My recommendation is that never update only clean install. I never had any problem with macOS.
Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)
231–240 of 248 posts
Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 never said that. I am a Designer and I have an animation degree, there are lots of Macs in the field, and they are not for "professionals", but for actual professionals, the computers I mentioned I used were MacPros that were actually rather interesting machines, and it was sad when Apple decided to stop making them (now they are making them again but with ludicrous prices). What I DID mean, is that my sister is pr…
Mac Pros not being MacBooks is an interesting point. A wide range of products leads to a spectrum of quality. Die-hard fans may be the ones in the high-price/-reliability quadrant, but maybe 5x more are attracted by the lower-price/-reliability quadrant. I suspect that MacBook was in the starter quadrant, and the actual professionals are in the other.
Sometimes things even shift in a single product over time: establish a good reputation, then water down the product a couple years later. All the die-hards leave, and the rest are none the wiser.
IMO $6k is just too much for a Mac Pro, except if it rocked a 3990X (do it, Mr. Apple!). It might actually be worth the money, even still. Apple seems to support Mac Pro OS upgrades for ~10 years after release.
Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
I'm a commandline person and often prefer to use something from Homebrew instead of the graphical equivalent. I've got a dozen or so packages (besides whatever is installed via brew cask) and it's going well for me. If you reply with the output of "brew list", I have no problem with installing and testing packages you require.
Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)
#234Earlier 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…
Like what ? A software i develop needs to hide and move the mouse cursor at some point (To create an infinite zoom effect in a timeline as is common in media software). If the user clicks on "no" by reflex on the security popup when they first click on the scrollbar, a very very basic functionality of the software won't work and people won't have any idea why - best case is i get bug reports (and I got a few), worst…
Plus if someone did download something malicious, they will still click yes to all permissions
Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 security prompts apply for everyone who has and uses more than a few applications. There is no scope for individual differences there except for the number of prompts.
That's perhaps the difference between me and others. I like getting prompted if software attempts to read my Documents folder. I've got about a dozen packages installed via brew cask, plus a handful from the Mac App Store. The first day, most of them prompted me once or twice, but that was about the extent of it.
It's basically like the prompts you get on iOS. I don't have a problem with these either.
Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I heard someone complaining about this when docking to two identical displays (with identical model names in display settings).
I have two identical setups, both with two 27 monitors and to make it worse one is horizontal and one vertical. Most of the time when i go to the other desk the monitors switch and I have to reset the orientation in display preferences. I have been fighting this for two years. Reset everything apple has told me to and no fix at all. Total PIA.
Same issue for dual display setup, my workaround is to label the cables and make damn sure I plug them in the same order and same port every time. If I do it wrong I’ve to do the display settings and rotate both screens routine..
Another option is to use the left side ports at work and the right side at home.
Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)
#237I 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…
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…
This seems to be a genuine question so I will answer it. I run Windows, Linux, and Mac. The reasons I prefer my Mac:
1. The most important reason is that the Mac UI is generally consistent and powerful: both the appearance but also keyboard shortcuts, modifier key behavior, etc. Neither Linux nor Windows has both of these. Linux has never had a consistent UI and Windows is just a mess (e.g. two control panels in Win10).
2. Compared to Windows, vastly less of the advertising and key-logging nonsense. No Candy Crush ads for example.
3. Compared to Linux, better software availability and quality. There's the obvious big players (Photoshop, Office, etc), but Apple's own apps are quite good. I'll take Keynote over Google Slides any day. In general Linux software is also available on the Mac (VLC, Gimp, etc) but the reverse is not true.
4. iOS integration is sweet: Reminders, Notes, Messages, etc. It's awesome when a 2FA text message arrives on my phone, get forwarded to Messages on my Mac, and then Safari offers it in the text field. (Can I do this anywhere else? Honest question.)
5. For me, Linux and Windows upgrades have been more problematic than my Macs. For example, Ubuntu 16 upgrade left a broken glibc and I had to reinstall.
I believe that Apple's software quality is trending the wrong way, and am very suspicious of Catalyst, so there's cause for worry. But I still very much prefer to use a Mac today.
Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understood when they removed PPC support via Rosetta from Intel OS X (Even though the tech pretty much felt like magic). But I don't get the justification for ditching all that legacy 32bit software. If it hasn't been upgraded yet, then it's never going to be. The Mac isn't like iOS, it's pretty niche. You can't just throw all the software under the bus every few years and sit back smugly expecting either developer…
I think the issue is that supporting 32-bit apps in MacOS isn't free. So there's a cost/benefit analysis to do. It probably isn't helped by the current MacOS business model. MacOS needs to focus on things that help sell new Macs because that's where the money comes from. Back when you'd drop $129 every few years the focus could be more on the OS itself. Not that it didn't also have to sell Macs, but the OS itself was…
I think that makes a lot of sense, until you look at the rest of the market and that Windows 10 was a one off purchase in 2015 and still supports apps from the early 90s, with a selection of apps tens, maybe hundreds? of times more than OS X. Not to mention Apple specifically chose that business model themselves for business reasons, they get the cost benefit of not having to support older versions which must outweigh 32bit support. We can't retroactively claim that business choice is not a bad thing just because it supports their bad actions today.
Been a fan of Macs for 20 years but becoming more jaded with Apples approach to the platform.
Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
I figured it was a resource starvation thing. Didn't look into it once Firefox cured the issue,
Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)
#240I think in general Catalina was missing flagship features.
- The split of iTunes into Music, Podcasts and TV (and system integration for iOS synchronization/backup) didn't bring about significant user-visible benefits. I think there was an issue with content not being available in iTunes under 4k the was solved, and Dolby Atmos was added.
- Catalina is not really a user-level feature. The apps which are created using Catalina aren't really draws - Find My is probably my most used, and I could just use the website if it wasn't an app.
- Reminders got a big refactor and new functionality, but the in itself is a limited draw.
- A few smaller changes to Notes, Photos, and Safari, but nothing I couldn't live without
- Screen Time - perhaps useful in families, but my understanding is that the conceptual differences between iPhone usage and Mac usage weren't accommodated for.
There was the delayed release, impact to polish, and removal of features like iCloud Folder Sharing (which I've indirectly been told were all the same issue - that folder sharing was not stable enough to be integrated into the tree and it impacted other development). It was a much rockier-than-normal update.
You also have the anti-features of 32-bit support being removed, and additional privacy-consent-for-access prompts for screen sharing, sensitive folder access, etc. The prompts are IMHO overblown - they are one-time and many of them have gone away as software has been updated for Catalina (as in, there was no legitimate reason for some particular application to be scanning the Desktop to begin with). This doesn't change that there isn't a big draw.
If there is a big feature for macOS Catalina, it would be SideCar. This adds a second screen to the Mac, it enables pencil usage, and perhaps even provides a slight bit more justification to Touch Bar functionality. This is still limited as it is an ecosystem feature - IMHO its real value comes when you are using an iPad Pro.