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Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

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Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#31

Post by yakz »

themagician wrote: post #18

This is an interesting idea, and I am actually curious what Apple is going to do going forward. A "Snow Leopard"-esque release would be nice, but I think what would be better is an LTS release. Historically, you get a new Mac and you usually only get 5-6 years before they drop your model from the latest release. This has always made some sense to me, as after 4-6 years, you do start to feel it. I bought an M1 Max tha…

They need to somehow start marketing effectively to gamers, because the GPU in your M1 Max is shit. Sure, it’s fine for mostly-2D UIs and the occasional WebGL widget, but for AAA gaming it’s just dogshit.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#32

Post by spudlyo »

I'm done with macOS, I've migrated to Linux for my general purpose computing. With every new release of macOS, Gatekeeper is becoming harder and harder to bypass, increasing Apple's control over what software can be run on macOS, forcing apps to be signed with an Apple Developer ID. While I'm happy they are taking security seriously, I'm seriously creeped out that macOS sends hashes of every executable I run to their cloud. It's starting to feel like a broader move away from the openness of personal computing and towards a more controlled, appliance-like software experience.

When Sequoia eliminated the ability to override Gatekeeper by control-clicking, it became clear to me that Apple is now employing a frog boiling strategy towards their ultimate goal -- more control of the software you can run on their hardware.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#33

Post by r5Khe »

rcarmo wrote: post #10

There are some factual "gaps" there about how good Snow Leopard was, but I understand the sentiment. As someone who's been a Mac user since System 6 and has been consistently using Macs alongside PCs _daily_ for over 20 years I can say that Apple's software quality (either in terms of polish or just plain QA) has steadily decreased. It's just that me and other old-time switchers have stopped complaining about it and…

I've been using Macs since Mac OS 9, and Snow Leopard was indeed very good. It remains my favorite version of Mac OS. I actually think it was Snow Leopard that started the rush of developers to Mac as _the_ platform to use.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#35

Post by CharlesW »

lapcat wrote: post #23

See my blog post "The myth and reality of Mac OS X Snow Leopard": https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2023/11/5.html TL;DR What people remember fondly is not Mac OS X 10.6.0, which was in fact very buggy, and buggier than 10.5.8, but rather later versions of Snow Leopard after almost 2 full years of bug fixes. See also "Snow Leopard bug deletes all user data": https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/snow-leopard-bu…

Thank you, the nostalgia for a 15-year-old OS release, which absolutely was not great out of gate, is strange.

My recommendation for people who don't absolutely need the latest features: Upgrade to the previous version of macOS when the new version is released. Sequoia is incredibly reliable 7 (soon to be 8) updates in.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#36

Post by rcarmo »

basisword wrote: post #28

I feel like they're trying to build too many platforms most of which have become quite large. macOS, iOS, iPad OS, visionOS, watchOS, tvOS. The fact all of these systems are quite tightly linked in terms of features/syncing makes it difficult to navigate. If you want to ship every single year you need more developers, but that might make the collaboration between the systems more difficult. They need to move away fro…

The platform teams at Apple don't really work that way. My (limited) understanding is that they share a fair amount of core code, but each went their own way for a while and have recently started getting nudged back together from a UI perspective -- unfortunately, the iOS style guide seems to have won, and many decades of desktop UX is being thrown out with the bath water.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#37

Post by bluescrn »

yakz wrote: post #31
themagician wrote: post #18

This is an interesting idea, and I am actually curious what Apple is going to do going forward. A "Snow Leopard"-esque release would be nice, but I think what would be better is an LTS release. Historically, you get a new Mac and you usually only get 5-6 years before they drop your model from the latest release. This has always made some sense to me, as after 4-6 years, you do start to feel it. I bought an M1 Max tha…

They need to somehow start marketing effectively to gamers, because the GPU in your M1 Max is shit. Sure, it’s fine for mostly-2D UIs and the occasional WebGL widget, but for AAA gaming it’s just dogshit.

'Gaming laptops' with more powerful GPUs are generally awful, though. Even ignoring the state of Win11.

Yes, they can theoretically perform better, but only when plugged into mains power, and creating so much heat and fan noise that the experience really isn't good.

Don't think there's anything out there that will outperform the GPU of an M-series Mac without consuming way more power and producing problematic levels of heat+noise.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#38

Post by thewebguyd »

rcarmo wrote: post #10

There are some factual "gaps" there about how good Snow Leopard was, but I understand the sentiment. As someone who's been a Mac user since System 6 and has been consistently using Macs alongside PCs _daily_ for over 20 years I can say that Apple's software quality (either in terms of polish or just plain QA) has steadily decreased. It's just that me and other old-time switchers have stopped complaining about it and…

> Most of the other examples in the article also apply, but to be honest I've been using GNOME in parallel for years now and I consider it to be my "forever desktop" if PC hardware can ever match Apple Silicon (or, most likely, if I want something that is _just a computer_).

I'm there as well. I've been really enjoying desktop Linux lately, but I can't go back to a non-Apple laptop at this point. There's just nothing else on the market that comes close, they all make some tradeoff I'm not willing to make - either screen, speakers, keyboard, heat/battery life/fan noise, touchpad, etc. Apple is the only one that has the entire package.

There's Asahi, but no thunderbolt yet and I'm not sure the future of that project with the lead burning out and quitting. I just want an Apple Silicon-esque laptop, no trade offs on components, that runs Linux, and there's no OEM out there that's offering that experience.

So, until that happens I'm staying on mac, and even with declining quality, it's not all that bad compared to the alternatives yet. I've learned to mostly work around/ignore the odd bugs.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#39

Post by CharlesW »

rcarmo wrote: post #29
dmitrygr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prioritize the results I want (apps, not internet garbage). Settings -> Spotlight -> Websites, UNCHECK

Does not work. I happen to know a fair bit about mdutil and the like and confirmed that does exactly nothing for my particular issue. A full Spotlight index reset works temporarily, but after a while it just conks out again. Also, I vaguely remember there being a way to _order_ results, not just disable them.

> Also, I vaguely remember there being a way to _order_ results, not just disable them.

Good memory! Apple removed this feature in El Capitan.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#40

Post by nicoburns »

themagician wrote: post #18

This is an interesting idea, and I am actually curious what Apple is going to do going forward. A "Snow Leopard"-esque release would be nice, but I think what would be better is an LTS release. Historically, you get a new Mac and you usually only get 5-6 years before they drop your model from the latest release. This has always made some sense to me, as after 4-6 years, you do start to feel it. I bought an M1 Max tha…

> I think what would be better is an LTS release. Historically, you get a new Mac and you usually only get 5-6 years before they drop your model from the latest release

In fairness, Apple to do tend to continue to release critical security patches for older versions.

I suspect that it will be AI features that push Apple into deprecating older hardware. But I also hope that the M series hardware will be supported a bit longer than the intel hardware was. Time will tell.

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