cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/68636679

True 💯

Apple has become the ultimate tech joke of modern Era.

Apple silicon pretty cool tho

still certified Unix, tho.

This is real, teenagers lack basic computer skills these days

No systemd - sad Unix.

Fun fact, no they're not!

Behold, the stupid copyright squatters responsible for deciding what is/isn't Unix: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

Do they not teach them how to use computers in school anymore? When I was in school, they had a class to teach basic computer skills.

Apple used to cost more compared to other brands. It's only been recently with their in-house chips and the implosion of the industry that they finally priced things competitively.

So... basically they've always been the lower half of the joke. Or at least the people who paid those used to be ridiculous prices.

The first apple device I recall was the Apple II.

Please help me out: I can't recall a single thing where Apple ever was cheaper than the competition.

Their selling point was "works better" and then became "everyone be different (in the same way though!)".

What set their devices apart was the smoothness in which everything worked. First the devices and later their ecosystem. I despise vendor lock-in and never went for them because of that but I can see the appeal.

Price though? This meme is the first time I've heard of that argument, someone please help me out.

same, I guess not

They teach them “digital competence” by shoving an iPad in their face, and then they go “Look, they know how to use it! They must be computer geniuses!”

It’s not controversial, it’s just wrong. Apple has always been more expensive. And it has always tried to block its users from knowing anything about the internals of computers. Part of their whole selling point was that it was easier to use. The way they went about it is IMO bad, but that's a different discussion.

So UNIX is *checks notes* IBM?

However, they are certified to be POSIX-conformant.

Apple is a marketing company that by chance happens to sell smartphones.

I blame Apple for making the Zoomers as tech illiterate as the Boomers

Not really, according to registry

In the past, the things that Apple has done well has generally been good build quality and long support. There are exceptions, yes, but they're usually better than their competitors in that field. Performance was always similar (or worse) for the price until Apple Silicon came around.

In modern times, all manufacturers produce laptops with excellent build quality (even smaller ones like Framework, Tuxedo, System76, etc.), all devices are generally supported for a while (+ can be extended with things like Linux), and performance is nowadays a race between the Mac and PC. You can do all the things on PC on Mac and vice versa.

What has always been the case and never gone away is Apple's locked down ecosystem. They don't support standard protocols, USB file transfer with iPhones is a nightmare on non-Macs (though it works fine for me on Linux right now, I imagine it depends on your distro and kernel, and it didn't work for me a few years ago), all the iServices being closed and not interoperable with non-iDevices, poor repairability, setting the standard / trend for the worse, etc.

In terms of the operating system, it's pretty different. For Windows, 2000 and XP were the golden age and it's (mostly) been downhill from there, Windows 10 / 11 being the most egregious requiring an online account. CoPilot and broken updates certainly don't help. MacOS is very closed and everything needs to be done the "Apple way", and you need Apple hardware to run it (for the most part, see Hackintoshes).

Linux has always been an awesome alternative, though it doesn't ship on many devices, it had excellent support on lots of hardware (unlike MacOS) and didn't require any online crap (unlike Windows), app development is much more open than MacOS while being as convenient as the App Store (unlike Windows), and FOSS software are the GOATs. There are so many options for distros, desktop environments, depending on your hardware or preferences, and you can have full control over your system, or it can "just work" for grandma. It's awesome! There's recently been lots of development with Valve on the gaming side and there has been a drive towards Linux due to Microsoft breaking Win11 constantly and pushing CoPilot spyware (more users, more developers, more apps, more drivers, etc.!)

The Linux desktop has never been better, and there is no reason not to switch! You can even get Linux on a Mac if you wanted too, thanks to the team at Asahi Linux!

I'm running EndeavourOS (the easy mode Arch-based distro before CachyOS) with Niri (scrolling tiling WMs are neat!), but if you want to get started with Linux, I would not recommend either if you aren't interested in config files and making something exactly how you want it to. Mint is awesome if you like Cinnamon, and Fedora is also good (though owned by Red Hat/IBM). The -buntus are also fine, but snaps, aside from using a proprietary and centralised repo, are often broken and not very user-friendly to fix. Debian is excellent if you have an older device and want stability, it's been there since the beginning. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is fun if you want to try rolling release, and of course Arch-based distros like CachyOS (or standard Arch with archinstall) are also good if you are fine with the "scary" black text box (that's all it is really).

If you want to experiment with an ARM device (laptop, tablet, or even phone), Nura is awesome! It's not fully there on everything, but it's fun to mess around in and try out apps that those devices were never intended to run!

Frankly, I don't think these clowns get to decide what is and isn't Unix.

As far as I'm concerned modern Unix is Linux, BSD and all their successors, including Apple, PlayStation and Nintendo (I believe they're BSD based) Unix itself, is an ancient and mostly dead standard.

Although I do hope for better Linux & BSD compatibility in the future.

"does more, costs less" was a slogan they used in their ads in the 90s: for example

we’re never getting rid of the ableist wojaks aren’t we

What's a computer?

Oh interesting!

But funnily enough these ads didn't air where I grew up and Apple was never even close to the price of a non-Apple PC

Oh and: Apple, you've sold PCs as well! Just because you picked up a cat and put stripes on it you couldn't just proclaim "look, a tiger!".
But then again ... You could. And you did. And in still furious that people bought it.

Having used a Mac in a professional technical field for almost 20 years these threads are always fun. “It’s locked down! It’s an OS for babies! You can’t do anything with it! Mac users are stupid noobs!”

Can we stop clustering early Gen Z and late Gen Z into one group? They are vastly different.

But to stay on topic: blame all of tech

For real. I've been around computers for 40 years and I don't recall Macs ever being anything but overpriced, overhyped machines. Regardless of their inner qualities.

Yeaaah, that's bait.

tbh, didn’t PC have a more strict definition back then?* specifically, an IBM PC compatible? so, intel processor + DOS (and later OS/2 or windows), which isn’t what apple sold

*(genuinely asking, i was not around in the 90s 😅)

(tho i guess even by that definition, intel macs were PCs lol, but that was way later)

You know that's another good point, while I was around then and even had a computer back then I'm from a non English country and just learned "PC == personal computer". It never occurred to me that Apple might have reacted to a US terms or definition up until this very moment it was always "they just wanna be different and fancy".

Perhaps a USA person my age bracket can give insights!

the two definitions (general Personal Computer, or IBM-compatible) always co-existed in different contexts.

aside - even though Apple ads really drove the Macs Vs PCs thing - before they went Intel, Apple computers used to have IBM PowerPC architecture processors.

"Cost less" was never Apple's thing. Maybe "Does more at great cost"?

It actually was their slogan back then. Until they noticed people are dumb and easily manipulatable

Well, you being professional with a Mac and the other expressions aren't mutually exclusive 😁

ah i see, thank you!

“It’s locked down! It’s an OS for babies! You can’t do anything with it! Mac users are stupid noobs!”

I mean, no other OS needs a “Genius Bar” to troubleshoot and repair the most basic of issues.

Schools stopped teaching basic computer skills in the 2010s. The assumption was, that since technology is becoming ubiquitous, that the kids would already know the basics.

Guess the 75-80% of other folks I work with are stupid noobs for using a Mac and never did anything because it was so locked down.

Yes. I never once got a call at midnight from my mom to help her fix a printing problem when she used windows.

🙄

Frankly, you're wrong.

Linux isn't UNIX and doesn't even pretend to be. Rather than calling it such, I think it's more useful to just forget about UNIX, which was a proprietary OS to begin with. Of course the owners of the trademark get to decide who gets to use it.

If you have to call Linux something other than Linux, you can always call it POSIX compliant, which it mostly is (MacOS however is actually certified here too).

What do you do with a Mac?

It actually was their slogan back then

which period "back then" are you referring to? 1976 maybe? the Apple I was affordable (at just $666.66 😄) compared to other kits at the time, but the Apple II (1977) cost more than twice what a TRS-80 did and afaik since then Apple has always positioned itself as a premium brand.

i don't recall them ever having a comparative-price-related marketing slogan or campaign, but maybe i'm forgetting something?

And?
Its like saying "it has the wifis".
Great, its UNIX certified, how does that effect me in my daily computer usage? How has that made it its killer feature? How does that make it people should stop using Linux of anything else?

All the developers at the place I work have MBPs. Apple silicon and long battery life are pretty great. I think people forget that Mac had a package manager long before winget existed and that a lot of unix code runs fine on macOS

Definitely not just Apple's fault. Pretty much all companies obfuscated how file systems work.

That was a big mistake. Although it's exactly what the tech companies want.

I’ve done everything from Java test fixtures to Golang app development to building POC architectures in Docker. Right now I’m testing database failover scenarios in Kubernetes.

it means the CLI has about 70% of the same stuff that Linux has in its CLI

i personally find it very useful as it makes scripting for macos easier since its so much closer to bash

It was. I'm thinking about running for School Board to bring back actual computer classes.

Almost like the 'generations' are clusters as imaginary as races and we should all stop pretending they're real.