Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

morrick.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 327 posts

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

#81

Post by wwweston »

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…

> Technology changes. That's a fact of life.

Is it? It's not really clear to me there's any sort of hard technical limit that requires operating systems to abandon components that support older software.

There may be an economic argument that every team has a limited amount of attention and resources, and older libraries/apis/layers may compete with newer ones, and that argument may even have some merit if the newer stuff is categorically better.

But, OTOH, there's MS's backward's compatibility, so it's clear that some platform owners can bear the cost just fine. Too bad Apple just doesn't make enough money for that, I suppose. :/

Perhaps they could think differently and charge users who want to stay on older versions of macOS for the updates. That'd provide a signal of how valuable it actually is and perhaps even a supporting revenue stream.

Unless resources aren't actually the issue.

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

#82

Post by twarge »

Real data required: How many people who experienced data loss or other issues have one of the following underlying conditions:

1. Creeping storage corruption that is exposed by the upgrade. 2. Latent configuration issues from running the betas.

Personal experience: I have had several issues with apps on a machine that went through all the betas. Had to spend some quality time with Console to sort things out. Zero issues with machines that upgraded untouched by betas.

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

#83

Post by Wowfunhappy »

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…

There's a lot of space in between "Company X has wronged me" and "I'm happy with company X". I feel very let down by Apple right now, and I sense the author does too. As the saying goes: I'm not angry, just disappointed.

The fact that macOS updates are optional, and you can downgrade at any time, really does help a great deal here. However, Apple's three years of security updates per release isn't much.

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

#84

Post by zten »

ladzoppelin wrote: post #10

For what its worth, Catalina has made my 2019 run slightly smother and less buggy. This might be because it reset all the preferences or its just in my head. All my "pro" audio stuff seems to work and my Apogee Groove works like before. My usb hub network port/driver would fail/crash randomly on Mojave needing a reboot but this has not happened on Catalina. Edit: And someone else replied, the DPI/font stuff seems to…

I'm happy with it too. They just added Radeon RX 5700 XT drivers to the latest beta release, something I have been eagerly awaiting since the card got released.

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

#85

Post by pazimzadeh »

dkonofalski wrote: post #62
pazimzadeh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is it's always slightly risky to upgrade, and if there aren't life-changing new features this time around (which there aren't) then in the short term you're simply rolling the dice and simultaneously losing compatibility with all 32-bit apps. It's for these reasons that for the first time in years, I'm not immediately updating.

That's fine, though. There's nothing that says that you can't stay on the version of the OS that you're using until you decide not to. That decision, though, comes with the consequence that you likely won't be able to run new software. If you're not worried about new software and don't want to be until the point comes where you need new software, the updates have always been optional.

Sure, as long as they keep fixing bugs and issuing security updates for the older OS's. But Apple Support articles start with "Update to the latest version of macOS and try again"

There is also no particular reason that I can tell why certain features are only added to the latest OS, though we have become desensitized to this. For example - why can't the ability to extend the Mac desktop to the iPad be added to Mojave?

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

#86

Post by johnisgood »

dkonofalski wrote: post #62
pazimzadeh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is it's always slightly risky to upgrade, and if there aren't life-changing new features this time around (which there aren't) then in the short term you're simply rolling the dice and simultaneously losing compatibility with all 32-bit apps. It's for these reasons that for the first time in years, I'm not immediately updating.

That's fine, though. There's nothing that says that you can't stay on the version of the OS that you're using until you decide not to. That decision, though, comes with the consequence that you likely won't be able to run new software. If you're not worried about new software and don't want to be until the point comes where you need new software, the updates have always been optional.

What was wrong with being able to run both old and new software? I thought that was a perfectly fine middle ground, and now the customer MUST decide between old vs new. Does not sound good to me, at all. I would pick Linux instead. :)

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

#87

Post by jjtheblunt »

twarge wrote: post #82

Real data required: How many people who experienced data loss or other issues have one of the following underlying conditions: 1. Creeping storage corruption that is exposed by the upgrade. 2. Latent configuration issues from running the betas. Personal experience: I have had several issues with apps on a machine that went through all the betas. Had to spend some quality time with Console to sort things out. Zero iss…

Real data: my Mac Pro transitioned from betas to production fine, albeit with some annoying warning messages about unexplained dangers during upgrade, about a Preboot folder that would be deleted, so be ware.

Hours of backing up later, it just upgraded off the beta train perfectly, though didn't explain why it took some valid files (perhaps cached from iCloud) and dumped them into a folder.

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

#88

Post by jjtheblunt »

ladzoppelin wrote: post #10

For what its worth, Catalina has made my 2019 run slightly smother and less buggy. This might be because it reset all the preferences or its just in my head. All my "pro" audio stuff seems to work and my Apogee Groove works like before. My usb hub network port/driver would fail/crash randomly on Mojave needing a reboot but this has not happened on Catalina. Edit: And someone else replied, the DPI/font stuff seems to…

Same here

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

jolmg wrote: post #79
newnewpdro wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by johnisgood »

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.

I think the misunderstanding here is that you did not answer the actual question, which is, what makes Linux less secure in comparison to macOS? What you mentioned applies to all OSes, and does not answer the question.
Post reply on HN