Problem: Linux is more or less completely unusable for *any* kind of creative work, be it Graphic Design, Audio or Video - even if you can live without Adobe (which is unfortunately nearly impossible for a professional designer anyways due to several reasons).
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'Constant Negativity' From Pro Users Led Apple to Develop Modular Mac Pro, Which May Not Ship Until 2019
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Problem: Linux is more or less completely unusable for *any* kind of creative work, be it Graphic Design, Audio or Video - even if you can live without Adobe (which is unfortunately nearly impossible for a professional designer anyways due to several reasons).
I completely agree with you. Linux would be SO great for it's stability, speed, constant upgrades and price. Unfortunately, there's just no software pro's need on the system. At least, not for me. Which is why so desperately hope Apple will wake up, or at least keep the development of their OS and software up to a decent level. If not on original hardware, then at least on a hackintosh (I still use a 2009 12 core Mac Pro, 48 GB ram, 1 TB SSD and GTX 960).
Unfortunately, I also invested in a Dell UP2715K 5K display (which is fantastic by the way). It still works really well in 1440p retina mode on El Capitan, but Apple chose to remove that option on (High) Sierra. No reason for it, just incredibly annoying... *sigh*, Oh, and, of course, you can't write to the nvram from Sierra up, so I needed to boot El Capitan (when I still ran Sierra) to write nvram settings just to get the 5k display to work.....
Yes, Apple really DOES care about the pro users.... How many normal consumers have a 5k display connected to their Mac?
Unfortunately, I also invested in a Dell UP2715K 5K display (which is fantastic by the way). It still works really well in 1440p retina mode on El Capitan, but Apple chose to remove that option on (High) Sierra. No reason for it, just incredibly annoying... *sigh*, Oh, and, of course, you can't write to the nvram from Sierra up, so I needed to boot El Capitan (when I still ran Sierra) to write nvram settings just to get the 5k display to work.....
Yes, Apple really DOES care about the pro users.... How many normal consumers have a 5k display connected to their Mac?
So do I!
I mean I even was almost forced to work on a hackintosh since Apple did not deliver what I (and apparently many others) actually want. And my hack just runs circles around my old (maxed out) 3,1 ...
While my hack works fine for most(!) of the time, it still needs more attention than a real Mac and I would prefer to use that additional time and effort for productive work. So let's just hope ...
Exactly!
If you can’t do it on macOS then you do it on Windows, not Linux. Even that is a crap-shoot. As much as I would love to use Linux, it’s still very much a geek’s playground and not for creative work.
Quality alternatives to Logic, Final Cut, and Adobe Suite on Linux? Not a chance.
To be fair: there is at least Da Vinci Resolve on Linux, that surely is professional level. Dunno how well it works on Linux, but even then it is usually not all you need in a video editing workflow.
So yeah, seems a lot of us are more or less locked into macOS. And personally I wouldn't mind if Apple would use a least a *tiny* amount - or better: a *not so tiny* amount - of their *huge* pile of cash for us (creative) professionals. And even if they try, Apple seems to have a strange perspective - I only say "iMac Pro" (and of course macPro 6,1) ... Remember Apple: it is still "form follows function" and not the other way round. And I also think that apparently, Jony Ive *really* needs someone that pulls down his feet back to the ground, now that Steve is not around anymore to do that.
But noooo, despite us(!!!) essentially saving Apple back then in the dark days, their main target audience seems to be 12 year old kids now, therefore take these 1000000 new emojis instead. Ahhhh well ...
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PS: not even that, at least not for everything. At least web development, especially frontend development is done mostly on macs nowadays. And how can I develop any iOS app on Linux?
I have said this a few times, but someone needs make a MediaOS with Linux for Graphics and Video using Vulcan graphics layer or whatever makes the most sense... It could be like how Steam made the SteamOS for games.
Autodesk, The Foundry, FilmLight, and Blackmagic all have highly productive media software running on Linux. Every moment of every day someone is getting high end media jobs done on Linux. We have the tools to make a great OS for media pros, it's just such a small market, no one seems to be interested.
Also if someone could convince Adobe to make CC for Linux everyone would follow..
I have worked on Resole on Linux and we have a Autodesk Flame running Linux and they are both very very stable.
The OpenSouce Quicktime libraries and the FFMPEG reverse engineered ProRes have a few gamma shift bugs but they have work arounds.
Unfortunately: Nope! While this surely would be a big step, still not enough at least for me. I still would miss a LOT of software I either really like or just have to use, and where I simply dont see any good replacement for Linux:
- Office (yes, Office! I guess this falls into the "have to use it, like it or not" category)
- Various UI mockup apps like Sketch
- VMs, absolutely essential for my work!!! I doubt you can run _all_ common OS in a VM under Linux - with macOS, you can!
- Omni Graffle
- Tower (a great git client)
- Paws (a great HTTP client)
- Transmit (a great FTP client)
- Safari (needed for testing websites)
- iBook Author (need to make iBooks from time to time)
- Time machine
- The dock
- The finder - even with all its own definencies - eats at least the native file managers of win and ubuntu for breakfast. And if its only for its ability for remembering window positions and their view configuration. The lack of this feature alone makes me mad with other OS file managers every time!
Apart from that, imho the general macOS UI and workflows (Exposé for example) still beat everything else, hands down. On top, both win 10 and Ubuntu are simply ugly compared to macOS in my eyes as well ... though I see that Ubuntu slowly gets better over time.
And I know various windows versions and at least Ubuntu relatively well, so its not that I haven't investigated the alternatives.
I really want to have an alternative, but I simply dont see it, at least not a good one.
Andy Dufresne could not crawl through that pipeline.
Well, that is true, but I can get it on macOS as well. Why sacrifice three great apps for one when I can get all four on macOS?
Plus, any open source apps I may want from the *nix arsenal (there are quite a few) I can probably find by using Homebrew, which IMO is essential for any Mac user.
Like I said, as much as I love Linux, I cannot see any upside to using it. Mac+Homebrew > Mac or Linux alone.
The main reason some/many people use Linux is the huge range of very cheap hardware that runs it. For many ordinary users Linux works quite well for basic functions. Browser/Office etc. I know I can pick up decent hardware to do these things at a fraction of the price of what I would have to pay for Apple HW.
Then they should just focus on the mobile aspect of the company. They should just get rid of the Mac or really focus on it.
You still need Macs to develop apps for iOS, so Apple can’t get rid of them. Yet.
Agreed. With the amount of money Apple has on hand don’t try and sell me that they can’t afford to produce quality Mac hardware and software. They most certainly can if they want to so either do it and do it right or don’t do it at all.
I realize the vast majority of their profit comes from mobile products but I think it would be foolish for them to remove Mac desktops and laptops from their product ecosystem. Some of us still like / need traditional PCs and laptops outside of our work environment and no matter how small the consumer market for PCs and laptops becomes the business and creative pro community will need them for years to come.
There are millions of us out there willing to pay the Apple tax for OS X but if you expect me to pay thousands of dollars for a laptop or PC it damn well better be upgradable and repairable.
Bring back the cheese grader with a hardware refresh to bring it up date. How hard can that possibly be? What’s coming next year better be up to snuff or I’m done with Apple and will grudgingly go with laptops and desktops running Windows 10.
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I feel exactly the opposite about Finder. For years, I've had Macs at home and Windows at work. By far my least favorite aspect of Mac OS is Finder. I find Windows Explorer to be much more streamlined and easier to manage. I'm not talking about the registry or install/uninsall process which are weaknesses of Windows - just the UI of Finder vs. Windows Explorer.
One example is cut-and-paste to move files or folders, which I use almost every day on Windows. Yes, you can copy and Cmd+Option V, but that's not as intuitive. Also, I don't like how Finder mixes folders in with files by default when sorting by name. I much prefer all folders to be shown first, which has only recently become a Finder option (buried in advanced settings). And I've been using the Windows snap to left or right feature for years to put two file lists side-by-side. I'm honestly not sure if Mac OS ever added that feature or not since I use the Magnet add-on.
I understand all of this is personal preference... I'm just answering the question asked in the quoted reply. And I do like Mac OS better as a whole... just not Finder.
Why Cmd+Option? For me it is just Cmd+V
Ahhh yeah, very good point. I always hated that, so I actually "hacked" the finder to get this feature.
Dont need this, but on the other hand, I like the finders ability to remember everything. I really like when a window for a certain folder opens in teh same state like it was when I closed it. I am so used to that that the windows explorer freaks me out when I have to deal with it. Besides that, I think the windows ribbon interface (in office as well) is just a freakin mess, an ugly graphical and usability abomination
Yeah, exactly! And since I have a lot to do with UI / UX, I am always interested in others opinions.
cmd+opt+V is "Move Item Here". In macOS the behaviour is you can choose to paste or move upon being at the destination, where the move option is quite hidden. In Windows, since forever the behaviour has been to choose cut or copy while being at the source, then you have to paste the cut item to finalize the "move".
I personally find neither practice perfect, but Windows' one is at least a bit more obvious.
I do find the Mac approach more logical, also it correlates with the shell commands for file handling. If you could "cut" a file, and then forget to paste it, where does it go? Not that intuitive, having files just hovering in the nowhere before being pasted somewhere.
In Finder, you copy a file and it stays where it was. If you decide to paste it somewhere (⌘V) it's copied there (cp in the Terminal), if you decide to move it somewhere (⌥⌘V) it's moved there (mv in the Terminal).
Not sure moving files by cutting and pasting would even be POSIX compliant.
I'm still confused why Tim Cook said "Why would you buy a PC anymore?". I guess it was directed at the masses, while assuming those who really needed MacOS for creating web content, iOS apps, graphic artist, and general software development would continue doing so?
That question was aimed at a broad segment of the market. There are many people who are realizing that the iPad serves all their needs better than a Mac. My grandparent-in-laws for example. They switched from Windows to an iMac years ago, and that was a very positive switch for them. Things definitely got easier. In recent years iPads and iPhones have been creeping in, and they are using the iMac less and less. The iPad does just about everything they need to do, and it's far easier to use.
The desktop OS will forever be relevant for work in fields that are constantly inventing new workflows. Software development is just one area where suddenly a new business requirement appears, and an entire new suite of software and process needs to be added to the pipeline, and you need to flexibility of an environment like Windows/macOS/Linux to discover and implement your new process.
If you can do all your software development on an iPad, and I've seen people try, that probably means your work fits into a very narrow scope of a process, very wash/rinse/repeat. Maybe that's the case for some sectors of web development, where you know you're only ever going to use 3 pieces of software over and over again forever.
Apple could have avoided the "constant negativity" if it had built a Mac Pro that MP users needed and then not waited over four years to admit the mistake and at least claim to be correcting it.
However good Windows 10 is, it still is by Microsoft and they still do not understand a good customer experience.
1. Why does Windows restart in the middle of a game, rendering a video or essentially any other task to install updates. Most OS's understand when the computer is in use and will put off tasks like that, or at least ask.
2. Why do adverts keep popping up trying to get me to buy office, use skype, candy crush or the xbox store. Why do these adverts have their own uninstallers?
3. Why do they release browser updates like twice a year rather than having a constant minor release cycle like Chrome. Do they think it is better for their customers to have buggy unpatched software than small unnoticeable updates?
The only other OS which is as bad / worse is Android for all it's annoying Google integrations, constantly pushing you to use Google software. The Samsung S8 has 2 Siri like assistants, both with gestures / buttons to activate them. Ony by Google, one by Samsung.
The only thing Microsoft could do to make the experience worse would be to introduce loot boxes into the desktop experience.
I suspect that it's all ******** and the Mac Pro is dead.
Nobody is going to wait around for two plus years for it.