are you tech-savvy enough?
I’ve always been drawn to computers. I don’t need them, but I genuinely like them and all the things you can do on them. But it’s hard to do all of those cool things when all your brain can think about is fixing tiny imperfections.
You use what works for you, but what works for you depends on your own standards and work requirements. Not everyone dares to tinker with PCs or even ever thinks about it. Not only because a lot of people grew up with iPhones and iPads which are very locked down by design, but because most people don’t care about that stuff. They may want to draw, write, design, communicate with others or play their games. For these people, computers are tools – not toys.
I used to be a hardcore Linux guy until I realized I was spending more time perfecting things than using them. Buying a Mac freed up so much time for other, actual hobbies because it removed the mere possibility of me toying with things. There are merits to having things locked down just like there are merits to the opposite.
Granted, I learned a lot about computers during my time on Linux, but was it what I wanted to do with my time? Did I envision any future for myself in which that was an important aspect of my life? No, I didn’t.
Updates on Linux were always like Russian Roulette. I would restart and pray to every deity in human history for nothing to break. Mind you I didn’t use Arch, that was my experience on Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE. At least openSUSE had a way to rollback, but app support was lack luster and finding solutions online was like an easter egg hunt.
All I’m saying is that not everyone wants to know how a car functions to drive one. We need to get from A to B, but also sometimes from C back to A, and it feels like on Linux or really any open platform, I need to plan ahead for major fuckups by the system that would be my problem to solve. I simply didn’t and don’t have the time for any of that and I would bet that most people would just be too frustrated to even attempt fixing these things which I stupidly did, time and time again.
There is a reason why Apple’s products are so popular, especially among students, despite being so expensive. The last thing you want is your device crashing while you’re working on an important project or that a tool is unavailable or that your specific hardware requires a workaround to work with an app. There’s gotta be more to life than what computers can offer us and that’s why they should remain tools, not toys.
It’s great that Linux and Android exist, but I would never run them on my main devices that I use for actual work.
PS: I have ADHD. I don’t need anything to distract me because it all happens automatically. This is a discussion about accessibility of technology more than anything because Linux is not accessible in that sense. I’d often rather fix an issue than do what I’m supposed to do. Minimizing tech issues is what I need. It doesn’t “cure“ my ADHD, but it makes it a little less bothersome.