CarlTheWebmaster

I did see that and tried all the different options - somehow despite the photo being in a 3:2 aspect ratio, under every option there were white bars to the sides, above, or below. Printing on 4x6 paper, that size should fill the page. It simply would not. On the Mac, it "just worked". Maybe a one-off case but it's not the only time something like that has happened.

HDQDD

I used to be a windows guy (would be Linux if the desktops were better), then I was a MacOS guy. Now I spend about an equal amount of time in both.

Mac positives:
Great UI
Apple ecosystem. (iMessages, notes, photos, iCloud, etc)
Speed
hardware look
Unixesque underlying OS (Darwin which comes from a few things, Next, BSD, etc)
*nix filesystem

Negatives:
Finder is hot garbage compared to the Windows explorer.
apples walled garden makes it less “hackable”.
M1 processors are now ARM only (for someone who works on mostly x86 applications, this is a major roadblock, at least for now)
Apple makes simple HW upgrades near impossible

Windows +
Explorer vs finder
More applications available
Office is much better on Windows (limited (Intentionally?) on macOS)
Very hackable
i find the windows keyboard layout to make more sense.

Windows -
The old DOS/NT filesystem
Security
NT kernel (really hoping MS will move to *nix eventually, they are playing nice-nice with Linux these days, i.e. WSL).
AD integration and management.

If Apple hadn’t gone all in on their own silicon (ARM), I’d prob be a 100% Mac guy and just run windows in Fusion. As it stands, I’ll have to see how virtualization shakes out, or continue to carry two laptops. 😬

LIH Prem

The only thing that confused me when I first got a mac was similar to this, when you open a downloaded disk image to install a program ... I didn't understand that they were just asking me to drag the icon on the left representing the program I wanted to install into the applications folder on the right, and that icon was the applications folder or a shortcut (link) to it. is that really obvious to everybody else?

For everything else, fortunately I had a lot of friends at work I could ask and these days, I just end up googling things I need to do that I can't remember or don't know how to There's tons of help out there. I'm still using windows, running a vm on the mac, but basically only for one app.

Coming from a unix background, I appreciate that the underlying OS is a unix variant and I can use the command line utility with all the familiar unix tools and shells I've used over the years. (Yes, all thet stuff is available to windows users also, via something called cygwin).

StuckInYYZ

A lot of the stuff isn't necessarily obvious when you are coming from another OS. I find it is also confusing at times if you use multiple flavours of Linux or even different package managers (I started on Ubuntu... you don't know how often I "sudo apt" when I touch a non-deb distro...) It's usually sense memory that gets you.

Cygwin gives you "Linux-like" commands on a Windows-based system. It is on a few Windows servers that I deal with. I try not to use it personally as it causes confusions sometimes (it's usually put on there by Linux admins who are miss Linux). But I'm of the school that believes that you install only what is required and install as little additional stuff as possible to reduce attack surfaces and to free up resources.

HDQDD

I stopped using Cygwin years ago when WSL (Windows Subsytem for Linux) came out for Win 10. Much lighter weight, and multiple distros work. Starting with Win 11 supposedly WSL2 has GUI support (although I’m a CLI cowboy).

WSL makes running Linux executables or commands super easy.

I really hope one day MS will just move to a full on linux kernel.

i remember running X on top of Windows 95 back in the day. It was slow as molasses.

Jimmie76

I use Windows at work, Linux (Mint) on my laptop, Android on my phone and I got an iPad last year that somebody gave me. I don't have an issue with using any of them and I found most of the differences easy to deal with. I'm having a love hate relationship with the iPad though because Apple wanted so much personal info before I could start using it. Also I can't seem to block apps/the system from accessing the internet. On Android it's a relatively easy thing to do with a firewall app but on IOS not so much. looked for a Firewall app but everything was either a VPN app or just showed you what had been communicating with who. When I did find one (called Lockdown) it didn't work initially. I then discovered that without the Internet and an account, it didn't work so deleted that. There's another one I found called Let Me Be but that didn't offer anything to block when I opened it.

yosithezet

What is your objective in blocking the internet?

StuckInYYZ

Most likely in the poster's case, he doesn't necessarily want an app(s) to call home or send data outwards. Case in point... You don't necessarily want Word or Excel to send metadata back to MS about a file you're working on.

Jimmie76

You're spot on, I don't want or see the need for an app to connect to the internet when it's just running a local process. it's fair enough if the app requires data from the internet to work such as a browser, the soccer & baseball scores, the weather etc. On Android a no root firewall app allows me to block outgoing and incoming connections. I can choose to block over the wifi, cellular data or both and I can see where the data is going. I can also block the system apps and processes should I wish. This means that I can have complete control over the amount of data used on cellular and wifi and thus charges on metered wifi etc. Also I see in many IOS apps that they collect information which they say is not linked to me. However that info often includes my location, user content etc. which is enough to put me off downloading that app. Exactly what "user content" they are collecting it doesn't say and some apps don't have a privacy list/policy yet. Yes I'm mildly paranoid but that's nothing new or unusual.

DeafFlyer

You can block apps on an iPad. If I had time, I would try to help more, but there are settings for doing what you want.

antichef

Something like this?
https://mashable.com/article/how-to-stop-apps-from-tracking-you-ios-14-5

https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/how-stop-apps-tracking-3804386/

StuckInYYZ

I suspect it's more than just across web sites and apps. As an example, I present a case of Tim Hortons (Canadian coffee chain) from last year. Other things to consider... Word and Excel likely send meta-data back home based on usage patterns, crash reports, etc. The two articles posted are for things like common tracking methods (eg, cookies) but also access to "other apps" data (eg, technically you could use your own update checking app ala FB to accomplish this or possibly sending an API call to Safari/Chrome). Except for possibly crash reports (with your permission), Word and Excel really don't really need access to the internet (well.... not a smartphone version anyway). Updates can be managed by the appstore... Even crash reports could technically be pushed through the appstore (although that gives Apple/Google even more data to work with as well) so blocking access to the internet is not unreasonable. Additionally, it doesn't hurt to periodically review the permissions of a given app (or even just a list of the packages) installed on your smartphone/tablet. In the before times, when I was in transit (land or air based) and I was bored, I would do maintenance on my smartphone (especially review permissions of the big players like FB) as it is possible for them to ask for permission and you granting it by accident (eg, in a rush to get something done or for a legitimate request that you meant to disable afterwords).

antichef

I am with Jimmie76 on wanting maximum privacy!

Jimmie76

Exactly! I'm used to having complete control over everything and on this I just don't. For example No Root Firewall offers you a list of apps, system, preloaded and downloaded.


By default apps are blocked until you make a decision on them, see the first panel below. From that pending list (or from the full apps list) you can select individual apps and then allow them access to cellular, wifi or both. You can block individual IP addresses or a range for just that app or globally. See the second and third panels.




More detail


Then you also get an access log. This lists what's been trying to communicate with the outside world, where it was trying to reach and whether it was successful or not. Red is unsuccessful, Green is successful, White indicates you haven't made a decision yet.



Some apps will not work without an outside information source. My weather widget for example uses the Norwegian Metrological Institute for the forecast. I have therefore given it access to www.met.no and associated IP addresses and nothing else.

That's what I can't do on the iPad.

Jimmie76

Wow that's horrendous.