Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update

LOL n-gate trolls referrals from here. That’s brilliant.

I absolutely agree. The action of pushing out major updates every year has lead to a drop in quality. They never get a chance to fix last years bugs because they are working on next years features.

What??? Xcode 11.4 requires Catalina now?? That’s nuts.

According to HN threads within the lifetime of any given MacOS release, the last acceptable MacOS was System 8.

I'm running a 6-year old MB Pro, updated within the first week of every releases' public beta availability, never reinstalled. I use sudo far too liberally to be good for system health, including (as long as it was possible) deleting all sorts of files in /System, /private, etc. when I run out of space and believe they're superfluous via cursory inspection ( i. e. sudo rm -rf /System//{AMD,SCSI}).

And... it just works? I've never lost any data. I've typed in my WIFI password once and not changed anything since. Time Machine recently stopped working, and I had to follow the cable because I didn't remember where the HD actually was (taped beneath a cupboard, as it turns out; the power cable had somehow unplugged). Catalina did throw up a few permission dialogs after installation, but that took less than five minutes, even though I run a few low-level utilities (karabiner etc).

There are certainly some annoying UI bugs or inconsistencies. When you open an ePub in Books and immediately press cmd+f, for example, the search field loses focus repeatedly while the book opens. And why is cmd+f the shortcut for search almost everywhere, but not Keychain?

I recently installed Linux on a Desktop for some Cuda work, for the first in 15 years or so. Based on what I had read (mostly on HN), I expected Linux on the desktop to have made vast progress over that time. I'm sorry to say that it is, still, a complete disaster by almost any measure. I have no idea why the popular narrative sees the two anywhere close to each other.

Case in point: My installation of Ubuntu, using defaults, had an application menu with categories "Preferences", "Setting", "Utilities, and "System". Those all mean (almost) the same thing! There are two package managers now (apt and I forgot the new one's name), each with abpout five GUI and three CLI applications for installing packages. But both sometimes installed three year old versions of standard software (calibre, I believe). Good thing Homebrew is now available for Linux, because somehow they have no trouble keeping up.

Font sizes, margins, and contrast are all over the place. There are dozens of color schemes, yes. But much like unhappy families, each one fails in its own manner: with both a dark and a light one, I encountered parts of the UI where you'd suddenly have light buttons with light (invisible) text. Or, IIRC, light text on dark backgrounds. Which works -- until there's a link in the text.

There seem to be five different subsystems between my mouse and the desktop. None of seemed to allow adjusting scroll wheel acceleration. (Even pointer acceleration felt wrong to me. And even though I found the system of partial differentials that seems to be the official interface for adjustments, I failed to find the sweet spot. But this might be an issue of familiarity more than objective quality).

The screen on my MacbookPro13,1 (late 2016) recently gave out. I needed a replacement but I was not convinced by any of the current Apple offerings -- I can't stand the stupid touch bar on the Pros, and the new MBA didn't sufficiently excite me.

The usual build-to-order options like Dell or Lenovo being backordered due to the pandemic, I walked into a Costco and bought a LG Gram 17[0]. This is the first time I bought a laptop off the shelf, and the first time my primary laptop has not been a Mac, in over a decade. I installed Xubuntu 18.04 LTS on it with no fanfare and have been quite happy with it since.

The early signs of Apple's demise, indeed.

[0] https://www.lg.com/us/laptops/lg-17z90n-r.aac8u1-ultra-slim-...