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Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

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Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#81

Post by Wowfunhappy »

avidphantasm wrote: post #31

> The Unicode Consortium has introduced a lot of new emojis since Mavericks was released. We need to add them to Mavericks! No, we don’t. If I had infinite free time, I’d build a Linux distro that completely lacks support for emoji (and animated GIFs).

But what are you going to do when someone else uses an emoji in a way that changes the meaning of what they wrote?

You don't have to like them, but to me, using a computer that can't display emojis would be kind of like using a computer that can't display the simicolon character.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#82

Post by reactordev »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #44
bazmattaz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have fond memories of my Hackintosh years. Over time the frustration of updating to the latest OS and having to deal with breaking changes just sucked all the joy from it. Especially when I really needed to use the computer for something. I might tinker again some time soon. I had thought of building a Mac mini for a home theatre setup but then again Apple TV just works so well

I hackintoshed a few times over the years too. It could be frustrating at times, but when you had a solid setup that updated cleanly and everything it felt like a cheat code. Just as stable as a real Mac, but more capable, quiet, and expandable. One of the laptops I hacked for a while had a 15.4” 1920x1200 screen panel (much nicer than on contemporary 15” MacBooks), 4 USB-A ports, FireWire, Ethernet, an eSATA port, a…

if I were a bitcoin whale...

OpenBSD on the Desktop can be a thing if someone were just to make a good experience with it, from the ground up, like Steve Jobs did with NeXT. Just don't choose Objective-C.

The issue is money. Developers are expensive, AI isn't anywhere near ready for this task, and we have a lot of learnings from good UI design and developer patterns (both pro, and anti). ElementaryOS was supposed to be that thing but quickly devolved into yet another distro.

These older machines deserve some love too. Not everything needs to be <2 years old. Not everything needs to be shiny. This is why you're broke. Stop spending :D

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#83

Post by [deleted] »

WillAdams wrote: post #68
os2warpman wrote: post #60

My favorite thing about MacOS is how it has never changed how it changes. It's like the game Civilization. Every new version is worse than the last. Every new version is more bloated. Every new version has changes that ruin it. Every new version is "less snappy". Every new version ruins everything. Not even with OS X, we're talking back to the System 6 days, almost 40 years ago, it has always been the same. System 6…

One notable standout here was 10.6 which was simply 10.5 recompiled for native Intel and dropping PowerPC support --- that said, for early 10.x each version consistently became more performant up through 10.5, it's just that 10.6 was the version where that was the _raison d'être_.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#84

Post by Wowfunhappy »

latexr wrote: post #75
nutjob2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was pretty funny. “You can do anything, and you should be able to do anything, nothing will break”, then in the same paragraph “but don’t do this specific thing”. I think you're being a bit pedantic. There is no contradiction. You can indeed delete System Preferences and nothing will break, ditto for utilities, it just makes life difficult if you do. For a locked down system for say a child though it might mak…

> There is no contradiction. Neither have I claimed there is one. I understood the point perfectly, I simply found it humorous. Things can be funny without being contradictions, my point was about the tradeoffs inherent to different types of OS lockdown. > You can indeed delete System Preferences and nothing will break, ditto for utilities, it just makes life difficult if you do. And—surprise!—most people don’t want…

(I know I already replied in a different comment, but just thinking about this more.)

> Both can also be true of your elderly relative, or your partner, or your cousin, or your friend who doesn’t want to fiddle with the damn machine, they just want to get their shit done without having to worry about screwing up anything. Your other friend will want the freedom to do everything and ask you for help.

...you know, this is also why, as much as I love the hackability of Mavericks, I also kind of liked the way Apple initially implemented System Integrity Protection in El Capitan.

It was easy to turn off! Just boot into recovery mode, open the Terminal, type in a short command, and boom, SIP will never bother you again for the entire life of that computer! The process wasn't onerous, or even difficult as long as you knew how to open a Terminal in recovery mode, or were willing to learn. And if you couldn't do those things, well, you probably shouldn't turn off SIP!

Where I get annoyed is with the signed system volume stuff, because that consistently gets in your way! It is impossible for any type of user to "unlock" modern macOS.

Although then again, even going back to the original SIP without SSV... well, we did already have a system for this before SIP, didn't we? It was called UNIX permissions! If you didn't know what you're doing, or didn't want to learn, why were you using an administrator account? Why did your elderly relative ever have superuser privileges in the first place?

...the answer is kind of obvious, actually. Administrator accounts are the default, and even if you went out of your way to avoid one, you'd be unable to, for example, install Photoshop.

I wish that is the problem Apple had solved! Instead of introducing an entirely new layer on top of the UNIX security model, make non-admin accounts the default setting for new users, and then make those accounts a tad more capable (and lean on Adobe to stop being awful).

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#85

Post by dardeaup »

carlosjobim wrote: post #59
JKCalhoun wrote: post #52

> There is no modern mainstream browser engine that works in Snow Leopard. Sadly this too will be true in Mavericks soon enough. If you decide to web browse on a separate machine though, you can still have your Mavericks machine be your main one.

Aren't there old versions of those browsers?

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

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#86

Post by Wowfunhappy »

dardeaup wrote: post #85
carlosjobim wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there old versions of those browsers?

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 really needs a good, up-to-date sandbox. There has to be protection somewhere in the chain.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#87

Post by latexr »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #84
latexr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no contradiction. Neither have I claimed there is one. I understood the point perfectly, I simply found it humorous. Things can be funny without being contradictions, my point was about the tradeoffs inherent to different types of OS lockdown. > You can indeed delete System Preferences and nothing will break, ditto for utilities, it just makes life difficult if you do. And—surprise!—most people don’t want…

(I know I already replied in a different comment, but just thinking about this more.) > Both can also be true of your elderly relative, or your partner, or your cousin, or your friend who doesn’t want to fiddle with the damn machine, they just want to get their shit done without having to worry about screwing up anything. Your other friend will want the freedom to do everything and ask you for help. ...you know, this…

There is also another layer: when SIPS was introduced, there were tons of articles and videos teaching people to turn it off when they shouldn’t. This ranged from uninformed social media “developers” who confidently spewed dangerous bad advice, to outright bad actors trying to compromise your machine. Non-savvy users could still break their own systems by disabling these features easily.

But largely I agree with you. I wish Apple had taken longer to fully develop a robust solution from the ground up instead of the status quo of piling on year after year to a semi-broken system.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#88

Post by WorldPeas »

bazmattaz wrote: post #40
reactordev wrote: post #33

You know, there comes a journey in every developers life where all roads lead to hackintosh. It’s like a right of passage. I did it back during the Snow Leopard years with NForce motherboards (wrote some kernel extensions). Now, it’s just out of nostalgia.

I have fond memories of my Hackintosh years. Over time the frustration of updating to the latest OS and having to deal with breaking changes just sucked all the joy from it. Especially when I really needed to use the computer for something. I might tinker again some time soon. I had thought of building a Mac mini for a home theatre setup but then again Apple TV just works so well

hackintosh-in-docker has made my life so much easier. also w/r/t the apple tv, I've always wondered if anyone released an installer for the old x86 apple TVs, those would be fun to try and modernize.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#89

Post by JKCalhoun »

dardeaup wrote: post #85
carlosjobim wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there old versions of those browsers?

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

And some sites refuse to load if your browser is too old. I think Google was like that — requiring a newer browser to access, for example, your Google drive.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#90

Post by xp84 »

> 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

This is the part that hits home the most for me.

I get the benefits of the hardened pc-as-appliance that Apple has shoved down all our throats as "for our own good" but using a modern Mac compared to even Mavericks, or Windows XP, feels to me like if someone came into my house and confined me to a coat closet which they've padded and sealed off. This isn't my house anymore, someone else controls everything and only they can give me permission (revocable at any time) to do literally anything. They promise me that I'll never hit my head now, but I never had that problem in the first place.

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