I hate that for you. Adobe has gotten worse over the years, but I suppose I don’t have to tell you that. There are a lot of great alternatives out there — I probably don’t have to tell you that either — and I hope one day you can switch to them.
Of course, that’s why work is a four letter word, and you can’t eat your wants.
I keep hearing it’s certified UNIX, and if you don’t know “what they call it” despite me saying so in the post you replied to, I question your comprehension of the material in general.
Now, I’m not a UNIX guy, and I always thought it was bizarre that people said that. So I looked it up. I neither like nor trust Google, so I searched “macOS UNIX certification” on DuckDuckGo, which I believe uses Bing? Still not ideal, but at this point any search engine is going to get us some meaningful searches.
DDG’s AI companion says this: MacOS has been certified as UNIX compliant, specifically as UNIX® 03, which means it adheres to an older version of the Single UNIX Specification. This certification indicates that macOS meets certain programming interface standards, but it does not necessarily reflect the latest UNIX standards.
The top link is from The Open Group which declares itself to be the official register of UNIX certified products. They list Apple macOS 26.0 Tahoe at the top (probably because Apple comes first alphabetically).
The Register is a little more dubious on the subject. It claims that macOS 15 Sequoia (the previous version; before they went to year-name releases rather than sequential) was also UNIX certified, but it goes on to say there are different certifications which are upgraded each year, and Apple only qualifies for UNIX 3 from 2002. It seems like there are much newer certifications Apple could maybe go after, but hasn’t. It goes into what the certification means, but this isn’t that interesting to me. But there is the link for anyone curious enough to dig.
Finally, OS News claims the certification is a lie but this is mainly clickbait. It says the same thing as The Register, that Apple only achieves the UNIX 3 certification. Then it goes on to accuse Apple of cheating to get to that point, and goes into some code — way past my expertise.
Today, I am a little bit more educated on macOS UNIX certification than I was yesterday. Maybe some of you are, too. Or maybe not, I really don’t know. We’re all on different paths. However, I am not convinced to change my assertion that it should be “Linux and macOS against Windows” rather than “Linux and Windows against macOS.” The latter just seems wrong — why would Linux and Windows users align at all? Other than more similar hardware. Whereas Linux and macOS are both improvements over Windows.
Another thought occurs: is it even Linux users who are going against Mac users? I think it’s probably mostly just Windows users trying to spread FUD.
Yes, it is. Mostly what Windows 11 won’t run on is not a matter of the machine’s capability of running the software, it’s more about the hardware security to back Microsoft’s DRM shit.
Even if Linux Mint isn’t especially lightweight, there’s a Linux distro for just about everybody out there. You could probably find one that runs on 00’s or maybe, possibly, even 90s hardware, it would look like shit, it might look like OSes from back then, but it still could have modern support for whatever you want to tack onto it. I will never underestimate the versatility of Linux and its community.
Anonymised telemetry is different from collecting information to sell for marketing, though.
Of course, in the realm of privacy, everyone should know their own threat model. Anonymised telemetry is not a threat to me. But if it’s a threat to you (nebulous term — the person to whom I am replying, or anyone reading), then none of the big tech companies offer viable alternatives. You (same audience) cannot say Apple’s telemetry is a problem and then use anything from Microsoft, Google, or Meta.
For my threat model, Meta/Facebook has always been a bridge too far. Google has too, for the most part. I used to think Microsoft was fine, but no longer do. But, that’s just me.
Anything involving Copilot makes me happy to be a Mac user.
If you have a machine that runs Windows and the hardware is still good, it’s time to give Linux a chance. Look into Proton for gaming (it’s a translation layer, like WINE I suppose). And let’s stop acting like Macs are the odd one out. Macs run UNIX. Windows is the odd one out! ;)
We all have to do the course. And honestly I’m not even mad.
In my line of work, most people are not computer savvy. We’re running Windows 11 and no one has admin privileges, even the highest ranking people. They’re all limited. That’s fine. We can’t install anything. I’m pretty sure I could hit up PortableApps and get some portable software working, but I’m not trying to push my luck. I’m pretty sure I know what I can and can’t get away with, but it’s a good job and I don’t want to mess it up. Besides, a lot of people are illegally streaming sports or movies and getting away with that, so IT security is pretty lax. That’s probably true at a lot of places.
I don’t mind the cybersecurity courses because I mute them and make them run at double speed and I ignore them, clicking through, then I ace the test. It’s not that I don’t care. I just know the material already. I’ve also helped coworkers who earnestly sat through the whole thing and are genuinely struggling. I know they hate how casually I get all the questions right, but they hate having to go through it a second time even more.
Plus, there’s one vendor of training videos that is kind of like an office comedy, and one of the workers has a bunch of anime fan art in their cubicle. So it amuses me to no end that all of my coworkers are seeing these characters. It’s nothing recent and I haven’t seen it in a while. I know Killua from Hunter x Hunter is there. 12 year old boy, has super powers, something with lightning? (been ages since I watched HxH, and Meruem best boy) and he can rip your heart out of your chest (he’s done it before). I feel like they need to add Anya Forger (from SPYxFAMILY) to the wall. That would be funny. (Telepathic toddler, dumb as a box of rocks, and just as adorable.)
That’s what I’m thinking. Lincoln Park is a real place — I think it’s in Chicago? And it predates the band. The band is most likely named after it. So they changed the spelling. If you have an iPhone, the autocorrect is brutal. I’m not saying Android is better, but it doesn’t autocorrect iPhone to “advertise.” iPhone does that to Android. Have to tap it out like a caveman. (I use both. I’m good with both. I talk shit about both.)
I use fre:ac. It is open source but I’m not savvy enough to see what the license is.
I don’t use MP3, I use AAC. Never liked Opus. I get it’s a free/open codec, but I’ve never liked the format. So I’m not sure what the licensing is for AAC. But I’m sure fre:ac can do Opus as well.
Nothing.
My daily driver is an iPhone. We’ve always had the problem of limiting sideloading (to be nonexistent for most people) and it’s never been a problem for me.
I also have a Galaxy S10, but all my apps on that come from the Play Store.
This won’t affect 99% of users, just like it doesn’t on iPhone.
I just hope now that they’re taking sideloading, and they’ve already taken memory card slots, headphone jacks… and they’re still taking a cut off the back end by selling your personal information… maybe the cost will come down. But I doubt it. Android makes sense when it’s cheaper than iPhone. I mean, iPhone makes sense to be expensive. It’s a pocket Mac, it’s made by a computer company. Sure, they have telemetry but it’s not an ad company like Google. So for a phone that’s less powerful and still has the same restrictions, and I’m paying with my personal data? I expect the phones to be cheaper. They really should be cheaper.
But I’m gonna let you in on a secret. Smartphone performance plateaued a long time ago. All these new phones are kind of a scam. Okay, so the Pixel 10 has the benchmark performance of an iPhone 11. The Galaxy S25 is like 40% faster than the iPhone 16 Pro until it hits load (like the top 1% of games, maybe) then the iPhone is like 10% faster… Who Cares? My 2019 Galaxy S10 is still a viable daily driver in 2025. So, I think I’m done chasing the latest model for a while. If Apple Health comes to iPad (I’m not sure if it’s there or not), I’d even consider replacing my Android phone with a newer phone next, like a gently used Galaxy S24 or S25 (I mean in a few years). These new phones talk about performance numbers, but for most people, they don’t really mean shit. Phones don’t slow down like they used to. They got a lot better and it wasn’t even that recently.
I use Telegram. Eek? It’s just my wife and I though. All these things I’ve heard about Telegram? Never actually seen them in mine. I have looked at groups, but I’ve only seen memes, crypto crap, and what look like scams (“post this in 5 Reddit threads to get invited to the actual group”). There’s nothing of value out there that I’ve seen. So I just use it to message my wife, because texting wasn’t good enough when we started using it (both our phones have RCS now) and I don’t use Facebook, and she doesn’t have an iPhone (so, no iMessage).
I completely reject this notion that you have to pick one and stay with it. My messaging apps include iMessage, Session, Signal, and Telegram. I also have a fork of Telegram that lets me use it from my watch (as in, it has a watch companion; official Telegram does not). I also have Discord (need it for a couple things).
Even if you don’t like the guy, I think it’s worth reading what he has to say. And you can agree with what he says and go on not liking him.
IMO the best way to do it is to acquire lossless (e.g. FLAC) and compress it yourself, if you want to. I use the MPEG4/AAC Low Complexity filter in fre:ac at 192kbps. Makes .m4a files about 10MB each. They sound great. AAC is supposed to be about twice as efficient as MP3 (and a looser license) but the files I make are about the size of MP3 320k files. Which tells me they’re about twice as good.
Apple gets associated with M4A/AAC a lot, but that’s just because they use it. I do use Apple hardware, but the same hardware runs MP3 without issue. The only issue I had with AAC was getting the old Winamp (2.x) to play it, back when we used Windows. But even then I found an input plugin and from there it was smooth sailing. It’s basically superior to MP3 in every way. (But for free licensing I think Ogg Vorbis will be a better fit.) (I also stream it via my Plex server, so if a device can’t play M4A — rare — Plex will transcode it.)
Anyway, I use Nyaa for a source (nyaa.si) but that is primarily Japanese/Asian media. That’s mostly what I listen to though. I do like some western rock from the 80s and 90s, but as the west stopped pushing rock music, I went where it was being pushed, which was Japan (and a lot of those guys sing in English, like ONE OK ROCK and Survive Said the Prophet — though, to be fair, 1OR is basically an American band now; while the guys were born/raised in Japan, they’ve lived in Los Angeles for years now, are signed to Fueled by Ramen, and they want to be more like Paramore and Fall Out Boy, which is fine, but it feels a bit disingenuous calling them Japanese rock in 2025).
IIRC Crunchyroll used to be a pirate site so that may be where you heard that? But they’ve been legit for years.
I would say just look for x265 (HEVC) webrips of your favorite content and throw it on a Plex (or Jellyfin if you don’t have any Apple stuff) server. On the flip, if you have all Apple tech, Infuse is a good option, but IIRC it doesn’t stream outside your network like the other two do.
I’m in the same boat, sort of. iPhone 16 Pro Max main, Galaxy S10 backup (WiFi only, cosplay prop). New iPhones are just not exciting so I’m thinking I’ll update the Android phone next. I need Apple for Apple Health and I don’t think iPads do Apple Health? So I might keep the iPhone to do Health and to pair with my watch and main Android for a while? It’s not definite but it is a consideration. Their keyboard is way better. Almost zero privacy on official firmware though. I wonder if Samsung is better than Pixel in that regard or if it just adds a head to the hydra. Like, I really like the S24 and S25 — wife has S22 and even that is pretty good. Anyway, this is not a this year or next year problem, this is like 2028-2029 when my iPhone gets to be 4-5 years old.