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Comment by FredPret | Hacker News Reader

My decision to move to Mac when the M1 came out is starting to pay more and more dividends!

I mean... this is a hugely ironic comment given the topic is discussing respect for the user's desired browser.

Something Apple does considerably worse than Microsoft, intentionally and purposefully - entirely for control and profit, mostly to maintain their app store taxes.

Is there a place I missed where macOS does not respect the user's default browser setting? (I'm using work-mandated Chrome as default on work laptop, never had an instance of Safari opening)

(can't comment on iOS since I use Safari there, but then TFA is about Windows 11 i.e desktop-side)

I've had Safari open itself a couple of times when clicking useless Apple links (I think in settings with more info?). Also, if i click the play button on my keyboard without anything recent to play, it will open the piece of shit that is Apple Music that I have never used nor opened by myself. If I open a document or spreadsheet in the default installed apps, saving them will save them in the proprietary shitty Apple formats, instead of the one it came in (thus creating a second document instead of updating the original). In a similar vein, multiple things any other OS and Desktop Environment has, such as different scroll direction between mouse and touchpad, custom keybindings, basic window management features, Display Port daisy chaining over USB C (non-thunderbolt) macOS doesn't just because the gods of Apple have decided you don't need to have them, because fuck you.

I can go on, but macOS is not an OS that respects users or user choice.

It respects user choice where there’s a choice to be made. Most of your examples seems to points to things that are not included by design.

Not giving the user choice is a form of not respecting the user when talking about basics such as "don't save a document which came in a normal format into some proprietary nonsense unusable outside of an Apple device". This is actively hostile design.

> If I open a document or spreadsheet in the default installed apps, saving them will save them in the proprietary shitty Apple formats

Do you mean Pages/Keynote/Numbers?

Since these are not 1:1 (neither on feature nor in concepts) with MS Office/OpenOffice opening such a file is by definition a lossy import, so saving in the original format would be destructive, both with regards to the original contents being lossily converted to Apple app concepts and any Apple concept specific change made after opening being lossily converted to the original format.

This is not user hostile, this is saving the user from the impedance mismatch between software that organically grew from Multiplan and software that's been designed from the ground up.

Now, the Apple office suite being "shitty" is largely your personal (and the way you phrased it, judgemental) opinion, I personally prefer the Apple office suite any day to MS Office/OpenOffice/GDocs.

I agree. I have Firefox, Chrome, Tor Browser and Brave running next to my current browser of preference, Safari. But switching back and forth is easy, and macOS respects my choice when I change the settings.

What does using a Mac have to do with the article?

What I've learned about tech tribalism arguments is that for some reason some one else doing something first means you can't be mad about it when it happens again.

Its like if you cheated on your wife and told her she can't get mad because your neighbor cheated on his wife first. Somehow that is a rebuttal even though she was never married to the neighbor and may have even started dating you in the first place because you didn't cheat.

Well avoiding the problem to start with is a perfectly good solution.

Apple avoids the problem of not respecting my browser choice how, exactly?

Apple open webviews in Safari, does not respect the user's choice at all, and doesn't even allow you to install a non-safari browser on their mobile OS.

This is like peak irony. Apple is the walking definition of this problem.

Why are you comparing a desktop operating system to a mobile operating system? On macOS Apple lets you trivially set a different default browser and doesn't annoy you about it.

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