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Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

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Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#81

Post by kuschku »

marmaduke wrote: post #49
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…

> If you kill -9 the fsck “For science,” right? I mean why would you do that? If you did that on Linux, would things really be better?

On Linux you'd be able to just right-click on the drive in GParted/KPartMan and run fsck again

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#82

Post by panzerboy »

randomsearch wrote: post #74
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.

Was thinking about jumping ship but: - MacBook Air is still lovely (once ahem I had keyboard fixed) - Basic productivity tools on Linux - eg email or word processing - still suck and I want native apps for such things. Any solution?

For email and word processing, it depends on what you've previously used. I would say that LibreOffice is quite all right for word processing. Also have a look at FreeOffice (https://www.freeoffice.com/en/) which aims for great compatibility with MS Office.

For an email client, I personally use the GMail web client nowadays, but I've used Thunderbird for a long time and it's fine (not as polished and good looking as Mail.app on MacOS though).

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#83

Post by pacifika »

randomsearch wrote: post #74
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.

Was thinking about jumping ship but: - MacBook Air is still lovely (once ahem I had keyboard fixed) - Basic productivity tools on Linux - eg email or word processing - still suck and I want native apps for such things. Any solution?

Geary and google docs

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#84

Post by nix23 »

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.

You can try OpenBSD or NetBSD, but the biggest problem on all platforms is probably the browser with 4GB.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#85

Post by encom »

IndySun wrote: post #75
sneak wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone wishes to submit all of their data to the warrantless government surveillance that cloud storage necessarily entails in the Five Eyes countries. Much of the data in iCloud is not end-to-end encrypted, giving Apple (and the FBI and US military intelligence by extension) full access to a lot of your data, such as photos or notes. I don’t use iCloud at all for this reason. Additionally, media production, es…

"... of the data in iCloud is not end-to-end encrypted, giving Apple (and the FBI and US military intelligence by extension) full access to a lot of your data, such as photos or notes. I don’t use iCloud at all for this reason..." Is all of this true? Apple claim it is not accessible.

>Apple claim it is not accessible.

It doesn't matter what Apple claim. All their software and hardware is proprietary, including of course their "cloud" computers. You have no way of verifying anything they say.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#86

Post by sneak »

encom wrote: post #85
IndySun wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... of the data in iCloud is not end-to-end encrypted, giving Apple (and the FBI and US military intelligence by extension) full access to a lot of your data, such as photos or notes. I don’t use iCloud at all for this reason..." Is all of this true? Apple claim it is not accessible.

>Apple claim it is not accessible. It doesn't matter what Apple claim. All their software and hardware is proprietary, including of course their "cloud" computers. You have no way of verifying anything they say.

We can take them at their word: they tell us what is end-to-end encrypted, plainly.

Everything not on that list is not, and thus readable by Apple. The critical items not end-to-end encrypted being device backups, photos, notes, email.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#87

Post by tinus_hn »

saithir wrote: post #55
themodelplumber wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It’s a way to make it possible for customer support to tell people what to do, while not overcomplicating the operating system for the 99.9% of users who do not care about things like manually setting resolutions if they even know what it is.

It’s like the habit of using key combinations to interrupt the boot up sequence, it introduces necessary facilities that aren’t in the way of you don’t need them or don’t even know about them.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#88

Post by mrweasel »

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…

It's not really as easy as: macOS is better or Linux is better. Both suck in their own little ways, not as much at Windows, which still manage to cramp up my hand for some reason.

Linux has an amazing level of freedom and flexibility, macOS still have the faster and more responsive GUI. The main reason for me to buy into the Apple ecosystem is still Apple trackpads, both those on the laptops and the external Magic Trackpad. Those are my input device of choice. I really do not want to go back to using a mouse or trackball again.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#89

Post by Akronymus »

livueta wrote: post #9
easton wrote: post #5

I don’t know, at scale in a company, my mood has always been (with Windows, mostly, but sometimes older versions of macOS) that if the issue doesn’t exist on a clean test box, we’re reimaging your machine. Since home folders are often somewhere else (folder redirection or OneDrive in Windows, in this case on a separate volume from /System), a OS reinstall isn’t very time consuming. Once the OS comes back up, MDM grab…

At one of the large companies I worked for, IT took that "just pave it" approach for _everything_. Maybe because of the contrast between that and my day job of spending weeks to months root-causing really weird distributed systems issues, it stuck me as penny-wise-pound-foolish. At least in this example, that attitude was used as an excuse to never actually investigate anything, even issues that recurred within days…

I'd personally go with re-imaging the first X times, then do a root cause analysis.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#90

Post by encom »

sneak wrote: post #86
encom wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple claim it is not accessible. It doesn't matter what Apple claim. All their software and hardware is proprietary, including of course their "cloud" computers. You have no way of verifying anything they say.

We can take them at their word: they tell us what is end-to-end encrypted, plainly. Everything not on that list is not, and thus readable by Apple. The critical items not end-to-end encrypted being device backups, photos, notes, email. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

Trust but verify. Apples word is worth nothing.
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