Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by Wowfunhappy » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #71

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'…

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...

> Apple used to charge for upgrades in the past. Now they give them away for free.

But back then, they also supported old releases for longer.

I actually suspect this was part of Apple's internal calculus, or part of it. "Free upgrades will get installed by more people, so we can drop old releases more quickly." A fine tradeoff under some circumstances, but right now, the old way of things is looking quite appealing.

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

#92

Post by johnisgood » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:08 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #70

namesbc wrote: post #67

I have too many 32bit games that will never be updated to 64bit. For the first time in 18 years, I am not going to upgrade to the latest mac os. Apple orchestrated a much smoother transition from OS 9 to OS X and RISC to x84 than from 32bit to 64bit.

They did? 32-bit apps continued to be supported for a full decade after the hardware architecture went 64-bit. During that entire decade, Apple issued steadily-increasing warnings to users that eventually, the 32-bit support would cease. Seems like a smooth transition to me.

I do not even get the transitioning part within this context. If you are pretty sure that the software you are using will not work on Catalina, then what significance does transitioning have? Having more time saying your goodbyes to your old games (in this case), or what? 32-bit applications will not magically turn into 64-bit ones.

In any case, I think it was a silly decision to "force" the customer to pick between old vs new software, but I am sure they can afford it. People will probably forgive them for it, and then completely forget about it. New users in the future probably will not even have anything to forget (or forgive), unless they want to run "really old" software, in which case people will just boo on them, and say "times change, technologies change, you gotta adapt, man" and the like which seems to be the case today with respective to both old software and hardware.

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

#93

Post by robbrown451 » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:08 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #72

mulle_nat wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Except that that may not really tell you much. If you have a system that is working, and are worried that Catalina might make it no longer work as it did before, you don't learn a lot by installing on a new volume or virtual machine.

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

#94

Post by SliderUp » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:08 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #70

namesbc wrote: post #67

I have too many 32bit games that will never be updated to 64bit. For the first time in 18 years, I am not going to upgrade to the latest mac os. Apple orchestrated a much smoother transition from OS 9 to OS X and RISC to x84 than from 32bit to 64bit.

They did? 32-bit apps continued to be supported for a full decade after the hardware architecture went 64-bit. During that entire decade, Apple issued steadily-increasing warnings to users that eventually, the 32-bit support would cease. Seems like a smooth transition to me.

But why warn, why stop supporting it at all?

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

#95

Post by pier25 » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:09 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #70

namesbc wrote: post #67

I have too many 32bit games that will never be updated to 64bit. For the first time in 18 years, I am not going to upgrade to the latest mac os. Apple orchestrated a much smoother transition from OS 9 to OS X and RISC to x84 than from 32bit to 64bit.

They did? 32-bit apps continued to be supported for a full decade after the hardware architecture went 64-bit. During that entire decade, Apple issued steadily-increasing warnings to users that eventually, the 32-bit support would cease. Seems like a smooth transition to me.

> steadily-increasing warnings

Did they?

I only saw warnings in Mojave.

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

#96

Post by Wowfunhappy » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:10 PM UTC

dkonofalski wrote: post #55

mullen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catalina does break a lot of games. I am pretty sure that if you get on Steam, the list of games that Catalina breaks is longer than the list of games that work on Catalina.

I'm sure it does because most games didn't update to 64-bit. I still fail to see how that warrants an article like that. If you know the games won't work and you still want to play them, don't upgrade. It's not that hard.

As it happens, the author isn't upgrading.

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

#97

Post by johnisgood » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:11 PM UTC

SliderUp wrote: post #94

Bud wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did? 32-bit apps continued to be supported for a full decade after the hardware architecture went 64-bit. During that entire decade, Apple issued steadily-increasing warnings to users that eventually, the 32-bit support would cease. Seems like a smooth transition to me.

But why warn, why stop supporting it at all?

Because the removal of widely used things that worked fine caught on for some reason. Apple has been doing this for a while now. Jack, USB, ESC key, whatever else I cannot recall.

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

#98

Post by pier25 » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:12 PM UTC

ms013 wrote: post #60

Nobody is forcing people to upgrade - you’re free to stick with an older version of any OS, although possibly at the cost of the OS going out of support from the vendor. Why such a decision seems to lead to these long winded opinion pieces on the internet is weird - don’t these authors have something better to do than opine about how what they want doesn’t line up exactly with what some vendor is giving them for free…

> Nobody is forcing people to upgrade

Except if you want the latest Xcode version.

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

#99

Post by Wowfunhappy » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:13 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #76

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.

That would effectively mean that Apple decided to purposefully cripple their current products in order to make their future products more appealing.

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

#100

Post by newnewpdro » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:13 PM UTC

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…

Different OSes have different sandboxing capabilities.

Until relatively recently, Linux had effectively none, just chroot, and selinux which almost everyone disabled for a decade.

The point, which you seem to be missing, is that with generalized sandboxing tools like containers, you can isolate any application to limit the potential damage of application exploits.

It's a form of defense in depth. We must assume browsers have many bugs and are exploitable. Ok, from that perspective, what do we do to safely access untrusted input (the entire internet) with the browser on a computer we also do things like banking, private communications, and access privileged servers from? We run it in either a dedicated VM or more recently, we use sandboxing technologies like containers.

I don't understand why this is so difficult for you to grok.