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Home truths about macOS

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Re: Home truths about macOS

#21

Post by ticviking »

protomyth wrote: post #12
kennend3 wrote: post #3

This was my personal favourate statement in the article. "Deciding whether and when to upgrade macOS is one of the more difficult choices we face. If your Mac isn’t capable of running the current release of macOS, or you’re dependent on key hardware or software which is incompatible, then the decision is made for you." If you head over to the hackintosh side of things you will notice that very rarely does a hackintos…

I tell people that I haven't looked forward to new features in the 'California' era like I did in the 'Cat' era. Now, I worry about what Apple will break or take away. If Microsoft wasn't so intent on spying and advertising to me, I might consider them. I get the feeling I will switch to a BSD eventually.

I’ve been leaning the same way. I’m curious why you also lean towards BSD instead of Linux?

It’s a gut feeling for me after watching the Linux ecosystem churn a lot and seeing BSDs with well documented core systems and the “core/ports” distinction make clear what is and isn’t really supported

Re: Home truths about macOS

#22

Post by black_puppydog »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #18

My low-end test Mac is an old (2012) 11" Air, running Catalina (it can't run anything newer). It's been getting updates, until recently. I don't know for sure, if they are done.

My dad switched to Ubuntu Mate when his updates stopped coming in. He's happier than ever with the "look inside, see all the details" approach of Linux, compared to the "details are behind extra hoops because we don't trust our users^W^W^Wwant you to have to think about these scary, scary things."

Re: Home truths about macOS

#23

Post by black_puppydog »

Maursault wrote: post #19
lapcat wrote: post #6

> What other actively exploited bugs are Big Sur and Monterey now vulnerable to? Actually, Apple sometimes patches actively exploited vulnerabilities in "unsupported" older versions of both macOS and iOS. The vulnerabilities that don't get quickly patched are the ones that aren't actively exploited. In any case, security researchers talk about known vulnerabilities that have or haven't been patched, but as the author…

> "New versions of macOS are full of bugs" This is why I never liked Apple's annual upgrade schedule. Ostensibly to stay ahead of security issues, annual upgrade isn't working and is causing more issues than it is worth. Leopard to Mountain Lion were the glory days of OS X stability, with Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion, and High Sierra standing out as focusing on bug fixes rather than introducing new features (and new b…

> I wish Apple had development and stable branches for macOS, such that stable was plain and had very limited features, stayed compatible with decade-old hw

The reason they don't have that is the same we don't have this for phones. No profit driven venture on the planet would go through that trouble just to hurt their own sales.

Which is why free (as in speech) alternatives are so important.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#24

Post by gw98 »

Got to be honest I rarely get any issues with macOS for a couple of years now. The only notable one I remember was the date selection in reminders on 12.6 stopped working and that was fixed in 12.6.1. Workaround was to manually key it in.

You do have to keep within the 2-3 year update cycle though. Quite frankly it pays for itself though in less eye poking than windows.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#25

Post by kennend3 »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #8
kennend3 wrote: post #3

This was my personal favourate statement in the article. "Deciding whether and when to upgrade macOS is one of the more difficult choices we face. If your Mac isn’t capable of running the current release of macOS, or you’re dependent on key hardware or software which is incompatible, then the decision is made for you." If you head over to the hackintosh side of things you will notice that very rarely does a hackintos…

There is no excuse for the most profitable company in the world to drop support for working hardware. It's entirely within their capability to support even PowerPC macs. And that's besides fact that Apple has an incredibly small portfolio of hardware to support; so much so that they could trivially exhaustively test every update on every possible piece of hardware.

This is sort of my line of thinking. when you effectively have a very small product line and are incredibly profitable it does seem a bit greedy to artificially limit updates.

It would be different if there was no way to bypass the upgrade lock, but given opencore legacy works.. Clearly the hardware is able to run the new OS.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#27

Post by scarface74 »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #8
kennend3 wrote: post #3

This was my personal favourate statement in the article. "Deciding whether and when to upgrade macOS is one of the more difficult choices we face. If your Mac isn’t capable of running the current release of macOS, or you’re dependent on key hardware or software which is incompatible, then the decision is made for you." If you head over to the hackintosh side of things you will notice that very rarely does a hackintos…

There is no excuse for the most profitable company in the world to drop support for working hardware. It's entirely within their capability to support even PowerPC macs. And that's besides fact that Apple has an incredibly small portfolio of hardware to support; so much so that they could trivially exhaustively test every update on every possible piece of hardware.

Besides the impracticality of running new OS’s on a 2005 era Mac, what software engineer at Apple would be willing to take on that role? Also, even if the hardware were supported, what third party software company would still support PPC Macs?

Re: Home truths about macOS

#28

Post by RadiozRadioz »

> It’s safer to delay upgrading

This is my policy for most of my software unless there's some kind of critical exploit. Software updates have been the cause of many breakages for me, but I have not (yet) been affected by running out-of-date software (to my knowledge).

Re: Home truths about macOS

#29

Post by nerdponx »

protomyth wrote: post #12
kennend3 wrote: post #3

This was my personal favourate statement in the article. "Deciding whether and when to upgrade macOS is one of the more difficult choices we face. If your Mac isn’t capable of running the current release of macOS, or you’re dependent on key hardware or software which is incompatible, then the decision is made for you." If you head over to the hackintosh side of things you will notice that very rarely does a hackintos…

I tell people that I haven't looked forward to new features in the 'California' era like I did in the 'Cat' era. Now, I worry about what Apple will break or take away. If Microsoft wasn't so intent on spying and advertising to me, I might consider them. I get the feeling I will switch to a BSD eventually.

Check out the KDE edition of Fedora. Fedora is a rock solid OS and KDE is a rock solid desktop environment. Reminds me of what I always wanted Windows to be.

You can go with their default edition (GNOME) if you want something that looks like a MacOS clone right out of the box, but the actual user experience is so different (and IMO so much worse) that I can't recommend it for anyone interested in switching.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#30

Post by protomyth »

ticviking wrote: post #21
protomyth wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tell people that I haven't looked forward to new features in the 'California' era like I did in the 'Cat' era. Now, I worry about what Apple will break or take away. If Microsoft wasn't so intent on spying and advertising to me, I might consider them. I get the feeling I will switch to a BSD eventually.

I’ve been leaning the same way. I’m curious why you also lean towards BSD instead of Linux? It’s a gut feeling for me after watching the Linux ecosystem churn a lot and seeing BSDs with well documented core systems and the “core/ports” distinction make clear what is and isn’t really supported

I'm much more familiar with OpenBSD and FreeBSD on the server-side, and I don't feel real comfortable with Linux. The two biggest vendors, Red Hat and Ubuntu, don't really give the warm fuzzies. Maybe something like System 76 backs.
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