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Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

morrick.me

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Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

#71

Post by greedo »

semiotagonal wrote: post #36
dkonofalski wrote: post #15

That reads less like a reasonable, well-thought breakdown and more like a whiny diatribe coming from an entitled teenager. If the entire argument boils down to "I don't wanna!", then what's the point? Don't upgrade. Apple isn't forcing anyone to upgrade at all. If you need to run all your old software, don't upgrade. That's not a fault of the new OS. Technology changes. That's a fact of life. Even the example of Aper…

> That reads less like a reasonable, well-thought breakdown and more like a whiny diatribe coming from an entitled teenager. A customer is legitimately entitled to upgrades that aren't actually downgrades. > Apple isn't forcing anyone to upgrade at all. > Just don't act surprised and attacked when it doesn't work anymore years from now. Well... if Apple isn't forcing people to upgrade now, but will later, then there'…

A customer isn't entitled to any upgrades. Apple used to charge for upgrades in the past. Now they give them away for free. Apple has never forced anyone on to upgrade their Macs. I have a fourteen year old Mac Pro that still works fine. Sure it can't run Catalina, but I don't need it to.

And complaining? Complaining about what? You act as if Apple is bricking computers if you don't upgrade...

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

#72

Post by saagarjha »

mulle_nat wrote: post #65
mark_l_watson wrote: post #3

I couldn’t tell from the article if the author had actually tried Catalina. I have been running the beta since day one of the beta release and the only issue is that applications have to be signed or built locally. Apple wants macOS to be a safe walled garden like iOS and Chromebooks. I am fine with this, but I also have a very nice Linux laptop to play with. I expect organized crime and most governments to continue…

How does a user "try out" Catalina, decide that its not for him and then revert back to Mojave ?

Install it on a new volume/virtual machine?

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

#73

Post by jolmg »

newnewpdro wrote: post #66
curt15 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I avoid arbitrary web browsing on my Linux laptop and just use it for coding. What makes web browsers less secure on Linux than on macOS?

Unless you're going out of your way to run your browser in a container or dedicated VM on Linux, there are substantial risks associated with browsing the web in terms of exposing all of your information in /home, which might include ssh and pgp private keys, basically everything your user can access. But we have a number of solutions for running things in containers if you just use them. Early on firejail was popular…

> substantial risks associated with browsing the web in terms of exposing all of your information in /home, which might include ssh and pgp private keys, basically everything your user can access.

What are you talking about? You're saying that a random website is given unrestricted file access to everything the user can access. Can you back that up with a concrete example or a link explaining the issue or something?

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

#74

Post by saagarjha »

bastardoperator wrote: post #53

Then switch or don't upgrade. For all the bash purist you're gonna need this: export BASH_SILENCE_DEPRECATION_WARNING=1

I just install a recent version of bash from MacPorts instead of relying on the one that ships with the system.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

#75

Post by newnewpdro »

jolmg wrote: post #73
newnewpdro wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're going out of your way to run your browser in a container or dedicated VM on Linux, there are substantial risks associated with browsing the web in terms of exposing all of your information in /home, which might include ssh and pgp private keys, basically everything your user can access. But we have a number of solutions for running things in containers if you just use them. Early on firejail was popular…

> substantial risks associated with browsing the web in terms of exposing all of your information in /home, which might include ssh and pgp private keys, basically everything your user can access. What are you talking about? You're saying that a random website is given unrestricted file access to everything the user can access. Can you back that up with a concrete example or a link explaining the issue or something?

All it takes is a browser exploit.

We've had plenty of browser exploits for any given browser, sandboxing the entire program a la containers is the most effective mitigation outside of running it in a dedicated vm.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

#76

Post by Spooky23 »

lostgame wrote: post #49

I don't understand the possible, potential advantage removing 32-bit support even has . It doesn't improve security for my sake, because I can't use a system that doesn't allow for 32-bit apps. Why can't we have a Rosetta equivalent? I've had to tell every MacOS user I know, especially non-techie ones, just to not upgrade, and consider something other than Apple moving forward.

Future releases of MacOS will probably support ARM. They don’t want to take away functionality for a big release like that.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

#77

Post by imron »

duskwuff wrote: post #57
imron wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I also have to believe the designers at Apple are trying to make things better Except they're not trying to make things better. They're just changing things - often ignoring their own UI guidelines to do so - and introducing bugs that cause data loss at the same time. Updates shouldn't cause data loss - especially for something as critical as email.

There is no evidence, and no reason to believe, that the UI changes in Mail are related to reports of data loss.

You are correct, updating the UI and the underlying storage mechanism are almost certainly separate things falling under a broader umbrella of "lets change up Mail instead of fixing long-standing bugs".

I would really love to see every other major release of macOS and iOS to be a bug-fix release rather than a "lets change all the things" release.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

#78

Post by jeremyjh »

dkonofalski wrote: post #59
semiotagonal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That reads less like a reasonable, well-thought breakdown and more like a whiny diatribe coming from an entitled teenager. A customer is legitimately entitled to upgrades that aren't actually downgrades. > Apple isn't forcing anyone to upgrade at all. > Just don't act surprised and attacked when it doesn't work anymore years from now. Well... if Apple isn't forcing people to upgrade now, but will later, then there'…

>legitimately entitled No, they are not. This isn't an upgrade to their existing OS like a patch release. This is a new OS completely and developers were all warned years in advance that Catalina would drop 32-bit support. This is not a downgrade in the slightest. >but will later I have a Mac Mini from 2005 that still runs MacOS Leopard just as well as the day I bought it. I can't install all the latest, greatest sof…

No computer that is not getting security hotfixes is "just as good" as it was when it was getting those updates.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

#79

Post by jolmg »

newnewpdro wrote: post #75
jolmg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> substantial risks associated with browsing the web in terms of exposing all of your information in /home, which might include ssh and pgp private keys, basically everything your user can access. What are you talking about? You're saying that a random website is given unrestricted file access to everything the user can access. Can you back that up with a concrete example or a link explaining the issue or something?

All it takes is a browser exploit. We've had plenty of browser exploits for any given browser, sandboxing the entire program a la containers is the most effective mitigation outside of running it in a dedicated vm.

All it takes is a browser exploit, in any OS.

What does the possible existence of exploits have to do with macOS being more secure than Linux? macOS can also have exploits.

I don't understand where your claim that there's a specific risk of unrestrained file access to websites comes from. In my eyes, saying that it could be true because exploits could exist nullifies everything you said.

You could apply that argument to everything: There is a substantial risk in iPhones giving websites unrestrained access to making phone calls on your behalf because all it takes is an exploit.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

#80

Post by morrick »

amiantos wrote: post #21

Author hasn't tried Catalina, and their biggest complaint appears to be that the email app allegedly has a new UI--but I don't think it does. Mail app looks the same in Catalina, doesn't it? I can't say I noticed any differences. Either way, this is an extremely long blog post to say basically just "I don't like change, and I'm not willing to see change as a potential improvement to try to accept it".

I am the author, and I may be guilty of writing an extremely long blog post; but judging by your response, you didn't bother to read it that thoroughly. The new layout in Catalina's Mail.app is actually my smallest complaint.

I don't like change when it unnecessarily breaks things that used to work just fine. I don't like change when it is haphazardly imposed on a yearly basis by a company which has clearly stopped caring about Mac OS as far as management is involved.

I used to like change more when it actually made me work better, when the advantages clearly outweighed the downsides, when progress and improvements were noticeable and thoughtfully implemented.

But hey, that's me.

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