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The End of OS X

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Re: The End of OS X

#131

Post by Hamuko »

oneplane wrote: post #112
brightball wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time there’s a new Apple announcement, I’m happier and happier that I switched to Linux a couple of years ago. Power users want freedom and control of their own machines and hardware. The moment that Apple started soldering parts into place, I started looking elsewhere because it was a signal of the thought process.

On the flip side: does anyone still buy a low-specced machine and upgrade it mid-lifecycle? I've seen it less and less over the last 6 years and the last 2 years it hasn't happened in any work setting. I know people like to have the feeling of control (do you really control your laptop if you can't replace your EC, CSME, AGESA, SSD FW, NIC FW, VBIOS) and the concept of shuffling parts around, but the need for that (a…

Apple is making it a pain to do even basic things like replace the battery, which is a consumable part.

I've personally upgraded the hard drive and replaced the battery twice on my old 2011 MacBook Pro.

Re: The End of OS X

#132

Post by oneplane »

_bxg1 wrote: post #115
0x0 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, what a modern desktop is sorely lacking right now is protecting users and developers from themselves. Whenever I run "npm install" I have to close my eyes and ignore the chills down my spine thinking about how a thousand random npmjs.org account holders just ran their postinstall scripts on my computer with full access to ~/Documents/. The traditional multi-user Unix permission system is no longer…

Maybe what we need is a granular permissions model for all executables, including those in the terminal. Instead of the binary choice between "this code is allowed to rewrite my operating system if it wants to" and "this code can 'only' read and write all of my user files", what if we had to explicitly give binaries access to specific directories? Network access? The desktop environment? Drawing to the screen anywher…

That does exist: we have ACLs, containers (no, not docker, but the filesystem views and isolation in macOS - and to some extent windows), chroot etc. Beyond that there are systems like AppArmor and SELinux on the Linux side of things.

Problems with all of those: it becomes too much overhead and the additional moving parts create additional places for things to break (and they do break - even in a preconfigured distro).

Re: The End of OS X

#133

Post by Jtsummers »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #72
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #53

What I think a lot of us programmers miss is the experience of the end-users who are likely to buy a Mac. The fact of the matter is, 99.9% of people who buy a Mac are not going to know what subpixel hinting is. Or care too much that they can't delete Chess.app. To them, the Mac is nicer looking and easier to use than ever. Will iOS devs care? Not at all - developing for the Mac has become easier with Catalyst. It's e…

> And as for some saying that MacOS is becoming more iOS like: Yes, it's been happening since Mac OS X Lion with the fullscreen Launchpad. Nothing has changed. I'd say a lot has changed, because everything is a matter of degrees. As soon as I realized Launchpad was a piece of crap, I put an Applications folder stack in my dock a la the Leopard default, and forgot that Launchpad exists. Can't really ignore it anymore.…

My solution is to just use Spotlight Search to launch everything. My hands are on the keyboard much more than a mouse or touchpad, and it's a good habit for when I switch between the laptop (where the touchpad is more convenient) and a desktop setup where they're more physically separated. Hunting for things on a screen with a cursor is tedious and annoying to me, when I can always just type it. But maybe that's a habit from growing up with MSDOS and (later) Linux and FreeBSD starting in college.

Re: The End of OS X

#135

Post by zitterbewegung »

lordleft wrote: post #64

I've looked at the trajectory of Apple these past few years with mounting bitter-sweetness. At its best, MacOS really felt like the best of Unix combined with the consumer focus alluded to in the article. I still adore the craftsmanship of the latest Macbooks, but my 2015 Macbook felt like the apex of Mac's design. It was the kind of device that was such a pleasure to develop on. You could leverage the power of Unix…

I've always used Apple products because they just work. UNIX compatibility has been great and I've run docker, run virtual machines, given presentations and I love the hardware. Most of the restrictions are tradeoffs for security and the real problem is that I have tried having workflows on other systems and tried to switch off of it (I had linux on my MacBook Pro 2017. Below are my most frustrating situations

1. My MacBook Pro 2017 had some weird problems due to voltage of the CPU. Somehow they misplaced the laptop but they did a full top case replacement eventually. It was weird when someone came out of the store with handcuffs while I was in the Apple store. With this Laptop I wasn't disappointed by the keyboard or the Touch Bar and never experienced reliability issues. I sold it due to frustration but I shouldn't have done it. 2. My AirPods have been replaced twice due to buzzing. This could have been me not cleaning them and sometimes I still experience buzzing sometimes but cleaning them seemed to work. I got both earbuds replaced twice 3. iCloud got messed up on my MacBook 2016 when I installed a beta version of Catalina and that was my fault had to go on support and they never got back to me about an engineer looking at my iCloud. 4. My MacBook Pro Retina (around 2012) had a zebra pattern on the monitor. I took it to the Apple store twice and they just gave me a new laptop.

With all of these issues over the years Windows is much more pain to even use. On my Gaming computer Wifi still can take minutes to start. I had to upgrade it to Wifi 6 and that may have fixed it with an external wifi.

My current Laptop (MacBook Pro 16) has good thermal management now. Plugging into a monitor does increase the thermals to 60 C . Sometimes I turn off turbo boost. Other than that having a laptop with 64 GB of Ram, a 5500m graphics card is pretty nice especially with a 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9. Somehow I actually was able to refine a few iterations of GPT-2 on the CPU but that was by mistake when I was cleaning data.

I like the Touch Bar because it lets me not change to using the trackpad sometimes due to RSI. I also have an external trackball mouse.

Wifi and bluetooth open with no issue. System is really responsive even compared to my Windows machine. Screens have always been amazing and color accurate. Emacs runs great also. Terminal.app keeps on getting better. UI looks like it's going to be cleaned up in MacOS 11. Having ARM is going to be very exciting and Metal is even more exciting and might be the only thing that will start to compete with NVIDIA.

Re: The End of OS X

#136

Post by mattigames »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #53

What I think a lot of us programmers miss is the experience of the end-users who are likely to buy a Mac. The fact of the matter is, 99.9% of people who buy a Mac are not going to know what subpixel hinting is. Or care too much that they can't delete Chess.app. To them, the Mac is nicer looking and easier to use than ever. Will iOS devs care? Not at all - developing for the Mac has become easier with Catalyst. It's e…

The problems I have faced with my 2018 MacBook Pro that make me dread working with it (I have to due my job) are not development issues but mostly end-user ones: https://ivanca.tumblr.com/post/615979862803562496/15-flaws-o...

Re: The End of OS X

#137

Post by mason55 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #115
0x0 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, what a modern desktop is sorely lacking right now is protecting users and developers from themselves. Whenever I run "npm install" I have to close my eyes and ignore the chills down my spine thinking about how a thousand random npmjs.org account holders just ran their postinstall scripts on my computer with full access to ~/Documents/. The traditional multi-user Unix permission system is no longer…

Maybe what we need is a granular permissions model for all executables, including those in the terminal. Instead of the binary choice between "this code is allowed to rewrite my operating system if it wants to" and "this code can 'only' read and write all of my user files", what if we had to explicitly give binaries access to specific directories? Network access? The desktop environment? Drawing to the screen anywher…

IMO there are two problems.

The first is that no one actually wants to manage that kind of access. Especially not your every day computer user.

The second, related, problem is that if every app is asking you to review 20 permissions, people are going to stop reading the list and blindly accept. Or at least the people who need the guardrails the most will blindly accept.

For all the crazy granular permissions I just don't see a way for it to work other than a source like Apple doing the review, saying that this app is trying to read your documents for no reason and so it's rejected. But now you're back to all apps going through the app store sandbox.

Re: The End of OS X

#138

Post by technofiend »

oneplane wrote: post #112
brightball wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time there’s a new Apple announcement, I’m happier and happier that I switched to Linux a couple of years ago. Power users want freedom and control of their own machines and hardware. The moment that Apple started soldering parts into place, I started looking elsewhere because it was a signal of the thought process.

On the flip side: does anyone still buy a low-specced machine and upgrade it mid-lifecycle? I've seen it less and less over the last 6 years and the last 2 years it hasn't happened in any work setting. I know people like to have the feeling of control (do you really control your laptop if you can't replace your EC, CSME, AGESA, SSD FW, NIC FW, VBIOS) and the concept of shuffling parts around, but the need for that (a…

Why wait for mid lifecycle? Buy a low-specced machine and the drop in larger storage and memory rather than paying a huge premium to the vendor. It's not about control as much as just saving money.

Re: The End of OS X

#139

Post by peternicky »

defnotashton2 wrote: post #101
peternicky wrote: post #33

I’ve been unhappy with macOS and Apple for the past few years and in January switched back to developing on a windows PC. I could not be happier with that decision and with the “roadmap” Apple provided yesterday, I expect it will be a long time before I go back to macOS, if ever.

I don't understand how you can get anything done without fighting windows nonsense proprietary tools.

Not sure what you are trying to say, windows like macOS is not perfect but with patience I was able to replicate my existing development workflows and improve some.

Which “nonsense” tools are you taking about?

Re: The End of OS X

#140

Post by _bxg1 »

oneplane wrote: post #132
_bxg1 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe what we need is a granular permissions model for all executables, including those in the terminal. Instead of the binary choice between "this code is allowed to rewrite my operating system if it wants to" and "this code can 'only' read and write all of my user files", what if we had to explicitly give binaries access to specific directories? Network access? The desktop environment? Drawing to the screen anywher…

That does exist: we have ACLs, containers (no, not docker, but the filesystem views and isolation in macOS - and to some extent windows), chroot etc. Beyond that there are systems like AppArmor and SELinux on the Linux side of things. Problems with all of those: it becomes too much overhead and the additional moving parts create additional places for things to break (and they do break - even in a preconfigured distro…

And this is what Apple has always been best at: taking technologies that already can work and making them into a product that does work, without hassle, for most people.
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