111–120 of 222 posts
It's not a macOS release with out the Ars Technica review: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/09/macos-10-12-sierra-the-... They also have an article to create a bootable USB install drive for clean installs: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/how-to-make-your-own-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
MacMini 705 days (2 years) Mac Pro 1009 days (almost 3 years) Appalling!
Yeah, it is appalling. Making Macs has truly become a tiny side business for Apple in more ways than one. It's clear that Macs don't make a dent in its profits and so aren't important. Considering how much money Apple has, it's not an issue of not having people to work on this or of lack of talent.
The desktop/laptop realm enjoys a great amount of freedom in that most everything works well and there just aren't a lot of features that Apple is ready to compete on. They aren't going to win with gaming, they aren't controlling enough of the market to battle for niche programs, and the major software suites they do have run pretty damn well on current hardware.
It would be a numbers update only and I just don't really see a lot of reason until Apple starts doing something to justify the numbers. Youtube and Facebook can only load so fast for their users.
It used to be that Windows was the one that was always made fun of for its instability and bugs, and everyone would upgrade to a new version only after SP1 was released. Well, at one point it got even more funny (for other reasons) when the very first release of Windows Server 2008 was actually Windows Server 2008 SP1 (so the first "service pack" released later was SP2). [1]
The scene on the OS X/macOS front has not been good for a long time with respect to .0 releases. If there is one release of Mac OS X that will be held dear and always remembered of fondly, that'd be Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It came nearly two years after its predecessor, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and had only under-the-hood improvements. [2] But subsequent releases after it have become more bloated and not provided a great experience in their .0 versions. After a long gap, OS X El Capitan was supposed to be like Snow Leopard, with improvements mainly in stability and performance.
The problem with bloated and less stable major releases is that whenever a better release comes along, many Macs may not be eligible to upgrade to them. This leaves the owners of those machines stuck with a relatively newer but somewhat crippled OS with no easy way forward. It would be good to have Apple focus more on the stability and performance aspect in every single major release, but that's just a dream.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2008#Service_Pa...
So, there's no new features that anybody asked for, save the clipboard thing, which has unfortunate security implications, and there's a ton of nonsense none of us will ever use, as the Mac platform gets increasingly complex ("the computer for the rest of us" is now anything but), moves away from Unix compatability, and doesn't do anything useful with this additional complexity, but does cause emacs to crash. I'd wai…
Many asked for tabs in every app, shared clipboard, more voice control, improved Photos app and better iTunes, picture in picture, and more full featured Messages app. Plus few would ask Apple to take back the ability to save space (up to tens of GB) through iCloud/Desktop integration and more.
In the meantime, there's also a new filesystem on the way, already in early public developer versions.
>and there's a ton of nonsense none of us will ever use, as the Mac platform gets increasingly complex
Like? I can't possible thing anything that got made more complex, save for a couple of trivial things (with an equal amount of other stuff or more becoming easier).
>moves away from Unix compatability
In what way it had moved one iota from Unix compatibility?
>and doesn't do anything useful with this additional complexity
What complexity? What exactly did you find more complex compared to 10.10, or 10.7 or 10.5 or whatever?
Besides something like "sandboxed apps make it difficult to piss all over the filesystem, like old apps could".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
MacMini 705 days (2 years) Mac Pro 1009 days (almost 3 years) Appalling!
Yeah, it is appalling. Making Macs has truly become a tiny side business for Apple in more ways than one. It's clear that Macs don't make a dent in its profits and so aren't important. Considering how much money Apple has, it's not an issue of not having people to work on this or of lack of talent.
I've been running the final beta for a couple of weeks, tonight I plan on downgrading to El Cap, and staying there for a few months. I have not found a single useful feature, and many bugs, both on the OS (time machine seems more broken than usual) and in other apps (notably Emacs keeps crashing). Maybe I'm getting old, but I would strongly recommend leaving this one until at least .1, if not .3
Earlier quoted context omitted.
AS an outsider looking in. What is holding a developer from moving to Linux? I don't understand the draw of OS X for developers especially the past few years. These yearly updates seem to break everyone's workflow for a while.
I've been actively looking for a MBP-quality laptop that shows up on my doorstep running Fedora for about 2 years, but at this point all I'd need is a significant uptick in hardware to justify starting fresh. I'd also point out how frustrating it is that Linux laptops tend to be on the cheap side (on par with a 13" Air), or generally massive, plastic, and loud.
Anyone having trouble with macports or homebrew?
sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local
Heads up for anyone using Karabiner to remap their keyboard-- it's not updated for Sierra yet. I figure that's a more popular app among HN crowd than most places, and losing it is really painful.
Hijacking this to point out about as comprehensive a list of software compatibility with Sierra as I have found: https://roaringapps.com/apps?platform=osx&os=sierra I have used it on past releases (El Cap, Yosemite, etc) and it has always been a great source for tracking the software I care about as a developer.
I'm in shock at how many applications that are incompatible. This is far from a upgrade, considering it's breaking nearly every essential application I use in my workflow. You would assume that backwards compatibility is Issue #1 in regards to operating system updates.
I'd rather see updated Mac hardware. According to MacRumors, it's been 490 days since the last MacBook Pro Retina was released.