I just want to point out that I was somewhat tech literate in the 2000s. and The Mac OS still scared me.
I doubt there would be much difference. I was started on an old brick-style Mac before switching to PC and am now the most technical person in almost any group I enter. It's not as if Mac devices are entirely void of programmers and other technical users.
Yeah, Apple computers are disproportionately common at tech conferences and meetups.
I suddenly vividly remember putting my mom’s Chromebook into developer mode and installing crouton on it so I could play Minecraft.
My family’s first computer was a 68k Mac, specifically a Quadra 605. I tried (and failed) to teach myself C++ using that system at the tender age of 9, but eventually moved over to Windows PCs. Had a Linux-based web server running on spare parts as a teen, though, and did succeed at teaching myself PHP and later Python well enough to hack together my very own blog software. Not very good blog software, mind you, but the critical thing was that it worked! Even spent a few years as and SMB sysadmin even though my degree is in [building] architecture.
Since then I’ve drifted away from the very deep end of tech world, but I would never say that first Macintosh stunted my skill.
(100% autistic tho, so ymmv)
I grew up on Mac and only switched to Windows when I was 30. lol
I still wonder what Linux is like… It’s probably cool.
I started on Commodore (Vic20 that I don't remember much, C64, and A500) mostly with a tiny bit of Atari and then was on Windows at home for decades (I tried installing Linux (Mandrake and Redhat) back when it fit on a floppy, but without a lot of success). I guess I'm too old and not neurotypical enough?
Lemmy Linux bros make me avoid Linux at all costs
I've been using pop OS for 5 years and barely understand anything at all, we're not all super nerds. I got it to save a bit of upfront money on a new build with the plan to buy windows when I needed it, never needed it.
I enjoyed a lemmy moment in the thread about things the Canadian government needs to do to not be as dependent on the US and the first bullet point in a comment was switch to Linux
Yeah I use Linux but I also hate people who shame people who use windows because it does what they need.
Keeping you off Linux has been the goal all along
My first experience with Linux was at 10 years old or so. I had a netbook that I'd installed Ubuntu on.
Flash forward nearly 14 years and I use Arch as pretty much a daily driver these days.
The thing with Macs is you don't have to spend 80% of your time troubleshooting them. I love my Mac and OS X. I boot it up, log in, and don't have to think about it. The UI is very intuitive and easy to use as well.
The automation features in macOS are fantastic. Search, filter, run scripts when a new file arrives in a folder, great GUIs for automation, services. It’s sooooo powerful and accessible. Search for menu items in every application from the keyboard. Change keyboard shortcuts for all menus in all applications. Python, ruby, zsh, bash, are all installed by default. The default image and PDF viewer Preview.app has great editing for PDF included.
If you want to get shit done, macOS is just excellent in so many ways.
I started with a windows computer and learned lots about troubleshooting windows. However once I started using a Mac, I actually made cool stuff with my computer like music, nice documents, fun automation, video, programming, and so on.
The indie software scene on macOS is also unmatched, I think. The apps made by Omni and Panic have no equivalent on Linux or Windows. Kaleidoscope.app is the best diff app on any platform.
Every year I believe this more and more. I've always been lumped in with the tech crowd by anyone not tech-savvy, but in reality all my knowledge is from personal troubleshooting and very limited (I'm thinking of trying Linux and that's gonna be like a whole ass event for me). I used to think that was dumb, but then I started working with more Gen Z...
They have zero idea how to troubleshoot anything. If the computer doesn't do what they expect, it's a full stop for some of them. I have "solved" so many IT problems by replugging a cable or just knowing the settings option exists. These aren't stupid kids either, they're in a tough industry and very capable otherwise. I think my generation was right place, right time to learn this stuff organically because shit just never worked quite right -- apple was largely the outlier back then.
I have an external Samsung SSD that my mac mini just refuses to keep indexed.
The solution to this is when I log in every day I have to go into the Mac system settings and tell finder to ignore my external drive, close system setting, then reopen systen setting and tell finder to no longer ignore the external drive. This is the only way to get it to reindex everything.
I need to do this everytime the mac mini wakes from sleep.
I started on a Mac, and now I live as a nomadic caveman, never contacting the civilized world.
Can we stop throwing around "autistic" for anything? Have people actually ever met autistic kids? It has nothing to do about having uncommon interest, it imply much more things than that.
Started on Mac. Still use one as my (not so-) daily driver. In the ~30 years in between, I've (professionally) been a PC field service technician, mainframe operator, datacenter tech, enterprise monitoring administrator, and a whole slew of other tech hats. In my personal time, I learned OS 7-8 inside and out (ResEdit ftw), built PCs out of spare parts (throwing Linux on some just to do it), turned an old tower into an external SCSI enclosure, built VM stacks for fun (DOS 6.2, Win 3.1, Win95 all on the same Mac box decades ago, just because I could), half-wired my parents' house for ethernet, built them a Hackintosh from parts, stuck a Linux VM on an old laptop to host Citrix so I could remote into work and have that one extra layer between personal and business, and gotten completely disillusioned with tech as a hobby and as the framework for modern society.
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
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