Hacker News

points by carlosjobim 2 days ago | 0 comments

Sublime Text, BusyCal, Logic, Affinity, NetNewsWire, TablePlus, Transmit, Zotero, Mac Mail, Cakedesk.

Let's flip it: Do you have some examples of software needed that is not available as a regular install for MacOS? Not saying it doesn't exist, but you can almost always find high quality local software.

[–] johnnyanmac 2 days ago

All popular modern popular software? You don't get to "install" media apps anymore. Many games are simply thin clients into someone else's server. Office and many professional productivity tools (Adobe) converted from "software you buy and install" to "software you pay a monthly subscription to keep using". all your chat apps are basically mini web-browsers under the hood in terms of overhead instead of a small thin-client.

These are the largest pieces of software people use, and there's more bloat and less control than ever.

[–] carlosjobim 2 days ago

All these apps are modern and of the highest quality. All of them very popular except the last I listed. Not mentioned are the many high quality apps included with MacOS, including the Music.app (iTunes), which doesn't need any Internet connection to play your MP3s.

Games I don't care about, for those a PC or console is most likely your better option.

> Office and many professional productivity tools (Adobe) converted from "software you buy and install" to "software you pay a monthly subscription to keep using".

MacOS comes with a free office suite which is perfectly capable for personal or small business use. Affinity is a great alternative to Photoshop that is free, although the new version 3 now checks your license when you run the app. Affinity 2 was software you buy and install. You can otherwise buy Pixelmator Pro for $50 from Apple.

> all your chat apps are basically mini web-browsers

The included iMessage is probably not.

I haven't been in a situation where there wasn't a great traditional app available for purchase or for free for the tasks I needed.

Of course if your task is "I specifically need Microsoft Office/Adobe Photoshop and nothing else" rather than "I need to get this or that done", then you are stuck.

[–] johnnyanmac 2 days ago

I'm not saying there is not high quality software that doesn't require a subscription. I'm simply saying most people's core apps do not fit in that model.

As an analog, I don't feel it's much value to ay "Facebook sucks, use Hacker News" (or any of the hundred other social media that are not a data harvesting platform). The existence of (more) ethical alternativea doesn't erase that fact that most are on unethical software. Likewise, there being efficient software doesn't invalidate that most people are on electron powered services that each take up GB's of data.

[–] carlosjobim 2 days ago

Okay, but if somebody doesn't want to solve their own problem then I'm not going to loose sleep over it. There is a solution for those, but HN has turned somewhat into an endless complain venting space. Discussions seem to follow this pattern:

User 1: There are no good cars anymore!

User 2: You can get this car A or this car B which are good.

User 1: But I have car C which isn't good!

I didn't claim in my original comment that all or most software was high quality. I said that high quality software is generally available for MacOS. Then it's up to each person what they do.

[–] johnnyanmac 2 days ago

>but if somebody doesn't want to solve their own problem then I'm not going to loose sleep over it.

That's basically been the attitude of politics for awhile now. And I see that result doesn't end well.

This is comparatively harmless, but I'm overall trying to unsubscribe from that paradigm of "let stupid stupid". I at every least want to help contribute to alternatives if others wake up one day.

[–] carlosjobim 2 days ago

You can lead a horse to water...

[–] johnnyanmac 2 days ago

Yes. In the context of this topic, I simply want to make sure horses have a watering hole to come into once (or if) they get overloaded or outpriced out of the sugar water full of leeches.

For larger topics, you tackle system, not people.

[–] imtringued 1 day ago

You're talking about your own free rider attitude, if you haven't noticed.

You say you want X but you do Y.

But then you say you don't want X, you want someone to magically make Y as good as X.

That type of wishful thinking is all the rage in politics.