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Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

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Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#111

Post by hhas01 »

musicale wrote: post #23
chalst wrote: post #7

Also worth reading John Gruber's complaints, over and above bugs: > But I don’t know a single expert Mac user who is not seriously annoyed by the heavy-handed security design of Catalina. Not one. Every single expert user I know is annoyed. That is a bad place for MacOS to be. MacOS 10.16 needs a serious course correction to fix this, and if 10.16 goes the opposite way — growing even more heavy-handed in restricting…

I'm kind of OK with "macOS Vista." I've wanted more restrictive and granular permissions for a long time. Web browsers don't need unrestricted access to the entire file system. Neither do games. Preview doesn't need to access the microphone. Word doesn't usually need to record the screen. PowerPoint should not be sending email or accessing the camera. TextEdit doesn't need access to my contacts or calendar. And I don…

Just about everything you said there is wrong. Hey, don’t get me wrong: if you enjoy 10.15’s tedious security-theatre crap then knock yourself out. But you are not qualified to dictate what other users need or want to do; only they are.

Like Apple, you are thinking App-centrically. Stop. Apps are not the center of the users’ universe. The users’ own tasks are.

Therefore you need to think task-centrically—i.e. What does the user need/want to do?—and structure your security model to enable and support that.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#113

Post by hhas01 »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #53
spoondan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an important point to be made here about the gap between theoretical and practical security. Overly elaborate password policies (excessive complexity demands, passwords expiring, no reusing last five passwords) end up causing annoyed users to make bad decisions that compromise password security. Similarly, an excess of popups doesn’t increase security. It annoys users to the point they stop thinking about ind…

>Overly elaborate password policies (excessive complexity demands, passwords expiring, no reusing last five passwords) end up causing annoyed users to make bad decisions that compromise password security. Similarly, an excess of popups doesn’t increase security. It annoys users to the point they stop thinking about individual security decisions. It's particularly annoying b/c there's a subset of craftsmen developers…

“And then there are Apple engineers who seem to be so far behind the curve that they're just now discovering and implementing patterns that others not only discovered and tested years ago, but discarded years ago.”

QFT. Because there are not enough upvotes in all the world.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#114

Post by neurostimulant »

athiercelin wrote: post #9

I've heard these upgrade stories since the 90s (on Mac). It got better a few years back, and it's back again at hit or miss but in the end it's like backup strategies: it's basic knowledge at this point but still needs to be repeated. If your mac is a production machine, don't jump on any of the updates, decide if you need the update then check your programs one by one. If you can, pop into the Apple Store to test th…

Yup, this is pretty much what I do regardless of operating system. Just don't upgrade to the latest major version immediately after release. Wait around a bit to see if other people reported any major issue, and then wait until those issue fixed before upgrading.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#115

Post by xkemp »

How can there still be people writing these yearly "I'm so disappointed" articles. It's the same for every single MacOS release. I bet if I look through the archives here, the last halfway usable OS release from Apple was Mac OS 8.

You'd figure the people writing these articles wold leave for other platforms, and those that remain should be less likely to do hot-take duty next year, considering they didn't feel the need to this year?

Unless there's constant renewal in the pool of people-with-something-to-say. I guess today's worst-MacOS-ever is their future good-old-days-of-quality.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#116

Post by bengale »

fredsted wrote: post #25
ble52 wrote: post #11

Am I the only person that doesn't have any significant issues with Catalina? I'll admit, some of the permissions-related pop-ups are a bit annoying, but overall it's been a rather stable macOS version for me (developer, working mostly in Xcode and JetBrains IDEs).

Not sure what the issue is either, once you add the necessary permissions for your apps, it doesn't ask again. Only complaint is Apple seem to ignore long-standing bugs that have been there for years, like monitors switching around every time you dock your MacBook. They should make a Snow Leopard-like release and clean out their bug tracker.

I don't get monitors switching, but the apps don't return to their position when I switch from docked to mobile which is a pain.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#117

Post by thawaway1837 »

xkemp wrote: post #115

How can there still be people writing these yearly "I'm so disappointed" articles. It's the same for every single MacOS release . I bet if I look through the archives here, the last halfway usable OS release from Apple was Mac OS 8. You'd figure the people writing these articles wold leave for other platforms, and those that remain should be less likely to do hot-take duty next year, considering they didn't feel the…

This is absolutely not true.

I haven’t been in the Mac ecosystem for some time now, but I can say for sure that no one was writing these articles until Snow Leopard at least.

I thin what has led to the prevalence of these articles is Apples shift to an annual release cycle for their Mac OSes. It used to be well known that you didn’t upgrade to an OS until the .1 version at the earliest, and it was only until .3 or .4 that a new OS X would be absolutely stable. Unfortunately with the annual release cycle the OS isn’t stable for even a few months before it is replaced. And I’m convinced that the fixes aren’t as good anyways because as soon as one OS is out, many devs are likely working on the next one.

Catalina itself appears to have become a bigger disaster due to what may be considered good decisions, such as better security and killing 32 bit, but done in a way that reminds people of Vista. With nag screens and a poor transition path. That’s why the noise against Catalina has been even louder.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#118

Post by Hamuko »

jen20 wrote: post #60
fredsted wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what the issue is either, once you add the necessary permissions for your apps, it doesn't ask again. Only complaint is Apple seem to ignore long-standing bugs that have been there for years, like monitors switching around every time you dock your MacBook. They should make a Snow Leopard-like release and clean out their bug tracker.

This isn’t something I’ve encountered and I dock to three different desk setups most days. It’s typically good enough that it remembers the correct layout for multiple of the same type of monitor once configured. Is your monitor sending the serial number correctly?

I think I heard someone complaining about this when docking to two identical displays (with identical model names in display settings).

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#119

Post by tambourine_man »

thawaway1837 wrote: post #117
xkemp wrote: post #115

How can there still be people writing these yearly "I'm so disappointed" articles. It's the same for every single MacOS release . I bet if I look through the archives here, the last halfway usable OS release from Apple was Mac OS 8. You'd figure the people writing these articles wold leave for other platforms, and those that remain should be less likely to do hot-take duty next year, considering they didn't feel the…

This is absolutely not true. I haven’t been in the Mac ecosystem for some time now, but I can say for sure that no one was writing these articles until Snow Leopard at least. I thin what has led to the prevalence of these articles is Apples shift to an annual release cycle for their Mac OSes. It used to be well known that you didn’t upgrade to an OS until the .1 version at the earliest, and it was only until .3 or .4…

Memory is a curious thing. Snow Leopard had a very problematic release but got better during the dot updates. Its “no new features” slogan was commendable and resonated well, but it meant under the hood changes that broke things.

Perhaps they should reconsider the yearly release schedule. Either go back to a more conservative one, letting things settle after many point updates and enjoying the achieved stability for longer, or adopt a continuous evergreen model, like Chrome and Firefox.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#120

Post by ble52 »

skc wrote: post #78
ble52 wrote: post #11

Am I the only person that doesn't have any significant issues with Catalina? I'll admit, some of the permissions-related pop-ups are a bit annoying, but overall it's been a rather stable macOS version for me (developer, working mostly in Xcode and JetBrains IDEs).

Now you know how some of us who rarely have issues with Windows feel :)

I actually have a second PC desktop with Win 10 for gaming purposes. Good quality hardware components, regular software updates, no weird "antivirus" software, browser extensions, "cleaner" apps, etc. and it's working like a champ, no complains here as well :-)

I think this whole "System is shit" is more of a user problem than a software problem ;-P

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