You ever notice how Apple never really lets the user say "no" to their nudges?

It's always "maybe later" and never "no seriously, I don't want this, go away"

I’ve noticed that most companies do that, not just Apple.

Apple claims to be the privacy king. They deserve scrutiny.

What does privacy have to do with nudges?

The principle of respecting user autonomy.

Tangential IMO. Apple isn't surreptitiously pilfering your data via persistent nudges.

I have this one notification asking me if I want to enable the Personal focus when I’m at home. I don’t want my iPhone to care if I’m at home or not, so the past two years whenever it pops up I click Later.

It will probably never stop asking.

It will. Once you accidentally mis-click once and then suddeny there is no way to back out of it.

I think this should be called the ratchet theory of consent because it only tightens.

I beat you to it by a couple of years :)

https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet/

Google Play Store has a notification to enable notifications. You didn't read that wrong. It shows a badge and everything. I said no for years except that last time. Now I can't find how to turn it off again.

Can’t you just disable notifications for the Google Play Store app? Maybe it’s because I’m on GrapheneOS, but I can just enable/disable notifications like any other app.

This hostile behavior has unfortunately grown over the years. Notice how often you cannot really unsubscribe from newsletters, because clicking the small link in the email will only unsubscribe you from 1 of 25 "topics" or whatever and they will gladly re-define the "topics" every 6 months and re-enable them all.

i see this virtually everywhere, and worked at several places where PMs proactively changed text banners to not equate to "no"

severe industry brainrot

I don't have a solution, but on this topic I let Fable write a browser extension I called "Nee, krijg de tering". It's "No, fuck off" in English, but the Dutch feels more visceral for me. It's really rough, but it tries to find these "Maybe later", "No, thank you" etc. buttons and replace the No button.. I guess it's kind of self-explanatory. Does not really do anything, but it is cathartic (and also messes with a lot of UIs to the point where unfortunately the blocklist of domains this should not be used on is growing a lot :'( ).

I feel this pattern is really abusive. Like I am offering to slap you in the face, giving you two answer options: Yes and "Maybe later/no, thank you". As though you have any obligation to be forced to answer this question again at some late time, or to be very polite while you refuse to be slapped in the face. The correct answer is obviously "No, fuck off".

Sensible. Add in a 'Nee, flikker op met je kutcookies' button for cookie consent banners, and you're golden.

This 'maybe later' dark pattern seems to have gained so much traction that UX folk just use it because everyone uses it. There is probably some handwavy reason for it that amounts to not wanting to give the user the feeling they are doing something definitive, but it just ends up being another grain of sand on the micro-annoyance pile of today's tech.

(lit. "No, get the tuberculosis".)

I get the annoyance at "ask me again later", but "maybe later" or "not now" is helpful - there's no way to trigger dialogs by yourself, so this is a promise that even if you say "no" in the dialog, you can still go into settings to change your mind. Gives me less anxiety about the choice.

How about a choice: both "no, maybe later" and "no, never"

And "no, never" would irreversibly remove the option from settings?

It would never prompt again.

That's is the same as what "Not now" and "Maybe later" would (should) do.

Only "ask me again later" is the one that prompts you again. That's why I do mind that one, and appreciate the other ones.

“Maybe later” doesn’t explicitly say that you’ll never get the prompts again, so even if it did work that way, PMs would be able to weasel out and change it back to nagging you with the next update. (In reality, the wording like that is used precisely for this reason already, and that’s why we hate it.)

And it doesn’t really help the user. If I click “Not now” and later decide that I do want the feature, how do I find it? If you want to reassure the user, just say that:

  Enable cool new feature X?

  (You can always change this in System Settings → Y.)

  [ Sure ] [ No, thanks ]

Have you ever seen an app where upon responding to a dialog, an option is irrevocably removed from settings? The conversation is about “no” meaning “don’t bother me again with this question unprompted” (which used to be the norm), not “rewrite your own binary to remove the choice”.

A much better way would be “Yes” and “No” with a small message of “you can change this later in the Settings”.

Or have three buttons: “Yes”, “No”, “Remind me Later”. Apple does stuff like that in other parts of the OS, like when asking for app permissions, so they clearly know how to do it.

"Remind me later" means "bug me again with a dialog in the future", which is not what I want. I don't need to be reminded, but if I change my mind in the future, I want to be able to proactively go and change it.

Yes, more text can be another way to provide the message, but if you've ever done any user testing, you'll know that people at best scan through your UI. I know I wouldn't read that, or at least would prefer not to have to read that.

I guess I don't see why "No" combined with "You can change this later in settings" is so much less offensive than "Not now".

"Remind me later" means "bug me again with a dialog in the future", which is not what I want.

But it is what Apple and others do, and what the conversation is about. Sounds like you want what everyone else does (a “no”) but are just arguing over the specific wording of the message.

Microsoft and Google are the same.

It's always "maybe later" and never "no seriously, I don't want this, go away"

No? When I'm asked about Apple Pay on an iPhone, it says "Maybe later". In the Settings it has reminder, and if I go in and say "No" it never pops up ever again (maybe on a iOS major version upgrade?).

Generally with Apple it's one "Maybe later" with a reminder flag set someplace, and then that's it.

Techbros just can't grasp that "No" doesn't mean "Later." It's not exclusive to Apple by any means. Android update incoming? Your choices are "yes" or "later."

The “AI” industry has many flaws, the word “consent” being seemingly missing from training data and company handbooks is one of them

Yes! The most consentless (don't underline this in red firefox!) technology that I can think of certainly.

edit: also install and use Linux

But that’s a trivial cost compared to the consent problem. [..] AI bros keep telling me “just turn it off” and when I do they remove the choice.

This is barking at the wrong tree. If you value things like your privacy or the ability to strictly control what runs on your computer then perhaps it would be a good idea to not run a proprietary operating system that's primarily designed not to provide you with the best user experience possible but to slowly extract more and more value out of you?

You must be talking about someone other than Apple. Apple has been falling into value extraction lately (which I hope Ternus will change), but their operating systems very much have never been designed for that from the outset. Rather the opposite. Apple is the only company that comprehensively documents platform security and privacy. I can't think of anyone else who doesn't just say "trust me bro". Maybe GrapheneOS. Nobody actually proves they are who they say they are better than Apple does.

Apple is also one of the only companies to focus on user experience above all else (nearly, anyway). Again, I can't think of a single other example (maybe Framework comes close), but while Apple has incredible technology, they have always been fairly measured with it to attain just the user experience they want. IMO, that's what earned Mac a reputation for having poor performance, and iPhone a reputation for having low memory, because Apple gave them the specs they needed to run well and have a terrific UX, not necessarily the specs to push the frontier of what you can run at home.

Apple has been learning that frontier is important, though, and they've been leaning more into it lately. Part of why Apple Silicon has been such an incredible shock to the industry.

The author is complaining that his OS doesn't let him say "no". This would never happen with an OS which actually respects you. Of course, it's not Apple's fault, it never is -- it's those "AI bros"! It's incredibly ironic that the author writes "I’ve chosen not to kowtow to billionaires", yet he kowtowing to a company with a market cap of 5 trillion USD.

You wrote as if the entire operating system was designed from the start to extract value from you. That's what I'm disputing. I'm not trying to say that removing a disablement option that literally already existed had the user's best interest in mind. Just that it's not a sign of some core fundamental disrespect that the company has. We've already seen that Apple's been getting swept up by generative AI bullshit, like with the iPhone 16 marketing, and it is entirely fair to hold them accountable for all the shit they're doing, but it's also entirely possible that this is just a ripple and they're going to get themselves under control again.

Of course it's designed to extract value. MacOS is primarily a consumer content platform with some developer features, rather than vice versa.

The Apple experience is enshitifying at all levels and becoming consistently intrusive. I'm perpetually nagged about a 3 month trial of Apple Music I will never use and have zero interest in. Music player launches when I get in the car, even though I don't want it to. Apple Maps persistently asks me if I want a quick route home, when I don't. Apple TV repeatedly runs trailers for Apple Shows I have no interest in.

Apple '26 gave the world the much-loathed and objectively pointless Liquid Glass. iOS27 has some idiotically obvious bugs and usability issues. Parts of the hardware remain world-leading, but the software is getting less and less humane while pretending to be the opposite.

"good dog, here's a cookie"

You're repeating fruit factory propaganda as if it is gospel, the marketing department can be proud of their handiwork. In reality they're one of the most profit-maximisation centred companies out there in computing land, they don't really care all that much about what their users want and do their best to make it as hard as possible to escape from their "ecosystem". They fell into "value extraction" a long time ago and I don't see them stopping in any way as long as they have loyal apologists like you seem to be. Why would they? The money keeps rolling in, the congregation keeps on buying fruit phones and related paraphernalia, they'd be mad to stop from a business perspective.

"good dog, here's a cookie"

Ha, funnily enough that's not far off. (Vulpine)

You're repeating fruit factory propaganda as if it is gospel, the marketing department can be proud of their handiwork.

I hated Apple for a really long time. I don't know exactly why, but if anything, it was all the Apple haters that got me. And of course, the general idea of devices not being locked down to the company, and some other stuff. Having a rooted Android phone made me prone to confirmation bias too.

But my school had Mac, and after using them, I knew that Mac was for me. I still hated iOS at the time, but I knew I needed Mac. So I got one, and I was absolutely right.

The Mac broke down constantly though, didn't seem designed for the abuse I put it through. People begged me to go back to Windows because of the constant repairs, and I did, but I eventually got fed up with Windows again and tried Linux. I eventually got fed up with Linux too, went back to Windows, continued to be relentlessly fed up with Windows, and then eventually got a Mac again, with my own money this time.

At some point, it just clicked for me that the company is what I need, rather than Mac alone. I realized that iOS had the exact same philosophy that I liked so much about Mac. I got an iPhone and got to benefit from the ecosystem with my Mac. And at that point, my mind was fully made up. All in on Apple.

Note that at basically none of these points did marketing become a factor in my decisions. So no it's not the marketing. Though that is a great way to discredit opinions, I think Apple is genuinely the best for me.

In reality they're one of the most profit-maximisation centred companies out there in computing land, they don't really care all that much about what their users want and do their best to make it as hard as possible to escape from their "ecosystem".

To me, this feels kind of like the argument that Steam is an abusive monopoly. I choose and prefer them because the alternatives kinda suck in comparison. Apple is like that for me. I'm not locked into their ecosystem the same way that I'd be locked into an online game that I've poured thousands of hours into. Or locked into a social network where all my friends have been for over a decade. I can easily move somewhere else, and I even did recently, before moving back because I couldn't bear it.

I noticed just how much my habits changed to adapt to Windows, as opposed to Mac. I naturally used the system differently because it just wasn't capable of things I could rely on Mac to do for me. Spotlight is a big part of Mac for me, and none of the third-party software out there quite replicates that experience on Windows. In addition, the file management is far more primitive, and I found myself using directory structure in place of search. You could call this a skill issue, but to me, it's just a mismatch. Given how much I've used both sides my whole life -- I mean for much of my early life it was only Windows, but Mac has always been far more intuitive and expressive for me -- if they were comparable, I'd use them comparably, but I don't, so I think they're not.

I'm leaving Linux out of this because they don't have an ecosystem, they just rely on you bringing your own, I guess. You want file sharing, you install something like KDE Connect. You want organization, just find a file manager that has that, or make one. I've tried a few distributions, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Fedora Silverblue. I preferred Arch on my MacBook, eventually preferred Fedora Silverblue on my later PC, but nothing's quite right, even when I put the effort into curating (like the time I tried KISS Linux).

To be honest, I'm not quite sure why people say Apple's ecosystem is this terrible walled garden that's super hard to leave. Maybe they're hostile to a user experience that they prefer over the alternatives. Maybe they think that their preference is a sign that the walled garden is manipulative. I guess I just don't get it yet. Maybe they want to leave but it's inconvenient, they think Apple could make it easier, and that makes them conclude it's designed to trap them. In my experience, the alternatives simply are less convenient, it's nothing about Apple that makes it more difficult to leave.

They fell into "value extraction" a long time ago and I don't see them stopping in any way as long as they have loyal apologists like you seem to be.

I don't think there's any evidence that Apple cares whether or not there are "apologists". Maybe if nobody in the world liked them they would decide to change their minds. But I don't think it's as simple as people just rationalizing their bad decisions and excusing them, therefore enabling them. I think they're just as likely to make bad decisions that are universally bad, and it takes about as long for them to go back on them as bad decisions with "loyal apologists". Like that fiasco with the butterfly keyboard repair programs.

Why would they? The money keeps rolling in, the congregation keeps on buying fruit phones and related paraphernalia, they'd be mad to stop from a business perspective.

I do agree on one point, that Apple is unlikely to realize their mistake when it keeps generating profit, regardless of how many users complain. That's why I'm hoping for top-down action. I hope the new CEO sees that their more recent enshittifications like "Apple Creator Studio" are a mistake, a betrayal. I have no evidence that'll ever happen, though. Maybe that's the loyalty you're talking about. Or just the last shred of hope I have for what seems like the last company on earth I can rely on.

IMO, that's what earned Mac a reputation for having poor performance

Desktops maybe, but on mobile, Apple has always outclassed most Windows laptops that ordinary people might buy - alone because the full-aluminium case allows for far more heat input until saturation kicks in.

I see the dangers of AI and agree that many companies don’t value our privacy and do what’s best for them and not us, but…

…this is an emotional dogmatic post. „All of this garbage“ clearly shows that the author is stuck in the past. The banners on the website confirm this. It’s the figurative fanatic complaining about those black steam devils and their tracks that nobody needs and that destroy nature. Yeah, steam trains were noisy and created smoke, but the age of horses was over. No emotional outburst would have stopped that, and won’t stop AI now.

The unconditional and emotional rejection of AI undermines the actual valid point he is trying to make.

He's not talking about AI in general. He's talking about a device he owns.

If you honestly can't see the blatant and absolute anti-AI rhetoric in his post (I provided a citation) and the banners, then there really is no reason to continue this discussion.

Is it normal that I am enraged by this new process…is there a MacBook version of Graphene or something we can use if things keep boiling this way?

The answer is simple: Regulation to grant users the right to refuse during installation/setup of a system. This must also include updates. This feel like a repeat of the EU browser choice rule!

If you want to own your computer, linux is where it's at. Windows is rusty iron chains and MacOS's are gold-plated silver pretending to be gold, but they're still chains.

For now.

My gut is we'll have to start learning BSD soon.

GPL is a more free license if one cares about having control over their computing. The BSD community cares a lot less about that in my (limited) experience and more about purely technical aspects. Which is fine, I just wouldn't expect them to hold if Linux is no longer an option somehow.

I've seen people in #freebsd attack GPL like it was thought up by satan.

That's the problem with BSD, the community holds a large amount of radical ideologies that led them to BSD. Like a deep hatred for systemd or the GPL.

Not the core developers though, just the community surrounding them.

I had many conversations about this and it always came down to business. GPL is indeed restrictive if your priority is the free market. Pretty much every serious BSD person I know of runs it as part of their business, so from their pov GPL is restrictive.

However in the context of the constant restrictions of general purpose computing, GPL has my back. BSD at best doesn't care about restrictive forks and at worst even welcomes them as 'good business'.

Two different approaches, they both have their place but as a user, I feel GPL was written for me. BSD (license) was written for the developer.

FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD are your friends too!

Let me know if any of them work well on a laptop that's never than 5 years old.

Running FreeBSD on a Lenovo Thinkbook 16 G7 ARP that was bought brand new less than a year ago. Everything except the wifi works flawlessly (daily driver for working).

And the wifi is easily fixable either buying a non expensive dongle or waiting for the next release.

Also running bhyve as daily driver with Ubuntu for development purposes. Everything works without issues, perfectly.

That's valuable and good to know, but I meant a machine that's actually new (not one you just bought recently). That laptop is about 2.5 years old specs wise at this point. I use mine for anything from programming to video editing to AAA gaming on Linux. I don't think a machine like that could be my primary one, but looks like a decent secondary.

I don't know what you consider "actually new" hardware. The machine I use to work has 16 Gb of RAM. Ryzen 7 and an AMD GPU. For me that's a pretty decent and recent hardware.

If you meant the lastest of the latest GPU, processor, chipset and so you you might better off with Linux.

But the fact that the computer that was given to me was boxed from factory and bought after two weeks after started is a sign of recent hardware. I haven't tried it but two other person where I work have high end brand new ThinkPads and I'm confident FreeBSD can be run on those well too.

Psst. Macos is bsd in a trenchcoat. Don't let the others see this comment or they will get angry.

I would love to move my gaming PC to Linux but until the kernel devs permit kernel-level anti-cheats, or an equivalent, I refuse to give up games that I love. It's nearly impossible to play multiplayer games now without KLAC. The cheating is out of control.

Unfortunately this is an ideological hill that many Linux devs are willing to die on, so we're at an impasse. Valve claimed to be working on a solution, and if there is any company which can negotiate an accord, it's them.

It's worth having a look at https://areweanticheatyet.com/. I found that the most of the games I play which use anti cheat work on Linux. It's also not hard to dual-boot windows as a backup, though I haven't had a use for my windows partition yet.

I refuse to give up games that I love

But why? They're just video games. Why are they important, especially when a lot of them are designed to be addictive.

A lot of people love smoking but that's not important either and it's better to give it up.

What if those games are the only games they and their friends play together? I wouldnt want to stop that.

Having to give over time and money to a video game company to maintain friendships sounds more like a symptom than a cure.

When your grandkids ask you what you did with your finite time, is "I pwned noobs" the answer you want to give?

Having to give over time and money to a video game company to maintain friendships sounds more like a symptom than a cure.

Sure, let me just quickly hop on a plane to australia to meet with some. I assume youre paying?

When your grandkids ask you what you did with your finite time, is "I pwned noobs" the answer you want to give?

Yes? What kind of question is that? Youre just gonna start talking about the value you created for shareholders or your business?

What kind of question is that?

The question is what value are video games. The answer seems to be "not much".

They look much more like addictive distractions than anything valuable.

In your case it would seem to be “arguing with strangers on HN”!

I'd say it's more like I'm trying to get something coherent out of people and there's nothing to be had.

Video games don't even appear to be productive of good discussion.

What are you on about? You clearly don't like video games and think they're a waste of time, which is fine. Other people do like them and find them fulfilling for whatever reason, which is also fine.

Why are you trying so hard to "prove" that someone's hobby is a waste of time?

How is cheating a problem that needs a technological solution when playing with friends?

It's very simple: I like the games more than I want to move to Linux. Playing Fortnite isn't going to give me lung cancer.

But why do you like them? What do you get out of them? What's the benefit?

I've watched people play slot machines. They sit there and pump money into the machine for no real benefit to themselves. Why are video games any different to that?

I get fun out of them. I don't mean to sound snide, but do you really not understand why people play video games? I derive fun from many places, like hiking, reading, movies, music, and video games. Do you not derive fun from your hobbies?

How is a video game a hobby any more than playing a slot machine is a hobby?

I want to clarify to anyone reading this that this only effects high-competitive games, like LoL, Valorant, PUBG, R6S; and not all of them (e.g. Counter Strike).

It does not affect "multiplayer" in general, to the contrary, most multiplayer games are not affected (coop games, MMOs, RTS).

  | It's nearly impossible to play multiplayer games now without KLAC. The cheating is out of control.

Ofc, cheating is also present with KLAC, its just the next level of the cat and mouse game (Driver exploits, DMA access via PCIe, Network Packet analysis, ...)

  | Unfortunately this is an ideological hill that many Linux devs are willing to die on

Nonsense. 1. Almost no anticheat is implemented on Linux in the first place. Most "working" anti-cheat solutions for Linux are just a #if Linux doNothing(); #else ... 2. KLAC requires SecureBoot/ChainOfTrust + closed source code running with highest privileges. This does not make sense for any PC, but I dont see why it would be harder to do on Linux than on Windows, Linux just has a smaller install base in general and a lower acceptance rate for KLAC, therefore its not worth it to implement.

I would like to respond because you're speaking authoritatively but this is mostly your opinion.

I want to clarify to anyone reading this that this only effects high-competitive games, like LoL, Valorant, PUBG, R6S; and not all of them (e.g. Counter Strike).

It affected a game I really care about: Arc Raiders. That's not a "high-competitive" game. It's PvPvE, shooting at funny robots and scavenging rubber duckies. Cheating killed the game. [It's down to 6% of its peak.](https://steamcharts.com/app/1808500#All) Just because this hasn't affected the games you love doesn't mean it's not affecting many games. See Titanfall, H1Z1, and The Cycle: Frontier, among many more.

It does not affect "multiplayer" in general, to the contrary, most multiplayer games are not affected (coop games, MMOs, RTS).

I was going to ask you to back that up, but I realise I made a broad claim and can also not back it up, so we're just giving each other our opinions, I suppose.

Ofc, cheating is also present with KLAC, its just the next level of the cat and mouse game (Driver exploits, DMA access via PCIe, Network Packet analysis, ...)

Indeed. The goal is to reduce cheating to a manageable level. It is impossible to eliminate.

Nonsense. 1. Almost no anticheat is implemented on Linux in the first place. Most "working" anti-cheat solutions for Linux are just a #if Linux doNothing(); #else ... 2. KLAC requires SecureBoot/ChainOfTrust + closed source code running with highest privileges. This does not make sense for any PC, but I dont see why it would be harder to do on Linux than on Windows, Linux just has a smaller install base in general and a lower acceptance rate for KLAC, therefore its not worth it to implement.

Linux does not properly support KLAC because its architecture and development philosophy work against it. For example, Valve explicitly recommends user-space anti-cheat for Proton and says kernel-space anti-cheat is “not currently supported and is not recommended”.

The Linux kernel also deliberately does not provide a stable binary kernel-driver interface. Kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman has said that Linux has neither a stable in-kernel API nor a stable binary kernel interface, because maintainers want the freedom to change kernel internals rather than permanently support proprietary out-of-tree drivers.

Riot is on the record as explaining that Linux does not give Vanguard sufficient ability to attest boot state and kernel modules. They also claim that distribution differences make enforcement harder, and that cheats can potentially operate outside an emulated environment where the anti-cheat cannot see them. Riot is on the record saying that anti-cheat is “extremely hard on Linux by design”.

So you're technically correct, but I think you misunderstand a lot of the architecture which underpins this issue, and the ideological boundaries which many developers prefer to enforce around security, FOSS, and ownership.

The cheating is out of control.

There are hardware cheats that are not detectable by KLAC, so it doesn't solve the problem, just improves the situation.

The only way to avoid cheaters is to play with people you trust.

It's very fortunate that Linux devs do not tolerate this DRM crap. What you are asking for is to turn Linux into another Windows, at which point there is not point.

If you're not willing to stop using harmful software that's your problem.

And let's not forget that cheating in online games is only an issue because companies have co-opted what was a social activity between people you know (or at least can get to know) into a more profitable asocial e-peen measuring contest between randoms.

Online cheating as existed for as long as online games have existed. Long before companies cared about online gaming as a serious generator of revenue. There is a certain percentage of the population which enjoys hurting others and making them have a bad time. The anonymity of online games allows them to be antisocial with very few social repercussions.

I think equating having the option of KLAC with Windows is totally disingenuous. There are countless other differentiators. You would be free to just not use KLAC if you so desired.

So only play multiplayer games for which you know enough people who also want to play that same game and on a schedule that works for you?

KLAC isn’t the problem so much as lazy or shitty devs refusing to put in the work to support Linux as a platform. They’ll literally have game logic run in encrypted VMs on other platforms but then refuse to do the same on Linux with superior hypervisors like KVM and bhyve. Some developers have explicitly removed EAC support on Linux from their games, despite no open issues with it. Others demand someone else write the APIs needed for their invasive rootkits to run, ignoring that Linux is very much a community effort and that if one will write and publish it, others will use it.

I will 100% give Linux evangelists the guff they deserve on shitty UX in GUIs and their insistence upon a dozen slightly-tweaked solutions to the same core problem that prevents the industry from consolidating into widescale popularity on endpoints, but the incompetence and/or laziness of major devs to support even something like Debian is not a failing of Linux.

There is no doubt an economics problem here, where it might not make sense to invest a lot of effort into a system from which less than 1% of revenue is derived.

However, KVM does not solve the problem. In fact, Riot explicitly explains why virtualisation can make the problem worse: if Vanguard runs inside a guest, a cheat can run on the host and manipulate the VM in ways the anti-cheat cannot see. Riot says Linux currently does not give it sufficient ability to attest the boot state or kernel modules, with distro differences making the problem harder.

Linux also deliberately does not provide a stable in-kernel ABI for proprietary out-of-tree drivers. The kernel documentation explicitly says there is neither a stable binary kernel interface nor a stable internal kernel interface. The preferred model is for drivers to be upstreamed and maintained with the kernel, which is almost the opposite of how closed-source kernel anti-cheat is normally deployed.

And this isn't just Riot. EA actually supported EAC through Proton for Apex and then removed Linux access because its anti-cheat team said Linux was being used for impactful cheats, that Linux cheats were harder to detect, and that they couldn't reliably distinguish a legitimate Steam Deck from a malicious Linux client pretending to be one.

Valve itself tells developers that Proton's recommended solution is user-space anti-cheat and that kernel-space anti-cheat is “not currently supported and is not recommended”.

So I guess it's technically possible for a game dev to effectively create their own Linux distro, but I hope we agree that's never going to happen. They're game devs, not Linux devs. Anti-cheat needs a trust chain that the hostile user cannot control and not just an API through which it can inspect the system. Linux deliberately gives the machine owner far more control over the kernel and environment, which is exactly what makes strong client-side attestation difficult.

FYI bhyve isn't a Linux hypervisor. It's part of FreeBSD.

Riot says Linux currently does not give it sufficient ability to attest the boot state or kernel modules, with distro differences making the problem harder.

Why would a game developer have the power to approve what I boot on my hardware?

Especially a peddler of live service free to play.

Attestation is not permission.

I recently started playing a game that installed "anti-cheat" software that has done absolutely nothing to stop the amount of cheating in the game but it has made my Debian desktop unstable with random gnome and application crashes caused by their poor software. I never had crashes until that garbage got installed. It works exceptionally hard at preventing me from streaming my games I used to not have an issue with

kernel level invasive garbage would be beyond destructive and still not solve the problem

If it's on Linux then it wasn't kernel-level anti-cheat, and therefore mostly useless. It's not surprising that it did nothing to slow down cheating. Even KLAC can be circumvented. It increases friction and cost for cheaters but it doesn't solve the issue completely.

Ideally you would be free to not play KLAC games, and I would be free to play KLAC games. I just hope for the option one day, as I would very much like to make the move to Linux.

Your anti cheat doesn't stop others' cheating, so whether they had KLAC running is irrelevant to whether they encountered cheaters.

It's your choice, but I refuse to play games that come with a rootkit. I would rather have cheating than compromise my security.

Is Linux where it's at?

Maybe with the rise of immutable distributions like SteamOS, Bazzite, GnomeOS and KDELinux.

But the other "user-friendly" distributions are just not good enough for a non-techy.

We need better and more A/B partitioned immutable distributions and we need a new implementation of Flatpak.

I recently had to repair my parents their Linux Mint installation because it powered off during an upgrade. Apt does not handle that well, Linux Mint has no snapshotting, you cannot apt autoconfigure -a through the UI. Also the UI does not explain why the machine is getting hot while it's building dkms modules for an hour.

Just this week I saw someone with Fedora get a buggy graphics driver that made the whole system glitchy, they had to downgrade the kernel.

The week before I had to repair a manjaro installation from a friend because getting nvidia to work on ArchLinux isn't trivial even if Manjaro pretends it to be.

To be frank, desktop linux is still in a pretty bad state.

I think it's equally likely a windows update breaks a family owned computer and the solution isn't clear to them eg reinstall drivers directly from Vendor.

I'd also rgue Mint is easier to navigate than Windows with it's 3+ different context menus and baked in ads.

Maybe Little Snitch can be helpful in this sort of case ? Consent or not, it must be possible to kill the phone home line.

Potentially! Would be interesting to hear if anyone manages to block internal Apple shenanigans with Little Snitch successfully and feasibly (without constant toggling of rules or alike).

So... Apple should develop a separate version of their system, that doesn't include AI anywhere? Because Siri AI is not the only part of the system that uses the onboard models. The moral panic is just ridiculous at this point

I don't think anyone's asking for a separate version, just an option to turn the AI features off. Even totally aside from the moral points, some of us simply don't have the disk space.

it is off, Apple Intelligence and Siri AI IS NOT the name of the models. The worst they're guilty of here is confusing denominations, something hardly new to Apple

Do you believe that adding a "no" button _and then honoring it when the user clicked on it_ requires developing a separate version of their system?

Regardless: they already did, because Apple intelligence is not available in the EU.

You're mixing up Siri AI and Apple Intelligence with the models... Siri AI and Apple Intelligence are PRODUCTS, the tech behind it, the models, are called Apple Foundation Models and they're used in many places in the system. It's not a matter of consent, it's people not understanding the tech they're using and doing spurious analogies.

No worries, it’s only a matter of time until this becomes normal. Will probably follow the same trajectory as people disabling JavaScript. You still hear about that constantly of course, because the 7 people that do it can’t go a day without letting you know, but it won’t be a panic anymore.

I never really understood the craze for the overpriced Apple products. After many years of using PCs with Linux and Windows, I got forced to use a MacBook Pro as the company laptop and I found it hard to use. The OS is so limiting, Finder so crappy, oh my. There are some advantages, like the hardware is good, but on the other hand there are countless tiny issues where "Apple knows better" such as tying mouse scroll direction to the trackpad direction which is awkward for me. And now this what you're describing. So no, thanks, I'll stick to ThinkPad.

You don't buy Apple because it's good. You buy it because it's what the cool people use.

Imagine applying for a SF startup job and letting them know you use a Windows computer.

At best they will politely tell you to fuck off. But they might blog/X about the idiot Windows user who imagined they could be cool enough to work for them, all coated in a plausible "a craftsman takes care of using good tools, sharp knifes, ..."

You don't buy Apple because it's good

You do, because their hardware is very good. Denying this is just silly.

There is no contradiction. I agree Apple hardware is good. But it's not why you buy it (well, maybe you personally do, but you are not representative of the median Apple client)

Apple hardware is good, but not uniquely good. There are plenty of other good computers out there, Apple hardware isn't in some special tier where nobody can touch them.

Not trying to start flamewars, but more and more I wonder how much are people willing to put up with such practices. On linux for 15+ years and everytime I try to use mac or win, it is an ordeal. And ads. F*cking ads in a system someone has purchased. And spying. Really user hostile environment. No, thank you.

if you are happy on Linux, why do you even "try to use a mac or win"?

macOS has been on a downward trend since Apple started pushing "Services", basically iCloud. Now it's as bad as Windows when I last used Windows.

It's not just privacy violations. Those are the tip of the iceberg. I used to open the Activity Monitor and see a couple pages of processes. Now it's in the hundreds.

It's stuff that was badly done even before AI. The industry has been drunk on SaaS for way too long, and with SaaS comes the junk/slop and the privacy violations.

I've been doing my part and cancelling all my subscriptions apart from power, water, internet and garbage.

I won't disagree that MacOS has been getting worse, but Windows is even worse than you remember it. It's clearly a race to the bottom, but Windows 11 is full of ads, and you can't even search the Start menu for your installed programs anymore. MacOS hasn't gotten that bad yet, as frustrating as the new "Apps" menu is.

I switched my desktop to Ubuntu about a year ago, and while it's not 100% free of trouble, I still can't imagine running Windows 11 again. My MBP still runs MacOS and I haven't been pushed far enough to want to try installing a Linux distro on it.

Because Mac laptops are lightyears ahead of any other hardware.

Build quality (aluminum), charging (magsafe), screen resolution, battery life, noise (or lack thereof), trackpad…

It’s like other vendors aren’t even trying.

Also the OS mostly “just works”, just last week my Linux laptop disabled NVIDIA GPU (and almost bricked itself?? Not sure, had to fix apt) during automated updates

We're 30+ years into trackpads on laptops and they're still terrible on Windows machines. Make it make sense.

I can't say I've ever been impressed by an Apple track pad. Or their insistence on removing actual buttons for them.

The peak was my high school Gateway laptop.

I’m surprised you can tell it isn’t a button anymore, the fake click is very accurate feeling. The lack of moving parts is a good upgrade.

I am confused here. While I generally like Mac hardware the trackpads are quite mediocre. Lenovo and Dell have better ones. What are they better at?

While I generally like Mac hardware the trackpads are quite mediocre. Lenovo and Dell have better ones

I find the Mac better for scrolling, clicking, gestures and zooming. It’s rejection of eg palm input and the size of the touch pad are great.

Wild guess is they have to reject palm input mostly because they make them too big. I don't even put my palm on my thinkpad trackpad so I don't even know if it has such functionnality as it isn't even needed.

Gesture is more an OS functionnality but I am not sure how a trackpad can be better or worse for scrolling or clicking. You slide 2 fingers, it scrolls right? you click (or rather tap these days), it clicks? right? Can a trackpad click "less" or even "scroll less"?

OK maybe some handle better wet fingers, that is maybe the weak point of my current trackpad.

We're 30+ years into trackpads on laptops and they're still terrible on Windows machines. Make it make sense.

The old Mac trackpads were great. The new Mac trackpads where they increased the size, and made it solid-state feel terrible to use. Make it make sense.

I've never been able to tell the difference between a cheap trackpad and whatever Apple uses, but I hear folks go on about it endlessly.

My guess? Most people don't care, but the discussions are driven by the few who do, because for them, it's a really big deal, and they'll pay accordingly. Similarly for "My code is unreadable unless it's on a 4k display at 220+ PPI" -- I'm sure it's true for them, but for me, a crappy FHD display I can get for $100 is great for coding.

I'm like this with Linux...I pay System76 a premium because I care about how they go about building their systems, both hardware and software. To normal folks, it seems like a crazy thing to pay a premium for, but for me, it's a great deal.

I have to agree, unfortunately. Macbooks have their issues, and give me violent tendencies like any piece of hardware every now and then, but when it comes to UX and reliability, they are far, far ahead of anything I tried, and I tried a lot of hardware.

Reliability, yes. UX, no.

If you look at MacOS with a critical eye, it's nearly impossible to say it has good UX. It's outdated and everything requires more clicks. Finder stuck 20 years ago. Hard to find settings. Poor screen real estate. Hard to read text with transparent everything.

Let's kill this myth that "Macs are more intuitive to use".

I was talking about the hardware. Software sucks, paid little helper this, paid little helper that...

To be fair, the whole thread is about tolerating Apple because how good the hardware is :)

"but when it comes to UX and reliability, they are far, far ahead of anything I tried"

Sounds like you are talking about software also.

To each their own, I find the UX absolutely horrible and not intuitive, it's also poorly translated for non-english users (like "Finder", "iCloud Drive" or "Spotlight" not translated in the interface for example).

I have to agree on the hardware quality though but that doesn't do everything as I still have to use the OS

Translating terms that are basically proper names is not trivial, and Apple loves to give these catchy quasi-proper names for their features. Often it can be better to leave them untranslated.

They are translated on your average Linux distribution though, you won't see nautilus but "Files", gnome-software but "Software", Gnome snapshot but "Camera" (I've put the English term here but each term will be translated to your language). See https://apps.gnome.org and switch the language to see.

In comparison, both MacOS and Windows look more amateur with some leftovers not translated. (Like "Windows Update" on Windows for example)

Yeah, but your average Linux environment is translated by amateurs and is maybe 1% as keen on the brand image as Apple.

Well yes it's translated by amateurs but as for the result, both KDE and Gnome are miles ahead in terms of translation quality compared to MacOS or Windows.

Mac build quality is nice indeed. And Nvidia sometimes doesn't play along, but that is a small price to pay for an everyday peace of mind.

My both parents use linux and are happy with it. If you mostly use just the browser and reading e-mails, I don't see any better system even for someone who is non-technical.

If you mostly use just the browser and reading e-mails, I don't see any better system even for someone who is non-technical.

If thats all you do you might as well just use macos. Something comes up you can just send your parents to the apple store. Probably one of the last places on earth you can get a real life human in a real life building from a real life major company to sit down with you and walk you through your issue. They will do this for free, you only pay for an actual repair job, which you can also of course do there for a relatively fair price all things considered for oem quality work. Not sure where I would take any other laptop for repair. Do people even repair laptops as a business?

For software issues they have a real person - me, and for hardware ones they can be sent to ANY repair service. Just close to them there are like three vendors who do hardware work. But the thing is, for last 5 years or so I do not remember they actually had some issue with their box. Things just work and updates do not overhaul your system out of nowhere.

This has changed recently

For example this dell is superb, has tandem oled with 200% scaling and runs linux (dhh runs this on onarchy)

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/laptop-computers/spd/xps14da...

This has changed recently

I've probably heard "this time is different" on the topic of PC laptops catching up to Macs a hundred times over the last decade, but it never is...

It's hard to rebuild trust after selling a computer (without a CD drive) without networking drivers and no indication of which wireless chipset it has, but including a CD with said drivers.

Aluminium is not build quality. It makes lying stuff inside cheap. And feels horrible on skin contact.

The good ThinkPads with Magnesium feel much better (both for hand and lap) and are lighter. And the expensive and complicated build allows maintenance (replacing a keyboard is a bless on the X13). Lenovo is just stupid and also allows to purchase low quality screens, low quality frames and even a Windows. A thing that Apple never allows, you cannot purchase a bad configuration.

The MBAs at Apple figured out much earlier, that a rigid metal frame is cheap and gives the impression of quality.

Aside from that?

Customers are guilty, wanting a shiny and quick solution. And governments and companies by following ultra rigid and outright stupid purchasing guide (ISO craziness and “we can drop Windows, we invested another 300.000 in a Windows only Application).

At work we can choose between Apple laptops or Thinkpads, I choose thinkpads, using Windows and WSL.

Previously either VMware Workstation or Virtual Box.

Also I am not speaking from a position of no experience, as some projects require being assigned Mac Books, that I gladly return after delivery.

WSL is such a pain compared to just using a unix os from the get, which is of course what macos is. People forget that it is in fact a unix distro.

No, people don't.

It's just that mishmash of OSFMK (with BSD APIs of 1991 or so) with random additions of newer APIs does not necessarily make it a great Unix to work with in 2026

People really get hard up about it shipping with some older versions of some tools. But if you are really that much of a unix nerd then you'd also know that is solved in 5 mins with a brew one liner.

I am enough of a nerd to know that people will come with assumptions about libc based on Free/Net/OpenBSD and get burned because no, you can't fix the system libc with brew oneliner

One thing Windows did right is keyboard based navigation. Most of the general public does not know or appreciate how close to productivity nirvana the alt key brings you.

Same is possible in KDE. Combined with hot corners, you can become "blazingly fast".

Once a colleague seeing me work looked at my screen, lifted his head and pointed to my colleague saying "Have you seen how this guy work, he's a maniac!".

Mastering the tool you have always brings speed and smoothness into your process, one step at a time.

I don't feel like I've had much issue with keyboard driven workflows on any OS.

Any app can has its extensive set of keyboard shortcuts, but when it comes to DE itself, it's not always the case.

Microsoft has Meta+ and Alt+ combinations dime a dozen, and it's consistent across versions. KDE has extensive programmability which allows you to design you own. Both allows you to pack so many features into a small number of keys and work across applications or in general without thinking.

A terminal? It appears. A window? You call it without thinking. Ran out of space, a new desktop is just an instinct...

On macOS you can also assign a keyboard shortcut to any tool menu the app exposes. This works without the app knowing about it.

Not to mention that once you're in this ecosystem, it's usually pretty reliable.

It seems that no other device makers are seeing the value in Apple's many-devices-acting-as-one approach. It makes for some serious vendor lock.

Indeed. TBH if I was running a Google- or even OpenAI-scale company (3000+ devices) I'd probably invest into creating a useful Linux distribution and hardware configuration myself (at that scale, it could maybe start to make sense).

Also don't forget calibrated screens, great speakers, long-life (you can use one for a 7-8 years without even trying), and durable keyboards which doesn't become smeared wear-fests which defaces itself within a single heavy development session.

I always run Linux (Debian primarily) on my desktops and servers with a zealot-ish dedication, but what Mac and macOS brings to the table as a portable machine is irreplaceable with anything else.

Even a top end ThinkPad with a well groomed Linux distribution can't come close, sorry.

long-life

and durable keyboards

It wasn't that long ago they had terrible keyboard lifespans which could be a death knell for the laptop, and overheating CPUs which limited performance way behind spec. They've come far in recent years, and I certainly wouldn't be sad if it was my main machine yet I don't expect them to be an outlier forever.

In some dimension Apple (and any serious manufacturer) is always going to be ahead - and they certainly are in non-gaming portable CPU/GPU combos right now. Alas, they aren't ahead in many other dimensions; my Fedora X1 Carbon is my strong preference over my M4 macbook pro and a large part of that is the basic usability of the system and window manager (sway), which is something Apple will never match until we meaningfully switch interaction paradigms.

Do regular people care about these things or is this a hn thing?

I find a trackpad (even a Mac one) is absolutely infuriating to use compared to a decent mouse.

Battery life/screens/magsafe I'm plugged into a dock 99% of the time so it's irrelevant, but when forced to occasionally, the ergonomics of looking down at a single small 1x in screen is just terrible if doing it for hours and also makes my back feel horrible.

I might be weird but actively prefer the trackpad to keyboard and mouse as I can let my fingers rest on the keyboard at all times and use the thumb when needed to touch the excellent trackpad. That’s better than removing the whole hand to grab the mouse just to click something.

Agree unfortunately. I hate apple, for the same reasons as everyone else, but I have both a MacBook and iPhone and can’t do much about it. It’s like politics a little, you can only choose the least bad, there is no good.

I have a Linux server, and use cloud Linux machines extensively, but at least the last time I checked, Linux desktop sucks. There are always memory management issues, doing a video call makes my fan sound like a jet taking off, not sleeping, put my laptop in my bag and it gets to hot to touch - that’s just off the top of my head, I’ve tried Linux laptops on multiple occasions and they suck.

Next time you try Linux on the laptop, go with Void.

“just works”

if you use distros which ship the latest _stable_ release of software

and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up

but it can sometimes "just work" for a long time without any issues, something I haven't exactly had with either Windows or Mac

like my current gaming setup from a year ago(roughly) was setup once, I had to fiddle some minor tweaks during setup and since then it "just works tm". No issues, not know how needed, nothing. (At least for the Games I play.) But also not Nvidea which has in recent years increasingly more QA issues across _all_ OSes and _all_ hardware including their supper expensive AI cards... But that is more a Nvidea then a Linux Problem, by now, was different in the past.

and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up

but it can sometimes "just work" for a long time without any issues

These are defining qualities of something that does not "just work"

I've never used a computer that didn't have occasional hiccups. The Mac I have for work has lots of weird bugs. One is that if it has been using WI-FI and I plug-in my dock with an Ethernet cable attached, I lose internet access because MacOS can't gracefully handle the new interface becoming available.

I also find Apple's choice to just continually create 1G swap files until the system locks absolutely baffling.

Can any OS gracefully handle switching between WiFi and Ethernet without at least a blip in connectivity?

if you use distros which ship the latest _stable_ release of software

and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up

A Linux sysadmin teammate of mine has >10 years of running Linux servers, and chose to install Ubuntu on his work Dell laptop, and in the ~2 years he's been running that thing he's had regular (2-3/month) issues with audio during Zoom, Teams, and Google Meetings sessions. Both Bluetooth and wired headset connections.

At my last job (pre-COVID) I had a Linux workstation at my desk and a Windows laptop. At where I'm currently at we're hybrid and so we get laptops and I chose a MacBook because I knew I could both do my daily sysadmin chores through Terminal and also have access to 'business apps'.

issues with audio during Zoom, Teams, and Google Meetings sessions

Could it be due to a poor support of Linux by these proprietary apps? Possibly even intentional.

Windows on laptops also just works, especially for high end ones. It’s the Linux on laptops that’s hit or miss.

Of course it works and is beautiful hardware and all that.

But don't fool yourself. You're subverted to Apple's rules the same as Microsoft users are to Windows.

I prefer to fight a little bit on an update on a unix system on something that is not working 100% to give up choices. When you use Windows, MacOS, Android you do not have choices. Choices are dictated from above, like it or not.

As for me every time I have to interact with something that is not BSD or Linux I suffer miserably.

We are trading usability & quality for freedom & privacy. We know that, but we're all so busy that we have to make that trade. I've used linux since 2000 for servers, I've used it (and still do sometimes) for workstations, but even 2026 linux workstations & laptops aren't at where macbooks were 15 years ago.

Yes, there is a whole moral discussion to be had, but as much as you win points for doing the better thing, the better things don't really pay bills.

The good news though is that we definitely won the server war. We can spin up VMs and install Linux without licences. We have access to software that works well, security updates, frequent releases, a massive ecosystem of free software, no advertising, very little to no licensing for software, and it works incredibly well. So much so, that we can't even imagine a world in which servers require licence keys or subscriptions or a marketplace account.

Imagine now, if laptops & workstations were as solved as servers are.

That's why we aren't there yet, because they're not.

Some people don’t understand the concept of trade-offs

Some people understand the concept of trade-offs but don’t understand how other people don’t want the same trade-offs as they do

It goes beyond that if you ask me. I think anybody in this discussion knows all these things, but ultimately they fall back to “…and my decision is the correct one.”

That sentiment is rampant on this site.

5000 people skip over an obvious flame bait thread. 1000 people read but don’t comment at all. 7 people who feel they’ve solved the problem of which laptop is best and want to tell everyone why they should switch to Linux/Mac or why Linux/Mac sucks post obvious comments about Mac hardware and nix freedom. But “the sentiment is rampant on hn” is the take away. The sentiment that is rampant on hn is that there is a sentiment rampant on hn.

Isn't the only difference that people using servers are expected to have deeper knowledge? As someone using Linux both on servers and on a desktop, I see little difference.

Apple doesn't even have a tiling window manager as far as I know.

They have one built in now and have had third party ones for over a decade. I used SizeUp to tile windows in Mac OS in 2013. Now the OS has it built in but I find Rectangle to be superior. And it’s free and much better than any window manager I’ve tried in any Linux Distro.

We are trading usability & quality for freedom & privacy.

Are we? Not sure what usability and quality improvement there are in an OS where you have to fight against its vendor's decision.

Most critics against Linux I read come from people who never took the time to choose perfectly supported hardware in the first place but just buy whatever bleeding edge stuff is available running on windows, then hope it will works. It is like criticizing Apple/macOS because it doesn't work well on an hackintosh really and is completely dishonest. I don't criticize windows because it doesn't work on the latest Macbook M8 ultra studio pro nor do I criticize iOS because it doesn't work on my Samsung Note tab 6 or macOS 27 because it doesn't work on a Microsoft Surface.

I haven't had any update nor hardware support issue in the last 15 years because I have chosen hardware based on Linux support compatibility before purchasing them.

I don't even get the "quality hardware" argument. The only hardware I interact with is my high quality mechanical keyboard, trackball, and color calibrated monitor. All are vastly superior to any Apple hardware that I would interact with.

It's mostly about laptops. Most people use laptops. Apple laptops are good and all the other ones are bad.

I haven't had any update nor hardware support issue in the last 15 years because I have chosen hardware based on Linux support compatibility before purchasing them.

You're unique! Also I hear what you're saying about the vast choice of laptops available with amazing Linux compatibility

The thing is most people don't care about having a choice, they just want it to work. In fact having choice taken away from them is a good thing.

Probably 99% of Apple / Windows users aren't very tech literate so if they have to fight an update they'll just think it's broken.

It's just basic business practice, cater to the 99%, don't worry about the 1%

That simply isn’t true. You can disable whatever you want. You just may not be able to do it through the UI. I’ve customized my Mac to never phone home. It’s not hard if you know what you’re doing. It’s even easier if you don’t, and just ask Claude code to do it.

You can’t disable “whatever you want.” As the OP explains, in macOS 27 a “Siri AI” process stays running, always, doing who knows what, even if you turn everything off via the UI and CLI. If you know of a way to disable this, please post it because I’m sure many people would be interested in it.

As another example of what you can’t disable: I don’t wish to subscribe to Apple’s paid iCloud offerings. Yet there are several places in the UI both in macOS and iOS where there are non-removable ads for the service under certain conditions. For example, when your local storage fills up. Oh and now there’s a non-removable 20GB+ Apple LLM model now taking up space on my 256GB ssd. Thanks a lot Tim/John.