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

morrick.me

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

#201

Post by Wowfunhappy »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #196
syntheticcdo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there should be a single switch for expert users to toggle to effectively say “I trust all of the software on my Mac”. As an "expert" software engineer, I completely trust absolutely zero software running on my computer, in my browser, or basically on any device anywhere. I begrudgingly put up with it all because there is no alternative. Adding friction is good because it will eventually push (force?) developers to…

Yes, it’s because of this that I leave SIP enabled even though it can occasionally be annoying. Running without SIP feels like being naked, because you really can’t trust third party software any more — even if the app itself isn’t doing something shady, someone somewhere is using a hole in it to do something shady.

Note that without SIP, you still have all the protections of the normal vs root user account. The key is to be careful when entering your admin password. This is no different than most Linux installations (although a few systems of course have their own extra hardening mechanisms).

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

#202

Post by mihaaly »

xkemp wrote: post #176
speeder wrote: post #130

I never been an Apple fan. When iPhone launched I was skeptical, and didn't wanted one, and so on... I often argued with apple fans, and one thing that was clear to me, is that people that tried apple products around 2008 or so often would just love it, and many would become apple fans too. I used my first Mac around that time, and although I found some stuff just silly (mouse with only one button...) I overall liked…

Your relationship with both your sister and Apple users seems to mainly consist of condescension. For your sister, there's some added dependency: of course she's eventually gonna fold if she wants you to do tech support and you more or less make it a requirement that you get to make her decisions forthwith. FWIW the stereotype of Apple targeting "beginners" who are after "fashion items" is ridiculous. There are milli…

I believe the relationship with the sister is more like gloating on the misfortune of hers. In rooting for Apple... Which stems in a well deserved criticism of Apple.

Apple does not do improvements, it just forces changes!

When was the last time the changes were dominantly necessary for the sake of users? It was more like marginal in the past 10+ years. Instead doing excessive actions for the sake of questionable features mostly created for the marketing department and the clockwork keynotes! Revolutionary keyboard, charging, touchbar, blooming of adapters, eliminating connectivity, sacrificing usability for the rampage of thinness, force touch, new UI for the sake of new UI just to name some of the biggest issues!

Apple well deserve the condescension!!

(not the Apple users! They are just unfortunate trusting Apple)

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

#203

Post by blablabla123 »

It's the same with every Major update with breaking changes. This is not even macOS specific, if these updates wouldn't happen, every software would be like Windows or MS Office which stays backwards compatible for decades. It makes sense to adapt as user and also that developers need to adapt, e.g. to create 64 bit software. Also there are always work-arounds.

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

#204

Post by dunham »

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).

Catalina has been working fine for me since the release.

On my newer laptop, with Mojave I had a few Touch Bar related panics. I think they resolved that before Catalina came out.

My work laptop is Mojave. It still has the issue where it will lock up if I connect the external monitor while it is suspended. And recently it does this thing where the WindowServer task starts spinning and continues even if I kill off all the apps.

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

#206

Post by inviromentalist »

briandear wrote: post #195
inviromentalist wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried very hard to understand what benefits a MacBook has over Windows/Linux. I've boiled it down to- it can compile iOS apps, and you can use Unix commands. The first is Apple intentionally being anti competitive, the later is a genuine benefit that I nearly am unaffected by being a Windows/Linux user. However the strangest thing came up in my research, the number of SWE that said they liked the way it looks. I…

Aesthetics aren’t valid? Much of the fields of architecture, art, design, and even engineering would disagree. It also doesn’t seem that you have “tried very hard” to understand the benefits of a Mac. “you can use Unix commands”? That’s the big benefit you discovered?

Feel free to correct or add.

I'm genuinely trying to figure out where I'm wrong.

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

#207

Post by pdonis »

S_A_P wrote: post #193
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).

I will preface this by saying that for anyone who does have issues, it sucks. I empathize with you. Data loss is frustrating. Catalina seems to have been an especially large paradigm shift as well, so seems there are edge cases. Having said that, Im curious if these folks went in blindly with no upgrade plan. ANY time you update ANY OS, you should do a bit of recon to know what you can and cannot live without, and ta…

> e folks went in blindly with no upgrade plan. ANY time you update ANY OS, you should do a bit of recon to know what you can and cannot live without, and take a safety copy of those items.

The "Part 1" article in the series addresses this: yes, we techies understand that we need to do this, but most people are not techies. Most users of Macs are not techies. They expect upgrades to Just Work, and they expect their machine to always take care of their data. That's a lot of what they think they are buying from Apple, which is not unreasonable given that that is (or at least used to be) one of Apple's main selling points as compared to Windows: they carefully integrate the hardware and software to make sure everything Just Works.

If Apple is no longer making that guarantee, why would you pay all the extra money for a Mac?

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

#208

Post by vmchale »

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…

> I'm kind of OK with "macOS Vista." I've wanted more restrictive and granular permissions for a long time.

I'd prefer sensible (silent) defaults, such as disabling PowerPoint's access to my webcam.

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

#209

Post by filchermcurr »

wlll wrote: post #149
filchermcurr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my problems seem to revolve around using an eGPU with the laptop shut. I'll randomly get intermittent freezes where the display stops updating and user input stops being accepted. When I look at the logs, AMDRadeonAccelerator is going nuts. The AirPlay icon in the menu bar also flashes between Sidecar, Airplay, and nothing at all. I had to remove it for my sanity. Speaking of Sidecar... performance is abysmal…

My problems are mostly around external monitors too. I have the new 16", but I had issues on my 2014 MBP running mojave too. I have two external monitors, an Apple 27" and a Samsung 32. Sometimes the mac won't wake up my Samsung external monitor and it needs re-plugging to get it recognised (re-arranging my windows in the process). Also, if the laptop sleeps and puts the external displays to sleep, when the laptop is…

Oh yeah, the oh-too-familiar multiple monitor horror! I finally gave up and just bought a single ultrawide. I could feel my preciously slim sanity slipping away day by day with the struggle to wake my computer up without incident. nervous twitch

Strange about Chrome! I've always been a Firefox user, so I never had that particular issue. Unless the billions of Electron applications count...

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

#210

Post by atonse »

cerberusss wrote: post #17
atonse wrote: post #6

I have heard enough horror stories about stability and security prompts that it’s the first macOS release I’ll probably skip. Can’t afford to lose a day or more of productivity to fiddling with my OS.

You do you, but the relentless flow of horror stories didn't stop me from upgrading and it was flawless for me. I'd recommend reading these critical pieces and seeing whether any of it actually applies to you.

The main thing I get concerned about is homebrew packages. Because that's where all my dev work happens (everything else is browser based).

So there really is no way to know what packages are supported. Unless homebrew has a way to check..... I've never checked to see if it has a "compatibility check for catalina" mode

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