First home family computer was a Packard Bell, windows 3.1…was forbidden from taking it apart or messing with the settings.
First computer that I was allowed to mess with was a thrift store Commodor 64…
That damn “warranty void if removed” sticker. I wasn’t allowed to tinker with the old family Win3.1 PC until 1999 because of that damn sticker, and only because we finally replaced the old dinosaur with a shiny new Windows 98 SE laptop.
The weird thing is that the UNIX core of MacOS would lend itself really well to tinkering. It’s a shame that Apple lobotomizes all the hardware they sell with locked down firmware…
It’s why I much prefer MacOS over Windows. The command line makes sense. The file and folder structure makes sense. The defaults can be a little bit weird but a little configuration can help me feel right at home.
Ironically, I found macOS to be a lot more technical than Windows. It’s how I got my start with Linux. At least changing the default browser changes the default browser. I’ll be using macOS and Linux side by side.
Yeah tinkering with my Mac is what got me over to Linux as well. Yeah with Macs some things are locked down or a little tricky to find, but with windows nothing makes any sense to me and I feel like I’m constantly fighting it.
This schism exists in my household. Mrs. Warp Core had access to a Mac and went on to do non-computer things. I had a PC and went full-ASD/ADHD HAM on (what feels like) every iteration of commercial computer tech ever since.
Correlation does not imply causation though…
Indeed. It can hint towards more required research.
It does imply casualson though
Um. VAX cluster?
She must have had a Mac. Only Windows teaches both the knowledge and the fury to convince children to switch to Linux.
Switching from apple is like breaking out of prison.
Coming from windows it’s a breath of fresh air
For me as a user it always looked like Microsoft looks at how Apple does it and is eagerly employs the worst practices of not allowing the user to do anything ‘forbidden’ and not giving the user control in general.
Google is doing pretty much the same with Android for a long time, too.
it’s always puzzled me why Apple themselves call installing non approved software “jailbreaking”, they’re straight up stating that their os is a jail
They weren’t the ones to come up with the name, so they have to follow what everyone else calls it.
With iPhones yeah, but MacOS is not very locked down at all. You can run all the unsigned code you want.
Although you could argue the new Apple Silicon Macs are kind of locked down, since Apple only allows kernel extensions on the older Intel Macs
god, running unsigned apps was a pain though.
Real question, what things on Apple were so restrictive that you think it’s a prison?
I - carefully - maintained a music library. Got an ipod. Loved the device. Though sync via itunes was cumbersome.
Wanted to sync my tracks back to another device. Nope. Not supported. Everz track was rewritten into some garbage, including its tags.
Locked in a prison without knowing.
My elderly parents got iphones. They started sharing pictures via their message app. Required multiple times showing them that we - android users - receive aweful pictures. Prison.
Apple watch is only syncing with iphones. Prison.
Used to be an app developer. Releasing something as open source for ios is not feasible. You have to anually pay 120 USD to publish. Prison. Therefore you release the app in a paid manner. They tell you which price to raise. And tax 30%. Prison.
A friend wrote a thesis with some apple-writer thingy. Asked me for some help saving in the required file format. Couldn’t manage to. Prison.
Every app on the App Store is so bad because of that fee too. There just basically isn’t anything open source. Its 90% of the reason why I switched to Android.
“Vendor lock-in” is the backbone philosophy for the entire company and literally every single product and service it has ever created.
Except wifi
What about WiFi? Apple didn’t invent WiFi, Australian public funded research institute CSIRO did.
They didn’t invent it, but when they made wifi products they didn’t limit them to just apples.
I saw a documentary once about the engineers working to make wifi a thing with Apple devices. I can’t find it, but you can see how the crowd reacts seeing it for the first time https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HFngngjy4fk
Out of all of these only your last point is valid and even that is being changed as they get hit by ant-monopoly stuff, I don’t care if the apple watch only works with the iphone or that the ipods are best used with an iphone, i have used my fair share of bluetooth headphones on android and I have a generic smartwatch from Huawei and they fuck off, they have terrible UX.
For most of the shit I do, I just want something that works, for the niche shit I have Linux/windows on my desktop PC.
My only apple device was an iPod and it was the most cumbersome thing ever. Trying to put music on it on my own laptop was impossible as iTunes wouldn’t install. So I’d need to use someone else’s computer which would default to synchronizing their library with my device. So all my loser video game soundtracks will be on someone else’s device or their american sex music will be on mine. And those 33 pin or whatever Proprietary Cables broke if you breathed on it. Adding music was the closest thing to pulling teeth without actually pulling teeth.
Getting an Android phone instead of an iPhone was literally like breaking free. I can manage my own files directly on the device. I can download apps from anywhere. I can download music without proprietary software and expensive fragile cables. Oh, right, and I can charge it with the same cable my old brick phone used, the one that came with my portable charger, and one that powered my USB fan. A Standard Cable. Ffs.
American sex music
Lmao
I had a very similar experience with the ipod and avoid everything apple ever since.
ITunes did install on my windows laptop (wondering why i had to do that tho, why couldn’t i just drag my mp3’s to the device folder??), but it was still an instant locked-in experience. Whatever went into iTunes/ipod seemed near impossible to get back out. Mp3 in, gibberish out. Encoded to some apple © tm format, lost into the void. Coming from a normal mp3-player that was very unexpected and unpleasant.
The only thing I liked about it was the (hardware) wheel.
So absolutely nothing to do with Mac at all. And you’re referencing a cable that hasn’t been used in literally over a decade and comparing it to a a cable that you’re using now? You do realize Android phones in 2010 used proprietary cables too, right?
Lightning is still a problem on devices more than about 1.5 years old (everything “smart” that I own) and I’ve never had an Android phone that didn’t use USB, though some had additional proprietary connectors for a dock.
I got my first android (Samsung Galaxy S3) in 2014, before I had a LG Rumor Touch. Both used micro USB.
I was turned off from Apple anything after having an iPod as a gift and discreetly hating it. I was further turned off when I saw that an iPad is just an elongated iPod Touch rather than a Microsoft Surface which is literally a PC.
So micro usb, the literal worst standardized usb connector in existence, is what you are claiming is better than an iPhone’s omnidirectional lighting connector.
And you know how I can tell you haven’t ever touched an iPad? 🤦♂️ “an elongated iPod touch” smdh.
Lightning connector (2012) would be equal to USB-C (initially designed in 2012).
Micro USB would be equal to the 30 pin connector (and overlapping with mini USB.)
An iPad is a fisher price toy for the price of a Surface. It’s nothing. I used the ones in school and when I was an election day employee. They’re scams
Mini is worse than micro, which is better than all the proprietary connectors it obsoleted
Eh, I grew up with Macs, but I couldn’t afford a Mac for my first computer, or even a windows license. I got a computer from a family friend that was broken which I fixed up and installed Linux on.
I don’t know. I think Mac gets a lot of hate simply because it’s a Unix that was sold to the devil and comes with a satanic concierge service.
Like, I’m not saying that selling your soul to the devil is possible but if I had to pick a handful of people that on the whole I would say probably did I would pick Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Elon musk, Jeffrey bezos, Larry Page, Vladimir Putin, and probably every Hollywood social elite and musician that sells a platinum record, every Republican senator, congress person, and every president after Jimmy Carter, and every CEO whose company is worth more than 10 million dollars who didn’t inherit the company from their parents.
Don’t forget Robert Jordan
The ambassador or the guy that wrote The wheel of Time series?
My mistake, Robert Johnson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson
This isn’t right at all… Mac’s are awful if you want to do things like play most video games. Linux is much the same.
That’s right. I said it. Come downvote me, fanboys, I don’t mind. I’ve seen what makes you cheer.
Proton is way better than whatever thing Apple has going on (didn’t they say they were working on their own proton-like thing? did they just forget about it? I remember seeing a video with some sort of dev preview a while ago…)
Most video games work perfectly in Linux now…
growing up my family had a mac desktop that i had access to while really young. eventually realized mac is a little terrible, so i tried bootcamp to get some proper use out of the computer. i successfully installed windows, but somehow fucked up and formatted the mac partition. all for windows to also suck
What did your parents do?
my parents were understandably pissed because i had deleted at least a few hundred gigabytes of photos and videos from the last decade. iirc i was banned from touching the computer for at least a year, which was funny because i was literally the only one who used it
No, include autistic kids. Exclude unwanted kids regardless of anything, they’ll skew the results. The unwanted neglected kids growing up with poppy playtime and skibidi toilet are going to program games for a job after being told to go away by their entire family. Everyone else wouldn’t have used computers as often because they were spending time with friends and family.
Where there’s smoke, they pinch back.
My parents loved and cherished me growing up, and still do, which is part of why I was the only kid in sixth grade with a laptop (the other part was I had a disability accommodation with the school that allowed me to type my assignments rather than write them by hand). The fact that they encouraged my programming talent at that age, didn’t get mad when I installed a Fedora dual-boot on that laptop, and bought me the book Python for Kids for my 12th birthday, is why I’m a programmer now.
I’m sorry your parents didn’t show you the love and support you deserved, but that’s not the criterion we should be looking for.
Actually that’s also an interesting statistic to cover. What’s the proportion of programmers who learnt because they were supported vs unsupported (and while we’re at it do code quality analysis just to see)
As an Old, I started with an Apple ][ and learned BASIC. We did get the classic B&W Macintosh computers when I was 12-13.
I learned basic on an old trash 80 from radio shack in the late 70’s. I really miss mucking around with it.
Edit: Now I use Linux.
Yep, this study would have to divide things up by age. As a fellow member of the Oregon Trail generation, all my early computers were also Apple ][ and b&w macs. But then eventually by young adulthood it all turned into PCs.
I enjoyed a stint with Solaris in college (that’s SUN Solaris thankyouverymuch) which I consider my true intro to Linux/posix/whatever-ix.
I started on a Pr1me 550 type II learning BASIC myself. Apple ][s came out about 4 years later. Then I used them. Windows SA now.
My youth was at least partly misspent hacking z80 assembler on an Amstrad CPC664. Not as many regrets as one might assume. I miss when (8-bit) assembler was simple enough to hand-code without playing “surf the reference manual”.
I installed my first Linux distro in my country’s equivalent of high school, probably 17 years old or so. It was just Ubuntu. 🤷♂️ Not very difficult. Just pop in the CD/USB and follow the installation wizard.
At risk of going off topic, I don’t like Twitter posts like this:
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Both users ‘verified,’ essentially paying for more engagement, but with no actual “verification” like community mods tagging users.
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In your face engagement metrics all over the posts, as if that’s all that matters. Not even a user “poll” like Lemmy/Reddit or Mastadon/Facebook.
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Hiding most replies other than the most algorithmically engaging ones.
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Posted as a screenshot, unfortunately necessary as they essentially broke Nitter and it’s nigh unusable unless logged in.
I don’t like that the Twitter format is kinda the center of the social media universe, and seemingly staying that way now that we basically voted to back it with the US govt.
Move back to Tumblr
You joke (maybe), but Tumblr’s sharing mechanics are relatively healthy.
I don’t joke c:
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Bigger distinction: Kids with computers vs. kids with “smart” devices.
I feel that is the difference we’re seeing though. Younger kids who generally live on smart devices have lower tech literacy.
And apple phones are “smart devices”
Why insert the qualifier there?
Because my phone isnt a smart device. Its a dumb device that does nothing by itself and everything i tell it to do. It allows me to remove things i dont like without self destructing and locking me out. It works offline without complaining. It doesnt spy on me.
That doesn’t really answer my question. I’m going to conclude that you just have some personal issue with Apple.
I wouldn’t blame them. It’s really difficult to do anything Apple hasen’t planned for on their tablets.
Linux users should be included. After all they switched OS being they couldn’t understand how image formatting works.
Hey when I was 12 I- hold on a second!
You’re not onto anything so there’s no need to “hold on”. Several people did the same thing without some stupid disorder being The Reason Why.
I pirated applications and games at 9 because remotely breathing in my family’s presence was the equivalent of screaming fire in a crowded theater. Why would I ask them anything when I can ask Google? Google won’t hit me, tie me to a chair, lock me in a basement, scream at me, spit on me, or take all my possessions indefinitely. Google also won’t tell professional child abusers what I searched so that can be used to emotionally abuse me more.
Why would I ask people who would scream at me for asking for a 64¢ candy bar, about a $200 application? Why would I tell them about something illegal? That’s just asking for drama. But sure, some stupid ass puzzle piece Made Me So Smart and that’s why I pirated gamemaker and fl studio. The same puzzle piece that made me so (r word) and unfit for society that I needed to be locked away in an institution that dumbed me down into a dead weight.
Also using a computer is as easy as playing a video game. The directions and definitions are straightforward. Some stupid puzzle piece didn’t made a kid know how to do something, the kid taught themselves by reading. Which the people pointing to some stupid puzzle piece can do as well, instead of reducing a human being to some stupid ass puzzle piece. Literally dehumanizing but I’m ready to be the problem, as a human asking to be treated as a human. Downvotes mean nothing.
I started with System 7 on the Mac and because of that I had to quickly learn ResEdit and hex editing. Ironically this made me better later in life with windows and Linux, that shit is a breeze in comparison.
Also HyperCard fucking slapped
Oh my god I forgot about hypercard…wowww. Memories.
The AOL amateur HyperCard game scene was like Newgrounds before flash. I wish the world was still that simple sometimes. Or, at least, that fun.
I used ResEdit to fix an issue with my school’s email system.
Someone used a Hypercard stack I made to “break” a computer, It got me banned from the school computers. Same school even.
When I was 12 my dad gave me two defect PCs and says: find out how to compare the working parts and you can have this one for you. Also a copy of win95.
If I look back this was enough to learn about every hard- and software related issue ever. Hell, even the mainboards back then doesn’t have any documentations about jumpers etc.
And win95 need a regularly reinstall. If I compare how many reinstalls I needed between win and Linux, windows wins.
