by ordinaryradical 11 hours ago
This is going to be remembered as a comical fumble, in my view.
I was fully locked-in to the ecosystem, the phone, the services, the TV, and I am looking for the exits.
I’m starting to parallelize to software which will play well on Linux, and when I’m feeling ready (or miserable enough) I will not be looking back.
The macOS exodus will be like Hemingway’s line about bankruptcy: very slowly and then all at once.
I’m right where you are. Very happy Apple customer since my first PowerBook G4. Currently have an M1 Max, an iPhone 17 Pro, the iPad Pro, HomePod, Apple TV, and Watch Ultra.
All the _just works_ feeling and reliability seem to be gone. Tahoe is so unstable that I now restart the Mac every day, when in the past it happened on software updates only. Apple Music is another huge mess, I can’t comprehend how can it be so unreliable.
Looking for exits as well and kind of looking forward to migrating to Graphene OS, self-hosted Immich, and Navidrome
I can't quite believe how bad Apple Music is. I will say this for Apple, when I tried out Music on a brand new Mac and it didn't work properly, I got to chat to a real support person who walked me through fixing it.
It shouldn't have been broken though. It shouldn't be a native app written by Apple that feels worse to use than both Spotify and YouTube music. I mean, I open it now just to see if there's anything janky and yeah. "Get 3 months for $5.99" and then below that "Get 3 months for $8.99" and you'd have to scroll and read much smaller text to see that the second one is for family - I mean that's reasonably obvious but it's weirdly unpolished. And then the play bar, which is floating around, looks unintegrated with the app, obscures the content area, and provides enabled controls that do nothing because there is no song to play. Not broken, but UX stuff that shows a lack of care.
And yet Apple engineers are going through numerous forums and Reddit posts to gaslight people by commenting “well, it doesn’t happen to me, mine works perfectly”.
They managed to mess up an entire ecosystem and they’re acting so stupid about it that I cannot believe all this software was made by Apple.
There’s no elegance, no thought out user experience, no good design, it’s all stupid glass design with comical amount of padding. It all looks like it was designed and implemented by a team five over a half assed pool party.
What the hell is Apple doing with its tens of thousands of engineers, if they cannot make a freaking window manager.
I'm convinced that this is the fate of all successful software companies. It's not a result of arrogance or hubris or anything else like that. It's the result of turnover.
Take your favourite rock band and turn over all the musicians until no one is left from the original band. Should we expect the band to continue cranking out chart-topping hits?
There's one further factor that makes the situation even worse than the "Rock Band of Theseus." That's the fact that young software engineers are not interested in stewardship. They want to build their own projects, not fix bugs in someone else's. Across the software industry we see this lead to a continual churn, rewrites and redesigns no one wants, and a huge amount of wasted effort reinventing the wheel (and often making a worse wheel).
It often feels like Apple hires the best hardware and marketing people in the world and holds them to the highest standards, but the software design and engineering people are left to just kind of screw around, redesign stuff for shits and giggles, and laugh as people fill their forums with bug reports and (very obvious) feature requests.
When even my "boomer" aged and non-tech savvy dad who has always used an iPhone notices the update is bad, I think you are in at least a little bit of trouble if you don't quickly course correct.
I'm sorry but if your out is linux and windows because you're not happy how stuff doesn't "just work" in the Apple ecosystem boy are you in for a bad surprise.
However bad you think Apple is getting with MacOS - windows is getting worse. And Linux ? Good luck getting decent hardware that will run without having basic functionality issues. Queue the linux brigade "my PC works perfect, what linux issues are you having". Meanwhile I can't use bluetooth on my desktop (works perfectly fine on windows), and I was watching laptop reviews from justjosh recently where he's adding a segment where he is trying out linux on the device - and his experience on the two videos I've seen "sound does't work, wifi doesn't work, BT doesn't work ..."
All that said I am looking into leaving the Apple ecosystem as well because I just don't like how locked down and the devices are, but I'm fully aware that it's going to take significant effort for stuff that I'd get out of the box from Apple.
The problem isn't that MacOS doesn't work, it's that MacOS doesn't work _and_ you can't fix the things that don't work.
You can anticipate "the linux brigade" because it works well for many of us.
This isn't to say there _aren't_ problems. Bluetooth, audio, etc. working all depend on having the luck that someone wrote good drivers for the device you want to install Linux on. When you do have a problem, you don't have the benefit of having many people on your same configuration like you do with Apple. You might find yourself troubleshooting as the only person with your specific combo of dongle, mobo, cpu, distro, and kernel.
I've been on Linux since 2009 and MacOS since 2021. I've never had a bluetooth problem with Linux but I've had a ton on MacOS (but that might just be airpods).
The nice thing about Linux is that you have control over all your problems. On MacOS, if you have a solvable problem, the solution is often either "Pray that Apple fixes it in the next release" or "The fix for that costs $10 per month and it'll clog up your app switcher". On Linux, if you have a solvable problem, the solution is often "go into the settings for your distribution" or "install this tweak tool" or "find someone who had it before on a support forum and follow their steps".
It's not unreasonable that someone who is fed up with unsolvable problems on MacOS would find Linux more appealing. It's not a naive mindset, it's just how things are.
Thanks for this very important point. It often gets lost in the discussion.
The big idea with Linux/BSD/fully-open-source is that you can fix whatever you don't like.
That was the breaking point for me with Tahoe. I never loved MacOS before that, but it never got in the way. Then with Tahoe, it got in the way, so I went to fix it, and found out that fixing it is actually impossible! That was the breakup moment.
Sophisticated LLMs make it even easier to fix or tweak any Linux/BSD/fully-open-source software to our liking.
> The big idea with Linux/BSD/fully-open-source is that you can fix whatever you don't like.
That's a great theory, and sometimes it's actually true, but in reality for most users most of the time, Linux is as "fixable" as Windows or macOS, because most people, even the technically savvy ones aren't driver developers. Heck most software developers probably aren't even C programmers anymore. And even if someone had the competency in the language and low level system programming, do they have the time and the inclination to re-write the audio stack so that it finally works correctly? Or to fix the fact that even in 2026, sleep and hibernate are hit and miss? And then to maintain their patch against future system updates or go through the process of getting it upstreamed?
Most Linux users, and especially most Linux users switching from something like macOS or Windows would be waiting and hoping that someone else decided to fix the thing for them because they either lack the skills, time or inclination to do it themselves. And we know this is true because if it weren't true, all the various "wars" over the years like systemd and pulse audio and wayland wouldn't have been a war at all because everyone who didn't like it would have easily patched it out and moved on. But a modern full fledged OS experience is a mess of intertwined and complex dependencies. So when a distro decides to switch a big chunk of the underlying stack like that, most people either have to go along with it, or hope that enough people feel strongly enough about it to fork everything and make their own distro, and then they have to hope the forkers have the passion and drive to maintain that for them.
Yes, you "can" fix whatever you don't like in linux. Just like you "can" find all the information you need to diagnose and treat whatever medical condition you might have online and at your local libraries. But most people are still going to pay a doctor, because most people don't have the time or skills to actually do it.
> but in reality for most users most of the time, Linux is as "fixable" as Windows or macOS,
I disagree with this. For most users, most of the time, Linux is significantly more fixable than Windows or MacOS.
In nearly 20 years, I've never had to write a line of C or touch the Linux kernel to fix issues I've had on Linux.
For example, one of my big peeves I've had lately on both PopOS and MacOS are the looooong animations to switch desktops.
On PopOS, I had two paths to fix this: Tweak the COSMIC desktop to fix the behavior, or the simple thing of simply installing GNOME (or KDE or any other DE of choice).
On MacOS, I'm SOL. There's no way to fix that on my Macbook (short of installing Asahi Linux, of course).
> Just like you "can" find all the information you need to diagnose and treat whatever medical condition you might have online and at your local libraries. But most people are still going to pay a doctor, because most people don't have the time or skills to actually do it.
This isn't a great analogy, but it's worth noting: Many conditions are expected to be self-diagnosed and self-treated. I don't go to the doctor for scrapes, bruises, colds, dry eyes, a stubbed toe, etc. By this analogy, Linux users are buying their own aspirin and applying their own band-aids, while MacOS users are waiting in line, dependent on someone else to fix these things.
I say this as someone who uses both MacOS and Linux daily.
Does it matter? Generally Linux desktop distributions are made for the people who use them, who would tend towards people who will fix things. You mention distros but there obviously are a lot of passionate distro makers because right now it seems like there are more distros than ever.
There are often comments on threads like this that go along the lines of "If only the people making Linux desktop did X then they'd get more people". But there there isn't really anyone making Linux on the desktop. It's not a product. Even the products within it are built on the work of people with very disparate interests. It's kind of amazing that we get a cobbled together working experience at all.
Apple and Microsoft can focus on particular things, like getting more users, or supporting hardware they want to sell, or trying to get you to sign up to Office 365. No Linux desktop environment can have that kind of focus. So when you say it's not fixable to most users I think: well it's not supposed to be. It's not supposed to be anything, it just kind of is. Like coming across a mountain instead of a theme park - it's not a curated experience, it's not going to be for everyone, you might get hurt, but it's far far more beautiful.
We seem to have a world where neither Linux, nor MacOS, nor Windows "just work". None of them have meaningful support channels for individuals. All of them have issues. They're very similar in these ways.
The first of these systems is actionable: When it doesn't work, it can generally be made to work. The whole journey may be an awful affair for the entire duration, but a person can usually (not always!) get there.
The other two systems are inactionable: When it doesn't work, there is no fixing it. There is no pathway, nor any journey. One can only accept that it is broken, that they are powerless to change it, and that this is the end of the road for that problem.
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There are probably healthier ways to learn acceptance than this.
And phones are even worse!
I have come to hate Android, but every time I seriously look at switching to iOS, it seems Apple has chosen that time to make things even worse. Unfortunately, there's no Linux equivalent for phones. (Or at least, nothing that's easier than gentoo was in 2004. That was great for learning, but for daily use of a critical device, not so great.)
> The first of these systems is actionable: When it doesn't work, it can generally be made to work. The whole journey may be an awful affair for the entire duration, but a person can usually
It's also important to mention that it is more likely a person would get help along the way.
And - it should also be said that there are non-Linux free operating systems, like the BSD's, for which it can also "generally be made to work". And there's the more niche HaikuOS (where I don't know if what doesn't work can be made to work, but people do use it).
they have yet to invent a linux laptop with good battery life, quality keyboard & trackpad, sleep-then-suspend, bluetooth. as long as apple makes computers with those things, i can be content even if it means living inside my full screen linux vm
the macbooks are crazy for battery life compared to anything else.
But you can run Linux on an M2 Macbook.
And there is premium windows hardware on the market, where Linux actually works better than Windows (notably business laptops like the Thinkpad x1 and HP Elitebook).
> I'm sorry but if your out is linux and windows because you're not happy how stuff doesn't "just work" in the Apple ecosystem boy are you in for a bad surprise.
I think you and GP agree more than you realise, their point seems to be that Apple was worth all the locked down walled garden stuff because at least it "just worked." Now it's a locked down walled garden which _also doesn't work._ Tahoe and iOS 26 are the worst of both worlds.
> Good luck getting decent hardware that will run without having basic functionality issues. Queue the linux brigade "my PC works perfect, what linux issues are you having". Meanwhile I can't use bluetooth on my desktop...
Ok, you're having Bluetooth issues. Fair enough. But using Bluetooth (on a desktop no less) is not so overwhelmingly common that one can justify a sweeping statement like yours on that basis. The "Linux brigade" says that stuff works for them because it does. My desktop "just works" for me and it has for like 5 years at this point. That doesn't mean everything is perfect, but neither is Linux the train wreck of incompatibility you describe.
> And Linux ? Good luck getting decent hardware that will run without having basic functionality issues.
I think that's probably a few years out of date. Certainly, it used to be completely true and was a major problem.
I'm just not finding that now. Drivers are better, and more widespread, and there are less odd hardware innovations in standard PC components that screw it up.
And, if you want a laptop that runs Linux perfectly, there are more than a few options out there that ship with Linux installed and supported now.
Get serious, none of them have a working fingerprint reader.
I prefer my MacBook, but the Thinkpad whatever I bought to have Windows and Linux available for some software I need occasionally has a fingerprint reader that worked out of the box on Ubuntu.
Since when is using a fingerprint reader on laptops at all common? If that's a requirement for you then fair enough, but not having a fingerprint reader doesn't make a laptop so niche that one would be justified in saying "get serious".
Um.. all MacBooks have had a fingerprint reader for years. Without it, I would be typing passwords a lot more.
My Thinkpad's fingerprint reader worked out of the box.
Luck doesn't play a factor in getting your hardware to work with Linux. It's either supported or it's not, and since the code is Open Source you can Google/ChatGPT the answer in less than 2 minutes.
Your experience isn't uncommon, but it's largely the result of trying to force a square peg into a round hole. There are thousands of different smartphones, game consoles and set-top boxes that rely on Linux for all of their basic functionality. You only get problems trying to smash reverse-engineered drivers and hardware together expecting OEM-level support. If you want good Linux support, pay for good Linux support.
This. If you want Linux to be better, you need to use Linux. It's not any harder for OEMs to support it vs. Windows or MacOS. It's actually easier to support in many cases. There just isn't a business case. Use Linux, create a business case, get better software. Someone has to be the early adopter. Better nerds like us than grandma.
Off the top of my head:
Yesterday, my wife wanted to use Discord. It was right there in the applications folder. But MacOS couldn't find it. Launching it manually took minutes, for some reason.
We wanted to download a clip using yt_dlp (a Python program). Terminal told us, this would require dev tools, which it doesn't. So we installed Python from python.org instead, which worked. Except, that non-blessed python could not access the internet because of some MacOS "security" feature.
Another security feature requires all apps to be notarized, even the ones I built myself. This used to have a relatively easy workaround (right click, open, accept the risk). Now it needs a terminal command.
I live and work in a multi-lingual environment, and have set up a keyboard shortcut to switch between the German and English keyboard. MacOS does not have a keyboard shortcut for this. But Karabiner can do it, albeit a bit jankily.
Lately, the keyboard layout no longer sticks. It resets to English when I press shift. Sometimes it does work, sometimes it doesn't. This is unrelated to the aforementioned Karabiner shortcut.
The German keyboard layout for MacOS on non-Apple keyboards is insane. So I made my own layout. This is relatively easy, and worked well. Except, every single OS update reinstates Apple's insane layout.
Sometimes my Mac does not wake from sleep. Pressing the power button does nothing. Hitting keyboard keys does nothing. Only a long-press of the power button eventually reboots it. The power button on the Mac Studio is in an insane place of course.
There is still no indication anywhere that the hard drive is getting full.
There is still no simple way to reset the computer to factory conditions.
Gaming is still largely impossible, even though the hardware is very capable.
I have replaced TimeMachine with restic, as TimeMachine keeps resetting itself after a while.
My Linux PC should arrive this week, and will replace the Mac. I've had enough.
It will require wine for two apps, and a VM for two others. At this point, that's a price I'm willing to pay.
It is the year of the Linux desktop.
ElementaryOS is supposed to be a very clean transition environment for mac refugees. AI makes everything so much easier, Windows and Mac both have far more friction and hassle in contrast. Good luck!
I'm rocking cachyos(arch based though) wayland+kde and https://github.com/RedBearAK/toshy. it's great to keep the keyboard shortcuts that I'm so used to from the mac almost seamlessly. kde lets you configure pretty much everything how a mac was if you want it though it did take a month or two to get everything the way I like it. I've found that it is nice to have an operating system that is mine and not the whims of some company trying to make money off me. I don't think I'll go back unless I'm forced to for a job.
I don't have anywhere to escape. With iOS I have at least a chance with Android (even when I am locked in due to Find My, which is still the one thing that works great and keeps me at Apple).
When someone (Google?) finds me a way to seamlessly find/lock my phone from my computer, my computer from phone, and they all find my wife phone and computer, and they all find my keys and my wife keys... that will be the day I escape.