claycle

While there is cross-pollination between macOS and iOS Macs are general purpose computers. And while it is true you cannot, like most PCs, crack open and customize a Mac and that to date most games are developed for PCs and not Macs as a side-effect of this (game development and hardware/graphics card development are incestuous), Macs are extremely capable computers that can meet demanding needs.

I have used Macs and PCs all my life. At this very moment I am playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in full pretty mode on a PC while my Mac in the other room renders a film and I type this message in an iPhone. I prefer using my Mac over the PC for most things - and certainly the Mac is where my bread is buttered - my PC is a fancy launcher for Steam.

Without being impolite, it sounds like you looked at the Mac, but didn’t bother to actually use it for anything practical, tasks at which it excels.

People read their phones on the toilet - probably every single modern phone user has done it at least once. It is not inconceivable that a small, but significant, number of them have fumbled the phone and it has fallen into the bowl.

Likewise, pools, beaches, and boats are places people are very likely to go with their phones in tow and in use. It is not unlikely some of those - one can assume - millions of instances have produced some contacts between phone and water.

I ride a motorcycle and mount my phone on the handlebars for guidance. I spend a lot of effort keeping it dry and have actually lost a couple of USB cables (but not the phone, thankfully) to damp.

Hugo is opinionated, but fun, yes.

I have made several sites (and maintain one) with RWC. However, I found that using Hugo (installed with Homebrew) for static sites was worth the effort learning Hugo. It’s just more fun to me to actually write HTML (et al) and watch Hugo compile everything into a site that sit so high and remote in RWC (plus, if I can pass the site off easily to anyone).

If I have understood your question correctly: First, in the Finder, if you view by list instead of icon, you can then use the up/down arrow keys in the Quick Look to navigate backwards/forwards through the images. Second, you can also use the Preview or Gallery mode (I forget what it is exactly called) in the Finder on image directories to quickly create fast scrolling gallery views of image directories.

[bug, removed by me, Lemmy posted twice for some reason]

Yes, but.

Overall, yes, leverage the Apple Ecosystem as far as you can - and you can quite far before “needing” alternatives. I have several Apple devices are various stripes and the integration between them is very good/nice. I have a PC (strictly for gaming) and I made some efforts to integrate it with my Apple devices, but as I don’t use it much except as a launch pad into Steam, it really doesn’t matter much.

• I use Apple Mail and probably always will. I have tried several options, but find Apple Mail works very well “for me”.
• I use Apple Calendar and probably always will. Works fine “for me”.
• I use Apple Notes for quick jots of generally disconnected information. I have tried many other Notes apps, and so many are just “too much” (Obsidian, for example, is an operating system masquerading as a note app :-) /s). I am happy that Bear recently upgraded to the long-awaited Version 2 and for my heavy-duty note lifting and writing, it’s now my go-to.
• I use Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. I have used Keynote to build mid-5-figure and low-6-figure productions (I charged) for large events. It never broke on me during a run, it never crashed, and I made some good dough with it.
• I have used Final Cut Pro X and Motion to edit and release a feature length film. I actually migrated from pre-FCPX (8? 9?) to Adobe Premiere in 2010, used Adobe’s terrible products diligently for almost a decadebecause I thought I had to, but finally ditched that shit for alternatives (Final Cut Pro, Motion, Blender, Logic Pro, Affinity Suite, primarily). I just last month finally cut off our Adobe CC subs for the production company, although we kept the Adobe Stock sub.
• I use 1Password for cross-platform password management, but more-often-than-not I don’t actually use it and rely on iCloud passwords, which work perfectly fine “for me”, to the point that I am wondering if when the next rev of the OS comes out if I can ditch 1Password…
• I have iCloud+/AppleOne because 1. I wanted 2TB of iCloud storage 2. I wanted Hide My Email and VPN 3. I wanted unfettered access to AppleTV (which is great, and I am in the business anyway) and Apple Arcade (which is pretty good, awkually).
• I used to use Dropbox for professional file sharing, but after some privacy snafus on their part, I flirted with pCloud for a while (until I learned that you couldn’t “ln -s aName aNotherName” in the pCloud file system). We now have Sync.com as a non-US-based, zero-knowledge encrypted professional file sharing service and I couldn’t be happier with it. It is cheaper and more secure than Dropbox.
• I travel extensively and I use Apple Maps almost to exclusion. I also use apps like inRoute and Scenic (I ride motorcycle long-distances sometimes). I have Google Maps on my devices, but never use it (I have de-Googled myself in general, though incompletely).
• I use iMessage and FaceTime extensively and have never had a problem sending or receiving messages (that I am aware of). I especially like handing off phone calls to my other devices (for example, sitting at my laptop or desktop and my phone in the other room rings and I can call or answer on my computer).
• I use Nova (and its sister app, Transmit) for website creation (using Hugo+Bootstrap) and other low-level programming/text operations. I did use VSCode previously, but I am quite satisfied with Nova and happy to support small MacOS developers with $.
• I use Safari almost to exclusion, but Firefox in a pinch and exclusively on Windows.

I have used Linux (at one time I would build my own boxes), Windows (professionally), and macOS for decades relatively interchangeably, but in my dotage I am more and more becoming a MacOS-only user.

I use Safari as my primary and almost exclusive browser (falling back to Firefox once in a blue moon). I wouldn’t say I love or hate it - it’s JUST a browser after all - but there are a couple of things that come to mind:

1. I “hate” that some web developers just develop for Chrome and call it a day, though I usually have the ability to say “Well, fuck you, too.” and not patronize those sites. Apart from that, Safari works and works well (for me) on all the sites I care about.
2. I “love” that Safari integrates effortlessly across all my Apple devices - and this is a powerful motivator to stay in Safari’s garden. I like bookmark and secure password sharing. I like handoff. I like using “advanced” integrated features like Hide My Email (if I wasn’t using HME, I’d be using Firefox or DDG’s counterpart, but HME is “right there” and “works well”) and VPN (ditto).

(On my Windows 11 box, which I touch with ever-decreasing frequency, I use Firefox exclusively, and if Safari didn’t exist, that’s what I would use on my Mac.)