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macOS Big Sur Preview

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331–340 of 391 posts

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#331
post #15

IMHO Apple's design jumped the shark a long time ago. Even apart from the aesthetics of the "flat" look, which I like about as much as fingernails on a chalkboard, Apple has completely abandoned the principles that made the original Mac great: ease of use and discoverability. Once upon a time it was easy to tell where the affordances were, what you could click on, editable vs non-editable text. Nowadays everything lo…

Yeah, and they had the audacity to highlight this in the overview today like it’s a good thing: how controls will now get out of your way when not using them (that was a problem that needed solving??). Now we can look forward to things on macOS looking even less clickable because Apple has spent valuable engineering hours “helpfully” keeping controls “out of our way”.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#332
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is not working for you? I did the analysis a while back and (I stopped doing kexts back when SIP hit) - I have like no 32bit apps worth keeping (I don't have to use legacy Photoshop).

The accounting software my accountant requires me to use for my business is 32-bit. Luckily I have an old iMac in the closet I use as a media server and for the accounting software.

At least you’re not having to do it with pen and paper I guess

That sounds like a right pain in the arse. I’d have replaced them if they’re not using updated software personally.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#333
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, escape is actually slower (both in movement speed and in actual invokation) than ^[. lit: `CTRL+[` I know habits die hard, and "you're holding it wrong" is not a valid excuse- and I know that I also dislike massively not having an escape key. But for vim specifically; there is an escape sequence and the escape key is an alternative method for that. (similar to how the arrows "work" but hjkl is the "real" way of…

So you’re saying that pressing two keys is faster than pressing one key? In which universe?? Is eating 2 sandwiches also faster than eating one? Are 2 electrical impulses also faster than 1? I think not.

[deleted]

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#334
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will say I really like the lock button and the touch ID integration. I hate the lack of physical escape key (especially for vim); however, they are fixing that on many (most? all?) new models. Mostly I'm pretty meh about the touch bar. Not sure how much cost it's adding, but I'd probably rather they reduce the cost.

FWIW, escape is actually slower (both in movement speed and in actual invokation) than ^[. lit: `CTRL+[` I know habits die hard, and "you're holding it wrong" is not a valid excuse- and I know that I also dislike massively not having an escape key. But for vim specifically; there is an escape sequence and the escape key is an alternative method for that. (similar to how the arrows "work" but hjkl is the "real" way of…

My beef is that ESC in macOS is the universal non-destructive dismiss button. I'm glad they went back to making it a physical key.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#335
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will say I really like the lock button and the touch ID integration. I hate the lack of physical escape key (especially for vim); however, they are fixing that on many (most? all?) new models. Mostly I'm pretty meh about the touch bar. Not sure how much cost it's adding, but I'd probably rather they reduce the cost.

Have you considered remapping Caps Lock to Escape? There's an option for that in the Keyboard pane of System Preferences.

I've remapped Caps Lock to Control, which turned out to be very useful in various Remote Desktop and VirtualBox scenarios since it requires a left-Control key, which Mac laptop keyboards are missing.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#336

I'm mixed on the design. I really, really dislike the way macOS has looked since Yosemite, and compared to that, I think this one is an improvement overall. The icons have more depth, and there's far more use of color across the UI. But, it also looks extremely mobile-inspired—I suspect Apple's primary goal was to make iOS ports and apps look less out of place. That's a fine objective, but it also means they weren't…

I think the lack of title bars is an issue now. I've found it annoys me most on my web browser, when I have lots of tabs open there is one small section between the 3 dots to minimize/close and the first tab that I can use to move the window. My guess is that they expect most people to use the application full screen and not to be moving it around. I've got a large monitor and I don't keep my windows full screened so…

I’d say at least several times per month I either accidentally nuke a background window tab when a close button "X" materialized at the last second where it looked like I could just move the thing, and the rest of the time I simply catch myself a fraction of a second before doing it.

Just-in-time UI combined with a complete lack of borders and affordances is the stupidest trend and it needs to end.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't remember the last time I've had a crash on Catalina. That being said, I did do a clean install when I upgraded out of fear of issues. Not sure if that had something to do with it.

I had a new computer pre installed with Catalina

You may want to run a hardware check, look around online for people with similar issues and hardware as you...or just take it to the Genius Bar. In my experience kernel panics in macOS in the past 10+ years has come from bad hardware, badly written kernel extension, or corrupt preferences (which a clean install addresses).

A few years ago I remember reading an article where Apple looked at crash metrics and worked very hard to address those. The criticism at the time was that this wouldn't catch slowdowns, hangs, or issues like "why aren't my Messages showing up?" which has been issues more recently.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#338
post #17

Scrolling this site with a mouse is comically bad, this is clearly designed to be used only with a trackpad. I cant read most of the content without very carefully scrolling unnaturally. You also have to pause for the animations to play, but if you scroll one pixel too far they don't play, so its a guessing game of whether you're in the right place or whether you missed some content.

It’s definitely ridiculous with a mouse but at least it works using the down-arrow key for some sense of control over the thing.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App notarization works by hashing binaries and sending said hashes to Apple. Here you go: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/catalina-executables.htm...

What the actual f*ck. Thanks for the link. Looks like I'll need Little Snitch...

I tried installing little snitch on catalina and it needed a network connection exactly for that.

I would like to know how to disable this and install little snitch. Maybe spctl or csrutil?

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#340
post #125
post #34

The UI and UX seem to be getting worse on macOS with the “iOSification” of the OS. I thought Jony Ive’s exit would stop that trend. It’ll be interesting to read perspectives from John Gruber, M J Tsai, Marco Arment, etc. I still haven’t upgraded from Mojave to Catalina because of serious bugs reported by other people (including data loss issues in Mail). I’ll see if Big Sur shows improvements (reported by others) and…

Catalina is the one and only macOS upgrade I regret doing. It has mostly been bug-free, but I was surprised how much software no longer works due to the 64-bit change.

I always wondered why apple couldn't resolve this with a rosetta like interface or shim. Really, why couldn't it run forever?

Apple could do virtualization and run all the way back to macwrite or macdraw. Apple just doesn't get virtualization.

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