Fri 18 July 2025

Just now, I was doing what all great bloggers do when they run out of (easily) actionable blog post ideas:

I got around to cruising my RSS feeds!

To be fair, there are many wonderful bloggers that keep up with their RSS feeds and dutifully read and comment on all their friends' blogs.
Unfortunately, I am not one of them. ADHD, or something. This brain does not drive in a straight line, ever.
Probably a bent axle, no idea.

But anyway, while cruising some very nice blog posts, I came across one by the still astoundingly prolific Reuben Schade which contains what is, to me, THE quote of the Year:

UX at Apple gives me reverse imposter syndrome!

Dear God, what delightful sass. 😂 As I haven't played with Mac OS X* at length since High Sierra, I can't really comment on the UI/UX of the latest MacOS, but I trust what I'm hearing from others about the regressions of the UI, particularly from those who are designers and app developers.

* Yes, I still write the X (sometimes). I don't know why. Curmudgeon.

Another one:

But I can't remember the last time I walked past the local Apple store and wondered 'huh, some of that looks interesting'.

Man, that reminds me of the time when Apple shuttered all of their stores in my part of the city back in 2019. So, one day after that, I found myself at the mall, and there was no Apple store to browse randomly at. So what to do? I went to the Microsoft store!! (Shock, horror!).

While the OS (Windows), is obviously laughably bad, the hardware design of the various devices (some by Microsoft themselves, some by Samsung and others) was actually really, really nice! Inventive! Creative! More than just the same old Unibody MacBook chassis with minor variations for over a decade. I will say that since then, the industrial design of the iPads has been amazing to see, especially with their keyboard cases/stands. Very sci-fi-looking to me as an outside observer. But they are, of course, obscenely overpriced, and locked down with a more-than-just-proprietary OS, iOS. I mean, iPadOS. Whatever they're calling it this week.

Another gem:

The only thing, the only thing going for Apple since 2015 is that they haven’t been Microsoft, so I can run Office without Windows that has also slipped into the realm of absurdity. But Liquid Glass now puts us back in the deep, dark period of Vista, an OS that was designed in direct response… to Mac OS X!

Hilarious. Although to be fair, XP was the first, and wholly inadequate response to Mac OS X. Even the name had an "X" in it! But yes, Vista is what Microsoft accomplished with five more years of development, millions of dollars, and an army of engineers. 🤭

I would also have to say (depending on your exact workflow), you really don't even need Office anymore. LibreOffice can't do exactly everything MS Office does, but it's getting really darn close for me, and I exchange .xlsx spreadsheets with someone who is a relative master at Excel, regularly.

My own journey away from the fruity kingdom was catalyzed by 1) Apple deciding to no longer support my iMac, and 2) myself accidentally baptizing my beloved 2014 MacBook Air in hot tea in 2019. This caused me to rely on the cheapo used Thinkpad X200 which I bought "just for writing" as my daily driver. While I found that while there were some minor kinks to work out, I really, really loved being on Linux again.

100 Days to Offload 2025 - Day 40

Category: Humor Tagged: 100DaysToOffload ADHD Computing Humor Linux Non-religious post Polemic Writing