91–100 of 200 posts
Does anybody have an idea why Mavericks isn't available from Apple?
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_.
> 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(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.…
...see, I actually had the opposite frustration with SIP. So many people were so hesitant to turn it off, even when they had a clear use case.
This is where the argument looses me. I agree that it's good to protect people from screwing up by accident. But if someone has taken the time to reboot their computer into recovery mode, find the Terminal app, and run a very specific command, that is not an accident! That is a user clearly requesting that the training wheels be removed. And sure, maybe the user was following bad advice, but it wasn't an accident!
People are allowed to do stupid things, that's how we learn. Again, it's great to have guardrails for people who want them, and it's great to have those guardrails on by default for people who don't want to think about them or even know they exist. But deciding which users are savvy enough to be worthy of disabling SIP feels Gatekeepy to me.
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On the BSD side there has been efforts such as helloSystem ( https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/ ) and rayvnOS ( https://ravynos.com/ ) that aim to provide a FOSS recreation of the Jobs-era Mac OS X experience. Both can be considered BSDs as opposed to mere desktop environments. helloSystem uses X11 and Qt, while rayvnOS uses its own version of Cocoa. However, it’s been a few years since I’ve seriously investigated t…
Both those projects can only go skin deep. The macOS experience is not only how it looks, but the depth of its interactivity and the thoughtful implementations within that depth. I still shudder when I see the limitations of dragging files in Windows. The fact I can drag a folder to a save dialog to jump to that folder is so natural to me, and Windows and Linux never bothered with those details.
The worst transition for me was Big Sur (or, more precisely, Mojave -> Monterey when I bought a new MacBook in 2021). The useless margins, the unification of title bars and toolbars that no one asked for, the borderless buttons (I enabled "show borders" in accessibility settings), SF Symbols (no pixel grid alignment whatsoever), and the redesigned alerts, are the worst. From what I've seen of Tahoe, it makes it even worse, both with the touchscreenification and with the wasted screen area.
While I loved Mavericks (and I went through all the versions of OS X since Jaguar to macOS Sonoma), I have to say that in my opinion it just keeps getting better. Yes, a few restrictions came along but nothing that keeps me as a system developer from being productive.
The Apple SDK's, CLI tools, compilers and libraries available are world class, and I still got my Unix prompt, while having a snappy UI. Don't get me started on Apple Silicon; now I never have to wait for anything.
I'm still on Sonoma though, but it's because I take so long to upgrade. It's best practice to wait a few months with new releases of macOS. I've used that strategy for 20 years and it hasn't failed me once.
I really liked IRIX and will always have a soft spot for Sun's OpenWindows on Solaris, but there is no way in hell I'd use either as a daily driver these days, and I can almost bet either have fewer actively exploited vulnerabilities than Mavericks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(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.…
And seriously, it is the year of the Linux desktop. I’m shocked at how much “just works” like a Mac.
I feel like I have a system that’s more compatible with commercial software than a Mac (thanks Steam/Proton).