cross-posted from: https://yiffit.net/post/1072752
For a moment, it seemed like the streaming apps were the things that could save us from the hegemony of cable TV—a system where you had to pay for a ton of stuff you didn’t want to watch so you could see the handful of things you were actually interested in.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/K4EIh
Sorting out a Mac is troublesome. Errors that give you no information, lack of easy access to advanced utilities, and of course, it bring all in the name of “It Just Works! ™”. I found myself cursing at a Mac, but never had on literally any other operating system ever. Even TempleOS is easier to troubleshoot.
Errors on every major OS:
Windows: The application could not start because of missing dll X (0xb). Reinstalling the program may fix this problem. Linux: Could not find libfluidsynth.so.1. Reason: No such file or directory! macOS: Could not connect to this network. Android: App not installed. There's also another "There was a problem parsing the package" which either means it's corrupted or your phone is from the Stone Age. iOS: Literally reboots your iPhoney every 3 minutes because the fucking microphone is broken.Now let’s see what those errors tell me.
Windows: A DLL is missing. Either it got corrupted or the user fucked up. Linux: App is linking against a super old library. Update the app or compile it to use a newer library. macOS: LITERALLY NOTHING. Super vague, but at least the Android one below only appears when you are sideloading (you should know what you're doing) Android: While the error itself is vague, it usually means "no space left" or "bad signature". Again, if you see this error, you should know what you're doing. iOS: I couldn't tell unless I knew the mic was broken.Guess how many times my Dad had trouble with Bluetooth on macOS. More than I can count, to the point of needing to steal my mic from me.
Me and you have very different experiences to this, at work I’ve found MacOS the easiest of the three to sort out.
I’ll give you a recent windows example, A PC comes in for repair with a b450 MSI board no audio on the Front panel or the rear I/O. Naturally we install all the drivers off the MSI web page except windows won’t even detect the sound card. Throw on a Linux USB live environment instantly detected.
Naturally we’re like no worries let’s use the inbuilt Windows tool to reset the PC with a cloud download, nope that doesn’t fix it. Required a complete reinstall from a USB. This was windows 10 22h2 iirc.
At work I see Windows/Mac/Linux daily and Windows, gives me the most trouble on a daily basis. With Mac/Linux most things you can fix from the terminal pretty quickly, or with Mac just use the inbuilt reset tool no matter how much a customer fucks up their machine.
The problem is I don’t want to reload macOS over every tiny fuckup like in the SymbianOS days.