> This sucks. We think it sucks. You think it sucks. But we can't fix it: Apple has to do so. And this is why I gave up on macOS several years ago now and moved to Linux. It's not about which OS is better or worse. All software has bugs. It's about the empowerment to _do something_ about the inevitable bugs, rather than wait and hope that a fix comes down from above.
And not just that: if an update breaks my Linux install, I can figure out what broke it and roll back to an older version. Rolling back updates on macOS or Windows is just... not really a thing, at least not without a full reinstall, assuming you even have installation media for older versions these days.
macOS 15.2 breaks the ability to copy the OS to another drive
171–180 of 338 posts
Re: macOS 15.2 breaks the ability to copy the OS to another drive
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like the lesson learned here from reading your travail is not to invest in an ecosystem that makes it difficult to do a standard operation.
Sounds a bit too simplistic. Apple is about the only company that allows you to run any decently sized LLMs on a laptop. They also have all day battery life, amazing single-threaded performance and great multicore performance. And they didn’t stop there, they also threw in a truly fantastic display and speakers that are so far ahead of any competitors that I wonder what kind of magic they have that no other laptop br…
The answer is integration.
With Windows laptops, you have one company doing the sound card, one company doing the speakers and one company doing the enclosure. What you actually want is your sound card's equalizer curve being perfectly tuned to your speakers' frequency response, taking into account how their positioning in your specific laptop enclosure affects the sound. If your sound card maker doesn't know what laptop the card will go into, they just straight up can't do this.
There's also the fact that sound cards have to be conservative about how much power they output, to avoid blowing up the speakers. Apple knows the exact tolerances of the ones in their laptops. They even have special temperature sensors in them, so that they can increase the power even more, and go back to a safer level in software if the temperature ever crosses a safety threshold.
Re: macOS 15.2 breaks the ability to copy the OS to another drive
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously you can avoid all of this by buying your Linux-compatible PC only from a True Scotsman.
Can't find any Scotsman in Australia, let alone a true one.
https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/what-we-do/whm-program/lates...
Re: macOS 15.2 breaks the ability to copy the OS to another drive
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
As opposed to all the people who can't make a USB keyboard work with MacOS and can't do a damn thing about it . The thread about it generally reaches 40+ pages before Apple erases it only for it to come back. Apple has known about it for half a decade. I can pinpoint the OS release when they broke it. Sure, it doesn't seem to affect everybody, but the people it does affect have no recourse. With MacOS, as long as eve…
When did it break, and why does it still work for me? (Mac Studio, M1 Max, macOS 15.2)
I tracked it to a single OS update because it was one of the last iterations that still had removable SSDs. I could swap the drives and the USB failure moved with the OS.
It's almost certainly an overly zealous macOS USB HID driver. macOS will do very strange things if the HID descriptor and the USB report don't correspond exactly and it will do those weird things silently. People have had to work around strange macOS HID handling for quite a while now.
Re: macOS 15.2 breaks the ability to copy the OS to another drive
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't me trying to convince you to use Linux, but the listed reasons (other than LLM testing) aren't real deterrents (and there are plenty that exist for many people, no use pretending not): > Acorn GIMP (or Glimpse, if you want a more modern UI) or Krita can definitely do pretty much anything Acorn can. > Keyboard Maestro GNOME and KDE have been able to do this out of the box from pretty much the beginning. The…
> GIMP (or Glimpse, if you want a more modern UI) or Krita can definitely do pretty much anything Acorn can. I'm fairly certain that anyone who recommends GIMP hasn't really used GIMP.
Re: macOS 15.2 breaks the ability to copy the OS to another drive
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
And not just that: if an update breaks my Linux install, I can figure out what broke it and roll back to an older version. Rolling back updates on macOS or Windows is just... not really a thing, at least not without a full reinstall, assuming you even have installation media for older versions these days.
It's actually really difficult to roll back a MacOS machine to an earlier OS even with a full reinstall. You either have to make MacOS backup disks immediately upon opening the machine, or you have to find MacOS installation disks from the dodgy high seas.
Mist[1] downloads them directly from Apple.
[1] https://github.com/ninxsoft/Mist or https://github.com/ninxsoft/mist-cli
Re: macOS 15.2 breaks the ability to copy the OS to another drive
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually really difficult to roll back a MacOS machine to an earlier OS even with a full reinstall. You either have to make MacOS backup disks immediately upon opening the machine, or you have to find MacOS installation disks from the dodgy high seas.
Not really difficult to reinstall every major Intel Mac OS release, at least, as they're all downloadable from Apple in one way or another: 1. You can reinstall "the version of macOS that came with your Mac or the closest version that’s still available" via Internet Recovery[1]. 2. You can download installers for every major release back to High Sierra from Apple via the App Store[2] or directly from Apple's update s…
When I tried to wipe and reinstall stuff back in 2021, it was impossible to find old versions.
Nice to see that has changed.
Thanks for the links.
Re: macOS 15.2 breaks the ability to copy the OS to another drive
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds a bit too simplistic. Apple is about the only company that allows you to run any decently sized LLMs on a laptop. They also have all day battery life, amazing single-threaded performance and great multicore performance. And they didn’t stop there, they also threw in a truly fantastic display and speakers that are so far ahead of any competitors that I wonder what kind of magic they have that no other laptop br…
> Apple is about the only company that allows you to run any decently sized LLMs on a laptop Comments like these make me wonder if people even use different computers anymore or if they just say stuff and hope that it's right.
They also build their RAM in a way that makes it suitable for both CPU and GPU uses. This means you don't have separate CPU RAM and GPU VRAM, it's all just memory. If you get more RAM for your Macbook, that automatically means more memory you can use for LLM inference.
Yes, you can technically buy Nvidia, but you'd pay just as much for that if not more, and I don't think you can get as much VRAM in a consumer GPU anyway.
Re: macOS 15.2 breaks the ability to copy the OS to another drive
#179> This sucks. We think it sucks. You think it sucks. But we can't fix it: Apple has to do so. And this is why I gave up on macOS several years ago now and moved to Linux. It's not about which OS is better or worse. All software has bugs. It's about the empowerment to _do something_ about the inevitable bugs, rather than wait and hope that a fix comes down from above.
In theory I can make bluetooth and wifi and deep-sleep work with Linux, but am I actually able to fix it? No, and not for a lack of trying. If we're talking about practical ability to fix what goes wrong with my daily driver, then macOS still wins hands down.
My past two laptops, ASUS and Lenovo, lasted days with modern standby. Not as great as Apple but good enough.
Re: macOS 15.2 breaks the ability to copy the OS to another drive
#180It also kernel panics if you power down external monitor but keep HDMI connected or have an HDMI output device that is powered off. It was a great out-of-the-box experience for my new MacBook Pro.