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Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

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Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#51

Post by kergonath »

AnonHP wrote: post #14

It used to be a long running joke as well as practical wisdom on the Windows side to always wait for SP1 (Service Pack 1) for better stability and never to install the X.0 version. For all the “doubling down on Mac” that Apple’s senior employees harp about in interviews, macOS itself has been focusing more on eye candy and iOS parity than on stability. For my machines, I switch to Linux once macOS updates are no long…

Yes, QC of macOS releases is inadequate. I can’t say it’s really new though, even Tiger and Leopard had their issues on day 0 (it was also way worse in the 7.5.x era).

On the other hand, it is entirely possible to stay on a given version for the entire life of its successor. It is also possible to wait for the next x.5 version to upgrade, notwithstanding the incredibly annoying notification about a new major version being available (I don’t know how they can get away with that).

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#53

Post by ur-whale »

bgorman wrote: post #41

I recently switched to macOS after using Linux pretty much exclusively for personal use over the last 5 years. (2020 MacBook Air) For me the most infuriating thing is that Apple completely hides what is actually going on from the user. Want to manually scale your display to an exact resolution? Go to Displays, Hold down the option key and then click on the text next to a radio button. WTF!!! Who designed this, this i…

> I recently switched to macOS from Linux

Why would you do that?

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#54

Post by andrewmackrodt »

themodelplumber wrote: post #43
bgorman wrote: post #41

I recently switched to macOS after using Linux pretty much exclusively for personal use over the last 5 years. (2020 MacBook Air) For me the most infuriating thing is that Apple completely hides what is actually going on from the user. Want to manually scale your display to an exact resolution? Go to Displays, Hold down the option key and then click on the text next to a radio button. WTF!!! Who designed this, this i…

> Hold down the option key and then click on the text next to a radio button. WTF!!! Who designed this, this is completely non nondiscoverable. This could be a clever designer, if for example the team decided that Mac users don't need manual resolution settings, and this designer lost the argument. So they stick it behind a keypress and make sure word gets out. The team only cares about what they can see, a common is…

A lot of macOS seems designed this way, it took me months of using macOS daily before I learnt these little tricks, e.g. pressing option before many operations generally shows an advanced menu (advanced network connection stats, finder merge folder option etc). I'd like for there to be an option for power users where this is the default behaviour if enabled.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#55

Post by saithir »

themodelplumber wrote: post #43
bgorman wrote: post #41

I recently switched to macOS after using Linux pretty much exclusively for personal use over the last 5 years. (2020 MacBook Air) For me the most infuriating thing is that Apple completely hides what is actually going on from the user. Want to manually scale your display to an exact resolution? Go to Displays, Hold down the option key and then click on the text next to a radio button. WTF!!! Who designed this, this i…

> Hold down the option key and then click on the text next to a radio button. WTF!!! Who designed this, this is completely non nondiscoverable. This could be a clever designer, if for example the team decided that Mac users don't need manual resolution settings, and this designer lost the argument. So they stick it behind a keypress and make sure word gets out. The team only cares about what they can see, a common is…

MacOS just hides a ton of advanced things like that behind the "option-click on things", so it's not like it's an uncommon occurence.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#56

Post by xenonite »

apatheticonion wrote: post #38

It's been fun, MacOS, but it looks like our time is drawing to a close. With competitive, affordable AMD hardware and better GPU support, both WSL and Linux (KDE Plasma) offer compelling competition. The only rebuttal from Apple being extra padding on the UI, so it seems like I am no longer your target audience. Fair well, it was a beautiful, cohesive experience while it lasted.

Bigger padding around UI elements is literally my biggest annoyance with Big Sur. (and still, missing subpixel rendering, hence staying on 10.11 here)

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#57

Post by tonyedgecombe »

iansinnott wrote: post #33

> Apple has long taken pride that “it just works”, but seems to have convinced itself that is inviolate fact This. Apple's inability to admit fault coupled with decreasing software stability makes life difficult in many ways. For instance, aside from the obvious detrimental effects of OS bugs, it's often quite difficult to find specific solutions without a specific error message. "$APP silently fails" or "Why is my f…

I'm not sure software stability is decreasing, these sort of problems have existed for as long as I can remember.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#58

Post by jhanschoo »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #18
AnonHP wrote: post #14

It used to be a long running joke as well as practical wisdom on the Windows side to always wait for SP1 (Service Pack 1) for better stability and never to install the X.0 version. For all the “doubling down on Mac” that Apple’s senior employees harp about in interviews, macOS itself has been focusing more on eye candy and iOS parity than on stability. For my machines, I switch to Linux once macOS updates are no long…

> For my machines, I switch to Linux once macOS updates are no longer available What's the best way to use Linux on an old MacBook air? Should I be running it in a VM? Is there a way to dula boot? The laptop is quite old, it has 4GB of RAM. So I'm worried nothing will run well on it. Macos definitely feels sluggish on it now.

Linux runs alright on old (pre-2016) MacBooks (Air/Pro). This is in contrast to the MacBooks in the era when they started introducing the touch bar, secure enclave, and APFS. A word of caution: don't multi-boot together with macOS with Linux on your internal drive (Linux on an external drive is fine if double booting).

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#59

Post by tonyedgecombe »

bradknowles wrote: post #2

And this is part of why I refuse to be forced to upgrade to Catalina. So, when I buy “new” hardware, I will make sure that it is compatible with Mojave. Which means it won’t actually be new.... Something’s wrong when the best hardware you can buy from a manufacturer is from the versions they’re not making any more.

The trouble is it's difficult to get any objective data on this. Catalina has been rock solid for me. So is this a problem for a handful of noisy individuals or is it more widespread? I really don't know.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#60

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Voliokis wrote: post #40
bookmarkable wrote: post #21

I feel for developers on macOS bugs, bloat and unreliability, but for many users, it still works every day for 5 to 7 years without issue, and updates just mean some new emoji are available.

Unless you're on a device that can only be upgraded to 10.13, after which it won't get security updates anymore after 11 is released. Meanwhile, I can still put W10 on 10-12 year old PCs and it'll run fine (if the hardware wasn't particularly terrible even for back then). It might not support some of the latest features, but it works and you're not subject to some arbitrary decision by Microsoft as to whether you're…

W10 is terrible on traditional hard drives which most PC's were using 10-12 years ago. We are also at the tail end of the core 2 duo era, those devices aren't really up to the job.
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