I get what they mean, but macOS is even Unix certified. https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
While it's true that it wasn't always truly UNIX compliant, they put in the hard yards to become so (albeit to avoid a $200M lawsuit from The Open Group) [1]
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-goes-into-making-an-OS-to-be-Unix...
MacOS is certified UNIX i.e its "UNIX", like it or not. On this point the article is just wrong.
MacOS is both UNIX and also not Unix at the same time.
If the trademark holders decided to UNIX certify my cat, which is well within their legal right to do so, would that make her UNIX?
These threads always end up with veiled insults like this. Can you really not understand people who use Windows, Linux and Macs? They each have their strengths depending on what you are doing.
> which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your machine the way you want
I've use Macs since my first G4 PB, Linux for longer, and used to develop for Windows though it's been a very long time. I've never felt stopped for doing what I want.
> by just building up from a minimal distro like Arch or NixOS
Been there done that. I have too many other things that need to get done to build up a distro. I'm sure desktop Linux has improved since the last time I tried running it as my main computer, but I just not sure what the point is now.
> Been there done that. I have too many other things that need to get done to build up a distro.
Yes, but my comment wasn't made in isolation or directed at people with your objectives. The OP's article is about doing exactly this, but in the opposite direction (expending large amounts of effort to remove unneeded processes). See for example: "if we assume that we need to identify just 500 candidates, and each takes an average of one week to research, that would take over 10 person-years".
Starting with that as the baseline (as opposed to starting from your position which is that you're not interested in spending time on this issue), building up from zero is a lot more straightforward. And, if you use something like NixOS, you generally only have to do it once since the idea of "reinstalling" the OS (e.g. for new versions) largely goes away: subsequent effort is just about changing your mind about what software you want, or what version you want (as with any OS).
I like the freedom to run my machine the way I want, but I also enjoy something that is reliable and seamless. My macbook air's battery lasts forever. It works flawlessly, almost always. "oh with nixos if you brick it you can rollback..." that's great, but it does not beat working great for the first time.
Having said that, I'm progressively migrating from MacOS to Linux as MacOS is starting to "get in the way" enough to bother me.
I've owned a macbook since 2010, with a short break during the touchbar era when I got myself an XPS with windows which I dual-booted with ubuntu and later a system76 that comes with their own flavour of Ubuntu, called Pop! Os.
The situation in windows (windows 10 at the time) was abysmal. Completely incoherent UI, settings spread across different menus, ads in start menu, slow and broken search, constant nagging to update windows, to update the drivers, to tell me that the drivers have been updated, to install or update my antivirus, etc. These were not things that I installed myself, these were included with Dell's setup of the machine.
On the system76 laptop things were different. Things were calm, I could configure everything as I wanted and things worked. Until at some point I installed a new version of something, which had nothing to do with sound, but it broke sound, just as I was preparing to join a meeting, and just as we were going into the second phase of lockdowns in late 2020 so online meetings were here to stay.
My macbooks are reliable. I've got the M1 as soon as it came out and I never got a single issue with it. I've upgraded twice (I think) across major versions and everything worked. I don't have to worry about it leaving me hanging when I need it.
(And that's not taking into account things like build quality, touchpad quality, battery life, silence, etc)
In the end of the day, I do a lot of debugging as part of my work. When I don't work, I want to choose what I will be debugging, not have it forced on me.
And don't get me wrong: I see where Apple is going, I know that they're a greedy company that want to maintain their iron grip and have the final say on what we can and cannot do on our machines.
However, for me for the time being it's the least bad option.
XCode installations failing, Docker installation failing after an OS update never to work again without completely reinstalling OS, plugging in headphones would crash the Macbook (until OS update 6 months after I got it), video calls slowing to a halt, if sharing screen etc.
Also there were some things I just never got used to in Mac like window tabbing & minimize working in a Mac way. Maybe if I hadn't had a personal laptop that used Linux at the same time, I would have gotten used to it a little better, but I just plain hated the way it worked.
To be fair, I think it was still more reliable than varieties of Windows, especially the later ones! If tabbing worked more like under Windows and it allowed a bit more configuration, I might be using Mac these days.
That leaves Linux. Although it's not flawless neither after configuring Debian + i3, it works exactly like I want and the same installation has been reliably working for 5+ years. However, getting to the setup that just works certainly took several tries and depends on laptop compatibility, so... No ideal choices exist right now I think. Just luck and what someone is most used to in the end.
I have very few problems with linux, despite running a fairly unstable rolling release distro. MacOS does have problems. I have no idea whether its more of less reliable, but going on personal experience is not a good sample.
This was reason for me as well. More than decade. Unfortunately it is not the case anymore.
Hardware is still best (in my opinion) but software is not.
Your definition of power user may vary but for me:
- Especially for laptops, good integration with hardware (and good hardware), energy efficiency, power management
- Support from commercial software vendors
As a power user, I want to use, not to fix, my tools.
I might tinker sometimes, but that is unrelated for me.
Primarily much better compatibility with graphical apps. Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite are two that many people need access to. Both have first-party offerings on macOS, and somewhat poor support via wine on Linux.
With Apple Silicon, the hardware is also particularly excellent. And only runs macOS well.
In my prev. job I had a windows laptop with WSL2 though and I actually was super productive with that. But the laptop hardware offerings at the same price point are rubbish, just not very robust. Linux machines if you're in a corp and want one in the next 6 months are usually even more restrictive on hardware than they are on Windows.
This is funny; it's actually the main reason why I asked for a PC when I was up for renewal at work, so I can run Linux on it.
I truly like the hardware of the mbp, especially the screen (don't care about battery life, I mostly use it at a desk with power nearby). The OS itself is fine, since it can easily run most of the tools I use. I also like how it handles special characters (I can easily type French on an US-ANSI keyboard) to the point that I've implemented that on my Linux and Windows machines.
But what kills it for me is the UI behavior. The window management drives me crazy, especially when multiple screens are involved. And there are quite a few aggravating issues, like being unable to control the audio output of my screen's speakers (connected through DP), being unable to turn off external screens (sometimes I just want to use the power of my monitor, which has an integrated KVM).
Yeah, I know there are programs trying to fix these, but I have to go out of my way trying to find them, and then they're hit and miss. On Linux, everything works as expected (though, granted, it's possible I've won the hardware-compatibility lottery, since it actually works better than on Windows).
On macOS, I can work on hobby software & graphics/music.
It's a bit softened by the fact that many of them can be replaced/recreated with stock bitwig devices (if you're into that). There's also yabridge, though for me personally it has been a bit hit and miss.
[0]: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Adobe-Photoshop-2025-Wine-Patc...
Mac OS is not great, no platform is perfect. Gotta think what is important to you. Are you using your machine as a thin client? Then maybe Linux is fine. Windows is obviously tragic -- zero advantages there.
about the article, Mac OS can be gutted via disabling SIP (I'm doing it on 1 macbook air), but we have so much compute and RAM that it doesn't make much sense for most use cases. I know that some companies do this with minis/studios to make makeshift servers.
These days I do have a Tuxedo laptop for fooling around, and I don't even use laptops on the regular, which is probably why it works well enough. That and integrated Radeon graphics, I'm sure.
Access to Apple ecosystem - iCloud e. t. c. If one uses iPhone it's quite convenient to have access to the same cloud services from a laptop. FindMy is a big one for me - if I lost or misplaced my phone I can use FindMy on Macbook to locate it. While it's technically possible to use FindMy via web you'll need the phone as 2FA which is not an option when I'm trying to find it.
I'd love to know what's good ARM notebook which works fine with Linux.
Quite simply, an OS that you don't have to think about. I moved to MacOS from linux after seeing my co-founder use their Macbook basically without any problems, much longer battery life, nice conveniences like shared clipboard and wifi password sharing, airplay, Airpods integration, better screens and font rendering, perfect migrations to new hardware, etc.
While I learned a lot tinkering with linux for a decade, at some point you can't beat something that just works.
On the other hand, macOS is not that much memory-hungry as one might think. Like, a 4GB VM can start and build software.
Apple leadership makes decisions based on money.
That is also why there is no iPhone mini even though there is a small number of people that really prefer a small phone.
Asahi's not perfect, but there's no restrictions. You bought the computer, after all.
Seems ok enough if you want to use a M1 mini as desktop or server.