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Home truths about macOS

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Re: Home truths about macOS

#81

Post by Maursault »

lapcat wrote: post #42
Maursault wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

> 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 bugs). This is a common misconception. Major OS updates always introduce more bugs than they fix. Bertrand Serlet put up a "No New Features" keynote slide for Snow Leopard, but that was highly misleading, because Snow Le…

> This is a common misconception.

This is vague.

> Major OS updates always introduce more bugs than they fix.

This was my major point.

> Bertrand Serlet put up a "No New Features" keynote slide for Snow Leopard, but that was highly misleading, because Snow Leopard had many big under the hood changes,

But no new features. The major goals of Snow Leopard were to improve performance and reduce its memory footprint (by removing a lot of PPC code). What was nice about it, and what my point was, Apple had 2 years for bug fixes.

> and the early versions of Snow Leopard had some nasty bugs. You can go back and look at the old Mac OS X release notes to see the descriptions of the bug fixes. What was different about Snow Leopard than today is that it received a full 2 years of nothing but bug fixes.

Yes, thank you, this is the entire point of my criticism of annual upgrades in that a year is not enough time to fix bugs before introducing instability and new bugs in a major release.

> The Snow Leopard people remember fondly was 10.6.8 v1.1 not 10.6.0, which was much buggier than its predecessor 10.5.8.

Thank you for the straw man, but, in fact, this was my entire argument against major annual releases. I'm not sure who expects point zero software to be bug free. I would actually prefer that major releases stop entirely unless there are fundamental changes, such as a new platform.

> The current yearly major OS update schedule is death for quality, because there's never enough time to fix the bugs. The engineers always have to turn around and start working on the next big thing, never fix the current big then. There's no solution except more time between major updates.

>> The other difference between now and the past is that now Apple is immediately pushing everyone to update, whereas new major Mac OS X versions used to be paid rather than free, so there was a lot more lag, you had to go to the store and purchase new discs in order to upgrade, and a lot more users were sticking with the older versions.

This is a fair point, except for the part about Apple pushing upgrades. Unrestrained users push themselves with no regard to what they're using continuing to work. Though software updates can be configured automatically by the user, and security updates are pushed, Apple isn't pushing upgrades, and I don't think the OS can be configured to upgrade automatically, only update.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#82

Post by rahen »

chris_wot wrote: post #73
kitsunesoba wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re probably talking about most desktop Linux distributions, which are less stable than what servers are running both because servers run distros with packages that are older and more polished and because servers don’t usually have hardware with notoriously troublesome drivers (e.g. Broadcom, Nvidia, some Realtek stuff, etc). Of course desktop users can tailor their machines to use with Linux and also run somethi…

I run Linux on my 2015 iMac. Just upgraded it to Ubuntu 12.10, works great and loving the latest Gnome.

I guess you mean 22.10...

Re: Home truths about macOS

#83

Post by goosedragons »

chrisandchris wrote: post #72
gorbypark wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ~6 year old MacBook Pro (13" late 2016 model (with touchbar), purchased new in 2017) is no longer "supported" (no Ventura). As far as I can tell, linux does not support WiFi or audio on it, so it's pretty much a piece of trash as far as being a laptop once apps stop supporting macOS Monterey.

How many of these apps will drop support for Monterey within the coming year(s)? How many of your apps will actually stop working when there are no updates? I think that if a Laptop lives for 6-8 years, that's quite good. If you don't think so, maybe Windows is a better fit for you because you can purchase fove (cheap) laptops for the price of one Mac. If you "need" your Mac for work, I think replacing it every 6-8 y…

Why buy 5 Windows laptops for the price of one Mac when one PC laptop can be supported for 2-3 times as long? You can run Windows 10 on a ThinkPad T60 from 2006. Windows 10 will get support until 2025. That's 19 years support from one machine. Use a Linux distro and get even more.

Why spend more for a Mac if you get less useful life and are constantly having to repurchase software from OS upgrades breaking stuff?

Re: Home truths about macOS

#84

Post by LoganDark »

RadiozRadioz wrote: post #28

> 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).

I avoid updating my software like the plague. Actually, the reason I switched to Firefox is because Chrome's updater snuck past my firewall. That is literally the only reason why.

I am considering switching back after seeing how terrible Firefox is. For example, it has a memory leak that causes a crash after 3-4 days of uptime.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#85

Post by protomyth »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #46
protomyth wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about plain Debian :) if you’re comfortable with BSD then Debian should be a cakewalk for you.

The funny thing is I tried to setup and Arch Linux box. I can setup OpenBSD with thinking with all the partitions and such, but that Arch Linux install was just a bad time. I'll try Debian when I get back to work. We are replacing our Samba server and the BSDs aren't real current given some changes the Samba team made.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#86

Post by Aloha »

geraneum wrote: post #9
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 have a Macbook Pro 2015 and the latest OS it supports officially is Monterey. The new Ventura (2022) is not supported anymore. I consider my device to have had software support for about at least seven years so far and until when they stop releasing security fixes for Monterey. I believe this to be sufficient for my needs and the frequency of which I upgrade the laptop. P.S. I don’t think that it’s ok for Apple to…

I wish apple would do 'best effort' support on older macs. Meaning, it'll let you install after you click thru two pages of warnings, and might work, or might not.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#87

Post by LoganDark »

gw98 wrote: post #49
rocketbop wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I take issue with your "2-3 year update cycle" I think the OP meant the software update cycle not hardware.

Both actually. I replace hardware the moment the AppleCare runs out. I also tend to track near or at the latest versions of macOS. I factor in the cost on a monthly cost basis.

I also had to replace my Mac when its AppleCare ran out, but only because it started having random issues with its keyboard and USB ports. Stinks of logic board issue, not worth paying to replace when it'll just break again.

Still unhappy about that because nothing will ever live up to my mid-2015 MBP.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#88

Post by anta40 »

"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."

Since I need Mac for building iOS apps, unfortunately I couldn't rely on old Mac systems (say > 8 years old). Apple regularely increase the minimum OS version for running Xcode. Since v13.3, you need to have Monterey installed.

https://developer.apple.com/support/xcode/

Re: Home truths about macOS

#89

Post by LoganDark »

scarface74 wrote: post #32
lizardactivist wrote: post #13

Sort of agrees with my own opinion, that your use of Macs and iPhones and your stay in the ecosystem is only secure as long as you keep paying up. More specifically, you're good for a year after you do a major upgrade. After that you may or may not see critical issues addressed, and after two years all bets are off. I'm not sure how long Apple supports their overly expensive things these days, but I will not be surpr…

The iPhone 5s from 2013 just got a security update in July of this year. But if you care about how long the vendor supports your phone, you really should get an Android phone. I’m sure you will be delighted about how long they support their phones.

> I’m sure you will be delighted about how long they support their phones.

Not generally. OnePlus only provides 3 major updates, for example. That's 3-4 years of use.

You can root for LineageOS or other custom ROMs, but then you lose Netflix and whatever because Android uses stupid trusted execution crap for DRM.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#90

Post by mozman »

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…

Maybe I’m getting old but the UX changes in newer versions of macOS turn me off. I’m still running Catalina but that has to change as it’s EOL this year.

I use third party software to bring back some old behaviors but it’s an uphill battle, especially with things like the notification center.

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