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Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

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Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#141

Post by memsom »

nutjob2 wrote: post #16

This is way I feel, but my last stop is 10.15 (Catalina) having started with 3.2. Modern macOS is just trash. My goal over the longer term is to fully migrate to Android, especially desktop mode. There are several reasons for this but maybe the fact that given the typical hardware for Android means it's less likely suffer the terminal bloat of desktop systems.

I stayed on Catalina for a long time as it was the last version my Macbook Pro 2012 supported natively. It is a pretty solid OS, though it is harder to get Apple services running on it now.

I personally just use Sonoma now on my Macbook Pro M3 Pro.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#142

Post by saagarjha »

Telemakhos wrote: post #64
latexr wrote: post #26

> Don't you love how hackable everything is? Removing stock apps from the Applications folder is completely safe—nothing will break—and this is your computer, so you should make it your own. You can always restore apps later using Time Machine. Just don't delete System Preferences, or anything in the Utilities folder. This was pretty funny. “You can do anything, and you should be able to do anything, nothing will bre…

Is this actually true? I thought Chess.app was, from OSX Lion (prior to Mavericks) yea unto the present, protected from deletion from the Applications folder as somehow intrinsically important to the system. It's apparently load-bearing, not just a holdover from NeXTSTEP but an integral element that the OS must defend at all costs to ensure System Integrity.

Absolutely not, that's an internet rumor.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#144

Post by saagarjha »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #129
scarface_74 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you install a piece of niche software that corrupts your entire system when installing it with SIP turned off… https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/15235262/chrome-upd...

Because Google majorly screwed up, in a piece of software that runs with administrator privileges! Why the heck was it running with those privileges in the first place?! It's kind of nuts that Google faced basically no blow-back for rendering people's systems unbootable. The Chrome updater could also have had a bug that completely deletes your home directory, and SIP wouldn't protect you. I guess your computer would…

It is trivial to escalate to root and then do precisely that when SIP is disabled.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#145

Post by wila »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #86
dardeaup wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there are but running older browsers is a security risk. The older it is the more vulnerable it is.

Exactly, and just to add: browsers are where I draw the line in terms of security. If the OS is old, whatever, my router has a firewall and I trust the applications I install. But my browser is running gobs of random Javascript from who knows where every day! I guess you could do the thing where you disable Javascript by default and re-enable it on select websites; I'm personally not willing to do that. So a browser…

If you can't run a recent browser anymore then there's always the option to run the browser in a VM.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#146

Post by saagarjha »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #125
stuaxo wrote: post #7

This is nice, I wish there was way to bring the old Rosetta over, though I guess it probably needs something like all/some parts of the OS to be compiled as fat binaries to work,

You'd need to compile a custom kernel, but it might it be possible. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/rosetta-on-10-7-and-abo... > 10.6 xnu does have special support for rosetta, namely in kern_exec where it seems to set some special ppc environment bits if the oah binary is invoked (and of course there's the handler to call the oah binary for a ppc mach-o, but the former is more important for minimal viable examp…

Trying to get this to work three OSes later seems kind of hard.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#147

Post by saagarjha »

illwrks wrote: post #111
nailer wrote: post #102

> Each update seemed to chip away at something I liked about the platform. I have a MBP, 48GB RAM running today's stable version of macOS Sequoia 15.6.1 If I do cmd+space and type something it has 0 results for anything in my Documents folder. It's been that way for momnths despite all the OS updates. macOS used to be good.

Have you inadvertently set the search privacy on your drive? https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchl1bb43b84/... If that's not the issue try rebuilding your Spotlight search index: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102321

No, Spotlight has just been broken for several years. Thankfully Tahoe seems to have improved it a bit for me.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#148

Post by Razengan »

> I came to a decision. It was time to leave modern macOS behind.

It was the opposite for me: I decided to leave Windows behind after a mounting cascade of frustration and disappointment with Microsoft and Their Way of Doing Things.

Fast forward to Now: I'm still happy on macOS Tahoe. Apple does some dumb annoying shit too but it hasn't yet gotten to the point where I give up computing altogether and retire to a Tibetan monastery. Or switch to Linux. Whenever I get to look at the current state of Windows it has nothing that makes me want to go back. Sure, like an ex it still has a few things that you wish you could still enjoy, like a few games, but then you remember why you left them in the first place.

Some of the things that irk me the most about macOS:

• The dumbness or complete lack of documentation about some specific things, specially on the developer side.

• Some features touted as hot and sexy during a new release's PR wave and then rotting in a half-baked state.

• Some minor bugs remaining unfixed for years.

• Most improvements being tied to a major version cycle, even if they could easily be shipped in a minor monthly/quarterly update.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#149

Post by replete »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #36

I have a soft spot for Mavericks too. It’s not 100% perfect (as post notes, scroll bars have been flattened and by then sidebar item icons had lost their color), but otherwise visually its probably the closest thing possible to “perfect” Aqua era OS X. It feels very refined in several ways that the earlier versions didn’t. In my opinion the runner-up in terms of visuals is actually 10.4 Tiger, though — the dark grays…

I relied on the TotalVisor - every system I have I will hack together something to get this functionality:

- Windows hotkey bottom file explorer: https://github.com/replete/productivity-ahk/blob/main/Bottom...

- MacOS hotkey bottom Finder: https://gist.github.com/replete/245986ddfb5a912f0bc71f5708be...

There's XtraFinder which promises something similar, but now all modern macs require disabling security features, which seems a bit much for a convenient hotkey.

I have also requested TotalFinder-like feature for PathFinder(https://cocoatech.io/) which is the closest thing to what TotalVisor did.

Wild how tiny little utilities can change your expectations of using a computer. Simply cannot get by without quake terminal and bottom file explorer anymore, on any machine I daily drive.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#150

Post by zapzupnz »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #122
SlowTao wrote: post #115

So you know how there are different religious factions that broadly have very similar views but they practically go to war due to the variance of small details... screw mavericks, OSX 10.4 Tiger FOREVER!!!!

Hey, Tiger is cool, you won't get any shade from me! I would find it extremely difficult to use as a daily driver though, much moreso than Mavericks. I do try to support other old versions of OS X where possible. Aqua Proxy supports Snow Leopard for example, which took some effort. (I wish it could support Tiger too but there's no way to build Go binaries for Tiger.)

Not even by compiling Go to WASM, then transpiling WASM to C++, then building the resulting C++ with Tiger's GCC?
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