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Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I think the decline of software went hand-in-hand with the decline of the native indie Mac app

… I think the decline of software went hand-in-hand with the decline of the native indie Mac app. They still exist, but when I started with the Mac (2007), there was a very rich ecosystem of native Mac apps. Most stood head and shoulders above their Linux and Windows counterparts. Apple has nearly destroyed that ecosystem with: race-to-the-bottom pricing incited by the App Store; general neglect of the Mac platform (especially between ~2016 and Apple Silicon); and a messy reactionary toolkit story with Catalyst, SwiftUI, etc. The new toolkits seem to imply that Apple says that it's the end of AppKit, but most SwiftUI applications are noticeably worse. With their messy toolkit story and general neglect, developers have started using Electron more and more. Sure, part of the popularity is cost savings, since Electron apps can be used on multiple platforms. But part of it is also that a Catalyst or SwiftUI app is not going to provide much more over an Electron app. They will also feel weirdly out of place and you become dependent on Apple working out quirks in SwiftUI. E.g. …

Original discussionApple needs a Snow Sequoia780 source comments · at import
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RC

There are some factual "gaps" there about how good Snow Leopard was, but I understand the sentiment. As someone who's been a Mac user since System 6 and has been consistently using Macs alongside PCs _daily_ for over 20 years I can say that Apple's software quality (either in terms of polish or just plain QA) has steadily decreased. It's just that me and other old-time switchers have stopped complaining about it and moved on (taoofmac.com, my blog, was started when I wrote a few very popular switcher guides, and even though I kept using the same domain name I see myself as a UNIX guy, not "just" a Mac user). For me, Spotlight is no longer (anywhere) near as useful to find files (and sometimes forgets app and shortcut names it found perfectly fine 5 minutes ago), and there is no longer any way to effectively prioritize the results I want (apps, not internet garbage). Most of the other exa…

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CA

I think most of this is just downstream of the Mac being eclipsed by the iPhone in terms of Apple’s revenue. The Mac just isn’t critical to Apple’s business like it was in 2009 when Snow Leopard came out. They would have started development on SL in 2008, when the iPhone was still a fairly niche product and there wasn’t even an App Store. Now, ios gets the executive attention and it will generally get the best developers assigned to it, and the Mac has to live with the scraps.

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NE

> 1Password tried SwiftUI for their Mac app 1Password had a beautiful native Mac app that works to this day. Even assuming SwiftUI is actually bad, why did they have to migrate at all? What was wrong with the existing app? I'm not disagreeing with the opinions on Apple software quality, but I think the 1Password case is more down to their taking of VC money and having to give (JS) devs some busywork to rebuild something that worked perfectly well.

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JU

> I recently bought a ThinkPad to use besides my MacBook. I'm on the same boat here. Something is driving me away from my MacBook M1(Pro? Don't even know). I have a gut feeling that it's macOS but can't really put a finger on it yet. Bought a heavily used ThinkPad T480s (from 2018) and replaced almost every replaceable part of it, including the screen. Being able to replace many parts easily is a nice touch since I am using MacBooks since 2007 exclusively. Guess that's why I somehow overdid it here. Slammed Pop!_OS 22.04 on it and I'm very pleased with the result. The first Linux desktop I actually enjoy since trying SuSE 5-something. Pain points are teams (running in browser), bad audio quality with AirPods when using the microphone and cpu speed and heat. I guess one has to stop using Apple silicon in laptops to realize how amazing these processors are.

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