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macOS Catalina 10.15.5

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Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#311

Post by Scramblejams »

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #184
paultopia wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh damnit, damnit. I've been having those on 10.15.4 too, was really hoping they'd fixed it on this one. It's really profoundly upsetting to spend $3,500 on a brand new computer by the most reliable major manufacturer in the industry and still have daily damn kernel panics.

> by the most reliable major manufacturer in the industry You might want to revisit that. If you are looking for reliability, ThinkPads are way better.

I've owned four Thinkpads in my life (T42, X61s, T410, T420). Still got 'em. Every single one of them has one or more hardware issues. YMMV.

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#312

Post by tomxor »

specialist wrote: post #134
tomxor wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Binary patching hasn't been a thing for years unfortunately. True, and it's fair to say binary diffs aren't worth the complexities they introduce anymore, yet the concept of only pulling updates for individual packages has been a thing for over two decades in the *nix world. It seems like a poor choice for Apple to not bother making updates more discerning while also removing binary diffs... certainly a shitty move…

> binary diffs aren't worth the complexities they introduce anymore Noob question: Why are binary diffs impractical? Is it because the (compiled) object code layout dances around too much? If true, isn't that fixable? Meaning: make the order more stable, to minimize the size of the diffs? I recall a recent story/post about boosting runtime performance by optimizing object code layout. Sorry, I can't refind that artic…

Not a noob question... I don't know, but was assuming they were not worth the hassle from experience of using them, having lived through an era of binary diffs for old games where applying them seemed to be very computationally expensive at the time - sometimes to the point that it seemed faster to download a whole release, I assumed it was even more expensive to generate them - Those experiences may not be valid anymore in light of faster hardware or better algorithms, but the gains may also be too minimal when compared to highly granular packaging systems that various Linux distributions use these days.

Sibling comment RE chrome is an interesting one, I can imagine in the specific case of very large and frequently updated binaries like chrome it would still be beneficial to use binary patching.

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#314

Post by AshamedCaptain »

crazygringo wrote: post #218
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #132

Anybody knows what has happened that multiple manufacturers (at least Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, and now Apple) have released _all within this year_ updates to "enhance battery health management"? Even on devices which were otherwise out of support already. I ponder what has happened. I didn't hear any recent stories of battery explosions, huge battery recalls, or new regulations, yet all manufacturers are reacting to s…

Just regular market competition. One manufacturer announces a feature, other manufacturers think "oh crap, we don't want anyone buying a competitor rather than us because of that" so they implement it too ASAP. I've been in a lot of product decision meetings. In my experience, there's no quicker or more effective way to justify building a feature than "our competitor has it".

I don't think so:

1. this feature does not have a lot of user visibility,

2. in fact many laptops already allowed you to set this (e.g. Lenovo and Dell) but it seemed regular users didn't care at all,

3. Apple does not tend to do that, anyway (for better or worse).

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#315

Post by AshamedCaptain »

cesarb wrote: post #163
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #132

Anybody knows what has happened that multiple manufacturers (at least Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, and now Apple) have released _all within this year_ updates to "enhance battery health management"? Even on devices which were otherwise out of support already. I ponder what has happened. I didn't hear any recent stories of battery explosions, huge battery recalls, or new regulations, yet all manufacturers are reacting to s…

The exact phrasing Dell used is "modified battery algorithm to prolong lifespan and minimize risk of swelling", as seen for instance at https://fwupd.org/lvfs/devices/com.dell.uefia86a3f07.firmwar... and several others in that site. I looked at a few of the Lenovo ones, but didn't see anything battery-related in the recent changes.

In HP's May P87 BIOS update there is

"Changes the default setting of the HP Battery Health Manager in the BIOS Settings from Maximize My Battery Duration to Let HP Manage My Battery Health. The new default setting dynamically changes how the system charges the battery based on usage conditions over time to provide optimal battery health. "

(The HP Battery Manager itself is also a recent feature)

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#316

Post by Joeri »

ken wrote: post #180
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you guys put up with this? Do you like pain? Edit: I'm not trying to troll, I genuinely want to know why people put up with this. I bounce between Linux and Windows and have no loyalty to either of them. I've settled on Windows with WSL2 on my desktop but I'm tempted again to install the new Fedora on my Thinkpad. Is it the lock in? With my hardware I can run anything I want except for macOS. Once you buy Appl…

That question presumes that crashing is the only axis upon which computer users experience pain. Linux users said the same thing in 1996. It didn’t work then, either. Anyone working on desktop Linux should know they’ve hit saturation with their current approach. What‘s missing or broken that’s causing Mac users to prefer a system that crashes once a day?

As a macos and linux user I’d say linux has the same problems it always had:

- driver support (even my thinkpad has an unsupported fingerprint driver, and a buggy intel wifi driver)

- fragmentation that affects user experience. For example, there is still the gnome / kde divide, and using a combination of apps from both is visually jarring.

- lack of microsoft and adobe apps, lack of high quality productivity apps (e.g. i would love a pixelmator equivalent)

- many paper cuts, like how copy and paste of images only works half of the time

- when things break, you have to drop down to the terminal to fix them, instead of running some automated repair wizard

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#318

Post by chrisfinazzo »

buu700 wrote: post #192
emrikol wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same. Every day. I've done a lot of searching, and some people think that certain external monitors might be "the issue"--which I use. It didn't seem to be an issue before Catalina though.

Same here on a 2015 MBP, no external monitors. Constantly kernel panics during sleep, occasionally while I'm actively using it. Meanwhile, my 2013 MBP running Mojave and connected to an external monitor and peripherals has been chugging along with no issues pretty much 24/7.

Same here on my late 2013 15". Other than a few weird moments back in the 10.9 days when I tried installing Xcode on an external drive, it's run like a champ, upgrades and all. I was nervous about putting Mojave on it, but it's run surprisingly well, albeit a bit slow, although that's expected at this stage of the game.

The same can't be said for the machine it replaced, which began life on 10.5 but was brought to its knees by the combination of an 8600M GT and the 10.7 upgrade.

Right now, I'm waiting until things settle down - because COVID 19 - before pulling the trigger on a 13" Pro.

Discrete GPUs in portables are for masochists.

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#319

Post by plorkyeran »

qppo wrote: post #307
toyg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an admission that their upgrade rates for Catalina are bad. Between the now-customary list of new bugs and the 32bit massacre, the Vista comparison clearly struck a chord. It would have been so much easier to just keep shipping the 32bit compat layer.

If MS wanted to kick Apple in the shins they should get the Github Actions runner to support Mojave (right now it only supports Catalina). Would help me stave off upgrading myself and users for a few more months.

You can't run the latest Xcode versions on Mojave, so it'd already be of limited use and in a year it'd be a very niche thing.

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#320

Post by Wowfunhappy »

plorkyeran wrote: post #319
qppo wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If MS wanted to kick Apple in the shins they should get the Github Actions runner to support Mojave (right now it only supports Catalina). Would help me stave off upgrading myself and users for a few more months.

You can't run the latest Xcode versions on Mojave, so it'd already be of limited use and in a year it'd be a very niche thing.

Whether this matters is very dependent on what you're doing. For webdev stuff, for instance, you don't need Xcode—much less the latest version—just Apple's "command line tools".
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