neither is allowing massive corporations taking moral stands on divisive political issues—wholly unrelated to the purview of their industry—to become socially acceptable!
corporations are comprised of people that work for them, but corporations themselves are not people, regardless of the image social media managers try to portray. this is a crucial distinction.
I’m actually joining the Apple ecosystem from Android/Windows for similar reasons. In particular, I wanted to use Logic instead of paying huge sums for new versions of Ableton; I wanted to use Pixelmator Pro instead of paying for Adobe subscription (although Affinity Photo is also available on windows); I wanted to use Time Machine instead of Google Drive; I especially wanted my passwords stored on my computer instead of locked behind my Google account at passwords.google.com (I was locked out of my Google account for a week once and it was temporarily life-ruining); and finally, I was so tired of trying to keep up with endless UI changes in Windows and Android. I’m not saying these were good reasons, but they were my reasons. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure I guess.
There's FLStudio (or Bitwig, or Reaper) to match Apple's Logic, 1Password (or Bitlocker from what I hear) to match Google's passwords.google.com, and Backblaze+others to match Time Machine
Sure 'switching to apple' is a choice, but only one of many. Personally I am tired of using tech designed for and by managers and SWE's gunning for promotion and not personal empowerment or passion for personal computing
Besides, everyone needs to ditch Chrome. Firefox could use the love
BB complements TM for me; it's super useful to have a local versioned backup that's updated every time I dock my laptop with the desk, and is also invisibly supplemented by a versioned backup of changes I've made that the OS maintains on unused space on the laptop's drive. Works even if I'm sitting at a cafe with all the radios turned off to get maximum life out of the battery.
Backblaze? Backblaze is there for in case my house burns down and I leave with nothing but the clothes on my back.
On the other hand, having as many users as possible use any password manager at all is an immense challenge as-is. It really doesn't matter what gets them using one as long as they do. If an OS-native one happens to have the lowest friction, so be it.
For everyone else, sure, there might be 100 people in the world that will actually audit their open source password managers. But that isn't exactly moving the rest of the industry forward (be it from the engineering perspective or the user perspective).
In this case, (almost) perfect is the enemy of good.
> "Personally I am tired of using tech designed for and by managers and SWE's gunning for promotion and not personal empowerment or passion for personal computing"
Unless you have spoken to all managers and SWEs I doubt you can make such a blanket statement about the immense workforces at Microsoft, Google and Apple.
Sure, one could argue that Microsoft is profit-driven, Google might be marketshare-driven and Apple might be UX-driven, and all of those could be true (or at least true for a major subset of both the engineers and the targeted user group). But it would be a guess at best and not helpful to your personal situation or anyone else's.
How could you possibly interpret this new world of digital sharecropping ("cloud computing") as empowering? Where is the passion for 'personal computing' when nearly everything personal about it is delegated to the cloud?
Personal computing is a box under your desk or in your pocket beefy and smart enough to solve your problems without checking in with daddy warbucks and the mothership.
Nearly everything about modern cloud computing is the opposite... it disempowers individuals and creates an unhealthy relationship with things that are out of the users control. How many peoples' livelihoods have been messed up because FANG decided to lock them out for some reason or another? How many articles have been posted to HN and elsewhere begging for a FANG employee to come along and fix their problem because there is no other option?
The server in my closet or at my datacenter isn't going to lock me out because I pissed off Google.
In theory, yes, but in practice Microsoft Office favors its cloud service when you click "Open" or "Save". Didn't they break autosave to only work when a document is backed by the cloud?
In practice, I am continually having to disable cloud-related features (worded that I need them in the most patronizing way possible) every time Windows updates
In practice, common knowledge on desktop computing is atrophying because of an increasingly acute lack of knowledgeable users on the internet. As more and more of the young users who grew up in this gilded cage enter a level of expertise, their advice pollutes forums with cloud-backed solutions and knowledge of 'the old ways' becomes harder and harder to find.
>> How could you possibly interpret this new world of digital sharecropping ("cloud computing") as empowering?
Because it lets people - such as my older relatives - who wouldn't use a desktop and would have problems setting up and configuring one - especially for an "advanced" use case such as setting up your own private cloud.
As a computer instructor back home in west Africa, before smartphones I had students (especially older ones) who struggled with even using a mouse or keyboard. I've never had to teach a single one of them how to use their smartphone (at least for things like browsing the internet, taking and editing photos, making notes, etc). Providing things like photo editing on-device, without having to download and figure out a program like photoshop (or image magic for example) is a non-starter. Now they can edit, filter, share, make home movies- all without needing any help.
>> Where is the passion for 'personal computing' when nearly everything personal about it is delegated to the cloud?
I don't know what you mean by passion, but these people love their phones and the things it lets them do, with an intuitive UI (as well as a transferable one between Android and iOS, since they're about the same feature wise at the moment)
>> Personal computing is a box under your desk or in your pocket beefy and smart enough to solve your problems
This is ONE version of personal computing, and tbh an option only available to us "hackers".
>> without checking in with daddy warbucks and the mothership.
You don't need to check in. My country has crappy bandwidth and of course it's impossible to do things like pay for iCloud or gdrive without credit cards, so most use the phone without backups, and they're fine.
>> Nearly everything about modern cloud computing is the opposite... it disempowers individuals and creates an unhealthy relationship with things that are out of the users control.
How is allowing my students, older relatives, etc - who wouldn't be able to use a laptop or desktop machine - to go online and talk to their children abroad using apps like whatsapp - disempowering? I understand your point - I miss the days when we had computers to mess around with and learn Linux and coding on. Most of us on here came up that way, compared to kids now who don't have to see the underlying OS or tinker with it - they can just play Fortnite and watch YouTube.
But most people aren't interested in these things, or even care about machine models, OS versions etc. They buy phones because they want to communicate online and talk to their friends and family. That's it.
Before whatsapp the only way I could talk to my family was through international calls, which are prohibitively expensive, so they would happen about once a month. Once they got on whatsapp though we moved to being able to talk, share videos and pics of things happening at home, every single day. In addition a large part of getting rid of our dictator was people being able to use apps like whatsapp to share the latest information, even as he cracked down and only allowed propaganda to be published even in private newspapers.
This is a net positive however you look at it - it has brought far more people (especially in poorer countries) into the digital age. I find that very empowering in the sense of putting tools in the hands of more people, including barely literate ones (my country has something like a 40% illiteracy level rate) who use things like whatsapp voice notes to communicate.
>> How many peoples' livelihoods have been messed up because FANG decided to lock them out for some reason or another?
This is true but not really related to your larger point about computing devices and how they are being used now.
>> The server in my closet or at my datacenter isn't going to lock me out because I pissed off Google.
This really doesn't happen that much often considering we're talking billions of users.
We are on a "hacker" site where most people are skilled "tech people" so of course when things break for them they write blog posts and comments and we get to see and argue over those. Most people using these devices don't know or care about any of this, and have gmail accounts going back a decade that they've used without any issues.
In summary your version of computing (which is similar to mine) just isn't the universal version. I always find joy whenever I go back home and find taxi drivers using their phones to play music, people using YouTube to check instructional videos and post their own etc. When my grandmother died my uncle gathered all the photos, videos, etc that we have of her as a family on whatsapp, and made a nice video tribute of her life to share with us. Gathering the photos and videos took longer than making the movie itself, which was a few taps, and it was a very powerful moment emotionally esp for us family members outside the country. We were able to participate in remembering her life together in a way that international phone calls and a complex (to my uncle) photo editing app on a PC under a desk would ever have let us.
I find this very empowering, and it makes me happy how far we've come and how many more people we have brought across the digital divide. Let's not be myopic because those of us on here have the technical knowledge to disdain and even dump these platforms.
And keep in mind that American / Western users' use cases are very different from the farmer who can only afford a cheap android phone, being able to come online finally to check on crop prices so they won't get cheated, send pictures of their crops to prospective buyers, and even do things like checking the weather.
How is allowing my students, older relatives, etc - who wouldn't be able to use a laptop or desktop machine - to go online and talk to their children abroad using apps like whatsapp - disempowering?
It's the tyranny of the "minimum viable user" [1]. By making information systems that are safe enough for your students or their grandparents to use, the companies have to take away the customizability, configurability and assorted "sharp edges" that make those systems useful for more advanced users. I say "have to" deliberately, because the counterargument of, "Why can't they make both," never seems to describe a real world system.
Whether its Windows, MacOS or heck even Gnome3, the more an information system attempts to cater to the needs of novice users, the worse it becomes at catering to the needs of advanced users. And the terrifying reality is that inexperienced users outnumber us hackers by two orders of magnitude (or more).
It's pretty obvious that everyone who works at Microsoft (specifically) hasn't got the motivation for personal empowerment or computing, or otherwise hasn't got the power to enact such. The end result is the same: a tech corp that oppresses the end user wherever feasible.
Some points to back up my contention:
- Microsoft does not allow the Windows serf to uninstall Edge on Windows 10.
- Microsoft is hostile to the idea of allowing a Windows serf to self-sign their own TPM.
- Microsoft does not allow the Windows serf to inspect the code that arbitrates their computing.
- Microsoft does not offer the Windows serf any ability to inspect, reject, or roll-back "updates."
Understanding these harms helps my personap situation by enabling me to make informed decisions about avoiding serfdom to Microsoft and their legion of cog-like engineers, which is definitely to my benefit. Microsoft engineers actualize the harmful policy of "Windows users deserve less;" therefore, the sniveling SWEs at Microsoft deserve less.
Part of that less which I shall forever withhold is my money and my endorsement of their basic capacity to ethical computing. Microsoft engineers are simply not respectable with regards to any ideals of user empowerment they may pretend to hold.
Backblaze is great, but it’s not a replacement for time machine (and I use both).
Being able to buy a new Mac and make it into an exact copy of the old Mac by using time machine is amazing - I’ve done it a few times over the years, and it still impresses me every time. Plus I have time machine backups from 2011 which I occasionally browse to see what my kids were up to then.
I found out the hard way that Backblaze, despite their claims of "...automatically back up all your files including documents, photos, music, movies, and more. It’s that easy.", do not back up .dmg files (among others) by default. Which seems to be a huge omission considering the numerous use cases outside of just application installers.
I'm going ot go out on a limb and say that for the majority of users, any dmg they have is a software installer they could easily redownload. so a waste to backup
No need to go on a limb, .dmg files are usually software installers. But if I'm paying for a backup service that claims to back everything up, I want them to do exactly that, regardless of whether it can be re-downloaded or not (which takes additional time, not to mention figuring out what was missing from the supposed "everything" backup in the first place).
I'm surprised that backblaze doesn't checksum the files on the user's computer to see if they already have it on their servers to avoid duplicate uploads.
They apparently do but only within a users computer (or account, I don't remember). I would be pretty uncomfortable they comparing my files checksum to a master list of sorts
This is exactly what Dropbox does: they hash a file, compare with all known hashes, and deduplicate accordingly. The file is then encrypted with the hash of its contents.
The majority of users have no backups at all. The ones that do either use one of the big three cloud syncing things (Google Drive, iCloud Drive, OneDrive) or use a local backup (TimeMachine). Everything else is just a niche. (unless you want to pull in corporate users)
I don’t think it’s a matter of blocking, they’re just filtered by default. You can edit the filter list though so those files are backed up, and that’s what I do.
If I had known about their filter list, I would've done exactly that. But their implication that everything was backed up from the beginning by default is what got me.
ISO files are included in that filter list, among other files like VMs and such. Seems like a massive exclusion net to cast when claiming everything is backed up.
Backblaze has a bunch of sheisty rules put in place because they're afraid of supporting data hoarders, and want to minimize the amount of space users take as part of their 'unlimited' plan, so I am not surprised.
Nothing is being blocked. They have a default exclusion list which works very well for the overwhelming majority of users. It prevents people spending forever backing up large downloads that they can just get newer versions of.
Removing these exclusions is very easy and obvious.
Time machine isn't that great as a backup system and has issues. Carbon copy cloner is a better system to create snapshots to restore to as a local back up system IMO.
Does that allow you to set up a new PC as an exact copy of the old one? Because Time Machine does just that, and I’d really like to find the Windows equivalent.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I actually prefer to start from (nearly) scratch on a new machine as it gets rid of all the accumulated cruft. I use github + stow for my dotfiles, firefox sync for syncing browser history, bookmarks, etc and rclone + backblaze for backing up whatever is important enough. Beyond that, I don't care if I lose anything on the old machine.
Same. Every time I've tried copying stuff to a new machine via Time Machine the new machine feels unstable. There's so much stuff in ~/Library/Application Support type places that really shouldn't be copied so I just start the new machine empty and copy a few folders over (Documents, .ssh)
Isn't that easily accomplished by storing a disk image? (e.g. clobezilla, ssd migration software, snapshots,...). For that the OS is completely irrelevant.
Can't speak for the latter two but FL 20 absolutely steps up to Logic. And they keep adding stuff to it, for free. My license from like 2005 is still valid.
There is no windows for phones (anymore). If you aren't using an apple phone, you are pretty much forced to use google's android (or one of the various linux phones with little financial backing)
Windows/Android can be considered a natural pair, Microsoft seem to think so. Personally use Linux/Android pair, and I've been vaguely considering switching to an iphone to avoid Google.
How do they integrate at all? Windows has ability to link to a android phone to view texts, place calls etc, but no such link exists for iPhones and Windows.
If I ever wanted to get into iOS development I'd probably purchase a cheap Macbook Air for the bare minimum of stuff and use one of the multiplatform SDKs that can produce iOS builds alongside every other platform
My personal preference for a DAW is Studio One, it’s lovely. I like the efficient UI and it has all the features I ever wanted.
One of the sad ironies of my life is that once I switched to macOS and could’ve avoided all the annoyances and instabilities I’ve had with audio on Windows, I just never felt like making music again. Life is like that sometimes. :)
Of course I agree with your point that there are many options when it comes to switching. I tried, but clearly failed, to imply this very point. For me, after consideration of my requirements and tolerances, Apple seemed like the best fit, but I wouldn’t suggest that it has any kind of broader implication for the state of various software ecosystems.
Suffice to say I think all of the software in your list is pretty great and I chose what I chose for reasons that are wholly mine!
I switched to Apple from Android (still 100% Linux on desktop/laptop though) a few years ago, and I've grown to like it more than any Android phone I've owned...But it still sucks.
It feels like everything is overflowing with mediocrity, and there's no hope of it ever changing. I often have an idea for improving something that I see as being extremely shitty and perfect for improving/innovating, but there is no possible way for me to turn it into a successful product/business because the monopolists wouldn't allow it.
For example, why is the app store experience that same boring crap it has always been? Why can't that be fun, with like user profiles, Amazon-style reviews, Steam-style community features, social media-style feeds so you can sub to a developer, TikTok-style feeds of promo videos to discover new apps/games, etc. There's so much to explore there, but it's never going to happen because Apple doesn't allow it, and Apple themselves isn't going to do it because they're a monopoly and they have no incentive to (same goes for Google).
What are the chances that our government will wake up and do something about this limp noodle we call a tech industry? Or that some startup will "disrupt" these monopolists with something better and resist the multi-billion-dollar acquisition offers (backed by anti-competitive threats).
This makes me want to grab my old thinkpad and disappear into the woods. I'll become a hermit, using only my own+libre software and only returning to civilization when I need to replace the battery pack.
> Why can't that be fun, with like user profiles, Amazon-style reviews, Steam-style community features, social media-style feeds so you can sub to a developer, TikTok-style feeds of promo videos to discover new apps/games, etc.
Similar to the other comment, I read that with sheer horror. I specifically don't want to spend a lot of time in any app store. I want to find quality apps I'm looking for, download them and leave.
> It feels like everything is overflowing with mediocrity, and there's no hope of it ever changing.
I’d definitely think that about the Apple Store if they introduced some of the features that you suggested — that’s part of the problem. What one person considers an obvious innovation another person considers yet another newfangled UI design.
What's "fun" about following the developer of a particular piece of business or process support software?
Apple Store already has star ratings, user reviews, and links to publisher web sites. I don't use any of the social/community features of Steam, and I can't stand the amount of review-stacking that happens in Steam and Amazon.
The one area that Steam is useful is their discovery stream where Steam will show you more games that they think you might like — the catch being that if you like one RTS game, Steam will show you lots of RTS games and never show you Mass Effect, Torchlight, KSP, or Dad Dating Sim.
As to why Apple doesn't have a discovery stream, just look at Steam's problematic system and you'll understand: Apple doesn't have it because they haven't figured out how to do it in a way that makes sense and will help people discover apps that they'll enjoy.
There the Apple Store suffers is in discoverability: in some cases I've been looking for a specific app and the thing I'm looking for comes "under the fold" because a dozen other apps have paid to get higher rankings for that search term.
I do not want TikTok-style feeds of promotional material clogging up my App Store. I want to get in there, find the thing I want, then get out. I do not spend my life looking for inspiration from apps in the store.
Everybody has different interests and needs, but personally, I hope they never implement your suggestions for the App Store. I , like I’m sure a vast majority of the Apple user base , just want an App Store, not something filled with social features.
Not really the same. They switched from a proprietary platform to a free platform. That is a much larger jump than simply switching proprietary platforms with much larger costs and gains. They wanted control and switched to get it, whereas you just swapped out landlords.
So first of all, I don’t think it’s true that the article describes a switch to 100% free software. For example, the author bought a mirrorless camera, which is going to run proprietary software. Second, and more importantly, I think your comment implies that the only lever of control is switching between free and non free software and I don’t agree with this. For example, I am now protected against Google terminating or otherwise locking me out of my account whereas I was not previously protected. Even though I disagree with your comment, I appreciate that free software has some advantages over proprietary software and I would not dispute the claim in general.
I would strongly advise you to think twice about switching to Logic. Apple has consistently dumbed down that product since they bought it, turning it entirely into a loss leader to sell you the Apple ecosystem. Logic was great when it was Emagic's baby, I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole now. It is the archetypal example of a product steered by executive strategy instead of user interests.
If you need a low cost vendor neutral DAW, Reaper is the way to go. I'm a semi-professional musician, and well compensated software architecture consultant, so cost is not a factor in my software purchases for music, but when I want a linear-paradigm DAW, it's Reaper. That product is dope and the company is awesome.
huh, ok. Can you say more about where you think Reaper outshines Logic? I have to say that as a non-pro, I was really impressed by what Logic offers for the price, especially coming from Ableton which seems to offer considerably less for considerably more money. My main use cases these days are: 1) hooking up my electronic drum kit via midi and using Logic's built in drum kits (these sound pretty good); 2) recording and processing spoken word. For both of these use cases, Logic seems superior to Ableton, which is the software I am most familiar with. I think Ableton's interface and user experience are vastly superior to Logic's overall, but for these use cases that difference isn't worth paying for. Thoughts?
reaper was built by programmers who took advantage of everything software can do, so you can a) script the hell out of it b) customize it like crazy c) route anything anywhere. So for building power user interfaces for linear editing it's great. It does not have built in instruments. Personally, I use Rob Pappen's Punch and Addictive Drums 2 for 90% of my drum needs so I don't miss them!
In what universe does switching to a Mac to use Logic make more financial sense than buying a license for Ableton Live?
For what it's worth: if anybody else is facing the same conundrum, choose an OS-agnostic DAW like Reaper, Renoise or Bitwig, then it doesn't matter what OS you're on.
I done this with Affinity Designer and now when I successfully leaved marketing and public relations driven Apple, this decision is paying off nicely.
Running Affintiy Designer under Windows 10 VM is non issue.
OS-agnostic path is the only long-term way of working.
Now under Linux I use Resolve, BitWig and Reaper, Blender, Inkscape, Krita, Emacs and I feel confident that no corporation will dictate my workflow in the endless pursuit for world domination.
The reality is that we are living in some form of economic stagnation, worldwide changes are ahead and people will be poorer, this will drive Apples vision for 1000 dollars + smartphones and overpriced computers out of place. I have converted my business to ARCH and in the process saved a ton of money (previously dedicated to buy Apple Silicon).
Now this money will be spend on my engineers not on some half-assed marketing plan from company out of touch.
The only software that kept me inside Apple Ecosystem was Sketch. Since pandemic started for good or bad Figma is taking Sketch market-share, I don't like SaaS for design paradigm, but we adapt to clients requirements not to our own taste. I used Inkscape for interface design long before Macromedia Fireworks to offer a specific solution. So I am set for the future.:)
+1 for Pixelmator Pro. I just looked through my tool set (Figma, VSCode, Notion, a default browser, Pixelmator Pro), and the only Mac-specific app is PP - and it's awesome.
...okay; but Logic provides its updates for free (since X), is cheaper; and provides a wealth more content than stock Ableton does in the form of Logic’s downloadable content.
But why do you have to curry to inject your dependencies? Dependency injection is satisfied by moving internal constructs in your function or method into parameters, no?
That's the style that functional programmers prefer. It makes it slightly easier to work with as you can now pass them together as one. Most OOP dependency injection is done through interfaces, but with the functional approach where you have functions as first class citizens you can just pass functions around. And as the best interface is a one function interface, that's the ideal way to do it.
The point being, essentially they are the same thing, they hold the same power, and it's just a stylistic difference.
I’m still not seeing it. As a Java dev by day, I see DI mostly through the lenses of Hollywood principle and IOC containers, neither of which bear much resemblance to currying (as I see it). When it comes to something like DI frameworks, currying is certainly not as powerful, but I don’t think that’s what you mean. Currying seems much more related to something like the builder pattern. Maybe there’s some article you know of that I could read? Googled around but didn’t find anything.
So there is two types of DI, one way automatically wired through an IOC container, and the other manually wired through constructors. They both are the same thing, but one uses some configuration and magic to make it easier to pass around these interfaces.
Mark Seeman's blog[0][1][2](many more related articles, these are particularly related) helped me grasp some of this stuff.
It's an unfortunate comment since I struggle with word salad most days. Being able to skim and find certain blocks or aspects of a source file is preferable if I can't remember the name of something right away.
I'm confused. This article is about syntax highlighting, not semantic highlighting. Do you have semantic highlighting set up.or syntax highlighting? If the former, what are are you using?
> That's why suddenly so many care about the rights of minority groups, too.
Yes, as we all know, that idea was invented in 2004. Before that, it was unheard of to worry about the rights of minorities. The founding fathers of the US were famously not concerned about a tyranny of the majority.
I don't want to yuck anyone's yum but the thought of maintaining, keeping charged, finding room for and managing data on so many computers sounds like a nightmare to me.
Even just keeping software updates, backups, and your personal data up to date on both a laptop and a desktop can be frustrating. Two Macs could be doable because of the level of syncing that iCloud provides, but I'd probably still need Screen Sharing every once in a while!
1 closet server desktop (also old, but runs terraria servers just fine)
On my desk, I use 2 HDMI switches and a USB 3.0 switch to use the same peripherals and monitors for both my work laptop and gaming desktop. At the end of the day, I just hit the buttons on the switches to toggle to my desktop.
I have a USB-C dock that the work laptop plugs into. If i ever want to do work for my side project, I can unplug my work-provided laptop and plug in my personal laptop, and have the same setup as before -- just with a different machine.
> On the other hand, we just saw The Green Knight and that one will throw you.
I think I'm going to need at least two more viewings to get from "OK, I see it saying a lot of things about several themes or ideas, and I can tell what at least some of those themes or ideas are, but I have only the vaguest idea what it's saying about them" to "ah, now I get it."
Nolan's films are not baffling in the sense of creating true mystery or intrigue. They are baffling because they truly are a mess and have inaudible dialog, and that's despite being famous for having tedious monologues.
