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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

#321

Post by lilyball »

hrktb wrote: post #276
lilyball wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a few paragraphs, got the same impression, and closed it, because the author admitted they're using practically none of the Apple ecosystem and therefore have already discounted the overwhelming majority of the improvements in Catalina. It's certainly disingenuous to have a clickbait headline "Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it's worth" when it's missing "as explained by someone who doesn't use music, photo…

It's a fair take though. macOS is a product on its own, especially if you come from the hardware pespective, wanting for instance a iMac Pro and seeing the OS that comes with it as a glorified hardware manager. Is macOS Catalina the best OS for your machine ? Is it genuinely better than the precedent version ? That's a question worth pondering.

macOS is a product, that includes Music, TV, Photos, and all sorts of other apps, which were a major focus of the user-facing changes in Catalina. If you don't use Music, TV, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Calendars, or any of the other software, then you're discounting 95% of what the OS provides.

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

#322

Post by greedo »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #91
greedo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I still get patches from Apple for my older Macs that are classified as obsolete. Mostly stuff like Safari etc.

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

#323

Post by Wowfunhappy »

greedo wrote: post #322
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I still get patches from Apple for my older Macs that are classified as obsolete. Mostly stuff like Safari etc.

You do?! What OS, and how recently?

I know Mavericks hasn't gotten anything since 2016...

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

#324

Post by teekert »

mobilemidget wrote: post #219
teekert wrote: post #205

My father feels the same, he initially started using apple because he felt his Windows machine was using too much of his time for bs. Now he just upgraded to Catalina and Photos stopped working with this Synology based library, even I, a computer nerd, have already spend an hour at the problem. We are about done. I feel that Windows 10 would be just fine for him (or maybe I can get him sold on Ubuntu). Where pictures…

"Photos stopped working with this Synology" I have this too, I planned to look into it this weekend to see if there is a fix. I have moved my photos library to my synology just before upgrade to Catalina, as well having a little one, your photos exponentially increase. When I want to sync now it says it syncing, 'finishes within 3 seconds' and didn't sync at all..

I did some research, officially Apple does not recommend or support any photo Libraries on a NAS. It has to be a local APFS or HFS+ disk. Insane. My father is now pulling his 120 GB library over wifi to a local disc to see if it can be fixed. They really want you in the Apple cloud. I thinking maybe use Synologies "Moments" but apps get less than 2 stars... Meanwhile over here in Ubuntu-land I have Shotwell sitting in a nice folder structure working perfectly, simple , easy to move to something else and easy to backup.

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

#325

Post by fredsted »

oneplane wrote: post #313
fredsted wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's really slow.

To us perhaps, but most western users are only a fraction of people on the world. Even if you take BRIC out of the picture you still have billions of people that either nave no computer or a computer that is so old a recent PC with a rotating disk is still way faster. It's very easy to get lost in a current context.

Sure, I'd rather have a computer with spinning rust than none at all, but we're talking about new $1000+ machines where there's no rationality behind using these disks in 2019, or even 2009. It's just a money making machine for Apple.

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

#326

Post by aeorgnoieang »

madaxe_again wrote: post #220
Pokepokalypse wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me 2013 was the real sweet-spot for MBP. I still use mine almost every single day. It's a beast, and has been very reliable. Keyboard is WAY nicer to type on than the current generation. It's a little thicker and heavier, and lacks USB-c ports, but it's still damn fine.

Yup. Still on my pimped-out 2013 MBP. Still has plenty of horses, and the only things that have failed were a fan ((cats & cigarettes) simple replacement), and the power lead wore through. Super reliable machine, still relevant performance-wise. I plan on using it until it disintegrates. Edit: I wonder if apple regret making these machines. They seem like a failure of planned obsolescence - at least, until new releas…

I find planned obsolescence to be fascinating. First-order, it seems obviously terrible, both of the companies that (deliberately) practice it and for their hapless customers.

But second-order (and beyond), particularly from the perspective of the companies, I'm less sure what's best, or if there even is a global, objective 'best'.

Consider the most radically distant point you can imagine in 'self-supporting human group' configuration space, that's still capable of making something like a MacBook. What does it look like? How is funded/financed/supported? Is it temporary, i.e. more like a one-time project like making a movie or a video game? Or is it, somehow, a 'going concern'?

The 'going concern' attribute is one that I think is perhaps under-appreciated. One thing that companies, and other long-lived organizations, do well is in organizing people with specific expertise long-term. Think about making a computer, or a washer, or any physical product. Surely the people that make those things, that have done so for an extended period, have a huge amount of detailed knowledge, and wisdom, pertaining to making the specific things they make. What would be lost by them NOT having made the same things for so long? What would our computers, or washers, or pencils, be like if they were all produced by something more like a Kickstarter project?

Imagine another possible world where the 2013 MacBooks were just as good as in our world, but also intended to last indefinitely, perhaps more easily repairable, or made of more common or standard components somehow. Say they lasted 30 years, easily, before needing to be replaced. How is Apple different in this other world? How do they retain engineers like they do now? How do Apple's competitors do this? And, maybe most importantly, how much do MacBooks cost in this other world?

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

#327

Post by aeorgnoieang »

alwillis wrote: post #308
mihaaly wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my young ages I was hungry for new technology, learning and adapting the progress, experimenting. Nowadays I am for something that works and can be used for what I need. Apple is good in the first, and gives no f* about the second. Their products - including hardware - is for the young. I think I am going to accept that and 'adapt mindset' to this premise as an ultimate step of not 'resisting change'. (I already g…

I don't think their products are for the young. Short answer: I'm definitely not young—I started on an Apple II in high school. I do keep my software current and pay attention to things. I lived through 68000 -> PowerPC -> Intel, so I know how this goes. I've been running Catalina since the late betas and haven't experienced the issues others have, other than my old Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad not working with…

> I also switched to Zsh ...

Wait, how hard is it going to be to keep running Bash?

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