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Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

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Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#91

Post by ansmKJ »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #57
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.

Indeed, MacOS 9 was buggy as hell and worse than Windows 98 in terms of stability. OS X apparently fixed some of that for a couple of years, so it looks like Apple is now reverting to its old ways.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#93

Post by reportgunner »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #62
disposekinetics wrote: post #15

MacOS has so many features I'll never use. It is starting to feel bloated. I wonder if modern OSs did less would be smaller and feel snappier?

Apple can't win here can they, one person complains they remove too much functionality, the next complains the operating system is bloated.

Well you do reap what you sow, don't you?

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#94

Post by fluffything »

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…

Its also really hard to report bugs. So things don't get fixed.

Company policy is more like "it just works, our software has no bugs" (goes ahead and pushes one bug fix update per week).

The irony.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#95

Post by hellofunk »

randomsearch wrote: post #73
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…

Just in case you ever consider it for some reason, under no circumstances should you upgrade to Catalina. Worst OS I’ve used since I left windows nearly 20 years ago.

I installed Catalina on one machine, kept the other on Mojave. I can't tell the difference between the two unless I'm looking hard, and both are equally reliable for me.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#96

Post by bborud »

I used Linux as my main operating system on the desktop for 16-17 years before switching to OSX. The reason was that I was tired of having laptops that didn't work properly and the endless weeks of tweaking whenever I got a new laptop. It also helped that Macbooks were pretty decent laptops.

I needed a portable UNIX machine. First and foremost. The software available for it was a bonus.

In the latter half of the 2010s the quality of the Macbooks has had a sharp downturn. The majority of the Macbook Pros my team has bought has had problems. Keyboard, screen connectors, batteries, etc. Fully one third of them have had more than one problem (including recurrence of the same problem after repair).

Experiences colleagues have had with the new Macbook Pro 16" are also quite depressing. Reports of the thing thermal-throttling and spinning up its fans like crazy doesn't make me want to upgrade from my 2015 Macbook Pro 15". I'll hang on to that machine until there's nothing left of it.

The hardware quality argument for Apple is gone. They are odd, fragile, finnicky devices that you can't really repair (it is too expensive, and the approved repair shops generally do not have the qualifications to do board repairs - they can only reliably, and expensively, replace stuff).

And while people have their own anecdata, I've had to approve computer purchases for my department for the last 6-7 years. We do NOT have anywhere near these kinds of problems with Thinkpads.

I, rather foolishly, installed Catalina, and what is immediately obvious is where Apple is heading: they want to lock down Macs more. Getting software from parties that have not paid Apple for access (come on, let's be honest, this is about money) to run is getting more and more painful. And a few things simply do not run anymore.

The trajectory Apple is on means that I might go back to using Macs as my secondary platform - or even start to look to Windows as my secondary platform. With Linux as my primary platform.

I think that right now is perhaps the time in the last 20 years where having more desktop software for Linux would be a very good thing. I really, really want Fusion 360, Affinity suite, Ableton Live etc on Linux now.

Because I really, really do not want Apple to be part of my future if they are going to become a fully walled garden running on marginal hardware.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#97

Post by wqsz7xn »

phoe-krk wrote: post #35
brundolf wrote: post #6

> We are heading rapidly towards the corollary to “it just works” being “and if it doesn’t, just wipe everything and re-install”. Is this really all that bad? In the era of everything living in the cloud, it generally takes me only a couple hours to setup a system again from scratch. Not that I've ever had to do this on macOS personally (though I did once on iOS), but if I had, I wouldn't be terribly upset about it.…

> Re-installing an OS is free (both the materials and, for Apple customers who don't know how to do it themselves, the service). To make a semi-unrelated quote from Jamie Zawinski, "Linux is only free if your time has no value."

> "Linux is only free if your time has no value."

I've always wondered if Ubuntu was introduced to a child would they learn to use it just as fast as a child that uses Windows? All the times I've used Ubuntu it's exactly the same as windows without all the distraction.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#98

Post by phoe-krk »

wqsz7xn wrote: post #97
phoe-krk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Re-installing an OS is free (both the materials and, for Apple customers who don't know how to do it themselves, the service). To make a semi-unrelated quote from Jamie Zawinski, "Linux is only free if your time has no value."

> "Linux is only free if your time has no value." I've always wondered if Ubuntu was introduced to a child would they learn to use it just as fast as a child that uses Windows? All the times I've used Ubuntu it's exactly the same as windows without all the distraction.

I guess so, yes. This comment from Zawinski is very old by today's standards, and Linux has made massive progress when it comes to usability. A child should be able to learn it quickly.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#99

Post by csomar »

I have recently switched to Linux (ArchLinux)[1] after a not so happy ending with macOS. The new features that Apple keeps adding to macOS helps no developer and are consumer-oriented. I feel this is the new direction they are taking. As Apple gained momentum in the smartphone space, they want to capitalize that on the laptop market. And what's better than giving your users something they are already familiar with: iOS.

So macOS is slowly drifting to become iOS. While this might be good for your average consumer as she'll be comfortable manipulating the same patterns of the interface, for the developer it means less performance, less customization, more gatekeeping, etc...

In the future, I think there will be two types of OSes: A developer OS (probably a custom built Linux for the developer or the company) and a consumer OS. The divergence will be big enough that consumer OSes can no longer be used to do any useful programming (aside from programming for the said platform).

1: https://omarabid.com/apple-walled-garden

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#100

Post by jostylr »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #59
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.

I have been upgrading (and porting to new machines) a Mac account starting in 2008 on a white macbook (2006?), transferred to a 2009 iMac, and then transferred to a 2017 iMac. Never had issues until Catalina.

Catalina finally made me do a completely fresh install with transferring data files as the only touch from the old system. Since the fresh install, it has worked perfectly, but before that the system would randomly keep repeating the last typed character. I could not live with that behavior.

Also got a new MBAir 2020 (Catalina) and that has been perfectly fine and solid as well.

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