Linux Fanboy Reviews macOS: Feels OLD.

hey everyone this is nick and today i'm gonna take a look at mac os but from the viewpoint of somebody who's been daily driving linux for the past five years now mac os has often been taken as the master reference for ux ui and generally is considered super simple super easy to use although a little bit limited so we're going to take a look at how it works with all the bad faith and all the unjustified criticism that i'm probably going to get accused of what i can't be accused of though is not telling you about today's sponsor a fantastic open source office suite for linux this video is sponsored by only office the free and open source office suite that's fully compatible with microsoft office documents formats only office has a desktop app available in virtually every packaging format you might want on linux but it also runs on windows mac os ios and android the interface is super intuitive especially if you've been using microsoft office as it's really close and if you want to have your own office suite in the cloud you can also run your own only office server and link it to nexcloud owncloud confluence sharepoint redmine jira and a lot of other services i personally only use only office on all my computers running linux or otherwise and i also have my own only office document server linked to my next live server so i can edit documents online or offline using the desktop editors check out the link in the description below and give only office a try you won't regret it but first a warning i won't be running the very latest version of mac os because i only own an old intel xeon cheese grater mac pro that was supposed to stop getting updates a while ago while i got it up to big sur i never found the time to try and update it to monterey so some things might not look exactly like you want them to still monterrey doesn't fundamentally change the experience apart from the new safari tab bar the ability to move your mouse pointer and keyboard seamlessly between multiple devices and a few face time improvements so that won't really be relevant as this review of mac os as an operating system in itself on to the desktop itself the much wanted mac os experience let's see how it holds up you get a top bar and a bottom dock a layout that's now really common and easily replicated on any linux desktop mac os goes for the global menu which i like if i have to have a menu bar i would rather it used up the exact same spot on the top of the screen rather than have to hunt for the menu position on each window i know not everyone enjoys that but i always found it was the best solution if you had to use menu bars the dock itself just hosts open applications and open windows for apps that aren't in the dark plus it has the trash can recent applications and a few nice features you can minimize your windows to the apps icon you can add folders for quick access to various files or even to your applications if you add your apps folder to it you can change the minimize effect used automatically hide the dock and you can move it to any screen edge except the top one take that windows taskbar it also has one very annoying limitation you cannot minimize an app by clicking on its icon which is very very frustrating clicking on the apps icon is much easier and a much bigger click target than that super small orange stoplight thing in the corner of the window the desktop holds icons by default only your disk drives but you can store anything you want there with a nice feature the ability to automatically stack files by file type this means that even if you want to make a mess over your wallpaper that mess can still be relatively organized and usable instead of being a huge creep of files and folders that you will never be able to sort through the top bar also has the apple menu for quick access to system functions like rebooting shutting down the system preferences and more and you get a clock and notification tray icons which are less a problem on mac os because they have a well-defined api for it and developers tend to care about how things look on mac os so you rarely have a weird riot of colors shapes and sizes up there unlike what you would find in the system tray on windows or on most linux desktops seriously use monochrome icons please you also have a nice little control center with quick access toggles that you can drag and drop in the top bar to always get a look at them if you don't want them hidden in a sub menu clicking on the time brings the notifications and widgets desktop notifications are something i very rarely use and i also have literally no use for widgets in there but for people who want them this is a very nice implementation it looks pretty and it can be pretty useful i guess generally the desktop on mac os looks good it's pretty it's simple it's efficient and while it hasn't really changed much in the past 10 years it's still fine we definitely took some inspiration from it in gnome and kde and that's also fine in terms of options and look and feel you find a light or dark mode with an auto switch depending on the time of day and accent colors including one that is based on the dominant color of your wallpaper nothing very complicated here you can't really use themes or change how the desktop works it's a default experience with a few locks options you also can't really change the default file manager although you can change the default browser easily and the default apps for various file types it's definitely not as powerful as our linux desktops which offer a lot more customization out of the box on kde and a lot more options with extensions on chrome finally to run applications you either launch them from the dock or you have a full screen app grid with search that works pretty much like the gnome app grid you don't get an applications menu the closest thing you can get is dropping your applications folder in the dock and using that it's not bad but it's not integrated with the multitasking view which we'll talk about later so you can't just drag apps from the launcher to a virtual desktop to open them you can rearrange them though into folders or change their order not bad but also not the best implementation of an apps grid that i've seen gnome beats that handily finally you get the excellent spotlight which lets you search for virtually anything files apps settings web pages you name it hit super plus space and you can launch anything you want it's super handy it's blazing fast and it's something that we have on our distros but less well integrated in my opinion now sure you get the same features in gnome's overview but why open a full screen interface for this and on kde kroner is even more powerful than spotlight but it's so small and tiny on the top edge of the screen why not make it more visible now onto the weakest point of mac os window management window management on mac coming from linux even from a default window manager on globe or kde is a nightmare you get the close button the maximize button and the minimize button they're all on the left which i don't mind the close button doesn't close the app it closes the window the app stays open in the background ready to be reopened when you need it the minimize button reduces the window in the dock either on the apps icon or in a separate segment of the dock if you minimize to the apps icon and you have multiple windows minimized clicking on the apps icon will only bring back the last window you minimized subsequent clicks don't do anything so to restore the other windows you need to right click the icon and select the right window in a list no thumbnails no previews that's pretty bad but it's not the default behavior by default the windows minimize any specific corner so you can have multiple ones of them so that makes it all right no no it doesn't it's still terrible then there's the maximize button which doesn't really maximize it takes the window full screen which means your top bar is gone your dock is gone and to get them back you have to hover over the top or bottom of the screen not great if you press the alt key and then click on the green button then your window will not maximize or go full screen it will just expand to fit as much of the content as it can which again could be useful but not hidden behind a shortcut that's never explained there is no way i could find to maximize the window while not going full screen which really really sucks like maximizing is a basic thing to want to do with your windows without them going completely full screen it just feels weird and i'm sure there's an arcane shortcut that you can do with shift alt and clicking on the green button but it's not explained and it definitely should be the default behavior then there's the tiling you can't just drag a window to an edge of the screen to tile it you have to long press the green button to access a small submenu that lets you pick an edge to tile the window except it doesn't do just that it also forces you to pick another window to tile on the other half if you didn't want to have two tiled windows side by side you're out of luck your window will not stay tiled so if you have an ultra white display you can have three windows in three thirds of the screen you can't even have a window stuck on an edge and floating windows on the other side probably there's another weird unexplained keyboard shortcut that lets you do that but i couldn't find it why is mac os at least five years behind in that regard like no drag to tile is bad enough no maximize is stupid but also not letting you tile a window and having floating windows on the other side also makes no sense even windows does it way better these days it's baffling now there's a good part still the multitasking view called mission control you can access it with an icon on the dock a hot corner or a keyboard shortcut it looks like the kd overview effect or the gnome activities view with virtual desktops on the top and all your open windows spread out except minimized windows don't appear here and you can't drag a window from a desktop to another you have to switch to the desktop which takes you out of mission control then reopen mission control and then drag the window to the right desktop again a good idea but a half-assed implementation gnome or kde beat that without any problems basically window management on mac os is just bad whether you come from windows or from a linux desktop handling windows on mac os sucks there is no two ways about it it hasn't evolved a tiny bit since mac os 10 was introduced like i don't know 15 or 20 years ago and i don't understand why they don't have this experience out of the box you can install third party tools to fix that but why isn't it part of the system out of the box onto application updates and installing them here your default option is the mac app store it's a beautiful face on a not so well stocked app selection contrary to ios you can't find everything in there for example vlc isn't libreoffice also isn't although there is a paid version in there that's not from the library office developers inkscape basically most open source apps you're used to on linux aren't there probably a licensing issue or apple store restrictions i don't really know but who am i kidding mac users don't use these apps they have a plethora of applications developed just for their os and that follows their systems conventions to the ladder so for that the store is a good starting point we could even learn a thing or two about how they present apps they have editorial content presenting stuff users might need by type of activity they present the most used and downloaded apps first something we still don't do head over to the gaming category in discover or gnome software you should see steam first like it's the first thing that people are going to want to install in terms of gaming but it's not there and that's stupid but to be fair on the mac app store steam is also not present right front and center when you open the gaming tab so yeah still i really like the fact that they have small listicles that present one thing you might want to do with your computer and present apps that are suited for that purpose it would be amazing to also have that on linux to help people discover alternatives to the things they're used to on windows or mac it would also reduce the need to make videos for best apps for this thing or best apps for doing that but that also would reduce my income so i guess it's for the best you get a user account here of course so things you bought are kept ready for you to reinstall except if the developer decided not to update for your version of mac os in that case you're boned and you lost your money app detail pages are basically identical to what we now have on discover or gnome software they're good legible and useful and you can install in one click basically our app store experience is pretty close on linux to what mac os offers except we lack the ability to buy apps except on elementor ios we don't have app bundles and we can't really restore purchases or downloads that we already might have done on another computer or another distribution now flat hub developers are working on the ability to pay for apps if developers choose to and they're working on user accounts that would let you re-download stuff maybe they'll interface with what elementor ios does so the two solutions might work better together if you can't find what you're looking for on the store then you can still resort to the hunt online for a downloadable app solution what you get in the process is a dmg file which is a disk image to install your application you have to open the dmg file and then drag the app which is in a single file to your applications folder it sounds simple on paper and most dmg files have some kind of visual explanation to let users know they need to drag the app into the folder the issue here is that i've met an incredible number of people who never understood that they opened the app from the dmg image which means it works read-only in most cases and never saves any preference this is not a good way to install applications again on paper it sounds like a super simple solution you double click on a file you drag the app to the apps folder and it's all installed add it to your menu and whatever except a lot of people are just not used at all to that installation method and they just don't understand it why not make it simpler you open the dmg file you get a pop-up telling you we're going to copy this app to your apps folder are you okay with that yes or no and if you say yes boom everything gets downloaded in the right folder and the dmg file is deleted boom you're done of course there's also the weird security gatekeeping that mac os is doing showing pop-ups to let you know the app is signed by a certain developer would you really want to run that or sometimes just refusing to run it at all until you give it permission in the system settings i understand the reasoning but again the implementation is terrible and convoluted still if you can find what you're looking for in the mac app store then the experience is smooth as hell and super easy if you can't a lot of people will just pick up on the drag the app to the apps folder and everything will work nicely and a lot of others will just get confused run the apps from the dmg and then wonder why nothing works like it's supposed to so mac os isn't a bad operating system its conventions are old but work well a top bar and a dock is a good combo the global menu is a good solution for menu bars it has a nice store to install apps it has a few look and feel options and you can extend it with a few third-party utilities to better handle its shortcomings but it also shows its age badly in some ways window management is really really bad not being able to minimize a window with a click on the dock is annoying not asking you which window you want to restore when clicking on an apps icon is stupid no tiling and no real maximize button means that you'll have to resize windows manually all the time or buy your third-party utility mission control is good on paper but it doesn't really work well if you want to quickly swap windows to different virtual desktops opening apps isn't that complex with launchpad or spotlight but there is no easy way to set up your environment by dragging apps to virtual desktops for example all in all the feeling i get when using mac os is that of a system that has evolved by adding features on top of each other but that were never designed to work together at all all these features are isolated and i feel that in the same vein gnome does things a lot better you have one single overview for apps for windows for search for virtual desktops and it all makes it a lot easier you just drag your app icons to virtual desktops you just drag windows from one virtual desktop to another you start typing to search it's just better integrated and it feels smoother and easier to use honestly apart from that apple obviously still does the store thing better than what we do on linux not ethically or in terms of monopolistic practices although they don't really have a monopoly on mac os but in terms of how apps are presented featured and explained they're really good we could learn a thing or two here of course the sync capabilities and integration with other apple devices can't be beat we don't have a linux ecosystem to do all that but with kdconnect and an xcloud server you're really not that far off it just likes the simple easy single sign-on experience so could i use mac os daily yes of course and i did in the past back when i had a macbook for work and on my previous job before that i used mac os a ton and i like that system but nowadays after using gnome and kd for a long time i just don't really see any major advantages that i would absolutely want to use i think that our desktops nowadays are just better integrated the features are more cleverly designed and sure while we might lack a super polished app store or all the breadth of applications that you might get on mac os i think we're still better and yes i would rather use a linux desktop than mac os but that's the conclusion you were probably expecting i just think our linux desktops are better thought out what would also be very thought out would be to buy a computer with linux print style from today's sponsor tuxedo is a company based in germany they make laptops and desktops with linux print styled out of the box their devices are sleek they all sport a nice matte black look they've got great chassis great keyboard options for virtually every language they ship worldwide and they have a long long range of products with a ton of configuration options for each i used a ton of them in the past i reviewed a bunch of them on the channel and for example they just refreshed their stellaris 15 laptop which is their high-end production station or gaming laptop i already reviewed the previous model but now it's got intel 12th gen cpus rtx 3080s and a bunch of nice things on top of its already stellar 3k screen and optomechanical keyboard which is probably the best laptop keyboard i ever used period i'm gonna get a review unit for the new model soon and i might even buy it to use it as my main production device when i'm on the go so if you need a new device running linux out of the box check the link in the description below click it and see what tuxedo has to offer i'm sure you'll find something that suits your needs now thanks everyone for watching the video i hope you enjoyed it if you did don't mistake to like to subscribe to turn on notifications to write a comment to click on the super thanks button to give me a donation and if you didn't like the video you can also dislike it and tell me why in the comments if you want to support the channel you can join my patreon subscribers or my youtube members both get access to a weekly patreon cast and the right to vote on the next topics i'll cover so thanks everyone for watching and i'll see you in the next one bye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 292,464

Keywords: linux, elementary os, open source, distribution, linux distro, linux help, linux 2021, linux tutorial, macOS review, macosmonterey from linux, switch from macos to linux, switch to macos, macos review, mac os review, mac os big sur, mac os catalina, move to linux from macos, install linux on a mac, how to install mac os on a PC, hackintosh, hackintosh your pc, install macos on PC, how to hackintosh, hackintosh review, hackintosh build, linux mac os, make linux look like mac

Id: -KYbHJulEo8

Length: 20min 46sec (1246 seconds)

Published: Sun May 15 2022