MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design? • Hacker News Board

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#201

Post by tsukurimashou » Fri, May 22, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

kick wrote: post #38

Nextgrid wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am so glad I decided years ago to leave closed operating systems behind. The problem is, there's nothing else out there. Everything is going to shit in one way or another. Windows is now a disaster, Linux was always a disaster in terms of user experience and isn't improving. Mac OS was the last bastion of somewhat good, thoughtful design, user experience and attention to detail and now they've gone to shit too.

Linux was always a disaster in terms of user experience and isn't improving. Curious: what have you tried? People who use "Linux" as a catch-all in terms of UX usually have only tried a single distribution with a single desktop environment.

I feel like people still have in mind what Linux desktop was 15 / 20 years ago. It improved a lot in the past years, battery life improved on laptops, Ubuntu that was already very stable and feature complete also got a lot of things with previous releases and I've personally been running Arch on my main computers now for 5+ years and haven't got any major issues while upgrading.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#202

Post by rrdharan » Fri, May 22, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

Accacin wrote: post #84

nsxwolf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Linux to be a usability nightmare. Weird cut and paste behavior, difficult to resize windows, terrible trackpad support. macOS and Windows will have to get a lot worse before I switch.

I found at least in Gnome and KDE Plasma window management works pretty much just how Windows works. Cut and paste it just cut and paste - Do you mean how you can select text and use middle click on the mouse to paste without even needing to do anything but select?

There are two X clipboards. They are implemented differently (as in "ownership" model of the content) and the implementation bleeds out everywhere.

You can't remove or change this behavior because some people love it.

EDIT: FWIW the above statements are oversimplifying the situation of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_selection

And more here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/13585/how-can-i-use...

Most fans of Linux will claim the fact that you can choose any number of clipboard managers to customize things to your liking is a critical aspect that draws them to the platform.

Others among us (whether reformed or uninitiated) will commonly cite this same stuff as the reasons we avoid Linux on the desktop.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#203

Post by konart » Fri, May 22, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

inimino wrote: post #144

konart wrote: post #131

I've been using linux distros (~5 years of Ubuntu and ~3 years of Arch) before switching to macOS somewhere around 2013-2014. And now years later I'm thinking about moving back. But every time I'm think about this I start with digging about current Linux situation and every time I realise than it is still a horrible system for anything outside of work, especially if you can't really do without a decent UI\UX. Apple's…

I use my work machine for work and my personal equipment for everything else. My iPhone is more standalone then they used to be. I don't see any reason why I'd ever connect my personal phone to my work computer. So I don't see many downsides to making the switch.

Well, I don't have 'work' computer. I have my personal macbook and even more personal iMac.

Obviously in case you work only at the office or you use your computer only (lets say 90% time) for work - than there is no problem.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#204

Post by zozbot234 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

godzillabrennus wrote: post #124

leephillips wrote: post #12

This is completely insane. I am so glad I decided years ago to leave closed operating systems behind. This design seems to cement the trend at Apple to position their products as consumer appliances, not platforms useful for development.

Buy a Mac and put ElementaryOS on it to avoid the slowdown and have a slick experience. https://elementary.io/

Might want to make it a used/refurbished Mac. Newer Macs don't run Linux well (at least as of yet); the whole T2-chip based stuff on newer machines is especially problematic.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#205

Post by Throwaeay2928 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

BruceEel wrote: post #43

Nextgrid wrote: post #19

I've been forced to update to this pile of shit because latest iOS requires latest Xcode which in turn requires Catalina. It's a nightmare. First off the new apps (music, podcasts, etc) are terrible. They killed off iTunes but replaced it with much worse. These apps don't behave like standard macOS apps, the UI is full of inconsistencies and is just so empty. This website has nice examples of the failures of modern M…

> I've been forced to update to this pile of shit because latest iOS requires latest Xcode which in turn requires Catalina. It's a nightmare. I'm literally halfway there as I type this, Xcode 'installing components'. Having to upgrade essentially everything just to get the right dev tools for the current iOS is madness, feels like buying a new house to fit the new coffeemaker...

Forcibly relocated to a refugee camp tent with leaking water pipes next to your air mattress. But at least everything around you in your tent is white, flat, and material and your coffeemaker works.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#206

Post by rhizome » Fri, May 22, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

nemosaltat wrote: post #159

davidvartan wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Gatekeeper behavior is specific to running things from Finder (not Terminal), and only if you downloaded it via a browser that sets the com.apple.quarantine xattr. Two posts from Apple dev support (Cmd+F "eskimo") describe this in more detail. https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/127709 https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/127694

I recently learned that `xattr -cr path/to/my.app` solves the “this App is damaged would you like to move it to the trash” you get when you copy an app from one Mac to another.

That might be the Windows-iest feature of OSX I've ever heard of.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#207

Post by tsukurimashou » Fri, May 22, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

BruceEel wrote: post #85

swebs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux has been a delight to use for me. Things were rough 10-15 years ago, but it's pretty amazing now.

Any distro in particular you'd recommend?

not him but same experience, from my previous comment:

I would recommend: Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS

if you want: nice experience out of the box

I would recommend: Arch, Gentoo, Debian Net inst, Void

if you want a base system and install things you want on top of it

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#208

Post by shanemhansen » Fri, May 22, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

zeroimpl wrote: post #157

tragomaskhalos wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That computers are just slower to interact with now is such a truism that we hardly remark upon it any more. It seems utterly insane that in the early 90's I could just run Windows 3.1 on a bit of kit that in all likelihood wouldn't even power a toaster today, and the experience was, well, frictionless. I don't recall ever thinking "wtf is this thing doing ?", whereas today, by contrast, if I have the audacity to be…

I recall windows 95/98 being pretty slow to boot. I also recall being warned by teachers not to move the mouse while things were booting as that would allegedly slow things down further. These days the only real time I wonder "wtf is this thing doing" is when I'm waiting about 5-10 seconds for my mac to wake up from sleep.

Surprisingly, wiggling the mouse actually speeds up some windows operations.

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/11533/why...

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#209

Post by skykooler » Fri, May 22, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

OskarS wrote: post #25

skykooler wrote: post #13

If it checks with Apple servers every time you execute a new binary, what happens if you don't have an Internet connection? Are you just unable to run new code?

The linked website isn't loading, so I don't know what it says, but: if we're talking about notarization, you can "staple" the notarization to a .app or a .pkg, which means you don't have to do the internet lookup at all, and you can run the apps without having access to the internet. I'm not sure about the technical details, but I would assume you add some sort of signature that's like "This .app with hash X has bee…

That doesn't help with self-written code, however, since you can't notarize without internet either.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#210

Post by captainbland » Fri, May 22, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #104

dmitriid wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Curious: what have you tried? People who use "Linux" as a catch-all in terms of UX usually have only tried a single distribution with a single desktop environment. Yup. You've just described a disaster. How many permutations of x must a user try before finding a good UX?

Ubuntu pretty much works out of the box for a lot of "regular" users (I'm excluding gaming, which also works but is not as easy). I'm sure there are other user-friendly distros that similarly let average users browse the internet, write documents, listen to music and watch movies painlessly.

I'd say gaming on Ubuntu LTS (if not Linux in general) is quite easy provided you stay in the safe haven of games that natively support the OS, which to be fair is a pretty solid selection of games these days albeit one which is pretty much a strict subset of the games on Windows. As soon as you go outside that area and start messing with Wine or whatever all bets are off, though.