My first memory with a computer was playing (more like trying to play) Microsoft flight simulator 1.0 on a Macintosh when I was around 8-9. The thing that looks like that:
I only started using Linux when installed dual boot Ubuntu on the family computer around 14-15.
My dad had this flight sim on his old PC! That internal speaker and the BW graphics… another one of those games was the keyboard destroyer decathlon.
My first MS flight simulator was 4, the graphics were similar, but in VGA
My first game was probably 1944 or moon buggy
Wow that is awesome! I have big nostalgia for the early B&W Macs as well, having played on a Mac Classic my uncle had when I was a kid. He actually gave me that computer years ago and it’s still in my basement collecting dust. I powered it up a few years ago and it still worked but then promptly powered it down and put it away. I need to go through it and recap it. Hopefully there aren’t any disastrous leaks.
Those beautiful graphics. That dithering though!
Where’re all the DOS kids at?! 5 hours and 66 comments, but not a single mention yet.
Never mind solving problems with Windows; shit gets real when the thing boots to a
C:\>prompt and you need to know things like the difference between CGA/EGA/VGA/Hercules graphics modes and WTF an IRQ is just to install your games in the first place.Kids these days don’t know the pain of trying to get enough free conventional memory to run something.
or defragging a disk.
I was talking to a friend just the other day about that. I remember some application we used to reconfigure autoexec.bat to optimize it for one type of memory or the other, but I can’t remember the name of the application (I think it came with the OS), and I can’t remember what the different memory types were called either.
IIRC the application was just “edit.com”, as in “edit autoexec.bat”. The different kinds of memory were expanded memory, extended memory, and the high memory area; high memory was useful regardless which of the other two you were using, and those two were for the most part kind of interchangeable. You also typically had to mess with config.sys, which handled some things like the mouse driver. It was really common to have specific floppy disks that had only those two files on them (well, and were set to be bootable), so that if you needed a particular configuration for some game–maybe you didn’t load the CD-ROM driver, since that took up a lot of precious low-memory kilobytes–you could leave your normal setup alone and just stick your custom boot disk in for that program. Some programs were really tricky to make enough room for, even if you had a ton of RAM, because that privileged low ram area was so hard to manage.
I figured it out - it was memmaker. It automatically edited autoexec.bat (and possibly also config.sys, I’m not sure).
Ah, yeah, I think that may actually have been a paid program. It was something folks were willing to pay not to have to do, because, as I say, it was surprisingly tricky to manage the memory below 640K.
Well, at least in our case, it wasn’t something that we bought. I’m pretty sure it came with our MS-DOS.
Oh, you’re right, it’s right there in the link you shared–it was built in to MS-DOS, but only from version 6 on. I must have misremembered it as paid because it was something we didn’t have, and then later we did.
memmaker?
You ran emm386.com as a TSR (terminate, stay present) to set up extended memory according to my very stretched memory
That might have been one way of doing it, but I seem to remember a more mnemonic name - something like “memmaker,” perhaps?
Edit: Yep, it was memmaker.
in a care home presumably
Listen here you little shit.
spoiler
(Seriously though, DOS kids are like ~40 years old. We’re xennials, not boomers.)
I absolutely still remember my grandfather having a dual 5.25” IBM and teaching my 6-7 yo self how to use the cli. I still remember that MSDOS 2.0 box he had up on his shelf, and how he taught me to keep a simple text file of the prices of my baseball cards, according to the legendary Beckett price guide.
I then later vaguely messing around with 3.11 followed by 95+, but the basis of my mediocre understanding of the cli was due to my grandfather teaching me on DOS 2.0.
Now I’m glad I was at the tail end of DOS. My dad showed me how to interrupt the windows boot to get into DOS for Lemmings and Doom, but for everything else like Anno 1602, Need for Speed 2 and Age of Empires 1, I used Windows 95.
When windows was at version 3, I mostly had the computer booting to command prompt, type win to start windows
Though at some point I made a boot menu in autoexec.bat to let you choose windows, command prompt, or any of the games installed
Does anyone still know the
prompt?“What is that high memory area stuff they added in DOS4?”
gets swallowed by rabbit hole for days
“Oh, that!”
DOS was a step backwards for me from Atari TOS.
What were the Atari terms of service?
/sEasy mistake to make, but terms of service are abbreviated as ToS, not TOS ;-)
Alright, I’ll admit it: my first computer ran Tandy Deskmate, not just plain DOS.
Still, I did have to exit to a command line to run certain games, I think.
If I was pressed, I could probably still write a config.sys to reallocate enough system memory to play Test Drive
Pop quiz: which graphics mode is that screenshot?
I had 3.1, 95, 98se, XP(teenager).
I got in at I’d say the best time. XP for the Internet as a teenager was absolutely the best time to be a teenager with computers.
DOS5 here, installed from 5.25" floppies on a tiny HDD and looking at one of those awful shades-of-yellow monitors.
That’s if you don’t count the computer that didn’t have a hard drive and ONLY booted from 3.5" floppy (which was just enough to get a bootable DOS disk and Prince of Persia).
IRQ’s were great for choice. You got to your modem, video card, and soundcard and then picked which two would actually work when they all wanted IRQ5 or 7
I remember when discs got big enough that we could have windows 3.1 installed as well as a current tech game
I will not miss setting up interrupts for cards, I will not miss setting up extended memory
Though all that would have been easier were I older. I was in my 20s when Linux became available and the early experience with DOS had me happy to dive right into that
“Autistic children will be discluded from the study for skewing results”
“Autism involves a significant deviation from expected behaviour”
They have played us for absolute fools.
(I know autism describes a real cluster of traits, but it is only socially constructed norms that define those traits as aberrant, I am not saying it isn’t real)
Yeah, we create the rules that decide whether or not someone is autistic, and we decide what is viewed as “weird” (honestly, everyone is weird, if you were perfectly average in every way, you would actually, in a way, be weird)
I’m genuinely curious; is her hypothesis that macOS users are less tech literate? Because I definitely know much more computer science people that use macOS than Windows (of course most use Linux, but Windows is on third place).
I think that’s the gist of it. Apple is so hell bent on proprietary everything and keeping their hardware locked that there isn’t all that much you can tinker with when using a Mac. Aside from the high price of apple products, the customizability of PCs (and the access to games) are what kept me on windows.
What stuff do you think you can’t tinker with on a Mac?
I don’t understand the correlation with technical people on Mac. Like I DONT GET IT 😭
how can you just be ok with not being able to do stuff you want? I tried to use a cracked iPhone before deciding just to buy a new android because I just bout exploded with the corporate shenanigans apple has.how can you just be ok with not being able to do stuff you want?
Huh? What do you mean?
There are a lot of things that Apple just straight up tells you you can’t do – I don’t use a Mac often enough to make a list, but I can tell you that running apps made by people who aren’t giving Apple $99/yr for code signing was recently added to it – and using MacOS means being okay with that.
You don’t need code signing though. Just hold option when you open the app the first time and you’re never bothered about it again. Like the other person said, give us a list of things you can’t do on Mac, that you can on Linux.
I’ve never had a real answer asking that question…
As of MacOS 15.1 Sequoia, that is no longer possible.
In answer to your question, though, off the top of my head:
- Use a different desktop environment
- Uninstall OS components that I don’t need for a lighter weight system
- Be absolutely certain that Apple isn’t spying on me instead of just stopping Facebook from tracking me and then doing it themselves instead
- Run 32-bit apps after Apple ended support for them
- Play video games (the MacOS version of Steam is a joke and everyone knows it)
- Take my laptop or desktop to a repair service that isn’t sanctioned by Apple, or (horror of horrors!) replace the components inside it myself
Option click is still possible, it just works slightly differently. I literally did it yesterday on my Sequoia work system.
use a different desktop environment
Fair, I think this is one of the worst parts of the Linux “ecosystem”, as it completely fucks anyone that doesn’t know to use whatever the “current hotness” is, but I understand a lot of people like it.
uninstall OS components…
Like what? You mean like running without a login screen or do you mean uninstalling something like systemd?
be absolutely certain…
You can do that with plenty of network scanning apps, and you shouldn’t be doing that on device anyway. Not sure how Linux would stop that when you could install a bad package, or run apt update on something that has had a supply chain vulnerability.
run 32 bit apps
Fair. I haven’t needed this since about two months after Apple made the change, because Apple sure does a good job of getting developers to update their code, but I’m sure there are still some apps people wish worked that never updated.
play video games
Yeah video games on Mac are terrible, no argument there. Literally the only reason I still have a windows computer. Soon as they force 11, I’m switching back to a Linux desktop, but honestly I’m not looking forward to it.
take my laptop
You can do that now and you could before, Apple just didn’t like it and they made it as hard as possible. I agree it’s a shit policy, but I’m mostly asking about the operating system here. For example you could be running a hackintosh.
You can do that with plenty of network scanning apps, and you shouldn’t be doing that on device anyway. Not sure how Linux would stop that when you could install a bad package, or run apt update on something that has had a supply chain vulnerability.
If you’re willing to consider supply chain vulnerabilities when considering whether someone is spying on you, who’s to say there’s not a supply chain attack against Wireshark that hides the malicious traffic?
For example you could be running a hackintosh.
Aren’t hackintoshes virtually dead with the latest release of MacOS?
Soon as they force 11, I’m switching back to a Linux desktop, but honestly I’m not looking forward to it.
I don’t know when you last used Linux, but I can virtually guarantee that the new user experience is better than you remember it being. The last time I had a driver issue with anything apart from my graphics card (and that was easily resolved) was roughly ten years ago. As for the new user experience and just getting everything set up without using the terminal, confessedly, I’m an Arch user, so I’m a bit out of touch with the newbie side of the Linux distro world, but from what I’ve heard, Bazzite makes the transition fairly painless.
uninstall OS components…
Like what?
Like whenever you connected Bluetooth headphones to the MacBook, they started Music app. The
officialsolution to stop this was to reboot in safe mode and rename Music app, because it was baked in so hard, or install third party software to prevent Music from starting. That’s not to mention that I don’t need Music app at all and would uninstall it but it will get restored back.It looks like this behaviour changed somewhere in 14, as I no longer see Music starting, but it worked that way for longer than it should, really.
Upd: can’t find the support thread where they offered this solution, so it must’ve been not the official one. Officially you didn’t even need a solution because it’s not a problem.
As of MacOS 15.1 Sequoia, that is no longer possible.
Did you read the page you linked to? You can still run unsigned code. You have to review it in the system settings, but you’re not blocked from doing it. I’m doing it right now on the latest version of Sequoia…
- Use a different desktop environment
- Uninstall OS components that I don’t need for a lighter weight system
Valid, but these are things the vast (and I mean >98% VAST) amount of general computer users are not capable of understanding and should not attempt regardless.
- Be absolutely certain that Apple isn’t spying on me instead of just stopping Facebook from tracking me and then doing it themselves instead
If you care about privacy on any OS, you should be using a local firewall—something you can do on macOS. I use Little Snitch, which absolutely can block traffic to Apple’s domains.
- Run 32-bit apps after Apple ended support for them
This is the single most annoying thing about macOS. I’ll give you that. However, that being said, I haven’t actually run into an issue with it in the last two years.
- Play video games (the MacOS version of Steam is a joke and everyone knows it)
Similar to others have said, I daily drive my MacBook for basically everything except playing games. I do still play Minecraft, or any (usually smaller) games that I can install on my MacBook natively, but I play most games on my desktop PC—in fact that’s about all I use it for these days. Funny enough, that hasn’t changed since years ago when I used Linux Mint on my laptop and Windows on my PC.
- Take my laptop or desktop to a repair service that isn’t sanctioned by Apple, or (horror of horrors!) replace the components inside it myself
I work at a small, locally owned, computer shop. We order Mac parts and install them all the time. I’m literally doing a MacBook Air screen replacement tomorrow morning, and we’re not AASP. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
these are things the vast (and I mean >98% VAST) amount of general computer users are not capable of understanding and should not attempt regardless.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s actually fine that you can’t do this, because the average user is too stupid to be able to do it safely. That’s the Apple ethos. That’s their justification for disallowing sideloading on iOS, however flimsy it may be. I don’t care that my grandma doesn’t know what doing this would mean. I’m not my grandma, dammit. I own the computer, let me do whatever I want with it!
I use Little Snitch, which absolutely can block traffic to Apple’s domains.
That’s another thing I should’ve added to my list: find basic system utilities, like a drive cleaner, firewall, or alternative terminal emulator, that aren’t paid products.
I work at a small, locally owned, computer shop. We order Mac parts and install them all the time. I’m literally doing a MacBook Air screen replacement tomorrow morning, and we’re not AASP. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Has Apple finally pulled their head out of their ass and removed parts pairing? This is great news!
What stuff do you think you can’t do on Mac? It’s essentially just Linux with better (and more supported) apps.
OS X and iOS are completely different beasts, iOS is a closed off nightmare whereas OSX is basically just stable pretty Linux missing a few packages and costing more
OSX is
basically just stable pretty Linuxliterally BSD, including licensing the UNIX trademark to make it officialFTFY.
I use a Mac precisely because it lets me do what I want. Linux is endless configuration and poorly designed UIs, Windows is an incoherent mess that needs to be wrestled back to a usable state with every major update. Mac does what I need without any fuss.
Truth be told, I have a PC for gaming and a Linux server for Plex, *arr, and home automation. But when I need to get work done, it’s the MacBook. No question.
This is the key difference people miss in this discussion. Being able to do the things you want varies so wildly but the system gets out of the way entirely to let you do things. Not sit and endlessly tweak configurations. While for some that might be what they want to do and believe me macOS also has endless configuration parameters to tweak, the class majority just want to do things with the computer as a tool. It’s a subtle nuance but you said it well, it specifically lets you do whatever you want. Editing configs for hours to customize the desktop environment is not the same as being productive with the system.
have you tried mint
that’s the stereotype a lot of people believe but it’s just false imo
if your hardware is compatible, then it’s as simple as any other os
I’ve been daily driving Debian and arch for over a decade lol.
I’m always confused by people who don’t seem to understand that MacBooks and iPhones run different OSs. Why would they run the same OS?
You can install pretty much anything on a MacBook via the open-source package manager brew. I’ve been exclusively using Linux at home for almost 20 years, but on my work computer, which is a MacBook, I really don’t find much is missing. I use the same oh-my-zsh profile on both, brew install the real version of most utilities, and I move on with my life and get work done.
Apple doesn’t lock down the bootloader at all, so it’s trivial to install Asahi Linux now if you want to. I did this on my home computer because I like the screen, battery life, and keyboard layout.
Macs have a decent terminal + CLI interface built in, and decent hardware. Also, for many years apple offered huge discounts for students through their university, so many CS students got a macbook for super cheap and just never stepped out of the ecosystem.
The CLI interface is literally just GNU BASH, people need to understand Apple steals everything slaps a fresh coat of paint on it and boasts how innovative they are.
~full disclosure; I’m super jealous andhave always wanted a Mac Pro or Macbook Pro~
But with worse versions of most of the basic utilities.
Actually its zsh but yeah nothing special.
It’s better than power shell or whatever crap is on windows. Even WSL had issues the last time a used it a few years ago. Mac is Unix which Windows will never be.
PowerShell is like the 1 good product Microsoft has made the las 10 years
That is a dangerous opinion. In my mind, Microsoft has made zero good products.
Unfun fact: it switched from bash to zsh because Apple was butthurt and paranoid about GPL v3. Fuckin’ cowards.
apple offered huge discounts for students through their university, so many CS students got a macbook for super cheap and just never stepped out of the ecosystem.
This is the real reason. And I think they couple it with trying to make interface look and behave not how it is in Linux or Windows, so that once you’re used to it, you’re less comfortable switching to anything else.
The fact I had to use iTunes to put music on my phone and the lack of access to the filesystem were extreme deal breakers for me. There is also the impossible hoops you had to jump through to change ownership of a phone. I gave my mother my old iPhone when I changed to Android and it was impossible to scrub my account from it, even with a factory reset.
The environment felt way too sterile for my liking. It treated me, a legitimate tech savvy user, like a malicious imbecile.
Lack of access to the file system? What are you talking about?
I think they mean the iPhone. I love my MPB, but I still have no interest in iPhones due to lack of filesystem access, interface for the deranged, and not being able to customize it the way I want.
I still don’t know what that means. You can access the filesystem. You can even install a terminal if you want. And if that isn’t enough you can always jailbreak.
you cannot use an app to browse the entire filesystem, every app has its own space and can’t access other apps spaces. Even with jailbroken devices there are filesystem limitations related to how they’ve designed it.
It treated me, a legitimate tech savvy user, like a malicious imbecile.
So it’s doing security correctly.
That’s like saying martial law is doing security correctly.
It’s kinda simple actually. As much as I love patching the Linux kernel or debugging it, or anything really it takes a lot of the one resource in life I have less of each day, time. Generally on macOS I can just upgrade and not bother worrying about breakage. Not always sure but if you’ve ever had to deal with python libraries or c libraries and updating source you start to go if I’m not getting paid for this crap why bother.
My entire network is almost all Linux but I generally just use macOS mostly cause safari battery life is insane. Plus zsh as my shell I live in the terminal and use emacs I can pretty easy migrate off either but video apps and audio are so much better on macOS it’s not even funny. Maybe now that the realtime kernel patches are in mainstream Linux audio can get closer to macOS audio latency but I won’t hold my breath.
I can’t speak to windows though I don’t really use it outside of work related usage which is minimal as I work for a company that sells a Linux distribution.
Because it’s Unix, and Windows isn’t, and they refuse to try Linux because it’s
not backed by a corporationtoo much of a headache to use day-to-dayFor tech people, OS X is basically a BSD with a pretty UI that comes preinstalled on nice hardware (which is important mainly because corporate IT procurement is only gonna give you a choice between a Mac or a [Dell|HP|Lenovo] business-line machine running Windows (and with corporate policy that prohibits installing Linux). The Mac is a much nicer choice in that situation.
Also remember that, although they’ve backed away from it now, there was a time back in the 2000s when Apple was leaning into the UNIX hackability of the OS – they were coming out with stuff like XServe and Automator and went out of their way to design their machines for toolless upgrades of things like RAM. Some of the popularity of Macs among technical people stems from that era, and memories of it.
iOS, by the way, has always been an entirely different story. Your experience with a cracked iPhone isn’t even slightly representative of the experience using an OS X Mac.
Could be, could also be she is generally actually curious about it. I would actually think its the opposite since your problem solving skills are exercised more on a windows than a mac. Computer science people will engineer a solution from the ground up while the rest of us will problem solve and be happy with something held together with duct tape.
I think computer science is related to problem solving though. Especially programming is just basically solving one new problem after another and being able to figure out new solutions to errors you don’t know.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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)
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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Imagine paying for a blue tick on Xitter.
could’ve been before elongated muskrat bought it
It’s not unfortunately, there’s a date of 09/12/2024 under the original tweet
oh… oh… oh…
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 feel attacked !
Or seen. same difference.
Grew up on Mac (Chuck Yeager game anyone?).
DOS & Win3.1 later. QBasic for first language. Later VB, ew.
Linux sporadically throughout.
Use Linux largely for side projects but unfortunately all my jobs have me stuck on Windows during the day.
Chuck Yeager’s air combat? I played that on PC
Where does TRS-80 fit into this study?
Linux users should be included. After all they switched OS being they couldn’t understand how image formatting works.
Ah crud, I installed Linux on my computer when I was 12 (replacing MacOS, no less).
Children use smartphones way more than “PC” computers today.
