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Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

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

#101

Post by pier25 »

threeseed wrote: post #43
devxpy wrote: post #23

Not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but all of this seems like a cheap strategy to make users move to iPadOS.

That makes no sense. 1) Apple makes more margins on Mac hardware. 2) Catalina allows you to basically run iPad apps on the Mac. They wouldn't do this if they were trying to push users to iPad. 3) iPadOS and OSX are fundamentally different. There is no way Apple could ever replace the Mac with an iPad.

> Apple makes more margins on Mac hardware

Maybe but sells a lot more iOS units.

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

#102

Post by SeanLuke »

I have a Korg Microsampler. It's a common music synthesizer (er, sampler) keyboard manufactured in 2009. The only way to upload and download samples to this device is via a piece of proprietary software made by Korg USA. Which is 32-bit. So I'm in the situation that OS X Catalina will not only break my various 32-bit applications, it will also obsolete external hardware that I use regularly. I am lost as to why Apple would do this with no legacy option whatsoever.

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

#103

Post by jyrkesh »

Not a Mac user, so I have a little anecdotal evidence here, but with all the buzz about Catalina being broken, has this been a problem in earlier versions?

Just last night I spent all day trying to do some work on a friend's 2011 or 2012 MBP (16 GBs RAM, i7, should be fully capable). They needed Windows 10 for some special software, and wanted some help cleaning the hard drive to make room for the partition. After hours and hours of fighting tools and trying to work around Boot Camp Assistant limitations (it insisted on always reformatting as exFAT, in spite of Win10's 4+ GB .wim files), I finally determined that it was probably all fixed in a later version of macOS and proceeded to update her to Mojave.

Fast forward another hour and we're stuck in a bootloop of failing Mojave installs with some barebones diagnostics and repair tools that do nothing.

Thank GOD she had months worth of complete Time Machine backups we could easily restore.

But it's insane to me that a system update served by the App Store in the golden path on a piece of hardware still within it's support lifecycle could fail so catastrophically. I've given the middle finger to Windows' "Don't turn off this computer" messages scores of times, and it's always been able to boot up again just fine. As of late, I've not even experienced the need to do "Automatic Startup Repair" like the old days.

Is Apple really slipping that hard right now?

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

#104

Post by ridiculous_fish »

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.

I worked at Apple during the 64 bit transition. The answer is that 32 bit was quite painful to maintain.

The 64 bit transition was a compatibility break that enabled shedding technical debt, like NeXT-isms that no longer applied. In particular it added the ObjC 2 runtime, which allowed features like adding a variable to a class without needing to recompile subclasses.

So long as 32 bit is supported, it is difficult for Apple to use these features internally. If you add a variable to a class you break the 32 bit system. If you add a variable conditionally under an #ifdef then it is annoying to manage the separate build configurations, or disparate 32bit/64bit behaviors.

This only applies to the Mac; iOS always had the modern runtime. But macOS engineers are very very happy to see 32 bit go because it was painful to support.

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

#105

Post by kevingadd »

amiantos wrote: post #38
throwaway1777 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about all the iCloud bugs? https://tyler.io/broken/

Countering a personal anecdote with another personal anecdote. Here's another: I've been using Catalina since release on multiple Macs and haven't had any problems. I'm also an extensive user of iCloud services, Photos and Drive are very important to me and if I had any issues with either I'd probably lose my mind.

"iCloud did to my files" is not an anecdote. It's an assertion of software behavior. The fact that only one sample is being provided does not magically make it an anecdote. You can say the person reporting the bug is a liar, but that's not how quality assurance works in the real world.

Most likely the bug they encountered happens in a specific scenario, but regardless, "personal anecdote" or "it works for me" are not appropriate ways to respond to a bug report, let alone one about data loss.

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

#106

Post by bastardoperator »

saagarjha wrote: post #74
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.

Bash is depreciated in favor of Zsh in Catalina. Regardless of you where you get bash from, I prefer brew, a nag message is presented to the user about Zsh everytime a terminal session is initiated:

  The default interactive shell is now zsh.
  To update your account to use zsh, please run `chsh -s /bin/zsh`.
  For more details, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208050.
The export I provided prevents this nag message from being displayed for Bash users.

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

#107

Post by kevingadd »

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.

How does it count as a transition if everything just breaks? Them giving you warning doesn't make it a transition, it's just an EOL with advanced notice. A transition implies that you're moving from one working state to another, or replacing the old thing with a new one. How am I supposed to replace unmaintained/old software when there's no new 64-bit, notarized version of it?

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

#108

Post by kevingadd »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #104
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.

I worked at Apple during the 64 bit transition. The answer is that 32 bit was quite painful to maintain. The 64 bit transition was a compatibility break that enabled shedding technical debt, like NeXT-isms that no longer applied. In particular it added the ObjC 2 runtime, which allowed features like adding a variable to a class without needing to recompile subclasses. So long as 32 bit is supported, it is difficult f…

Would you say this is due to architectural limitations in how 32/64-bit are implemented in OS X, vs the way compatibility works on say Windows or Linux? I know people have claimed that part of this is due to the need for system binaries/etc to all include full 32/64-bit versions.

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

#109

Post by tomc1985 »

jyrkesh wrote: post #103

Not a Mac user, so I have a little anecdotal evidence here, but with all the buzz about Catalina being broken, has this been a problem in earlier versions? Just last night I spent all day trying to do some work on a friend's 2011 or 2012 MBP (16 GBs RAM, i7, should be fully capable). They needed Windows 10 for some special software, and wanted some help cleaning the hard drive to make room for the partition. After ho…

> insisted on always reformatting as exFAT, in spite of Win10's 4+ GB .wim files

exFAT doesn't have a 4gb limitation like FAT32

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

#110

Post by tomc1985 »

asperous wrote: post #5

"why mess with Mail’s classic layout? It’s been my preferred layout since Mac OS X 10.0, and that type of layout has basically been the one I have used since I started using email more than twenty years ago" This seems to be the heart of the post. I see the value in stable, unchanging things, but I also have to believe the designers at Apple are trying to make things better, and I think that is honorable.

> Apple are trying to make things better, and I think that is honorable.

Unwanted help isn't help at all

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