12 days Mac after 12 years Linux
October 10, 2023 •
Here's my experience with Mac after 12 days.
1. Package management system
A unique and beautiful feature of Linux is the accompanying package management system. Mac has a few options, but they're comparably weak. Brew is serviceable but not great. Win for Linux (except Gentoo), lose for Mac. For example, I had to download a modern version of Python. I visited the official Python website and downloaded it by clicking install. I can easily get the newest version of Python, in most Linux distributions, with one command line. It is convenient and more secure. There is no guarantee that the package I download is free of malware.
2. Linux and Mac interoperability
I was pleasantly surprised by the number of scripts that work on Mac. It wasn't a problem to switch at all.
3. UX/UI
UI (User Interface) is amazing! Everything looks handcrafted to perfection. Most people say the UX (User experience) is the same, but I beg to differ. There are a lot of cases where things don't make any sense, and you can't change it.
Some examples are;
Closing of Finder
The default behavior of "closing" a program is not actually to close it. Instead, it is to minimize it. This is very odd, coming from Linux or even Windows. Moreover, you can't, for example, close the Finder App (files) for some reason.
Consequently, the usual command to close an app doesn't work for Finder. You have to close the window, then move away from it.
Logging in
Log in requires a click on any button, then you can enter your password. This means you always have to wait until you can see the input field to write your password and is very slow compared to Linux.
Touchpad Settings
You only have ten options for touchpad speed. You’re out of luck if you can't find your preferred choice.
Little Box
Mac OS feels like a little box you start with that’s super light and works. I love this! It is one of the things I missed with Linux. It is hard to get a well-supported OS that works and has the basic things.
Security
Security is a mixed bag. Packages are more insulated than when running something on a standard Linux distribution. However, since there is no consistent package management system, it means you will be able to download malware from random sources. I particularly like the insulated part of the Mac Apps. Each app has different rights, like on an iPhone. However, it comes at a cost. Huge apps as they have to ship dependencies as well.
Conclusion
Lots of things to like and lots of things to dislike. I am not sure it was the right decision. My productivity in-vivo is down 30% as macOS lacks some basic shortcuts/ways of doing things that Linux (especially the new Gnome) is doing very well. Maybe I will gain that back. The updates are, hopefully, less problematic than on Linux.
I wish the Linux community would spend 90% of their energy on different distros that would become mainstream. I am sure, with the right amount of time/energy, they would end up with a better product than any other OS in the world. Unfortunately, that's not human behavior. If I were to fix it, I'd probably create my own. There would be more than one OS, and I would have contributed to what I explained as the problem.
