Live data from Hacker News

We need to document macOS

eclecticlight.co

21–30 of 266 posts

Re: We need to document macOS

#21
Just in case no-one read the leaflets that came with their new Mac, Apple has fairly comprehensive macOS documentation online:

https://support.apple.com/macos

A lot of this is built into your Mac also, at Help > Mac Help in the Finder.

For those who prefer physical books, I've always found the "Missing Manual" series to be excellent.

Re: We need to document macOS

#23

This is Apple we are talking about. If you built a knowledge-base like this on your own time and for the right reasons I bet they send a DMCA.

I doubt it. What claim would they have over a non-fiction work they had no hand in creating? They could sue for other reasons but the judge would have to be a fucking idiot to do anything other than order Apple to pay court costs. How much software documentation has been written by third parties?

Re: We need to document macOS

#24

Better: We need to stop using undocumented proprietary systems like macOS.

And use what? Windows spies on you and they call it a feature. Linux is a great server OS but a really terrible choice on the desktop. I'm not convinced that free software documentation is any better, either.

macOS is the best desktop OS going, for the moment.

Re: We need to document macOS

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In contrast to undocumented free (open) systems? Documentation is an issue irrespective of prorietariness(??!) of a system. I welcome this initiative. (Yes I know there are examples of documentation excellence to be found in some free/open systems. You can advocate their use whilst also having well documented macOs.)

I mean, I'm not the target audience and I don't have the attachment to OSX as a platform, but if I was gonna expend the energy to document a thing, I'd hope it goes towards a good cause and isn't just free labor for like the richest corp I can think of from the top of my head.

Documentation effort towards OSX would help vastly more people than similar efforts for any flavor of Linux, which nobody plus epsilon uses (except amongst devs).

Impact is a big factor in how useful an activity is, even if it's tied to a big company.

Re: We need to document macOS

#26

Better: We need to stop using undocumented proprietary systems like macOS.

In contrast to undocumented free (open) systems? Documentation is an issue irrespective of prorietariness(??!) of a system. I welcome this initiative. (Yes I know there are examples of documentation excellence to be found in some free/open systems. You can advocate their use whilst also having well documented macOs.)

> In contrast to undocumented free (open) systems? Documentation is an issue irrespective of prorietariness(??!) of a system.

Windows and Android had much better documentation than Linux for a long time.

That is one of the major reason of why they are where they are nowadays.

Re: We need to document macOS

#27
If you haven't already, join the MacAdmins Slack. https://macadmins.herokuapp.com It's an open-invite slack team with over 12000 users - sysadmins, MDM developers, security researchers and so on.

We have various ongoing efforts to document and improve the macOS experience for users. If you have a macOS question, you'll likely find the answer there.

Re: We need to document macOS

#28

> Yet Apple’s documentation for users and those supporting users has all but dried up You and me we both RTFM, but the population at large? Not so much. When computers were in their early days more of the people that used them were willing and even interested to learn a lot about what was going on. Now the computer is a tool used by most people to do specific tasks. Just like I don't care to learn how to fix my car t…

I think a more common example would be Googling a daemon that's hogging memory or CPU. Ideally, the top result would be Apple docs with a clear, concise description. In practice, it's usually an Apple discussion thread (which I do give some credit for them hosting/maintaining) or Stack Exchange. Although, I don't think I've ever seen an official response in their forums. It's usually a meandering set of posts (and "me toos!") before I can get any description of what it is or how to address it.

Sure, the average person doesn't have Activity Monitor (or top) open, but they could be walked through that process when their fans blare and battery life nosedives.

Re: We need to document macOS

#29

Better: We need to stop using undocumented proprietary systems like macOS.

And use what? Windows spies on you and they call it a feature. Linux is a great server OS but a really terrible choice on the desktop. I'm not convinced that free software documentation is any better, either. macOS is the best desktop OS going, for the moment.

> "but a really terrible choice on the desktop"

This is a very subjective claim. Maybe a long long time ago you could say this, but not the case today.

> "not convinced that free software documentation is any better"

That's beside the point. If that were true, that is an argument for focusing a community effort at improving documentation for a free desktop. And actually with linux the problem is not as much a lack of documentation, but rather that the documentation is a little overwhelming, because it is just too specific or technical. (ever typed "man" something in a terminal?)

Re: We need to document macOS

#30

Just in case no-one read the leaflets that came with their new Mac, Apple has fairly comprehensive macOS documentation online: https://support.apple.com/macos A lot of this is built into your Mac also, at Help > Mac Help in the Finder. For those who prefer physical books, I've always found the "Missing Manual" series to be excellent.

How come I never see them come up in Google searches? I have seen it come up when looking for conditioning your battery or the shortcut keys for Target Disk Mode. But more often I'll search for a runaway process name or an OS message that is spamming Console. The top results are Apple Discussion posts that go on for pages, but often don't have a clear result. I also recently was trying to learn more about macOS' init system and got lost like the article mentioned.
Post reply on HN