It’s most often installed as HAOS, which is a dedicated operating system that just runs Home Assistant. That is how anyone installing it on say, a Raspberry Pi, is likely to do it.

Home Assistant as a project is far more popular than every single other consumer focused server and as such it is often the first home server (and sometimes only) that many consumers will experience.

I mean, Windows supports both

Fair. Powertoys are awesome but since they’re not part of the OS, I never much got into them. Might have alleviated some of my issues…

I figured if utilities like Rectangle / Magnet / Middle were fair game, then PT certainly were :P

On the other side, I found Windows implementation of virtual desktops to be almost useless and I find it much more distracting to deal with a lot of open windows, on a laptop sized display, on windows, because you cannot easily put them on a secondary desktop and swipe from one to the other

I don’t know about opening windows on new virtual desktops, but you can easily switch virtual desktops with 3/4 finger swipes on a trackpad.

I think the biggest thing MacOS suffers with is supporting not just one screen (large or small), but multiple monitors. I personally use two 24" monitors, plus a 27" monitor, plus whichever laptop is driving them, and on that setup I find MacOS’ full screen and dock implementations pretty maddening as it is extremely easy to lose track of which window is open where.

macOS vastly superior search is worth a lot to me. So are built in features like bulk renaming files, merging pdfs and a fast built in pdf viewer, that isn’t a browser.

Fair points, though if you do have to go back to Windows, pretty much all of these have been addressed through Powertoys which quite frankly seem like direct inspirations from MacOS: (PowerToys Run does MacOS style search, PowerRename does bulk renaming, and FileExplorer Add Ons let you preview pdfs in file explorer, no merging pdfs though).

Also, I prefer my programs running in full screen, especially on my macbook, and macOS easy gesture based navigation to switch between virtual desktops and to launch mission control to switch between apps quick and fluidly are great. Even works with my logitech mx master mouse. And with third party apps like magnet, there’s even window snapping.

The titlebar doesn’t bother me. If I need the space, I just go to fullscreen.

I would argue that you go fullscreen all the time because the titlebar does bother you.

But also, Windows’ shortcomings, combined with my own curiosity and knack for tinkering with PCs) drove me towards macOS, years ago

It’s a little flabbergasting to me that someone with any desire for tinkering would go to MacOS, but building and continuing to run a hackintosh certainly does sound like a challenge, fair enough. The forced ads bother me alot, the telemetry doesn’t when it’s not being sold to advertisers, and in terms of stability, I’ve spent far more time trying to get Mac stuff working with third party accessories than I have had to deal with Windows stability issues, and I appreciate that my Windows machine can still work flawlessly with perfectly good PC accessories I bought decades ago, whereas Apple tries to break compatibility as often as possible. To each their own, but having to constantly work full screen and lose context for everything else I’m doing is not a workflow I see myself getting used to anytime soon.

I mean, I do and I have to use a Macbook for work. There’s not much difference between 4k and 1080p at under 24", on top of the fact that I should be testing my software on 1080p screens and not just exclusively high res screens.

Apple’s attitude towards technology as disposable and garbage the instant it ages is horrendous and has knock on effects for everyone.

I cannot use windows for more than web browsing

What more do you use your operating system for? Like 99% of personal apps are web apps, and like 80% of business apps are. I mean most of what I use an OS for is managing my open application windows, and MacOS’ dock / titlebar business make that objectively more difficult than Windows or most Linux distros.

I understand we may use them differently, but since I’m forced to use a Macbook for work, I’m genuinely curious about how people are using it without being frustrated to all hell. Or is it just that you haven’t tried to use Windows since the Vista days?

I mean MacOS has the reverse problem. They dropped support for sub pixel rendering once they switched to HDPI screens so now text looks blurry as fuck on all normal dpi monitors.

Windows and some Linux distros are the only OSs that nicely handles resolution scaling across both high and low dpi screens.

Lol, bro, you’re literally describing the OS failing to handle scaling properly, not an issue with the screen.

I’ve never had issues with text on 1080p screens. Yes, macOS scaling isn’t great, unless you happen to have the right resolution but in my experience, it’s fine on 1080p.

It objectively is not. Look up sub-pixel rendering / try using a Windows laptop then switch back. Blurry AF all because Apple decided that once they switched to high res screens everyone should throw out their 1080p ones.

The Video Output isn‘t a macOS limitation but a hardware limitation of the base M chips. Some macs can output more than one monitor over TB. It’s stupid, yes. But not macOS.

No. I did not bring up the absurd one monitor limitation of the m series chips. I brought up multi thread transport, the display port feature that lets windows laptops output 4 monitors over one thunderbolt connection but MacOS is limited to two, even on M Pro and Intel chips.

And the dock happens to be hideable and moveable. Windows 10 cannot do the latter anymore…

The dock is hideable and moveable because it’s fucking useless. Want to know what Windows you have open? Go fuck yourself we’ll just show you what programs you have running. Wanna know what Windows is on which monitor? MacOS again says go fuck yourself, no possible way of telling you that information. Oh and MacOS will demand a title bar from every single window too cause there’s so much vertical space to go around!

Literally just turn your windows update cadence down to stable and you’ll avoid those issues, though quite frankly I’ve had more issue with MacOS updates breaking everything. Hell at least Windows tries to maintain backwards compatibility unlike Apple that considers anything more than 4 years old to be trash that should be thrown out or it will make them puke.

WSL isn’t Unix like, it is Unix.

MacOS is terrible, it can’t render text on 1080p screens, it can’t output to more than one monitor over thunderbolt, it demands a dock and title bar, taking up limited vertical space.

Windows does everything MacOS does but better and without being a patronizing locked down poc. I mean try and enable seeing hidden files globally, impossible.

Windows: there are very few issues, but all of them are possible to fix if you’re willing to brave regedit and some random IT guy’s instructions from 12 years ago on a now defunct forum

There are many qualms to have with it as an OS

• It demands both a dock and a title bar, a huge waste of vertical space on screens that are vertically limited

• There’s no way of globally enabling hidden files and folders (you can do it for finder through the terminal, but can’t do it for the file picker windows)

• It doesn’t support multi-stream transport, so despite being all about simplicity you cannot display more than two display port screens over a thunderbolt connection, whereas windows can do 4.

• It doesn’t support sub pixel rendering, making text look blurry AF on 1080p and any other screens that aren’t super high res

I mean, SpaceX is still a legitimate success story… I think that has a lot to do with Gwynne Shotwell and the engineers dedicated to pushing forward spaceflight, but as much as I despise him and even kind of want SpaceX to crash and burn just to spite him, if I’m being honest it is still the one thing he’s touched that is a legitimate success, both technically and commercially.

MOAR TITLE BARS

Hey MacOS, you know these days most people are using wide or ultra wide screen monitors and have more space at th–

😡MOAR 😡TITLE 😡BARS 😡