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Comment by ChancyChance | Hacker News Reader

> But at least “yes, it can do that”

That's a good point. Hardware failures are far more costly on a Mac that on a windows machine. I'm so far removed from that being an issue (because I'm old) that it is a privilege I forget I have. Duly noted.

Cygwin/MSYS/Mingw are really sad reflections of their source material. Not to take a big crap on the millions of man hours the developers have put into them, but they are not drop in replacements which is what I need. And in multiple cases over the years, they always fail to reproduce what is expected. These tools end up requiring their own special care in scripting, which is what I need them to avoid.

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It's really all about the perspective.

I'm a Windows wizard of many a decades and fucking hate iPhones and iPads, but finally got around to buying a Macbook to try it thanks to the sheer hype surrounding the Apple M chips.

My understanding of Macs now is that I hate them but also respect them. What do I mean by this? Well, I have gripes, lots of them; but I'm a power user and here's the kicker: Macs are not intended for power users, I'm not my Macbook's intended customer.

No, Macs are clearly intended for the moms and pops, the common man who treats computers like any other tool or appliance around the house or workplace. Once I understood that and re-evaluated what I had in front of me, I could not deny that Macs are superior to Windows (and Linux) for their intended audience.

Complete computer illiterate guy or gal come to ask me for advice on buying a computer? I'll tell them to go and buy a Mac. Macs Just Work(tm), and that virtue is invaluable for anyone who can't or doesn't want to mess around with their computers.

Something breaks in the Macbook? Just throw it away and buy a new one. The common man doesn't care for messing with the computer, it's an appliance and he has things that need doing, and Macs will satisfy that demand.

Yes, a Mac user has to subscribe to the One Apple Way(tm), it's a hard requirement of getting into the Apple ecosystem. But the common man doesn't care, he has more pressing matters on his mind.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s users don’t like to tinker — just that they don’t want to mess with hardware.

I am absolutely a tinkerer. But I basically need Unix for that. I have a set of dotfiles and config that basically instantly works whenever I transfer machines, just by doing a “git clone” into my $HOME folder. I have a setup script included in there, which copies my config and installs all necessary programs. I have two Mac laptops and can keep them in sync this way. I’ve used Linux for years also, and can modify the Mac script with some changes to support Linux too.

There’s basically no way to do this on Windows because the terminal is a step removed from the system. I can’t open a brand new laptop and have all my programs and config transfer by just running a script. You need to use the UI during multiple points.

Part of this is because I’ve used all of the OS’s extensively (still have windows too!), and always end up needing to reinstall the system every couple of years for one reason or another — maybe just general clutter. This is regardless of OS. On Windows I always lose multiple days to getting it “back to how I want it”, but on Mac and Linux-based systems, it is much faster because (1) there isn’t a bunch of adware to remove, and (2) most/all of the programs that I need can be installed in the terminal with zero effort

> Macs are not intended for power users,

The fact that you can make that claim with a straight face in the context of Windows, with zero examples, tells me you have little experience with both.

WSL2 should help some? It's not perfect, but can get you a lot of the way there.

WSL2 is the best Linux you can get anywhere. Perfect hardware support.

Never heard about it. Does it run on bare metal ? /s

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