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The End of OS X

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Re: The End of OS X

#241

Post by BenoitEssiambre »

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…

This somewhat echoes some of Steve Job's own complaints about the Apple he was kicked out of: https://youtu.be/Gk-9Fd2mEnI?t=2078

Also note that at the time he was creating a NeXT, a Unix company.

Re: The End of OS X

#242

Post by dmitriid »

jaywalk wrote: post #169
swyx wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why exactly did they change the version number? i dont get it

I don't think Apple has explicitly said anything, but the fact that this version will support a new CPU architecture seems like a pretty good reason.

CPU architecture change wasn't enough for the 10.x line to bump the version number. And it was a much bigger deal then that it is now.

Re: The End of OS X

#243

Post by banachtarski »

mstade wrote: post #148
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 keep reading these types of comments on HN but I just can't relate. I consider myself a power user, and precisely because MacOS feels like the best of Unix combined with customer focus is why I'm wholly invested in the Apple ecosystem. I simply can't relate to the statement that Mac is a "platform that contends with me every step of the way" and I'm curious to know more specifically why you feel this way?

I just "use linux" and I get all the benefits with much better hardware (more memory, disk storage, speed for compilation), better drivers (important especially for GPU support for either graphics/rendering work or machine learning) and my downsides are... what exactly? Itunes, Mail, etc, none of the software shipping with MacOS is actually any good. I don't use Safari. From your perspective, what aspect of the "customer focus" materially improves anything? ICloud? The thing that lost a ton of my data over the years? Safari? The thing that doesn't even support WebGL 2 or other standards that are a decade old? (seriously, safari is the new internet explorer).

Re: The End of OS X

#244

Post by eyerony »

drunkpotato wrote: post #180
eyerony wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will not be migrating from Mojave to Catalina, and will use my current generation of Macs until they are obsolete, while finally making the transition to Linux I've recently been doing this, after some time (ahem, a decade) away from "serious" desktop Linux. Some observations/pointers: - Running ultralight window managers with minimal services still feels the most "right" and predictable/stable way to have a Linu…

Thanks for the great tips! I’m not super thrilled at the idea of running Linux on Windows, though that may be the best option. It would be nice to have more games available, but I find using Windows a grating experience with its constant popups and annoyances. It’s a thousand little things that annoy the heck out of me when using it. I had a Windows work box for 3.5 years and the only nice things I have to say for it…

Strongly agreed, I haven't even kinda liked Windows since Win7. Still, it's not as bad as the constant oops-rebooted-there-goes-your-work fest I recall from early Win10. I forget it's there most of the time, until I suspend my work VM and fire up Steam for some games.

I don't really trust a ZFS root on Linux not to, you know, suddenly break in ways that keep it from booting up, so absent that the snapshotting you can do for your whole OS when it's running in a VM is very handy, too. Though of course you could do that with any OS playing host—Windows is just convenient as the best driver shim available on generic x86 hardware, really. Takes a bunch of the headaches out. "I want to upgrade this, will my Linux installation become way less stable if I do?"—who cares, it sees what VBox shows it.

Re: The End of OS X

#245

Post by fanatic2pope »

metalforever wrote: post #233
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.

No, this is not what I want, and I’m a power user. I want my machine to solve my problems and not get in my way when I am creating solutions. I do not want to be messing around with the internals, I have better things to do . I pay for it to just work in an environment I hope is vaguely private.

> I want my machine to solve my problems and not get in my way when I am creating solutions.

That's literally why I switched to Linux in 2018, after a decade on OS X.

Re: The End of OS X

#246

Post by Tagbert »

totaldude87 wrote: post #85
coliveira wrote: post #7

OS X (the name) is gone for a while, it was replaced by macOS. The numbering change now is inconsequential.

yeah , like look at iPad OS.. its now iPadOS 14 :|

Yes, they have spread the theme across all of their OSs but they are still distinct members of a family. It looks like they brought some of the best new features from iPad to the Mac and I see they are bringing sidebars from the Mac to iPad. Makes sense.

Re: The End of OS X

#247

Post by askafriend »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #231
mstade wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep reading these types of comments on HN but I just can't relate. I consider myself a power user, and precisely because MacOS feels like the best of Unix combined with customer focus is why I'm wholly invested in the Apple ecosystem. I simply can't relate to the statement that Mac is a "platform that contends with me every step of the way" and I'm curious to know more specifically why you feel this way?

For me, the React Native experience has been instructive. Android is quick and easy to develop, debug, and deploy. The iOS side includes multiple hoops, constant frustration stemming from XCode, long app release times, and minutes-long builds for production-size apps. Our team, without any policy dictating daily development habits, has coalesced around Linux/Android development with iOS testing before release.

As a consumer, I've never used a React Native app that I liked using. It's always janky and commpromises UX in ways that made me simply use the app less or had the effect of teaching me to "get in and out of the app as quickly as possible".

Re: The End of OS X

#248

Post by oneplane »

sudosysgen wrote: post #224
oneplane wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your scenario definitely exists, but it also doesn't hit the likes of the user you respond to as much as you might expect. SSD's don't fail the way they used to, RAM requirements don't change as much as it used to and while batteries do die, at this time I've seen more people switch machines before any of that happens. The last time I wanted or needed to replace memory or storage in a laptop must have been 7 years ag…

If SSDs don't fail, more RAM isn't needed, and so on, then why do people feel the need to buy a new laptop every three years? I think the percentage of users that would buy a new, 1500$+ machine instead of a small 100$ upgrade is much lower than one expects living in a bit of an echo chamber. There's a lot of people that get burned by outrageous repair prices or that buy new computers when they could simply upgrade a…

Because the overall degradation. Sometimes I want 10% of 'everything', plus a new feature, plus less weight to carry around. That's practically been the only driver of my personal upgrades over the last 15 years.

And by degradation I don't mean the existing device degrades per se, but the degradation of productivity on the current device vs. new device.

At the same time, the way work is done has changed a lot for me and the people around me: heavy workloads are almost never done on a laptop anymore.

Re: The End of OS X

#249

Post by ilikehurdles »

sudosysgen wrote: post #224
oneplane wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your scenario definitely exists, but it also doesn't hit the likes of the user you respond to as much as you might expect. SSD's don't fail the way they used to, RAM requirements don't change as much as it used to and while batteries do die, at this time I've seen more people switch machines before any of that happens. The last time I wanted or needed to replace memory or storage in a laptop must have been 7 years ag…

If SSDs don't fail, more RAM isn't needed, and so on, then why do people feel the need to buy a new laptop every three years? I think the percentage of users that would buy a new, 1500$+ machine instead of a small 100$ upgrade is much lower than one expects living in a bit of an echo chamber. There's a lot of people that get burned by outrageous repair prices or that buy new computers when they could simply upgrade a…

> why do people feel the need to buy a new laptop every three years?

Beats me. You will often see comments in these threads about people (like me) using nearly decade-old Macbook Pros to this day.

I stopped replacing laptops every 3 (or less) years after I stopped buying budget non-Apple laptops.

Re: The End of OS X

#250

Post by devonkim »

wwweston wrote: post #214
crystaln wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a developer and power user. I am incredibly happy with every update from Apple. Unix with good design is exactly what I want from my OS. Sure I can't disassemble my laptop and change the hardware. I have no desire at all to do that. I literally can think of no reason I personally would want to do this, although I imagine there are a tiny fraction of users who would and you may be among them.

> I literally can think of no reason I personally would want to do this Being able to swap out RAM and storage and battery from factory-provided can extend the lifetime (and even increase the performance capacity) of a given machine at nothing more than the cost of the new parts. And Apple used to make it pretty easy to do this, and enough people did that there was a subeconomy of vendors selling for this purpose, al…

It used to be the case I would swap MacBook parts out more when laptops were simply clunkier maybe 10 years ago (added a SATA SSD back in 2010). But lately with 16 GB RAM being fine for most developers even, NVMe SSDs being standard, Macs still being lame for GPGPU tasks besides mining cryptocurrency, and a lot of compute intensive tasks simply put into the cloud ... I can’t really say I need to do many hardware updates on a Mac besides perhaps the battery anymore. What really helps me most now is battery life and better screens to reduce eye fatigue, and that’s basically what Apple has done fairly well compared to the PC laptop market.

I’m kind of curious to see how usage goes for AWS Graviton 2 instances in the future as Apple laptops transition and there’s less friction to deploy along ARM based tool chains and artifacts.

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