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Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

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Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#111

Post by dewey »

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.

Every OS has bugs, I can't see more show-stopper bugs in Catalina than any of the previous ones. Especially none that would stop me from working or being productive.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#112

Post by gregoriol »

kergonath wrote: post #51
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…

macOS 10.15.6, which is a minor .6 version, should not cause a lot of concern, had a nasty bug with virtualization, breaking virtualbox/docker/..., it was well known within a week or two after the release. So it's not always good to wait for a .x version, it's sometimes more to wait for a few weeks after the release of any version.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#113

Post by jankiehodgpodge »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #60
Voliokis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Windows 10 on a core 2 duo and an SSD is still pretty quick, it just doesn't run well on HDDs.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#114

Post by mindfulhack »

rawfan wrote: post #104
mindfulhack wrote: post #65

I think in general macOS is an amazing operating system, recent Catalina bugs aside. Something related: what I've been really living with is the T2 chip kernel panic hardware bug. Over 3 different models (the 2017, 2018, then the 2019 16-inch MBP which is my current), I've seen Apple go from: - The initial full-scale buggy behaviour of 1-2 complete system crash & forced reboots per week; - to Apple suddenly deleting…

I would really go with regular Ubuntu for the best support. It really just works and you don't need to put any effort in getting things running smoothly. I went from Ubuntu to macOS as my daily driver because the company switched to Macbooks. I really like the integration of everything. Especially for developers, though, Ubuntu is the perfect OS.

I would have said Ubuntu a year ago, but I've been watching the Desktop Linux space closely for a year now, and it appears Mint is actually more user friendly than Ubuntu, which is quite surprising and nice to know (I'm not a fan of Snap centralisation either). E.g. the GUI app store is superior, it's been demonstrated...along with other things that actually matter under the 'just works' category.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#115

Post by mindfulhack »

mschuster91 wrote: post #70
mindfulhack wrote: post #65

I think in general macOS is an amazing operating system, recent Catalina bugs aside. Something related: what I've been really living with is the T2 chip kernel panic hardware bug. Over 3 different models (the 2017, 2018, then the 2019 16-inch MBP which is my current), I've seen Apple go from: - The initial full-scale buggy behaviour of 1-2 complete system crash & forced reboots per week; - to Apple suddenly deleting…

> to observing Apple slowly tweaking how macOS responds to the kernel panic by no longer crashing the system but just freezing the screen and all controls for up to a minute (while sound continues) before unfreezing itself (this happens maybe 3-5 times per week for me, even more, it happens when watching full-screen video in any app). That's not a kernel panic then, by definition a kernel panic is an unrecoverable ev…

OK, I might now agree with that. Perhaps it's a second issue (which only makes the criticism stronger). I still do occasionally get the T2 'crash', i.e. entire system reboot, but not very often. What's most frustrating is how Apple's taken away control of troubleshooting and knowledge about one's own device and what's going on with it, for their own business reasons. Extremely hostile to the consumer.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#116

Post by the_other »

oblio wrote: post #61
marmaduke wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is completely non nondiscoverable I also don’t find this discoverable, but option clicking was best analogy to right clicking on Apple since the mouse used to have one button. Your complaint is like saying that having to copy and paste with ctrl c and ctrl v is non discoverable in Windows with a two button mouse because in Linux it’s just select text and middle click somewhere else.

> option clicking was best analogy to right clicking on Apple since the mouse used to have one button. Not high praise for Apple, wasn't the 1 button mouse the laughing stock of mouse users everywhere? :-)

Only the ones who’d learned about two-button mice.

When the one-button mouse arrived, the majority of the population had never touched a mouse.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#117

Post by scns »

AnonHP wrote: post #20
perryizgr8 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I’m not a fan of VMs for older machines since they tend to perform poorly. And 4GB RAM wouldn’t be adequate for that. I’d suggest dual booting with a separate partition for Linux. You can also choose distros that have a lower hardware requirement and perform better on older machines (my first choice is Xubuntu, but there are others too). Make sure you still retain the macOS partition and installation (after resizing…

This is the way to go. But if you like a polished OS i would recommend Mint Cinnamon edition. Installed the Xfce version on my mothers ancient (T61 i think) Thinkpad, and the idiosyncracies were quiet annoying. Replaced it with the Cinnamon version which ran just fine.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#118

Post by oblio »

the_other wrote: post #116
oblio wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> option clicking was best analogy to right clicking on Apple since the mouse used to have one button. Not high praise for Apple, wasn't the 1 button mouse the laughing stock of mouse users everywhere? :-)

Only the ones who’d learned about two-button mice. When the one-button mouse arrived, the majority of the population had never touched a mouse.

True, but by the time the one button mouse left, the majority of the population had definitely seen or used a two or even three button mouse.

We're talking about a decision that took 2 decades to reverse.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#119

Post by swiley »

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…

This is why community maintained software tends to have better UIs; you just have users and developers (who are often the same) and none of this “bell-curve psychology.” WPA-GUI is awesome for example, but you can’t sell it because it doesn’t look awesome.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#120

Post by antod »

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.

Basically, yes - it can work like that depending on circumstances. My son started with Ubuntu and doesn't like windows (new school requirements forced it). But he's not into gaming.

I've known a couple of other fathers that had the same experience. But it isn't common.

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