they've definitely let the desktop os be swayed by touch idioms (which you could reasonably argue was good or bad), but they didn't try to unify it all into a single os, like a windows and ubuntu.
I was merely pointing out that Apple was not immune to the paradigm; it isn't a bad thing but needs clear thought of the differences between the two platforms.
Windows 8 might have been a step back but 10 is a job damn well done imo.
My only concern in computing is that of vendor lock in, on the desk/laptop/living room - I'm using a self assembled PC, Surface pro and Xbox One X and the integration is outright amazing but on the mobile side I have an iPhone and an Apple watch which can work very well with each other but not so well with the other ecosystem.
Windows is trying to better work with non Windows devices since Satya whereas on the Mac side, anything but iPhone is (and has been) crapshoot. Cloud storage and syncing services (Google Photos, Drive/Dropbox) are godsend but I feel I've gotten way off point now.
A problem with Apple is that you can't change it if something doesn't work for you. If I don't like GNOME or Unity, I can easily switch to xmonad, i3, awesome, openbox, fluxbox, xfce, lxde, kde, or many other options.
yes & no; via the accessability hooks 3rd party programs can change a surprisingly large amount, but obviously it's not as flexible as the complete control you have writing your own window manager.
to me the big advantage of apple is there's just so many people running the exact same setup. ~ once a year new stuff comes out, some stuff breaks, it gets fixed.
with linux you might be literally the only person running some particular combination of software; you seemed more on your own for fixing stuff. this was years ago, so maybe things have settled down a bit...
lots of users + all-at-once release = lots of crying.
but that also means everyone has the same setup, same problems, and stuff gets fixed quickly.
that's my experience anyway. it'd be fun if someone tried a side-by-side daily-experience report of say ubuntu, windows, and macOS. our own personal perspectives are always colored by time and chance.
Linux works great. It provides freedom in more ways than just the UI.
It's interesting that the main attraction of a company that advertises "think different" is to force everyone to use the exact same setup. I've never seen a Mac desktop that looked different from every other Mac user.
glad linux is working for ya. "think different" is mostly just a marketing slogan, but it's also not inconsistent to think that people want to "think different" by working on their shit, not customizing their desktop. :-)
You don't have to spend a lot of time customizing the desktop. It works fine out of the box. The difference is that you have an option to customize the desktop and are not locked in.
In any case, customizing one's computer teaches useful tech skills. I've solved many problems that better programmers couldn't solve, because they didn't know basic unix stuff.
totally agree knowing unix stuff is really handy, but mac has all that stuff there too. all it's missing is X and custom window managers (and you can even run that, if you really want to).
