6 ms·

I’m actually joining the Apple ecosystem from Android/Windows for similar reasons. In particular, I wanted to use Logic instead of paying huge sums for new vers

I’m actually joining the Apple ecosystem from Android/Windows for similar reasons. In particular, I wanted to use Logic instead of paying huge sums for new versions of Ableton; I wanted to use Pixelmator Pro instead of paying for Adobe subscription (although Affinity Photo is also available on windows); I wanted to use Time Machine instead of Google Drive; I especially wanted my passwords stored on my computer instead of locked behind my Google account at passwords.google.com (I was locked out of my Google account for a week once and it was temporarily life-ruining); and finally, I was so tired of trying to keep up with endless UI changes in Windows and Android. I’m not saying these were good reasons, but they were my reasons. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure I guess.

tomc1985 5y ago
Google's ecosystem != Windows ecosystem. There's FLStudio (or Bitwig, or Reaper) to match Apple's Logic, 1Password (or Bitlocker from what I hear) to match Google's passwords.google.com, and Backblaze+others to match Time Machine Sure 'switching to apple' is a choice, but only one of many. Personally I am tired of using tech designed for and by managers and SWE's gunning for promotion and not personal empowerment or passion for personal computing Besides, everyone needs to ditch Chrome. Firefox could use the love
- monkeyfacebag 5y ago
  Of course I agree with your point that there are many options when it comes to switching. I tried, but clearly failed, to imply this very point. For me, after consideration of my requirements and tolerances, Apple seemed like the best fit, but I wouldn’t suggest that it has any kind of broader implication for the state of various software ecosystems. Suffice to say I think all of the software in your list is pretty great and I chose what I chose for reasons that are wholly mine!
- phire 5y ago
  There is no windows for phones (anymore). If you aren't using an apple phone, you are pretty much forced to use google's android (or one of the various linux phones with little financial backing) Windows/Android can be considered a natural pair, Microsoft seem to think so. Personally use Linux/Android pair, and I've been vaguely considering switching to an iphone to avoid Google.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    Windows/iPhone isn't a bad pair either, provided you're not drinking the cloud services koolaid
    - phire 5y ago
      Or if you want to do any form of app development.
      - tomc1985 5y ago
        If I ever wanted to get into iOS development I'd probably purchase a cheap Macbook Air for the bare minimum of stuff and use one of the multiplatform SDKs that can produce iOS builds alongside every other platform
    - schraeds 5y ago
      How do they integrate at all? Windows has ability to link to a android phone to view texts, place calls etc, but no such link exists for iPhones and Windows.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- dundercoder 5y ago
  +1 for Reaper. Fast and fantastic piece of software. I switched from ProTools and have never looked back.
- runjake 5y ago
  +1. File History is the Time Machine equivalent for Windows. It works great. It should be used in concert with an offsite backup service like Backblaze.
  - stuartd 5y ago
    Does that allow you to set up a new PC as an exact copy of the old one? Because Time Machine does just that, and I’d really like to find the Windows equivalent.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      There are two backup solutions on windows, 'windows 7 backup' (yes, wtf) allows you to make exact copy and clone it. There are also paid solution. File history is for all your files, but it is amazing at it. You can roll back to a particular version from particular date
    - hiyer 5y ago
      Probably an unpopular opinion, but I actually prefer to start from (nearly) scratch on a new machine as it gets rid of all the accumulated cruft. I use github + stow for my dotfiles, firefox sync for syncing browser history, bookmarks, etc and rclone + backblaze for backing up whatever is important enough. Beyond that, I don't care if I lose anything on the old machine.
      - greggman3 5y ago
        Same. Every time I've tried copying stuff to a new machine via Time Machine the new machine feels unstable. There's so much stuff in ~/Library/Application Support type places that really shouldn't be copied so I just start the new machine empty and copy a few folders over (Documents, .ssh)
      - stjohnswarts 5y ago
        I don't like it but it does still feel good to start fresh. I do it in linux as well.
    - 5y ago
- dep_b 5y ago
  > There's FLStudio (or Bitwig, or Reaper) to match Apple's Logic Plenty arguments against Logic, but these three are not in the same league.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    For some workflows, Logic simply cannot do what Live or Bitwig or FLStudio do. For other workflows, Reaper and Logic can do things that are essentially impossible in Live/Bitwig/FL Studio. There's no best DAW for everyone, only best-DAW-for-the-workflow-you're-using-today. Sometimes that's Logic, sometimes it's not.
    - Dracophoenix 5y ago
      Examples of what can't be done in Logic and what can?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        Not in logic: follow actions for clip launching. Not in live: logic's environment (you could do this in an M4L object, but not live itself)
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    Can't speak for the latter two but FL 20 absolutely steps up to Logic. And they keep adding stuff to it, for free. My license from like 2005 is still valid.
- stuartd 5y ago
  Backblaze is great, but it’s not a replacement for time machine (and I use both). Being able to buy a new Mac and make it into an exact copy of the old Mac by using time machine is amazing - I’ve done it a few times over the years, and it still impresses me every time. Plus I have time machine backups from 2011 which I occasionally browse to see what my kids were up to then.
  - jonpurdy 5y ago
    I found out the hard way that Backblaze, despite their claims of "...automatically back up all your files including documents, photos, music, movies, and more. It’s that easy.", do not back up .dmg files (among others) by default. Which seems to be a huge omission considering the numerous use cases outside of just application installers.
    - ehutch79 5y ago
      I'm going ot go out on a limb and say that for the majority of users, any dmg they have is a software installer they could easily redownload. so a waste to backup
      - brink 5y ago
        I'm surprised that backblaze doesn't checksum the files on the user's computer to see if they already have it on their servers to avoid duplicate uploads.
        macintux 5y ago
        The first time that backfires, though…
        odux 5y ago
        They apparently do but only within a users computer (or account, I don't remember). I would be pretty uncomfortable they comparing my files checksum to a master list of sorts
- beezischillin 5y ago
  My personal preference for a DAW is Studio One, it’s lovely. I like the efficient UI and it has all the features I ever wanted. One of the sad ironies of my life is that once I switched to macOS and could’ve avoided all the annoyances and instabilities I’ve had with audio on Windows, I just never felt like making music again. Life is like that sometimes. :)
- abandonliberty 5y ago
  Bitwarden. Open source, independently auditable password manager. For something this important, it should be no other way.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    On the other hand, having as many users as possible use any password manager at all is an immense challenge as-is. It really doesn't matter what gets them using one as long as they do. If an OS-native one happens to have the lowest friction, so be it. For everyone else, sure, there might be 100 people in the world that will actually audit their open source password managers. But that isn't exactly moving the rest of the industry forward (be it from the engineering perspective or the user perspective). In this case, (almost) perfect is the enemy of good.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    Ah, shoot. It's too late for me to edit my original post but this is what I meant to mention. Bitlocker is Windows' FDE solution
- oneplane 5y ago
  > "Personally I am tired of using tech designed for and by managers and SWE's gunning for promotion and not personal empowerment or passion for personal computing" Unless you have spoken to all managers and SWEs I doubt you can make such a blanket statement about the immense workforces at Microsoft, Google and Apple. Sure, one could argue that Microsoft is profit-driven, Google might be marketshare-driven and Apple might be UX-driven, and all of those could be true (or at least true for a major subset of both the engineers and the targeted user group). But it would be a guess at best and not helpful to your personal situation or anyone else's.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    How could you possibly interpret this new world of digital sharecropping ("cloud computing") as empowering? Where is the passion for 'personal computing' when nearly everything personal about it is delegated to the cloud? Personal computing is a box under your desk or in your pocket beefy and smart enough to solve your problems without checking in with daddy warbucks and the mothership. Nearly everything about modern cloud computing is the opposite... it disempowers individuals and creates an unhealthy relationship with things that are out of the users control. How many peoples' livelihoods have been messed up because FANG decided to lock them out for some reason or another? How many articles have been posted to HN and elsewhere begging for a FANG employee to come along and fix their problem because there is no other option? The server in my closet or at my datacenter isn't going to lock me out because I pissed off Google.
    - etchalon 5y ago
      There's literally nothing stoping you from working exactly the same way as before the "cloud" was a thing. You just ignore the cloud features.
      - llampx 5y ago
        There are dark UX patterns pushing users towards the cloud services and/or making the old way harder to use.
      - 5y ago
- egypturnash 5y ago
  Backblaze+others to match Time Machine BB complements TM for me; it's super useful to have a local versioned backup that's updated every time I dock my laptop with the desk, and is also invisibly supplemented by a versioned backup of changes I've made that the OS maintains on unused space on the laptop's drive. Works even if I'm sitting at a cafe with all the radios turned off to get maximum life out of the battery. Backblaze? Backblaze is there for in case my house burns down and I leave with nothing but the clothes on my back.
eikenberry 5y ago
Not really the same. They switched from a proprietary platform to a free platform. That is a much larger jump than simply switching proprietary platforms with much larger costs and gains. They wanted control and switched to get it, whereas you just swapped out landlords.
- monkeyfacebag 5y ago
  So first of all, I don’t think it’s true that the article describes a switch to 100% free software. For example, the author bought a mirrorless camera, which is going to run proprietary software. Second, and more importantly, I think your comment implies that the only lever of control is switching between free and non free software and I don’t agree with this. For example, I am now protected against Google terminating or otherwise locking me out of my account whereas I was not previously protected. Even though I disagree with your comment, I appreciate that free software has some advantages over proprietary software and I would not dispute the claim in general.
bogwog 5y ago
I switched to Apple from Android (still 100% Linux on desktop/laptop though) a few years ago, and I've grown to like it more than any Android phone I've owned...But it still sucks. It feels like everything is overflowing with mediocrity, and there's no hope of it ever changing. I often have an idea for improving something that I see as being extremely shitty and perfect for improving/innovating, but there is no possible way for me to turn it into a successful product/business because the monopolists wouldn't allow it. For example, why is the app store experience that same boring crap it has always been? Why can't that be fun, with like user profiles, Amazon-style reviews, Steam-style community features, social media-style feeds so you can sub to a developer, TikTok-style feeds of promo videos to discover new apps/games, etc. There's so much to explore there, but it's never going to happen because Apple doesn't allow it, and Apple themselves isn't going to do it because they're a monopoly and they have no incentive to (same goes for Google). What are the chances that our government will wake up and do something about this limp noodle we call a tech industry? Or that some startup will "disrupt" these monopolists with something better and resist the multi-billion-dollar acquisition offers (backed by anti-competitive threats). This makes me want to grab my old thinkpad and disappear into the woods. I'll become a hermit, using only my own+libre software and only returning to civilization when I need to replace the battery pack.
- gnubison 5y ago
  > It feels like everything is overflowing with mediocrity, and there's no hope of it ever changing. I’d definitely think that about the Apple Store if they introduced some of the features that you suggested — that’s part of the problem. What one person considers an obvious innovation another person considers yet another newfangled UI design.
  - virgilp 5y ago
    Did you just argue that Apple should have more than one store?
    - gnubison 5y ago
      No.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
I use keepass for passwords, and save the password database inside OneDrive
arvinsim 5y ago
It really comes down to individual circumstances. I myself switched from Logic to Ableton just because it is cross platform(I have a PC and a MacBook)
Gelob 5y ago
Pixelator pro is awesome
alternatetwo 5y ago
I don't follow about Ableton, I'm still using 9 and it works just fine. You don't need to bump Ableton versions.
- lostgame 5y ago
  ...okay; but Logic provides its updates for free (since X), is cheaper; and provides a wealth more content than stock Ableton does in the form of Logic’s downloadable content.
greggman3 5y ago
> I was so tired of trying to keep up with endless UI changes in Windows and Android. iOS and MacOS both have endless UI changes as well.
iainctduncan 5y ago
I would strongly advise you to think twice about switching to Logic. Apple has consistently dumbed down that product since they bought it, turning it entirely into a loss leader to sell you the Apple ecosystem. Logic was great when it was Emagic's baby, I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole now. It is the archetypal example of a product steered by executive strategy instead of user interests. If you need a low cost vendor neutral DAW, Reaper is the way to go. I'm a semi-professional musician, and well compensated software architecture consultant, so cost is not a factor in my software purchases for music, but when I want a linear-paradigm DAW, it's Reaper. That product is dope and the company is awesome.
- monkeyfacebag 5y ago
  huh, ok. Can you say more about where you think Reaper outshines Logic? I have to say that as a non-pro, I was really impressed by what Logic offers for the price, especially coming from Ableton which seems to offer considerably less for considerably more money. My main use cases these days are: 1) hooking up my electronic drum kit via midi and using Logic's built in drum kits (these sound pretty good); 2) recording and processing spoken word. For both of these use cases, Logic seems superior to Ableton, which is the software I am most familiar with. I think Ableton's interface and user experience are vastly superior to Logic's overall, but for these use cases that difference isn't worth paying for. Thoughts?
  - iainctduncan 5y ago
    reaper was built by programmers who took advantage of everything software can do, so you can a) script the hell out of it b) customize it like crazy c) route anything anywhere. So for building power user interfaces for linear editing it's great. It does not have built in instruments. Personally, I use Rob Pappen's Punch and Addictive Drums 2 for 90% of my drum needs so I don't miss them!
peakaboo 5y ago
It's not like you have two choices only. Linux!
hammyhavoc 5y ago
In what universe does switching to a Mac to use Logic make more financial sense than buying a license for Ableton Live? For what it's worth: if anybody else is facing the same conundrum, choose an OS-agnostic DAW like Reaper, Renoise or Bitwig, then it doesn't matter what OS you're on.
- nbzso 5y ago
  I done this with Affinity Designer and now when I successfully leaved marketing and public relations driven Apple, this decision is paying off nicely. Running Affintiy Designer under Windows 10 VM is non issue. OS-agnostic path is the only long-term way of working. Now under Linux I use Resolve, BitWig and Reaper, Blender, Inkscape, Krita, Emacs and I feel confident that no corporation will dictate my workflow in the endless pursuit for world domination. The reality is that we are living in some form of economic stagnation, worldwide changes are ahead and people will be poorer, this will drive Apples vision for 1000 dollars + smartphones and overpriced computers out of place. I have converted my business to ARCH and in the process saved a ton of money (previously dedicated to buy Apple Silicon). Now this money will be spend on my engineers not on some half-assed marketing plan from company out of touch. The only software that kept me inside Apple Ecosystem was Sketch. Since pandemic started for good or bad Figma is taking Sketch market-share, I don't like SaaS for design paradigm, but we adapt to clients requirements not to our own taste. I used Inkscape for interface design long before Macromedia Fireworks to offer a specific solution. So I am set for the future.:)
  - hammyhavoc 5y ago
    A fellow person of culture and taste I see! :- )
    - nbzso 5y ago
      This is The Way:)
vladstudio 5y ago
+1 for Pixelmator Pro. I just looked through my tool set (Figma, VSCode, Notion, a default browser, Pixelmator Pro), and the only Mac-specific app is PP - and it's awesome.

tomc1985 5y ago

Google's ecosystem != Windows ecosystem. There's FLStudio (or Bitwig, or Reaper) to match Apple's Logic, 1Password (or Bitlocker from what I hear) to match Google's passwords.google.com, and Backblaze+others to match Time Machine Sure 'switching to apple' is a choice, but only one of many. Personally I am tired of using tech designed for and by managers and SWE's gunning for promotion and not personal empowerment or passion for personal computing Besides, everyone needs to ditch Chrome. Firefox could use the love

monkeyfacebag 5y ago
Of course I agree with your point that there are many options when it comes to switching. I tried, but clearly failed, to imply this very point. For me, after consideration of my requirements and tolerances, Apple seemed like the best fit, but I wouldn’t suggest that it has any kind of broader implication for the state of various software ecosystems. Suffice to say I think all of the software in your list is pretty great and I chose what I chose for reasons that are wholly mine!
phire 5y ago
There is no windows for phones (anymore). If you aren't using an apple phone, you are pretty much forced to use google's android (or one of the various linux phones with little financial backing) Windows/Android can be considered a natural pair, Microsoft seem to think so. Personally use Linux/Android pair, and I've been vaguely considering switching to an iphone to avoid Google.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Windows/iPhone isn't a bad pair either, provided you're not drinking the cloud services koolaid
  - phire 5y ago
    Or if you want to do any form of app development.
    - tomc1985 5y ago
      If I ever wanted to get into iOS development I'd probably purchase a cheap Macbook Air for the bare minimum of stuff and use one of the multiplatform SDKs that can produce iOS builds alongside every other platform
  - schraeds 5y ago
    How do they integrate at all? Windows has ability to link to a android phone to view texts, place calls etc, but no such link exists for iPhones and Windows.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
dundercoder 5y ago
+1 for Reaper. Fast and fantastic piece of software. I switched from ProTools and have never looked back.
runjake 5y ago
+1. File History is the Time Machine equivalent for Windows. It works great. It should be used in concert with an offsite backup service like Backblaze.
- stuartd 5y ago
  Does that allow you to set up a new PC as an exact copy of the old one? Because Time Machine does just that, and I’d really like to find the Windows equivalent.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    There are two backup solutions on windows, 'windows 7 backup' (yes, wtf) allows you to make exact copy and clone it. There are also paid solution. File history is for all your files, but it is amazing at it. You can roll back to a particular version from particular date
  - hiyer 5y ago
    Probably an unpopular opinion, but I actually prefer to start from (nearly) scratch on a new machine as it gets rid of all the accumulated cruft. I use github + stow for my dotfiles, firefox sync for syncing browser history, bookmarks, etc and rclone + backblaze for backing up whatever is important enough. Beyond that, I don't care if I lose anything on the old machine.
    - greggman3 5y ago
      Same. Every time I've tried copying stuff to a new machine via Time Machine the new machine feels unstable. There's so much stuff in ~/Library/Application Support type places that really shouldn't be copied so I just start the new machine empty and copy a few folders over (Documents, .ssh)
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      I don't like it but it does still feel good to start fresh. I do it in linux as well.
  - 5y ago
dep_b 5y ago
> There's FLStudio (or Bitwig, or Reaper) to match Apple's Logic Plenty arguments against Logic, but these three are not in the same league.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  For some workflows, Logic simply cannot do what Live or Bitwig or FLStudio do. For other workflows, Reaper and Logic can do things that are essentially impossible in Live/Bitwig/FL Studio. There's no best DAW for everyone, only best-DAW-for-the-workflow-you're-using-today. Sometimes that's Logic, sometimes it's not.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    Examples of what can't be done in Logic and what can?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      Not in logic: follow actions for clip launching. Not in live: logic's environment (you could do this in an M4L object, but not live itself)
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Can't speak for the latter two but FL 20 absolutely steps up to Logic. And they keep adding stuff to it, for free. My license from like 2005 is still valid.
stuartd 5y ago
Backblaze is great, but it’s not a replacement for time machine (and I use both). Being able to buy a new Mac and make it into an exact copy of the old Mac by using time machine is amazing - I’ve done it a few times over the years, and it still impresses me every time. Plus I have time machine backups from 2011 which I occasionally browse to see what my kids were up to then.
- jonpurdy 5y ago
  I found out the hard way that Backblaze, despite their claims of "...automatically back up all your files including documents, photos, music, movies, and more. It’s that easy.", do not back up .dmg files (among others) by default. Which seems to be a huge omission considering the numerous use cases outside of just application installers.
  - ehutch79 5y ago
    I'm going ot go out on a limb and say that for the majority of users, any dmg they have is a software installer they could easily redownload. so a waste to backup
    - brink 5y ago
      I'm surprised that backblaze doesn't checksum the files on the user's computer to see if they already have it on their servers to avoid duplicate uploads.
      - macintux 5y ago
        The first time that backfires, though…
      - odux 5y ago
        They apparently do but only within a users computer (or account, I don't remember). I would be pretty uncomfortable they comparing my files checksum to a master list of sorts
beezischillin 5y ago
My personal preference for a DAW is Studio One, it’s lovely. I like the efficient UI and it has all the features I ever wanted. One of the sad ironies of my life is that once I switched to macOS and could’ve avoided all the annoyances and instabilities I’ve had with audio on Windows, I just never felt like making music again. Life is like that sometimes. :)
abandonliberty 5y ago
Bitwarden. Open source, independently auditable password manager. For something this important, it should be no other way.
- oneplane 5y ago
  On the other hand, having as many users as possible use any password manager at all is an immense challenge as-is. It really doesn't matter what gets them using one as long as they do. If an OS-native one happens to have the lowest friction, so be it. For everyone else, sure, there might be 100 people in the world that will actually audit their open source password managers. But that isn't exactly moving the rest of the industry forward (be it from the engineering perspective or the user perspective). In this case, (almost) perfect is the enemy of good.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Ah, shoot. It's too late for me to edit my original post but this is what I meant to mention. Bitlocker is Windows' FDE solution
oneplane 5y ago
> "Personally I am tired of using tech designed for and by managers and SWE's gunning for promotion and not personal empowerment or passion for personal computing" Unless you have spoken to all managers and SWEs I doubt you can make such a blanket statement about the immense workforces at Microsoft, Google and Apple. Sure, one could argue that Microsoft is profit-driven, Google might be marketshare-driven and Apple might be UX-driven, and all of those could be true (or at least true for a major subset of both the engineers and the targeted user group). But it would be a guess at best and not helpful to your personal situation or anyone else's.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  How could you possibly interpret this new world of digital sharecropping ("cloud computing") as empowering? Where is the passion for 'personal computing' when nearly everything personal about it is delegated to the cloud? Personal computing is a box under your desk or in your pocket beefy and smart enough to solve your problems without checking in with daddy warbucks and the mothership. Nearly everything about modern cloud computing is the opposite... it disempowers individuals and creates an unhealthy relationship with things that are out of the users control. How many peoples' livelihoods have been messed up because FANG decided to lock them out for some reason or another? How many articles have been posted to HN and elsewhere begging for a FANG employee to come along and fix their problem because there is no other option? The server in my closet or at my datacenter isn't going to lock me out because I pissed off Google.
  - etchalon 5y ago
    There's literally nothing stoping you from working exactly the same way as before the "cloud" was a thing. You just ignore the cloud features.
    - llampx 5y ago
      There are dark UX patterns pushing users towards the cloud services and/or making the old way harder to use.
    - 5y ago
egypturnash 5y ago
Backblaze+others to match Time Machine BB complements TM for me; it's super useful to have a local versioned backup that's updated every time I dock my laptop with the desk, and is also invisibly supplemented by a versioned backup of changes I've made that the OS maintains on unused space on the laptop's drive. Works even if I'm sitting at a cafe with all the radios turned off to get maximum life out of the battery. Backblaze? Backblaze is there for in case my house burns down and I leave with nothing but the clothes on my back.

eikenberry 5y ago

Not really the same. They switched from a proprietary platform to a free platform. That is a much larger jump than simply switching proprietary platforms with much larger costs and gains. They wanted control and switched to get it, whereas you just swapped out landlords.

monkeyfacebag 5y ago
So first of all, I don’t think it’s true that the article describes a switch to 100% free software. For example, the author bought a mirrorless camera, which is going to run proprietary software. Second, and more importantly, I think your comment implies that the only lever of control is switching between free and non free software and I don’t agree with this. For example, I am now protected against Google terminating or otherwise locking me out of my account whereas I was not previously protected. Even though I disagree with your comment, I appreciate that free software has some advantages over proprietary software and I would not dispute the claim in general.

bogwog 5y ago

I switched to Apple from Android (still 100% Linux on desktop/laptop though) a few years ago, and I've grown to like it more than any Android phone I've owned...But it still sucks. It feels like everything is overflowing with mediocrity, and there's no hope of it ever changing. I often have an idea for improving something that I see as being extremely shitty and perfect for improving/innovating, but there is no possible way for me to turn it into a successful product/business because the monopolists wouldn't allow it. For example, why is the app store experience that same boring crap it has always been? Why can't that be fun, with like user profiles, Amazon-style reviews, Steam-style community features, social media-style feeds so you can sub to a developer, TikTok-style feeds of promo videos to discover new apps/games, etc. There's so much to explore there, but it's never going to happen because Apple doesn't allow it, and Apple themselves isn't going to do it because they're a monopoly and they have no incentive to (same goes for Google). What are the chances that our government will wake up and do something about this limp noodle we call a tech industry? Or that some startup will "disrupt" these monopolists with something better and resist the multi-billion-dollar acquisition offers (backed by anti-competitive threats). This makes me want to grab my old thinkpad and disappear into the woods. I'll become a hermit, using only my own+libre software and only returning to civilization when I need to replace the battery pack.

gnubison 5y ago
> It feels like everything is overflowing with mediocrity, and there's no hope of it ever changing. I’d definitely think that about the Apple Store if they introduced some of the features that you suggested — that’s part of the problem. What one person considers an obvious innovation another person considers yet another newfangled UI design.
- virgilp 5y ago
  Did you just argue that Apple should have more than one store?
  - gnubison 5y ago
    No.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

I use keepass for passwords, and save the password database inside OneDrive

arvinsim 5y ago

It really comes down to individual circumstances. I myself switched from Logic to Ableton just because it is cross platform(I have a PC and a MacBook)

Gelob 5y ago

Pixelator pro is awesome

alternatetwo 5y ago

I don't follow about Ableton, I'm still using 9 and it works just fine. You don't need to bump Ableton versions.

lostgame 5y ago
...okay; but Logic provides its updates for free (since X), is cheaper; and provides a wealth more content than stock Ableton does in the form of Logic’s downloadable content.

greggman3 5y ago

> I was so tired of trying to keep up with endless UI changes in Windows and Android. iOS and MacOS both have endless UI changes as well.

iainctduncan 5y ago

I would strongly advise you to think twice about switching to Logic. Apple has consistently dumbed down that product since they bought it, turning it entirely into a loss leader to sell you the Apple ecosystem. Logic was great when it was Emagic's baby, I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole now. It is the archetypal example of a product steered by executive strategy instead of user interests. If you need a low cost vendor neutral DAW, Reaper is the way to go. I'm a semi-professional musician, and well compensated software architecture consultant, so cost is not a factor in my software purchases for music, but when I want a linear-paradigm DAW, it's Reaper. That product is dope and the company is awesome.

monkeyfacebag 5y ago
huh, ok. Can you say more about where you think Reaper outshines Logic? I have to say that as a non-pro, I was really impressed by what Logic offers for the price, especially coming from Ableton which seems to offer considerably less for considerably more money. My main use cases these days are: 1) hooking up my electronic drum kit via midi and using Logic's built in drum kits (these sound pretty good); 2) recording and processing spoken word. For both of these use cases, Logic seems superior to Ableton, which is the software I am most familiar with. I think Ableton's interface and user experience are vastly superior to Logic's overall, but for these use cases that difference isn't worth paying for. Thoughts?
- iainctduncan 5y ago
  reaper was built by programmers who took advantage of everything software can do, so you can a) script the hell out of it b) customize it like crazy c) route anything anywhere. So for building power user interfaces for linear editing it's great. It does not have built in instruments. Personally, I use Rob Pappen's Punch and Addictive Drums 2 for 90% of my drum needs so I don't miss them!

peakaboo 5y ago

It's not like you have two choices only. Linux!

hammyhavoc 5y ago

In what universe does switching to a Mac to use Logic make more financial sense than buying a license for Ableton Live? For what it's worth: if anybody else is facing the same conundrum, choose an OS-agnostic DAW like Reaper, Renoise or Bitwig, then it doesn't matter what OS you're on.

nbzso 5y ago
I done this with Affinity Designer and now when I successfully leaved marketing and public relations driven Apple, this decision is paying off nicely. Running Affintiy Designer under Windows 10 VM is non issue. OS-agnostic path is the only long-term way of working. Now under Linux I use Resolve, BitWig and Reaper, Blender, Inkscape, Krita, Emacs and I feel confident that no corporation will dictate my workflow in the endless pursuit for world domination. The reality is that we are living in some form of economic stagnation, worldwide changes are ahead and people will be poorer, this will drive Apples vision for 1000 dollars + smartphones and overpriced computers out of place. I have converted my business to ARCH and in the process saved a ton of money (previously dedicated to buy Apple Silicon). Now this money will be spend on my engineers not on some half-assed marketing plan from company out of touch. The only software that kept me inside Apple Ecosystem was Sketch. Since pandemic started for good or bad Figma is taking Sketch market-share, I don't like SaaS for design paradigm, but we adapt to clients requirements not to our own taste. I used Inkscape for interface design long before Macromedia Fireworks to offer a specific solution. So I am set for the future.:)
- hammyhavoc 5y ago
  A fellow person of culture and taste I see! :- )
  - nbzso 5y ago
    This is The Way:)

vladstudio 5y ago

+1 for Pixelmator Pro. I just looked through my tool set (Figma, VSCode, Notion, a default browser, Pixelmator Pro), and the only Mac-specific app is PP - and it's awesome.