the next 6 months are usually even more restrictive on
| hardware than they are on Windows.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| > what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't
|
| Your definition of power user may vary but for me:
| - Especially for laptops, good integration with hardware (and
| good hardware), energy efficiency, power management -
| Support from commercial software vendors
|
| I could probably use linux for a desktop machine, that would
| work ok. But it's a no-go for laptops. And I've tried... and
| try regularly...
| pseidemann wrote:
| Perfectly working drivers.
|
| As a power user, I want to use, not to fix, my tools.
|
| I might tinker sometimes, but that is unrelated for me.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Exactly this. The question pretends that there is a whole
| group of "power users" who all do the same thing, but that
| couldn't be further from the truth IMO. There are users like
| me who program and don't want to spend forever configuring
| audio driers, etc. There are power users who like to tinker.
| And there are people who do a bit of both, to every extent on
| the scale.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't, and
| which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your
| machine the way you want?
|
| Primarily much better compatibility with graphical apps.
| Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite are two that many
| people need access to. Both have first-party offerings on
| macOS, and somewhat poor support via wine on Linux.
|
| With Apple Silicon, the hardware is also particularly
| excellent. And only runs macOS well.
| yomismoaqui wrote:
| > I've never personally understood the point of macOS for power
| users
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Nobody ever sees my Mac but me and the monitor is a horrible
| old Dell one with a thick black bezel. If we were talking
| about iPhones, I might agree with your point.
| closewith wrote:
| The same thing is true for laptops like Frameworks or
| Thinkpads running linux, just conspicuous to a different
| audience.
| matwood wrote:
| At this point, not-a-Mac often stands out more if you want to
| cite conspicuous consumption.
| deaux wrote:
| Haha right. They last so much longer than non-Mac laptops
| from a hardware PoV, and especially how long they end up
| being used. That's why they retain their second hand value so
| much better than Windows laptops, because you can buy a
| Macbook of a few years old, know exactly what you're getting
| and that it will last another few years unless you're
| extremely unlucky.
| p_ing wrote:
| You can do that as long as you're comfortable with
| unfixable processor security vulnerabilities.
| stabbles wrote:
| It just happens to be so that hardware which power users like
| to use comes with macOS installed.
| sakisv wrote:
| For me it's quite simple: It works and it stays out of my way.
|
| I've owned a macbook since 2010, with a short break during the
| touchbar era when I got myself an XPS with windows which I
| dual-booted with ubuntu and later a system76 that comes with
| their own flavour of Ubuntu, called Pop! Os.
|
| The situation in windows (windows 10 at the time) was abysmal.
| Completely incoherent UI, settings spread across different
| menus, ads in start menu, slow and broken search, constant
| nagging to update windows, to update the drivers, to tell me
| that the drivers have been updated, to install or update my
| antivirus, etc. These were not things that I installed myself,
| these were included with Dell's setup of the machine.
|
| On the system76 laptop things were different. Things were calm,
| I could configure everything as I wanted and things worked.
| Until at some point I installed a new version of something,
| which had nothing to do with sound, but it broke sound, just as
| I was preparing to join a meeting, and just as we were going
| into the second phase of lockdowns in late 2020 so online
| meetings were here to stay.
|
| My macbooks are reliable. I've got the M1 as soon as it came
| out and I never got a single issue with it. I've upgraded twice
| (I think) across major versions and everything worked. I don't
| have to worry about it leaving me hanging when I need it.
|
| (And that's not taking into account things like build quality,
| touchpad quality, battery life, silence, etc)
|
| In the end of the day, I do a lot of debugging as part of my
| work. When I don't work, I want to _choose_ what I will be
| debugging, not have it forced on me.
|
| And don't get me wrong: I see where Apple is going, I know that
| they're a greedy company that want to maintain their iron grip
| and have the final say on what we can and cannot do on _our_
| machines.
|
| However, for me for the time being it's the least bad option.
| timeon wrote:
| > It works and it stays out of my way.
|
| This was reason for me as well. More than decade.
| Unfortunately it is not the case anymore.
|
| Hardware is still best (in my opinion) but software is not.
| graemep wrote:
| One problem with system76?
|
| I have very few problems with linux, despite running a fairly
| unstable rolling release distro. MacOS does have problems. I
| have no idea whether its more of less reliable, but going on
| personal experience is not a good sample.
| flowerbreeze wrote:
| I do like the build of Macbooks and especially the solid
| casing. Unfortunately I could never get used to MacOS even
| within 2.5 years and it was not quite as reliable for me as
| it is for many others.
|
| XCode installations failing, Docker installation failing
| after an OS update never to work again without completely
| reinstalling OS, plugging in headphones would crash the
| Macbook (until OS update 6 months after I got it), video
| calls slowing to a halt, if sharing screen etc.
|
| Also there were some things I just never got used to in Mac
| like window tabbing & minimize working in a Mac way. Maybe if
| I hadn't had a personal laptop that used Linux at the same
| time, I would have gotten used to it a little better, but I
| just plain hated the way it worked.
|
| To be fair, I think it was still more reliable than varieties
| of Windows, especially the later ones! If tabbing worked more
| like under Windows and it allowed a bit more configuration, I
| might be using Mac these days.
|
| That leaves Linux. Although it's not flawless neither after
| configuring Debian + i3, it works exactly like I want and the
| same installation has been reliably working for 5+ years.
| However, getting to the setup that just works certainly took
| several tries and depends on laptop compatibility, so... No
| ideal choices exist right now I think. Just luck and what
| someone is most used to in the end.
| closewith wrote:
| > what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't,
|
| Quite simply, an OS that you don't have to think about. I moved
| to MacOS from linux after seeing my co-founder use their
| Macbook basically without any problems, much longer battery
| life, nice conveniences like shared clipboard and wifi password
| sharing, airplay, Airpods integration, better screens and font
| rendering, perfect migrations to new hardware, etc.
|
| While I learned a lot tinkering with linux for a decade, at
| some point you can't beat something that just works.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| > what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't, and
| which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your
| machine the way you want?
|
| Access to Apple ecosystem - iCloud e. t. c. If one uses iPhone
| it's quite convenient to have access to the same cloud services
| from a laptop. FindMy is a big one for me - if I lost or
| misplaced my phone I can use FindMy on Macbook to locate it.
| While it's technically possible to use FindMy via web you'll
| need the phone as 2FA which is not an option when I'm trying to
| find it.
| GeorgeOldfield wrote:
| battery management, ARM chips, SoC ram, only decent trackpad in
| laptops, only good audio output in laptops (3V RMS for 150+ Ohm
| headphones. literally no other laptop has it), etc. These
| things are only possible on Macs because of economies of scale.
| But the most important part, to me, is software. again,
| economies of scale -- almost every polished app comes to Mac OS
| as the first OS because of the monetization potential per
| install. Then apps for Windows or Linux are often an
| afterthought or are non-native.
|
| Mac OS is not great, no platform is perfect. Gotta think what
| is important to you. Are you using your machine as a thin
| client? Then maybe Linux is fine. Windows is obviously tragic
| -- zero advantages there.
|
| about the article, Mac OS can be gutted via disabling SIP (I'm
| doing it on 1 macbook air), but we have so much compute and RAM
| that it doesn't make much sense for most use cases. I know that
| some companies do this with minis/studios to make makeshift
| servers.
| jonpalmisc wrote:
| For me: pro & creative apps. GIMP/Inkscape will never replace
| Photoshop/Illustrator/Affinity. Ableton, Logic, Pro Tools, etc.
| are not available on Linux and with the exception of REAPER,
| the alternatives are awful. And even with a Linux-compatible
| DAW, very few plugins are available on Linux.
|
| On macOS, I can work on hobby software & graphics/music.
| throwawa5231 wrote:
| As far as I know, current Photoshop works fine under Linux
| woth wine [0].
|
| [0]: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Adobe-Photoshop-2025-Wine-
| Patc...
| eldaisfish wrote:
| This is a bit like claiming that a flat head screwdriver
| can sort of work with a Philips head screw... until it
| strips the head, you can't see it and you don't know how to
| fix it.
| austinjp wrote:
| How's Bitwig these days? I've not checked it for years.
|
| https://www.bitwig.com/
| jonpalmisc wrote:
| Not bad, but different DAWs cater to different workflows.
| To me (and most), Bitwig feels much more optimized for
| creating electronic music than recording guitar or drums.
| It wouldn't be my first choice for the latter workflow,
| where I'd prefer REAPER or Logic. You also still have the
| issue with plugin compatibility and that 99% of commercial
| plugin vendors don't support Linux.
| IsTom wrote:
| > 99% of commercial plugin vendors don't support Linux.
|
| It's a bit softened by the fact that many of them can be
| replaced/recreated with stock bitwig devices (if you're
| into that). There's also yabridge, though for me
| personally it has been a bit hit and miss.
| foelantrope wrote:
| In my experience, programmers fall into either of those
| categories:
|
| 1. Those that want to gain full control of their environment,
| customize to the max and peak in personal satisfaction and
| productivity, xor...
|
| 2. those that want their environment to _just. work._ and not
| spend days on end ricing a tiling WM that might instead
| preferably be spent on actually getting things done.
|
| Linux users largely fall in category 1, Mac users into 2. I
| don't see this as a skill issue. Even Linux Torvalds famously
| has been using Fedora because he prefers to focus on more
| important aspects (i.e., kernel work) than building his own
| minimal distro from scratch, which _starkly_ contrasts the last
| point you made.
|
| IMO group 2 is _much_ bigger than group 1, too. I 'd find it a
| boring way of approaching technology personally, but try and
| find some actual arguments against the established workflows of
| group 2 apart from slight personal preferences. I can't,
| really.
| matwood wrote:
| > I've never personally understood the point of macOS for power
| users
|
| These threads always end up with veiled insults like this. Can
| you really not understand people who use Windows, Linux and
| Macs? They each have their strengths depending on what you are
| doing.
|
| > which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your
| machine the way you want
|
| I've use Macs since my first G4 PB, Linux for longer, and used
| to develop for Windows though it's been a very long time. I've
| never felt stopped for doing what I want.
|
| > by just building up from a minimal distro like Arch or NixOS
|
| Been there done that. I have too many other things that need to
| get done to build up a distro. I'm sure desktop Linux has
| improved since the last time I tried running it as my main
| computer, but I just not sure what the point is now.
| rubslopes wrote:
| I've recently heard that using Linux is an excuse to spend
| the day tinkering and ricing and do no productive work. It's
| the same kind of prejudice, but opposite.
|
| I like the freedom to run my machine the way I want, but I
| also enjoy something that is reliable and seamless. My
| macbook air's battery lasts forever. It works flawlessly,
| almost always. "oh with nixos if you brick it you can
| rollback..." that's great, but it does not beat working great
| on the first try.
|
| Having said that, I'm progressively migrating from MacOS to
| Linux as MacOS is starting to "get in the way" enough to
| bother me.
| jbstack wrote:
| NixOS is an extreme case, and I only mentioned it as a
| counter to the OP's article which was talking about the
| mammoth efforts required to remove unwanted processes. More
| generally, there are plenty of Linux distros which "just
| work" out of the box for most use cases.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Having said that, I'm progressively migrating from MacOS
| to Linux as MacOS is starting to "get in the way" enough to
| bother me.
|
| Same here. macOS has been death by a thousand little cuts,
| and I'm finally accelerating my move away from it, as Apple
| locks it down more and more, and as they spend their
| engineering talent on crap I ultimately don't care about.
|
| While I've switched most of my computers over to Linux, I
| still have not moved my daily driver over. There are so
| many silly little things Linux (and its various desktop
| environments) gets wrong and are just annoying enough to
| make me not want to use it every day, like scrolling with a
| trackpad.
| jbstack wrote:
| No insult intended. I genuinely wasn't aware of what
| advantages macOS offers for a power user (by which I mean
| someone who wants to do tasks more advanced than browsing,
| email, etc.). From quickly skimming the replies the common
| theme seems to be a mixture of battery efficiency, hardware
| compatibility, and Mac-only software.
|
| > Been there done that. I have too many other things that
| need to get done to build up a distro.
|
| Yes, but my comment wasn't made in isolation or directed at
| people with your objectives. The OP's article is about doing
| exactly this, but in the opposite direction (expending large
| amounts of effort to remove unneeded processes). See for
| example: " _if we assume that we need to identify just 500
| candidates, and each takes an average of one week to
| research, that would take over 10 person-years_ ".
|
| Starting with _that_ as the baseline (as opposed to starting
| from your position which is that you 're not interested in
| spending time on this issue), building up from zero is a lot
| more straightforward. And, if you use something like NixOS,
| you generally only have to do it once since the idea of
| "reinstalling" the OS (e.g. for new versions) largely goes
| away: subsequent effort is just about changing your mind
| about what software you want, or what version you want (as
| with any OS).
| browningstreet wrote:
| > I genuinely wasn't aware of what advantages macOS offers
|
| It's been out for a while.. why are you interested in the
| debate if you've come this far, have no idea, but want to
| lead with a counter-assertion?
| bigyabai wrote:
| Why are we making personal attacks, instead of simply
| listing all of the unique system-selling features in
| macOS?
| jbstack wrote:
| Again, my comment wasn't isolated. It was a response to
| the article. In that article, the person was concerned
| with tracking down 500+ potentially unneeded processes,
| and lamenting the difficulty and time consuming nature of
| doing so.
|
| Perhaps I could have phrased my question better, but what
| I'm really asking is: for _that_ type of user, why would
| you pick macOS over Linux when such things are trivial
| (relatively speaking) in Linux by comparison. Note that I
| didn 't ask " _what advantages does macOS have?_ " I
| qualified it with: " _which makes it worth sacrificing
| the ability to run your machine the way you want?_ ". I
| wasn't suggesting that there are no advantages at all.
| Nuance matters here.
| dlivingston wrote:
| > what advantages macOS offers for a power user
|
| The serious answer is that you get an "it-just-works"+
| Unix-like operating system that gives you a development
| experience on-par with Linux.
|
| If you are doing sysadmin stuff: you will not like macOS.
|
| If you care about configuration for your window manager,
| desktop environment, or systemd services: you will not like
| macOS.
|
| If you are a graphics engineer or a kernel engineer: you
| will (probably) not like macOS.
|
| If you are a C++/Rust/Python/JavaScript/Java/mobile/desktop
| engineer who wants a rock-solid developer environment and
| doesn't care about the above: you will like macOS.
|
| You get all the Unix tools you could ever want, whatever
| shell you want to use (Zsh, Fish, even PowerShell),
| clang/LLVM, etc.
|
| Does that answer your question?
|
| +: caveat being "it just works" is getting less and less
| true with every macOS release.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > If you are doing sysadmin stuff: you will not like
| macOS.
|
| Even then, that's debatable. Should say if you like doing
| sysadmin stuff _on your own machine._
|
| I am a sysadmin, and my daily driver is an M4 macbook pro
| and I wouldn't have it any other way. I admin _other_
| machines, I don 't want to play sysadmin for my own. But
| its mostly for the hardware more than any other reason.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I think a surprising number of kernel engineers like Macs
| matwood wrote:
| This would be my answer, though I also do sysadmin stuff
| from macOS just fine. I've used OSX/macOS for a long
| time, I understand how it works and how to move around,
| and the ecosystem integration is nice. Adobe products, MS
| products also all work without any hassle along with any
| software development I want to do. Then there's the
| hardware which Apple Silicon has been great for. I bought
| an M1 Max 64gb laptop on release and it still never feels
| slow. Battery life is great, trackpad works great, etc...
|
| And I say all this knowing that someone can likely get
| similar use out of a MS or Linux laptop. At this point,
| just pick what you know and get on with it.
| anta40 wrote:
| As a mobile app dev, I'm _forced_ to use macOS: no iOS SDK on
| Windows /Linux/etc
|
| I'd love to know what's good ARM notebook which works fine with
| Linux.
| pitkali wrote:
| I got my first MacBook around 2010 because I was tired of
| fixing suspend to RAM every few Nvidia driver updates on my
| ThinkPad. Then I paid for a commercial VM to seamlessly run
| some Windows software I needed for my freelance work as a
| translator, removing the need to dual boot two operating
| systems. Everything just worked, and I could focus on things I
| wanted to do instead of continuing to tinker with the OS
| itself. And after years of playing with many different Linux
| distros, I realised that I did get tired of that. Moreover, a
| few games that I played, actually had native Mac versions.
| What's not to like?
|
| These days I do have a Tuxedo laptop for fooling around, and I
| don't even use laptops on the regular, which is probably why it
| works well enough. That and integrated Radeon graphics, I'm
| sure.
| ivm wrote:
| I'm a power user who's past configuring things, instead I want
| them to just work on their own. I also hate to memorize
| commands but like using the mouse and click buttons.
| hollerith wrote:
| >what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't
|
| Better security than any Linux distro.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Define power user.
|
| This is such a loaded term. I would hazard to guess your
| definition would include abilities which just arent possible on
| Mac which would by definition make it a bad choice. You can't
| replace the audio stack or run headless for example.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It was a marketing campaign ("Switch") during the rise of web
| programmers and web designers who didn't really know how
| computers worked, during the hot period of startups when all of
| them were making a lot of money for the first time and it was
| sold as a status symbol. Not having a MBP among web programmers
| was like having greentext among highschoolers.
|
| Now, they didn't know how computers worked because they "didn't
| have time or interest to worry about that stuff, they wanted
| something that just worked" it wasn't because they were limited
| as computer professionals.
|
| And of course, it was unix, so it was at least minimally usable
| for actual programmers, and then you got homebrew so you had
| package management and normal software available, and they all
| started using Linux VMs to run the important stuff, so in the
| end it was all Linux anyway.
|
| With all that, there was no reason not for it to gradually
| become a totally adequate environment to work in. Plus you got
| to buy the exact same thing as everyone in your social group.
| Talk about the next one like you would talk about the next year
| of a sportscar model. Have it match your phone. Get excited
| when they did that yearly thing where they all got on stage and
| sold the new line, then read Daring Fireball's take.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| More broadly, Linux doesn't appeal to me as a primary OS
| because there's no desktop environment that's a full equivalent
| of macOS, both in spirit and function. Existing DEs might have
| some vaguely Mac-like shape or can be configured to be slightly
| more Mac-like, but nothing gets you the full package
| (consistent application of a well thought out HIG, holistic
| approach to design, full embrace of progressive disclosure [as
| opposed to the extremes of IKEA minimalism or dumping
| everything and the kitchen sink], etc). Additionally, some
| things are bizarrely involved to set up despite being commonly
| needed (see virtualization under Fedora) or will randomly break
| once in a blue moon (usually after a system upgrade) and
| require diving beneath the hood to fix.
|
| For laptops in particular, it's the absence of laptops that 1)
| are good at being laptops (great battery life and standby time,
| are solid but aren't bricks, are inaudible except when being
| pushed for extended periods, and don't throttle to netbook
| speeds when unplugged), 2) are designed to be Linux-first, and
| 3) aren't just a half-baked rebadge of pre-existing models from
| ODMs like Clevo/Tongfang/Compal.
|
| Funny enough, the closest thing to a great Linux laptop is
| actually the Steam Deck. Nothing else on the market is as
| competently integrated. If Valve got into the laptop business
| I'd be interested.
|
| I could see myself daily driving Linux on a custom built
| desktop long before I could on a laptop, but the aforementioned
| broad challenges remain.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Speaking purely on the software preferences, all of those
| feel like nice-to-haves. I like a well-tuned HiG and widget
| library as much as the next guy, but the majority of macOS's
| features are bloat to me. What am I supposed to do with Stage
| Manager or AppleTV+? Why is Safari allowed to send me
| notifications begging the user to boot it up and try the new
| features? Why does the Settings app show a persistent
| notification when I log out of iCloud?
|
| There was a point in my life when I also thought I _needed_
| those creature comforts. Now I 've spent 7 years without
| dailying macOS and I really don't miss it one bit. You could
| give me a $0.00 Apple Silicon M6 Ultra laptop with 4 days of
| battery life, and I'd probably still be reaching for my
| Thinkpad if I wanted to get work done. As a development OS,
| macOS is borderline intolerable.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I don't need many newer macOS features myself. I'd be happy
| with an experience that's roughly adjacent to that of OS X
| 10.6 or 10.9, but that's not on offer either.
|
| I do need a laptop that's good at its job, though. If a
| laptop sucks at its defining qualities, I'd be better
| served by a backpackable ITX build or maybe a one of those
| trendy mini-PCs, because at that point the form factor's
| tradeoffs are too great to justify.
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| > Why is Safari allowed to send me notifications begging
| the user to boot it up and try the new features?
|
| For what it's worth I've been using macOS (and OS X) for 14
| years, and you only get the notification once after a fresh
| install and you can click close and it's gone forever, sure
| Linux is better on this front, but I don't want to spend my
| whole life tinkering my os until it works. It's still a
| hell of a lot better than Microsoft consistently shoving
| Edge down your throat.
| kaydub wrote:
| It's the hardware.
|
| I don't like MacOS, but you can't beat their silicon and the
| laptops "feel" better in general.
|
| I had a system76 for a while and I loved pop OS but that
| hardware...
| kmbfjr wrote:
| Less maintenance on my own kit after spending a day maintaining
| some else's kit.
|
| Linux userspace is utter chaos. When I'm pricing out lumber or
| other personal projects, I don't want that held up by any
| number of fresh in memory Linux what-the-fresh-hell-is-this
| moments.
|
| That is it. Will pay nearly whatever Apple commands to avoid
| having my personal (desktop) time invaded by Linux and the
| never ending reinventing solved problems and discovering new
| ones.
|
| Upside though, Linux by now may actually have an even dozen of
| methods to configure a wired ethernet device. I quit counting.
| stackghost wrote:
| >but what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't
|
| Flawless suspend/resume, best-in-class battery life, best-in-
| class touchpad drivers, lots of things "Just Work" that are
| painful and/or tedious on Linux.
|
| It might be better to ask what Linux offers the laptop user
| that macos doesn't. I run Linux on my desktop boxes but
| wouldn't dream of daily-driving a Linux laptop.
|
| >and which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your
| machine the way you want?
|
| I consider myself a power user. I have never once felt unable
| to run the machine the way I want. You can disable SIP and
| Gatekeeper and whatever else if it pleases you. I still have a
| terminal and a package manager. If there's a particular utility
| that I need on Linux I just spin up a VM, but I can count on
| one hand the number of times I've needed to do that in the last
| 12 months.
| p_ing wrote:
| I have it not only because of hardware, but because of color
| matching for photography/processing RAW images. That's as close
| to 'professional' as I get to using macOS for personal use
| (photography is nothing more than a personal hobby, for me).
|
| I also use macOS at work. Plainly, the machines offered are
| better (MBPs vs. Thinkpad T440s) and come with less impactful
| EDR. They're simply faster. I do need to fall back to my T440
| every now and then. It's not a great experience. That's not the
| fault of Lenovo or Windows, though. It's just how IT manages
| the laptops.
|
| But IMO Finder is a piece of trash. The Dock sucks (moves
| around monitors), how full screen apps are handed sucks...
| anyway, there's lots of UX issues with macOS. Generally there
| are 3rd party free and pay-for solutions for all of this...
| it's just that now I gotta get all this 3rd party stuff and due
| to the security model, often grant them high level privs.
| stevekemp wrote:
| I think "for work" is very definitely the reason for me. I've
| run Linux at home since 1994 or so.
|
| As a sysadmin/devops person 90% of my life is emacs, a
| browser, and collection of terminals. When I get a job I get
| offered a choice between a windows laptop or a macbook.
| Sometimes, rarely, I'm allowed Linux, but usually they say
| "compliance" or that their security scanning software won't
| support it.
|
| So I use macbooks for work, but I wouldn't pay for one
| personally. But they allow me to run terraform, git, shells,
| and similar things in the way that I'm comfortable with.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| "Power users" like to get their work done.
|
| In LInux, you can spend a bunch of time configuring your system
| to get simple stuff setup. The opposite of "getting work done".
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| I use a Mac because I have no desire to maintain a Linux box.
| The software I want is all there, it has a great *nix terminal,
| and the hardware quality is second to none. I work with
| computers all day - at home I just want to be able to focus on
| the task at hand.
| lkbm wrote:
| I got tired of fiddling with Ubuntu settings. I got tired with
| updates making my desktop UX worse and having to battle to get
| things back to what I wanted. I got tired of struggling to get
| wifi to work.
|
| Maybe more than any of that, though, I got tired of every
| laptop having bad build quality. Maybe the Dell XPS is good,
| but Lenovo and System76 (my last Linux machine) seemed
| significantly worse than a MBP. (I could maybe just run Linux
| on a MBP, but it's a lot more effort for little benefit.)
|
| I would like to replicate my 2005 Ubuntu desktop environment,
| but when Ubuntu shipped Unity, it was a serious downgrade, and
| at the time I struggled to get back to something good. I'm now
| in a macOS middle ground without having to fight the damn
| thing.
| a-dub wrote:
| it's the commercial unix desktop that has commercial app
| support, cool looking hardware and great power optimizations
| that lead to great battery life. (also in the ai era, unified
| memory is pretty awesome)
|
| personally i choose linux (kde) desktops and laptops where
| allowed because they've just gotten so good (and seem to only
| be getting better), but i get it.
|
| honestly though i think it's a little sad. the execution just
| isn't where it used to be and honestly i think the modern macos
| experience is kinda trash. i would really like to pick one up
| and be like "oh wow this is so cool everything is so refined if
| i wasn't so bothered about needing vms and docker for
| everything i'd consider this" but instead it's more like "wow
| this is kinda old and crufty and weird and not all that great
| to be honest i miss kde it's more refined"
| solarkraft wrote:
| It actually works, reasonably well, out of the box.
| 1-more wrote:
| 4 modifier keys vs 3. Can't go back. Maybe you can get your
| whole Linux env using 4 modifiers one application at a time,
| but my god would that be another thing that takes forever on
| top of everything else you need to configure. No ty.
| dgfl wrote:
| This was such a big pain for me when switching back to
| windows / Linux. I'm not sure why it's not talked about more.
| 4 modifiers is much better if you are a keyboard "power user"
| but don't want to spend days crafting and maintaining a
| bespoke input system.
|
| A more general point: you can be a "power user" and not have
| the time to learn about the absurd stack of technologies that
| is a Linux DE. You may even be a "power user" and not have a
| job / education related to computers! Shocking!
| 1-more wrote:
| I'm a dad, I'm doing home improvement stuff, I have cat
| litter to scoop, I have a day job. I have like 15 minutes
| at a time to power use my personal computer. I spend it
| programming. Everything I need to do between opening the
| lid and typing programs is an affront.
| nekooooo wrote:
| when i read threads like this i remember the ancient slashdot
| meme: this is surely the year of desktop linux
| turtlebits wrote:
| At some age you realize that tinkering with your OS is a giant
| waste of time.
|
| I just want a reliable thing that gets me A to B (car analogy)
| So what if the infotainment screen is too small or climate
| controls are annoying.
|
| Sometimes having less choice is freeing.
| pier25 wrote:
| Good luck running graphic design, music production, or video
| editing apps on Linux.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > but what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't
|
| A laptop with an excellent screen, speakers, touchpad, desktop-
| class performance,, great battery life, and runs cool and
| silent, and a *nix like OS that can run the
| proprietary/commercial apps I need.
|
| I work on macOS the same way I'd work on Linux; From the
| terminal with a package manager, docker, etc. Only now I get
| access to a few commercial apps that aren't on Linux, on
| hardware that's genuinely a joy to use.
|
| There's no other laptop on the market that touches the apple
| silicon macbook pros. None. Every close alternative sacrifices
| something I care about. I tolerate macOS for the hardware, and
| I'll remain on macs until such hardware exists in Linux land.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Same. If the only computing happened on desktop PCs and
| laptops didn't exist, I'd use Linux.
|
| But as it stands, going from a Macbook to Linux on a laptop
| is a downgrade. And you have to pay more for the pleasure of
| a worse experience.
|
| And macOS is "Linux" since it's BSD-based and has a native
| Unix shell. If macOS were as different from "Linux" as
| Windows was, then I probably wouldn't put up with it either.
| sneak wrote:
| I'd use macOS. Application sandboxing, per directory access
| controls, signed read only root, xprotect and gatekeeper -
| security out of the box on common linux OSes is a joke
| compared to modern macOS.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Good points, especially about sandboxing.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I'm an occasional Mac user, whenever their hardware and
| software align to be useful.
|
| Right now the m4 airs are a delight in regards to form factor,
| battery life, performance, and generally they look nice.
|
| I have a powerful processor, enough ram, and a battery to drive
| it and damnit I want to do work on it.
|
| Right now the world of laptops is dark. Any non-mac laptop
| running linux will have terrible standby battery life because
| OEMs have removed classic sleep modes for always-on mac-like
| sleeps, but without the polish and no way to re-enable the
| legacy sleep modes.
|
| In a couple years, maybe the AI boom will die down and people
| will be able to afford RAM again, and maybe non-mac laptops
| will be nice to use again.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| There isn't any app on windows or linux that can match what
| Preview does.
|
| One thing you may not know about is you can map anything in the
| menu bar to a keyboard shortcut. The application doesn't even
| know you did that. That's an operating system feature that
| neither Windows nor Linux can implement reliably.
|
| Accessibility is another one.
|
| It's like this all over the operating system. There's a deep
| integration with the apps and the UI you wouldn't notice unless
| you're a power user.
| grishka wrote:
| Linux doesn't have stable APIs or ABIs, has a million ways of
| doing the same thing (each slightly broken in a different way),
| has trouble with modern hardware features like HDR or even
| high-DPI screens, and requires you to fiddle with the terminal
| and config files for simplest things. MacOS does not. It just
| works out of the box, mostly. And it even mostly respects you
| and your work, unlike modern Windows.
| kergonath wrote:
| > I've never personally understood the point of macOS for power
| users
|
| I am not sure how much I qualify, but here is my use case: it
| can run Photoshop and MS Office, it has Keynote, it can compile
| just about any software I use or I develop for my job (mostly
| Physics and computational Chemistry stuff). It has a sane
| command line. Honestly, it just works for more than simple
| tasks. The things for which it does not work is games (but that
| has nothing to do with the merits of the OS) and yes,
| customisation.
|
| The alternatives are Windows (which I also use for other
| tasks), which is a nightmare to deal with and requires tons of
| faffing about to compile codes, and Linux (which is actually
| what I use most), which does not have a working Office and is
| very janky.
|
| That is not even considering the fact that MacBooks are the
| best laptops by a mile (my Mac is a desktop, so it's not
| relevant to me).
|
| > which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your
| machine the way you want?
|
| I do run my Linux box like I want. I spent hours upon ours
| ricing it up and fine tuning everything I cared about. Stuff
| still occasionally breaks after a minor update and I regularly
| have to roll back because of a misbehaving NVIDIA driver (at
| least once a year). On my Mac, I don't need to tweak every
| aspect of KDE because the default is fine. I don't need to be
| able to change pid1 because launchd is fine (but nowadays so is
| systemd). I don't need to install drivers because everything
| that does not work out of the box can be tweaked with
| SteerMouse and Karabiner (honestly, I would kill to have
| something that works that well on Linux). The couple of
| utilities I use are much, much better than the Linux
| alternatives and break much less often. So in effect I don't
| sacrifice much, and the tradeoff is very good.
|
| I won't even consider Windows. It's as customisable as macOS,
| but its default behaviour is terrible so here the tradeoff is
| absolutely not worth it.
|
| I don't like the direction Apple is currently taking, so I will
| re-evaluate in the future, but for now my Mac is the most
| pleasant to use of my current computers.
|
| > In Linux you'd solve OP's problem by just building up from a
| minimal distro like Arch or NixOS.
|
| And then spending a week to make it work, and then spending
| hours at unpredictable times when an update breaks something. I
| know, I already do it on my Linux box. It has some good
| aspects, but also some bad ones, which is why I use a Mac at
| home.
| plasticeagle wrote:
| "Power Users", whatever that might really mean use MacOS
| because it works. They use a Mac laptop because it always and
| instantly wakes from sleep. Because the audio always works, and
| is always low latency. Because they have work to do, and the OS
| is extremely reliable. Also because it is light, and the
| battery lasts for a very long time indeed.
|
| My laptop has been up for 43 days, not very long in a server
| world, but excellent for a personal device that I use for
| development, hardware design and audio production. The last
| time it restarted was probably for an OS upgrade, but I can't
| recall.
|
| My work linux laptop is also pretty reliable, but this is only
| because I never upgrade anything on it and only use it for
| development. Its battery life is terrible, so I only use it
| plugged into the wall. My work linux desktop has issues with
| bluetooth audio and graphics, neither of which I can be
| bothered to fix.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I don't see why a power user would trust a desktop Linux
| distro. They are so unprofessional and take 0 accountability
| for breaking your system. As a power users I need to actually
| use my computer and not spend all day trying to fix my OS.
| Fixing the OS should be the vendor's responsibility. Not mine.
| sneak wrote:
| Out of the box, macOS is substantially more secure than any
| common linux OS.
| ashivkum wrote:
| it depends on whether you're a power user in terms of getting
| lots of actual work done, or you're a power user (and this
| seems much more common) in the sense that you spend lots of
| time tweaking your productivity setup.
| drewg123 wrote:
| I'm a power user. I do FreeBSD kernel performance work for
| Netflix.
|
| I have a macbook as my work laptop. I use it as a dumb terminal
| to my FreeBSD desktop, a platform for corp. video conferencing,
| and to surf the web. Any actual work happens on my desktop
| (Unless I'm working on something arm64 specific, and am using a
| VM on the laptop ... but then I'm probably ssh'ed in from my
| desktop.
|
| Why the macbook? I have never gotten along with Windows (have
| tried on a few separate occasions). And I'm too lazy to put
| effort into getting Linux running well on a laptop, since that
| would still be just a dumb terminal for FreeBSD dev. And I'm
| not enough of a masochist to run FreeBSD on a laptop. So the
| macbook is the path of least resistance. It works well as a
| laptop (suspend / resume, connects to random wifi) and comes
| with a terminal and ssh client that require zero effort to get
| working.
| beAbU wrote:
| You appear to have forgotten the state of linux until fairly
| recently. For literal decades, MacOS "just worked" and it meant
| that the user did not have to fight their OS to get shit done.
|
| In the professional world where "I did not get any work done
| today because an update fucked my wifi card" is not a valid
| excuse, MacOS (and Windows to a lesser degree) triumphed. Large
| orgs who can afford a whole IT department might be fine
| deploying linux on their fleet of desktops, but there is always
| a tremendous amount of testing and validation behind the scenes
| to ensure that everything "just works". This just was not the
| case for the indy professional, or small tech startup.
|
| Now, in the past 5 or so years two things happened: 1) linux
| reached a state where a "normie developer" could take a chance
| and install it on a work machine and be just fine, and 2) MacOS
| has regressed enough where OS updates are risky now, and the
| "it just works" slogan does not really apply any more.
| jiehong wrote:
| 2 days ago I saw a colleague not using his dock. Turns out he
| can't update the dock firmware under Linux, and has to live
| with having a 20% chance of his laptop detecting external
| displays.
|
| He recently gave up trying to have a wake from sleep that
| works well too.
|
| I mean, Linux is great, but the paper cuts are still very
| numerous.
| testing22321 wrote:
| > _what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn 't ?_
|
| Photoshop, illustrator, Final Cut Pro, motion and more.
|
| When I want I open terminal and can do anything I would ever
| want to do in Linux.
|
| I've never spent one second of my life dealing with drivers or
| recompiling shit or version or so conflicts on a Mac.
|
| Literally hundreds of hours of that on windows and Linux.
| Luc wrote:
| > To the Unix purist, this might appear wasteful and unnecessary,
| but macOS isn't, and never has been, Unix.
|
| I get what they mean, but macOS is even Unix certified.
| https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
| timeon wrote:
| Yes on paper. Submitted version differs from what customers run
| at home/work.
| yokoprime wrote:
| Im sorry, but i dont buy that. Unix certification has nothing
| to do with number of processes running or "efficiency"! The
| OS must be SUS compliant, i.e have all the core interfaces in
| place, all the correct utilities (awk, grep, vi, sed etc) and
| theres something about header files, filesystem requirements
| etc. even if the macOS submitted for certification is super
| trimmed down, it does not matter as long as its a true subset
| of what is shipped to consumers.
|
| MacOS is certified UNIX i.e its "UNIX", like it or not. On
| this point the article is just wrong.
| timetopay wrote:
| Unix is both a family of operating systems and also a
| trademark. The name is overloaded - "Unix" is more than one
| thing at the same time. In addition, the trademark is
| "UNIX" and the operating system family is "Unix"
|
| MacOS is both UNIX and also not Unix at the same time.
|
| If the trademark holders decided to UNIX certify my cat,
| which is well within their legal right to do so, would that
| make her UNIX?
| greggsy wrote:
| Unlike macOS, your cat does not, and will not, meet the
| industry-accepted standard that describes unix as we know
| it today.
|
| https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/xym0.htm
| remix2000 wrote:
| Mayhaps not with a `cat(1)` alone, but really they just
| need to expand their menagerie now.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Like macOS, my cat does not qualify for the UNIX standard
| out-of-the-box and I'm far too lazy to configure my cat
| for an OS standard that's 25 years obsolete.
| shiomiru wrote:
| > as we know it today
|
| An important nuance you seem to be missing is that SUSv3
| is equivalent to "IEEE Std 1003.1-2001" (that is, POSIX
| 2001).
|
| In practice, I've had to work around more POSIX
| compatibility issues in macOS than in all other actively
| developed (Free) Unix-likes, combined.
| remix2000 wrote:
| Or perhaps they just won't certify your cat just as Apple
| won't start making Windows PCs...?
| greggsy wrote:
| The compliance trope that a point-in-time-assessment can't be
| used to support a claim is kind of a lazy take. The
| certification explicitly states macOS v26.0 Tahoe.
|
| While it's true that it wasn't always truly UNIX compliant,
| they put in the hard yards to become so (albeit to avoid a
| $200M lawsuit from The Open Group) [1]
|
| [1] https://www.quora.com/What-goes-into-making-an-OS-to-be-
| Unix...
| p_ing wrote:
| To certify any version of macOS as UNIX, the security had
| to be significantly altered (disabling SIP) among a few
| other things. This is why what is shipped is not what is
| certified as UNIX. You can /make/ it match what is
| certified as an administrator, but that would be
| inadvisable.
|
| https://www.osnews.com/story/141633/apples-macos-unix-
| certif...
|
| EDIT: And really, UNIX certification means nothing except
| to potentially government agencies and people who don't
| understand what UNIX and/or UNIX certification is. Or why
| being "certified UNIX" is generally meaningless: see the
| BSDs, which are much closer to "UNIX" origins than macOS
| will ever be.
|
| Or Windows, which is frankly just has better architected
| internals and abandons legacy UNIX ;-)
| rayiner wrote:
| > is. Or why being "certified UNIX" is generally
| meaningless: see the BSDs, which are much closer to
| "UNIX" origins than macOS will ever be
|
| MacOS is BSD over Mach, which is itself derived from BSD.
| p_ing wrote:
| Yes, that's the point. It's further removed from UNIX
| than the BSDs are.
|
| macOS contains BSD userland, networking, file system,
| POSIX, and a couple of other things. But XNU, the kernel,
| is "X is Not UNIX", if there ever was a statement to be
| made about the underpinnings of macOS.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation
| /Da...
| KerrAvon wrote:
| This is a very silly argument.
|
| There were several actual Unixes released based on Mach,
| and some of them more purely Mach than macOS/NeXT ever
| have been.
| sbuk wrote:
| The people that certify it say that you are wrong. What
| you think and what actually _is_ are two entirely
| different things in this case. The fact remains that,
| according to the OpenGroup (and they are the one that
| matter here), macOS 26 is UNIX.
| p_ing wrote:
| macOS 26 that is /altered/ is UNIX. macOS that ships on
| every Mac is not certified UNIX -- but it can be made to
| match if you're willing to give up security.
|
| You should read through the actual certification - https:
| //www.opengroup.org/csq/repository/noreferences=1&RID=...
| (there are a couple more in the repo).
|
| To run the VSX conformance test suite we first disable
| SIP as follows: [...]
|
| Feel free to disable SIP on your Mac. I certainly won't
| be doing so on mine.
| inkyoto wrote:
| You have just described OSF/1 (and later - Tru64) - a
| certified UNIX with a hybrid kernel operating over a Mach
| microkernel, BSD userland, POSIX conformance etc.
|
| What is the point that you are making?
| runjake wrote:
| _> Or Windows, which is frankly just has better
| architected internals and abandons legacy UNIX ;-)_
|
| Current macOS user, and former NT kernel dabbler and VMS
| user here. That's _highly_ debatable.
|
| On the kernel side, Windows is still filled with legacy
| VMS-isms. Eg: Object Manager (object/resource model),
| named objects, handles, how processes and threads work,
| vmem, scheduling etc etc
|
| On the userspace side, Windows is still filled with
| legacy DOS-isms.
|
| Don't me wrong, I love the underlying Windows OS, despite
| its many quirks, but it's filled with perhaps even more
| legacy cruft and definitely isn't any sort of step above
| anything else.
|
| I also don't believe anyone actually runs macOS in a
| UNIX-compliant configuration. Rather, it's a checkbox on
| some RFP and nobody is clued into why it's actually
| there, because all the people that did know have since
| retired.
| p_ing wrote:
| What lineage of OS predates both DOS and VMS? :-)
| runjake wrote:
| As the popular phrase goes: "It's legacy, all the way
| down". What matters is what's left of those legacies in
| current revs.
|
| In both cases: "Quite a bit", but I wish the base Windows
| OS would evolve away from legacy as much as macOS has.
| Start with eliminating drive letters.
| p_ing wrote:
| > Start with eliminating drive letters.
|
| Drive letters are there for the presentation layer and of
| course backwards compat. Windows refers to them using
| device paths internally. You can too, if you wish.
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/dotnet/standard/io/file-pa...
| sgjohnson wrote:
| The next sentence is also interesting actually.
|
| > It's a closed-source proprietary operating system
|
| Most UNIX systems were proprietary & closed source though?
| MisterTea wrote:
| All of the commercial Unix operating systems were closed
| source.
|
| The first open Unix-like is 386BSD which predates Linux. It
| was said that if 386BSD didn't get mired in a lawsuit,
| Torvalds would have used it and Linux would not exist.
| kps wrote:
| And the reason BSD survived is the maligned 'advertising
| clause' that most later BSD-type licenses dropped. Berkeley
| countersued that AT&T had promoted that System V included
| vi, without the required attribution.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "I get what they mean, but macOS is even Unix certified."
|
| What do they mean?
|
| To me the blog author is primarily focused on the issue of
| _control_, i.e., being able to control the hardware that he
| purchased as opposed to letting a company control it, e.g.,
| through pre-installed software, remotely installed "updates",
| default settings, etc.
|
| He cannot control its default behaviour hence he wants to "slim
| MacOS down"
|
| "UNIX" was a pun on the name of another OS that allegedly was
| accused of being too large and complex. That OS, Multics, was
| designed to run only on specific hardware from GE and later
| Honeywell
|
| UNIX was a smaller, less complex alternative that, after its
| rewrite in C, could more easily run on a variety of hardware
| and be modified by the people using it
|
| Apple does not allow people using MacOS to modify it
|
| MacOS is proprietary; unlike AT&T's UNIX it has not been
| released into the research community resulting in non-
| commercial, open source "MacOS-like" OS projects (HackIntosh
| notwithstanding)
|
| A user cannot write programs for MacOS without restriction by
| the company, e.g., prior approval, "developer" fees, etc.
|
| MacOS cannot easily be used on a variety of hardware, only on
| Apple's proprietary hardware
|
| Compared to non-commercial UNIX-like OS, MacOS is larger and
| more complex
|
| https://eclecticlight.co/2023/12/04/macos-sonoma-is-setting-...
| 9rx wrote:
| _> MacOS is proprietary_
|
| Some of the drivers are. The core is open source, though.
| macOS' particular choice for its graphical user land is
| proprietary as well, but AT&T's UNIX had no such equivalent,
| aside from some experiments, so that doesn't make sense to
| use as a point of comparison. Not to mention similar systems
| in the UNIX-esq space, like SunView, NeWS, VUE, NeXTSTEP,
| etc. were proprietary too. That has always been par for the
| course in the world of "graphical UNIX". The so-called "Linux
| desktop" is the aberration.
|
| You can, of course, run an open source graphical user land,
| like Gnome, instead on top of macOS' UNIX-y fashioned bits if
| you so wish.
| kergonath wrote:
| > To me the blog author is primarily focused on the issue of
| _control_, i.e., being able to control the hardware that he
| purchased as opposed to letting a company control it, e.g.,
| through pre-installed software, remotely installed "updates",
| default settings, etc.
|
| Which has absolutely nothing to do with the OS being an UNIX
| or not. It's a bit weird to see the allusion to UNIX to be
| fair: Howard Oakley is deep enough down the rabbit hole that
| I would expect him to know that History is full of
| proprietary and closed UNIXes.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| NB. The blog refers to (a) the "Unix purist" and (b) MacOS
| not being Unix. Arguably, (a) is more important, irrespective
| of whether (b) is true (IMO it's ambiguous)
|
| For example, the "Unix purist" might refer to someone who
| identifies with the "ideals" associated with that OS, e.g.,
| relatively small, portable to potentially any hardware, free
| to study and modify, etc. And (b) might refer to MacOS not
| conforming to those "ideals" (despite having a limited
| license to use a "UNIX" trademark)
|
| At this point, (b) is ambiguous; what is "Unix". It might
| mean different things to different people
|
| Ironically, Apple took the "Unix" parts of MacOS from open
| source, non-commercial "UNIX-like" OS projects such as NetBSD
| and FreeBSD that are not "Certified UNIX"
| nikanj wrote:
| HP-UX and IBM AIX are probably shocked to learn that they,
| too, are not Unix
| nxobject wrote:
| Sadly, HP-UX just reached EOL. I think their Integrity
| servers let you choose between RHEL and SLES now?
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| NB. I do not use a graphical layer or "terminal emulator". I
| only use textmode
| paulddraper wrote:
| > macOS isn't, and never has been, Unix.
|
| MacOS is the _most_ UNIXy of the UNIXes
|
| 1. Comparatively heavyweight
|
| 2. Proprietary
|
| 3. UNIX APIs
| nxobject wrote:
| To beef up the historical comparisons, "creates their own
| workstations on RISC-derived processors" is also
| (historically) a sign of a (commerical) UNIX, too. It isn't
| to jarring to mentally replace "macOS Tahoe" with "NeXTSTEP
| 26".
| peterisza wrote:
| It's such a shame that we have come to this. MacOS is basically
| Windows now. :(
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| As long as apps can continue to steal focus on windows, windows
| will always be worse.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Apps can do that on macOS too -- Steam is a very good
| example.
| willis936 wrote:
| Every login steam steals focus no less than two times.
| Steam is one of the few login items I'd choose to keep, but
| wasting the first 30 seconds of login is too heavy a price
| to pay.
| closewith wrote:
| I don't know if you've used Windows lately, but Windows is
| orders of magnitude less pleasant than MacOS (or even previous
| bad Windows versions like Vista).
| WesSouza wrote:
| Windows 7 you mean.
|
| Windows 11 is far deeper into the sewer.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Post Big Sur, macOS has felt alarmingly close to Windows 8.
| sbuk wrote:
| It really hasn't. The hyperbole here has been though.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Comparing Tahoe to Windows 7 is hyperbolic. 7 had Media
| Player, 8 had _Groove Music_. 7 was welcomed as a
| feature-rich upgrade, 8 was boycotted as a user-hostile
| downgrade.
|
| I don't know what school of contemporary design you hail
| from, but you can't piss on my back and tell me it's
| raining. Liquid Glass needs an 8.1 update, at the very
| least.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| Has MacOS ever been better than Windows for allowing fine
| grained control over system services?
|
| I've been a Mac user for my entire life so maybe I didn't
| understand what things were like with Windows, but the
| fundamental problem identified by Howard, that there are many
| many system daemons and it is expected that the user not know
| what they are, or what they do, and to just leave them alone,
| has been the case for at least 20 years, I think.
| p_ing wrote:
| The entire point of Macintosh is that you don't need to know
| anything about it (and Apple used to actively try to hide
| things you didn't need to know about). Or at least that is
| the user it has always been targeted at since the original
| Mac OS was released.
|
| Windows used to be known as the OS you'd "have to" tinker
| with.
|
| Early versions of OS X allowed more freedom in what you could
| do with the OS. As soon as SSV/SIP entered, that cut off a
| lot of freeform access.
| vegabook wrote:
| I don't understand why Apple doesn't offer a headless MacOS or at
| least a path to a minimal install. Those mac minis make a great
| little server box but losing 8GB to hundreds of processes, before
| you've done anything, just feels wasteful and inelegant.
| silvestrov wrote:
| There are no sales in it.
|
| Apple leadership makes decisions based on money.
|
| That is also why there is no iPhone mini even though there is a
| small number of people that really prefer a small phone.
| icedchai wrote:
| Worse, there's sales in NOT doing it. When I buy a Mac, I get
| extra memory "just in case." I would've been fine with 24
| gigs on my MacBook Pro, but I got 48.
| mfro wrote:
| They did provide OS X Server at one time, but the market just
| wasn't there.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Server
| awakeasleep wrote:
| Not very useful context considering that was before iOS
| development took off
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > that was before iOS development took off
|
| It was offered through the 2010s, iOS development had taken
| off by then, and the last release was in 2021.
| daedrdev wrote:
| In fact the number of unique apps available on IOS has
| declined since the 2010s
| kergonath wrote:
| I am not sure iOS popularity would justify macOS as a
| server. What would be the use case? It's not app
| development; that is done just fine on the standard desktop
| macOS. It's not backend; that is done just fine on Linux
| servers, even in Swift if that's your thing.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Builds
| kergonath wrote:
| You don't need any feature from the old server OS for
| this, though. You just need your workstation to be on a
| network.
| saagarjha wrote:
| A network connected to what
| dijit wrote:
| Mac OS X Server was..
|
| .. macOS but with a utility to install
| apache/ldap/smtp/carddav and caldav.
|
| _very_ useful for a home server.
|
| absolutely no benefit over Linux for the majority of the
| workloads it was designed to simplify.
|
| It wouldn't really give you much unfortunately, certainly
| didn't run noticeably leaner.
|
| (I think at some point "server" just became an .app that was
| available via the app store).
| mfro wrote:
| Right, but I could see an alternate timeline where OS X
| Server took off, and within a decade took a path similar to
| Windows Server (pared down services, headless flavor, etc)
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| It wasn't an absence of a market. Those of us that had to
| manage OSX Server soon found out the software was marked by
| several high-profile bugs, technical debt, and a perceived
| decline in reliability. I migrated a large number of Macs to
| Ubuntu Server software. The hardware was great.
|
| I fear the quality of macOS is deteriorating today in the
| same manner than befell OSX Server.
|
| https://www.darkreading.com/cyber-risk/apple-blasts-mac-
| os-x...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
|
| https://www.letemsvetemapplem.eu/en/2024/10/19/chyby-v-
| macos...
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Those Mac minis are a pain in the ass of a server box that
| auto-enable FileVault after annual releases, and getting
| LaunchDaemons just right compared to a Linux OS feels like
| perpetual iterations. trying to figure out why my apache didn't
| start after the last reboot. Oh, must have been the Mac log
| rotator messing with the file permissions again
|
| It's a shame, because I love how efficiently MacOS runs and the
| form factor/design language of a Mac mini is not something I
| feel the need to hide in a dark corner
|
| You'll have to leave virtual desktop enabled, and will
| definitely be using it semi-regularly aside SSH
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Those mac minis make a great little server box but losing
| 8GB to hundreds of processes_
|
| It doesn't matter because all the extra stuff just goes to
| swap. And you can't disable virtual memory anyways. So in the
| end you're not really losing anything. Those hundreds of
| processes are ultimately basically mostly just using up a
| little bit of your SSD, not your RAM, so it's not a concern.
| saagarjha wrote:
| They're not in swap if those processes wake up to do things
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yeah but they mostly barely do, and only the memory they
| actually access gets used, as opposed to everything they've
| allocated. You can observe the actual aggregate usage in
| Activity Monitor. This is why it's no problem at all to run
| something actively using 10-12 GB of memory on a 16 GB Mac.
| egorfine wrote:
| I badly need slimmed down macOS for CI VMs. Yeah, some little
| things can be cut out but most of the time not.
|
| On the other hand, macOS is not that much memory-hungry as one
| might think. Like, a 4GB VM can start and build software.
| big_toast wrote:
| Yes, I thought OP was going that direction from the title. I
| keep reading posts hoping someone has found the solution but
| there's always a tradeoff.
|
| I think it's important enough that maybe apple will announce
| something at WWDC. The AIs need better isolation primitives.
| Running software from un-trusted sources needs easier and more
| flexible isolation guarantees. Automated builds need lighter
| weight virtualization options. A dockerfile that you can
| specify includes xcode-tools, the accessibility APIs. Volume
| mounting. Network controls. etc.
|
| https://github.com/dockur/macos is a little too clunky? Tart VM
| or manually doing apple's container CLI is maybe most of the
| way there, but images are huge.
| egorfine wrote:
| I'm working on a Docker-like software for macOS Guests on
| macOS Hosts. Prototype's done.
|
| No, Dockur is ancient for Intel macOS which is almost useless
| in today's development as some dev tools are only available
| for Apple Silicon macOS which cannot be virtualized that way.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| For those wanting some semblance of control over macOS system
| processes, consider experimenting with App Tamer (
| https://stclairsoft.com/AppTamer/ ). I was sceptical about it but
| "rogue" system processes, like Spotlight Indexer / Engine, that
| randomly demanded and hogged 100% of the CPU is now a thing of
| the past for me, after I used _App Tamer_ to set it to not use
| more than 20% of CPU resources. It can supposedly stop (kill?)
| processes too, and I am experimenting with that too. But yeah, I
| think it 's time to dump macOS (thankfully, I am still using an
| older version so my experience is less shitty).
| dostick wrote:
| Misleading title, should be "you can't"
| latchkey wrote:
| Instead of forcing iOS onto laptops, they locked down MacOS.
| quotemstr wrote:
| For decades now, we've had to deal with articles like this one.
| People who know just enough to sound credible mislead those who
| known even less into mutilating their systems in the name of
| "optimization". This genre is a menace.
|
| Much harm has arisen out of the superstitious fear of 100% CPU
| use. Why _wouldn 't_ you want a compute bound task to use all
| available compute? It'll finish faster that way. We keep the
| system responsive with priorities and interactivity-aware
| thresholds, not by making a scary-looking but innocuous number
| go down in an ultimately counterproductive way.
|
| The article's naive treatment of memory is also telling. The
| "Memory" column in the task manager is RSS. It counts shared
| memory multiple times, once for each process. You literally
| can't say the 5MB "adds up". It quite literally is not amenable
| to the arithmetic operation of addition in a way that produces
| a physically meaningful result. It is absolute nonsense, and
| when you make optimization decisions based on garbage input,
| you produce garbage output.
|
| It's hard to blame Apple for locking down the OS core like
| this. People try to "optimize" Windows all the time by
| disabling load-bearing services that cost almost nothing just
| so "number go down" and they get that fuzzy feeling they've
| optimized their computer. Then the rest of the world has to
| deal with bug reports in which some API mysteriously doesn't
| work because the user broke his own system but blames you
| anyway.
| latchkey wrote:
| You're not wrong. Let's hope that articles, like the OP's
| post, shed light on further optimizations that Apple is now
| fully in charge of making.
| quotemstr wrote:
| I see nothing in the post that convinces me Apple ought to
| change a single thing.
| giantrobot wrote:
| One of the ways both macOS and iOS get good battery life is
| burst-y CPU loads to return the CPU to idle as quickly as
| possible. They also both run background tasks like Spotlight
| on the e-cores whenever possible. So some process maxing out
| an e-core is using a lot less power than one maxing out a
| p-core. Background processes maxing out a core occasionally
| is not as much of a problem as a lot of people seem to
| assume.
| saagarjha wrote:
| > The "Memory" column in the task manager is RSS. It counts
| shared memory multiple times, once for each process.
|
| It's "footprint" and no it does not do that
| quotemstr wrote:
| Perhaps it did a while ago. Now,
| https://www.bazhenov.me/posts/activity-monitor-anatomy/ is
| a good read. Thanks. It's much better than RSS, although
| I'm at still not sure that I like the inclusion of private
| compressed memory. In any case, thanks for the correction.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Having trouble understanding how this discussion, and TFA don't
| mention:
|
| https://www.puredarwin.org/
|
| which would be where I'd go if total control of the OS on Apple
| hardware was wanted.
| wtallis wrote:
| That doesn't seem to actually provide a usable OS to run on any
| remotely recent Apple hardware. The most recent test build
| available for download is a virtual machine image of a version
| that aligns with macOS from eight years ago.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Surprised that that wasn't mentioned as a reason for this.
|
| Rather a shame it's so far behind.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > Here's our first problem, as those are located in the Signed
| System Volume (SSV), so we can't change them in any way. The same
| applies to the other 417 LaunchDaemons and 460 LaunchAgents that
| account for most of the processes listed by Activity Monitor. In
| the days before the SSV it was possible to edit their property
| lists to prevent them from being launched, but that isn't
| possible any more when running modern macOS.
|
| SSV can be disabled. It would be ill-advised to do so, but Apple
| intentionally allows you to do that. In fact you can strip away
| every single security layer of macOS, including allowing unsigned
| kernel extensions to be loaded. This document is a bit outdated,
| but it should still be possible to do all of that.
| https://gist.github.com/macshome/15f995a4e849acd75caf14f2e50...
|
| Feels like the article is just a cheap dunk on macOS. Has Apple
| perhaps baked in a bit too much into the SSV? Definitely. Even
| the Chess.app is in there.
|
| Does it really matter? Almost certainly no.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _Feels like the article is just a cheap dunk on macOS._
|
| That blog, Howard Oakley at eclecticlight.co, is consistently
| the most informative on the internet about macOS behaviors and
| internals, that Apple does not explain. He is also the author
| of several useful tools [1] to help observe and understand some
| of its underlying details. It's maybe the closest we have to a
| SysInternals for macOS.
|
| [1] https://eclecticlight.co/free-software-menu/
| sgjohnson wrote:
| That just highlights my point about this article being a
| cheap dunk?
|
| Because I was very disappointed with it ending at "SSV
| doesn't let you". SSV can be disabled, and the author should
| have known (almost certainly knows) that.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Disabling SSV may have been beyond the scope of the
| experiment the author was attempting. I suppose he could've
| been more explicit about that.
|
| From one of his comments on his post:
|
| > _I wish whoever takes that project on, every success,
| even more so at working out how those processes can be
| disabled completely_ while keeping the SSV intact.
| sbuk wrote:
| It is. Add we all have off days. Perhaps Howard has had one
| here. I mean, he is defining what type of OS it is by how
| it's configuted. Which is just wierd.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| I got a chuckle out of that for my own reasons as a long
| time Mac user as "Mac OS X is Unix" was the brand back in
| the 10.0-10.3 days, to the point I believe they got a Unix
| certification by someone, and then again with macOS 15 they
| got an Open Group UNIX certification.
|
| https://www.osnews.com/story/140868/macos-15-0-now-
| unix-03-c...
|
| I can't say this affects me in any way I'm aware of, but
| the perception presented here is interesting.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Funnily enough, they had no certification and weren't
| compliant in 10.0-10.3 days, so what they were doing was
| trademark infringement, hence the lawsuit from the Open
| Group. 10.4 was the first compliant version. And oh boy
| they really milked it for several years afterwards.
|
| https://www.quora.com/What-goes-into-making-an-OS-to-be-
| Unix...
| catoc wrote:
| Eclecticlight and 'cheap dunk' ?
|
| No.
|
| This site is a class of its own, in quality of discussions, in
| quality of software, and in dedication... many years long,
| consistent quality
| sgjohnson wrote:
| I didn't claim that eclecticlight writes cheap dunk.
|
| But this article, which starts with
|
| > That's a question I'm asked repeatedly, which this article
| tries to answer.
|
| doesn't actually _try_ to answer the question. It just stops
| at SSV and draws a meaningless comparision with macOS 9. It
| also has several factual inaccuracies in there. Notably, the
| claim that macOS is not UNIX, and the implication that Unix
| systems must somehow be free and open-source (virtually all
| Unixes of the day were proprietary & closed source).
| catoc wrote:
| > _I didn't claim that eclecticlight writes cheap dunk_
|
| Thanks - then we agree (also on the part of the
| argumentation about macOS being a certified UNIX OS)
| sneak wrote:
| Disabling SSV puts your system security on par with any stock
| linux distro. Most OSes don't do a cryptographically verified
| read only root.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| The bigger problem with disabling SSV and making changes to
| it is entirely practical - any macOS update will overwrite
| them.
|
| Which can be worked around by writing a provisioning script,
| but in either case will be a significant headache if one
| would come to rely on the modifications they were to make to
| the volume.
| buttocks wrote:
| Don't read the comments. Author responds like a tool.
| MisterTea wrote:
| I read through a few and don't see anything that would meet
| this description. However, the fact that you saw fit to hurl an
| insult, something the author did not do, it's clear who the
| tool is.
| buttocks wrote:
| I'm more of an arse than a tool.
| rappatic wrote:
| Our machines all have CPUs that can execute on the order of 10^9
| instructions every second. Why waste time worrying about a few
| hundred processes that use next to no CPU time?
| coleca wrote:
| The needless processes / bloat still burn electricity though.
| I'd have to guess that given the millions of installed macOS
| machines it's a non-trivial amount of wasted electricity. Long
| gone are the days of ruthlessly optimizing software for the
| limited hardware.
| kbolino wrote:
| Indeed, these processes are not all sitting there doing
| nothing.
|
| Two processes in particular have been this exact sort of
| problem for me: mds_stores and mediaanalysisd. On three
| separate Macs (all Apple Silicon), I've observed the case
| heating up whenever the computer is plugged in but not
| actively being used. Assuming Activity Monitor is more or
| less accurate, the culprit seems to be those two, who always
| have massive amounts of accumulated CPU time, but never seem
| to actually be using CPU when watched. I suspect, given what
| they supposedly do, that they're also needlessly exhausting
| SSD write cycles, but that's harder to analyze/prove.
| Naturally, they are also in the untouchable area of the file
| system. Completely disabling Spotlight, which you can do
| without disabling SIP, seems to always fix this problem,
| albeit at the cost of seriously decreased usability. I've
| also had mixed results with just limiting the categories of
| Spotlight indexing in System Settings.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yeah, that's not supposed to be happening. Yet it does. For
| me it's fseventsd that goes crazy sometimes. These
| processes are all meant to be lightweight, but they're just
| buggy and end up in bizarre loops. Once my Mac crashed
| because it was endlessly downloading the same Aerial screen
| saver videos in a temp directory until it ran out of space.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Apple has done more than anyone to make its hardware more
| energy-efficient and its software too. It even warns you
| about which apps are using the most power.
|
| macOS is far from perfect, but when the background services
| are working properly, I don't see any evidence that they're
| any significant driver of energy usage.
|
| On the other hand, when they're buggy and suddenly start
| consuming 100% CPU all the time for no reason...
| tristor wrote:
| I'm not sure who the author is, but the fact they choose to be
| stymied by SSV (which can be disabled) to avoid investigation
| down that path, which is similar to the path enthusiasts do with
| Windows to build tools like Tiny11, NTLite, and distributions
| like Atlas, feels intellectually lazy. Asserting that macOS is
| not UNIX (it is, quite literally, including the most recent
| release Tahoe) and then arguing with folks who corrected them in
| the comments, makes me think the author wasn't really interested
| in answering the question they put forth and instead were trying
| to mystify readers to shut down exploration and curiosity.
|
| It is entirely possible to gain an understanding of those
| processes running on your computing system and to decide which
| process you don't want to run at startup, this is regardless of
| the desires and intents of the maker of the computing system, as
| long as you retain control of the hardware. Many of the Windows
| optimization tools at various points even involved community made
| binary patching. There's no basis to claim that it's not possible
| to understand or take actions, it's just that the Mac community
| has a different set of priorities and focus areas than other
| computing communities, so nobody in the community has yet
| invested the effort to do so.
|
| You could summarize this blog post as answering "No" to the
| question in its title, without actually exploring the question to
| determine if that's a true answer. It's not a true answer, and
| won't be until we completely lose control over our own hardware.
| sbuk wrote:
| Howard Oakley has been writting about macOS internals for a
| long time, and 99% of the time, his essays and articles are
| excellent. This is not one of them. Don't be put off by this
| one article - the site is a goldmine.
| sneak wrote:
| I have often considered making a set of scripts to do just
| exactly this (after disabling the SSV so that the system can be
| modified).
|
| It would be no less secure than any modern or common linux OS,
| which do not use a read only signed root.
| t1234s wrote:
| It would be nice to be able remove some or all of the iOS
| bloatware apps but you have to disable system protection and they
| will just reappear on the next macOS update. They really need
| something similar to the "Windows Components" screen that lets
| you check or uncheck things that are bundled in the windows
| install.
| pxc wrote:
| There's a lot of chatter here about macOS' Unix certification.
| But in a post shared by another user, it appears that _the actual
| content of that Unix certification_ vindicates OP-- macOS '
| official Unix compatibility requires disabling SIP:
|
| > So, if you want your installation of macOS 15.0 to pass the
| UNIX(r) 03 certification test suites, you need to disable System
| Integrity Protection, enable the root account, enable core file
| generation, disable timeout coalescing, mount any APFS partitions
| with the strictatime option, format your APFS partitions case-
| sensitive (by default, APFS is case-insensitive, so you'll need
| to reinstall), disable Spotlight, copy the binaries uucp, uuname,
| uustat, and uux from /usr/bin to /usr/local/bin and the binaries
| uucico and uuxqt from /usr/sbin to /usr/local/bin, set the setuid
| bit on all of these binaries, add /usr/local/bin to your PATH
| before /usr/bin and /usr/sbin, enable the uucp service, and
| handle the mystery issues listed in the four Temporary Waivers.
|
| https://www.osnews.com/story/141633/apples-macos-unix-certif...
|
| So it seems _very_ fair to say then, that features like SIP and
| the SSV are genuine turns away from Unix per se, _even given the
| fact of the certification_.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Well, one of the "nice" things about classic mac OS, was that you
| could write an app that could register with the system, to
| receive every user event (like keypresses and mouse movements).
| We used to make _fun_ extensions, with this...
|
| I'm sure that couldn't _ever_ be abused...
|
| The new UNIX-based OS may have its warts, but it _is_ just a bit
| more secure.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| (Generally, to avoid confusion, the classic version is written
| "Mac OS" and the modern version "macOS", with various versions
| of "OS X" between.)
|
| Modern macOS can do this too, you just have to ask the user for
| permission. You can see it in System Settings - Privacy &
| Security - Input Monitoring
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