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OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

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Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#241
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never in RL heard anyone call it "OS ten"

Just curious what age range you are in. From what I've personally noticed, younger folks tend to almost all pronounce it "O-S-ecks" and most in my generation (~40) tend to pronounce it "O-S-ten".

24 year old here. I exclusively call it "O-S-ten" and cringe every time someone says "O-S-ecks". Only particular reason I can think of is that we had OS 9 machines in grade school that slowly got replaced by OS X machines. Seemed natural I guess.

Plus, "O-S-ecks" gets too close to "O-S-sex". I was a kid...

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#242
post #208

It seems like more and more of the work on MacOS is dedicated to propping up iOS instead of simply making a great desktop OS. As someone who does not use or want Apple's mobile devices, it's been hard to get excited about these last few releases.

I like Apple's mobile devices but ever since the iPad turned out to be a giant iPhone instead of a true desktop/mobile hybrid, I'm scared as hell that they will lock down their desktop/laptop ecosystem the way they do with mobile. It's clear now that iOS is absorbing everything Mac. Now I'm trapped between MacOS, Windows 10 and maybe Google's Chrome environment. Linux, please take off. I wished the open source commun…

There are some really great UI/UI designers out there for Linux distros. Check out https://numixproject.org/.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#243

Copy/paste across iPhone and Mac is very useful. All the other features are Meh. I really don't want to be that guy talking to my Mac at work. I can't be sure that all my questions to Siri are not awkward to speak out. Would have been great to have a textual interface though. You know that Keyboard thingy that is always with a Mac?!

I loved that I could hear the audience audibly gasp when the presenter brought that up and that the presenter was caught off-guard.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#244
post #175
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metal is a proprietary 3D technology ported from iOS. Apple chose to do another closed tech instead of adopting Vulkan or fixing their slow OpenGL implementation. If you look at the numbers, you'll see that Metal is about 30% faster than OpenGL on OS X, which is interesting because OpenGL is about 30% slower on OS X than on Windows. Which means they're forcing developers to use their proprietary API to get comparable…

To be fair (regarding "closed tech"), Apple was hardly the only one to release a propriety Vulkan alternative (there's also Mantle and DX12) and Apple released Metal to developers almost two years before Vulkan 1.0 was released.

Vulkan is based on Mantle, and DX12 can coexist with Vulkan because Microsoft doesn't take responsibility for all of Windows' OpenGL and Vulkan support. In this area at least, Apple really is doubling down on proprietary technology where others aren't so much.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#245
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-level features like 3x larger emojis in an app? O.o

Hey, one less reason for me to use FB Messenger. In complete honesty, I prefer FB Messenger because it seems a lot more expressive and it's way easier to access your photos. FB is really stomping on iMessage in the chat realm, and I'm sad I have to wait for iOS 10.

I really enjoy FB Messenger. There's a part of me that is disturbed by how deeply integrated into my life Facebook has become, but there's another part of me that just loves the convenience of it all.

Now if only they'd fix that random infinite-reload-loop bug that's been plaguing me for the past week...

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, it's a very valid assumption to make given that mobile data quotas are increasing and metered broadband connections are most likely going to be a thing of the past. Edit: Also, Apples targets the premium segment of the market. Who are less likely to have such limitations.

As bandwidth gets cheaper our usage will increase. Adding the capability for privilege certain usage (I just want to check my email while I'm tethered) is crucial for the foreseeable future.

This is a great argument, but I suspect that we'll see a similar pattern as we did with processing power: We got to the point where we really didn't need more horsepower and could focus on other things, such as energy efficiency.

That won't happen at the same time everywhere but where I'm from it's almost here already. Every apartment in the city either has fiber or really fast cable, it's cheap and the limitations are so high that you really have to try hard to run into them. For mobile data you can get 4G with 20+ gigs per month for less than $20.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#247
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copy/paste across iPhone and Mac is very useful. I don't use a Mac or an iPhone, but I applaud this sort of device harmony. That said, I am worried that it would unnecessarily leverage the cloud. My guess is that instead of the two devices directly communicating with one another—that is, instead of leveraging the fact that they are probably on the same local network and should just work in concert—the clipboard dat…

Yes, the Hand-off mechanism works without iCloud involvement or even using your active internet connection. I just tried by disabling Wifi on my Mac and opening up message to continue on a semi written message from my iPhone. Now, there could always be a iCloud fallback that says if there is internet, just use it. Perks of using non-free software is that it will almost always non-verifiable.

> I just tried by disabling Wifi on my Mac and opening up message to continue on a semi written message from my iPhone.

How is this possible? Bluetooth? USB? Or are we talking about a previously synced draft that's still there when you turn your internet off? Sounds like a basic iCloud cache to me.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#248
post #97

Seriously, did Apple fire their OSX / macOS team? Pretty much all new features are spinoffs of their iOS infrastructure (Siri, handover, etc.) and the main OS development and innovation seems to have stalled. Not even a feature like telling software that you're on a metered connection and it shouldn't run backups! Is there anyone at Apple still working on innovating / improving OS X? Like people that tried to bring i…

They typically leave the keynote to high level features, or really big developer-focused features. However, you're in luck; looks like Apple is introducing a new file system: https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/schedule/#/details/701

I think I can hear John Siracusa cheering from the other side of the pond.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very valid assumption to make given that mobile data quotas are increasing and metered broadband connections are most likely going to be a thing of the past. The trend is in the other direction. AT&T now has data caps even on DSL lines. Almost all "unlimited" plans really have some limit.

Isn't fiber being rolled out across the US?

Yep. And it has a cap too. In fact, that cap is so low that if you max out your connection for just over two hours you'll be over the cap for the month.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#250
post #62

Will this make the OS suck less? Seriously, at least for my use case, and in my opinion, OS X has been on a downward trend for a while (since 10.6). They need to fix the bugs, and get back to a nice stable OS that "just works." That's all I'm interested in.

Apple really needs to improve OpenGL support at least. Bump version to 4.4. They should also fix any OpenGL bugs in a timely manner. Windows file sharing (at least with Windows 10 Pro) is pretty broken as well. Transferring multiple large files (especially 2 GB+) from OS X to a win10 file share seems to fail every time.

> Apple really needs to improve OpenGL support at least. Bump version to 4.4. They should also fix any OpenGL bugs in a timely manner.

Not going to happen. Metal is the One True Way now.

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