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Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

mavericksforever.com

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Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#21

Post by Wowfunhappy »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #11
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #10

In terms of the "Why Mavericks?" section, >I knew I wanted an operating system from before Apple abandoned the Aqua design language. I suppose it depends on your definition, but that likely does mean Mavericks is the latest available. For my money though, El Capitan (10.11 to Mavericks' 10.9) was the local maxima (speed, stability, capability). I've no inkling what issues using that would entail—I had no idea that Mo…

Strictly speaking, Mavericks (and Mountain Lion and Lion before it) were already some way through abandoning Aqua. Lion dropped the beautiful blue scroll bars that previous OS Xs had, replaced the pill-shaped buttons with rounded rectangles, and somewhat flattened the overall UI as well, though not to the extent that Yosemite did.

But even as a fan of Aqua, I think it's nice that some of these elements got toned down just a bit. Really, you could view most of the design changes from OS X 10.0 onwards as Apple slowly toning down Aqua; the original Cheetah looks kind of gaudy IMO, the interface elements draw too much attention to themselves.

I do miss Snow Leopard's scroll bars though, as I explicitly call out on the website!

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#22

Post by runjake »

xeviousr wrote: post #15
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #10

In terms of the "Why Mavericks?" section, >I knew I wanted an operating system from before Apple abandoned the Aqua design language. I suppose it depends on your definition, but that likely does mean Mavericks is the latest available. For my money though, El Capitan (10.11 to Mavericks' 10.9) was the local maxima (speed, stability, capability). I've no inkling what issues using that would entail—I had no idea that Mo…

We could benefit from a site that describes the best OS for any hardware and has scripts and instructions for how to mod them to be more efficient and up-to-date, with someone assigned to maintaining patches and tools for basic functionality you might need, but also having standalone, airgapped versions of each for longevity. Right now, this info is dispersed everywhere and it’s not the primary intent of archival sit…

Most of all that is subjective and is going to vary person to person, which is why it’s dispersed everywhere.

But something like a pcpartpicker.com but for OS setups would be cool.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#23

Post by Wowfunhappy »

brewmarche wrote: post #9

The MacBook Air mentioned (2014) will install Mavericks when booted into recovery mode anyway (unless you use Option-Command-R which will give you the newest compatible version which is Big Sur). I did that a few days ago and I agree, it’s quite snappy! Missing certificates can also be installed manually (e.g. from the curl CA bundle), but even then TLS 1.3 support is lacking in most apps which breaks a lot of stuff…

> The MacBook Air mentioned (2014) will install Mavericks when booted into recovery mode anyway (unless you use Option-Command-R which will give you the newest compatible version which is Big Sur).

Certain 2014 Macbook Airs, including my own, will install Yosemite instead in recovery mode for some reason, even though obviously I'm using Mavericks and it runs fine.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#25

Post by Wowfunhappy »

felixding wrote: post #24

I can, and will, totally use this as my daily driver on my MBP 2013, if there is Tailscale and a up-to-date iTerm2. The UI is soooo much better than the current Mac OS.

I'm afraid the newest compatible iTerm2 is 3.0.15 from 2017 [1].

It's open source so it might be possible to build a newer version to be compatible, or to cherry pick certain newer features. It's not an app I use though.

1: https://iterm2.com/downloads/beta/iTerm2-3_0_15.zip

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#26

Post by latexr »

> Don't you love how hackable everything is? Removing stock apps from the Applications folder is completely safe—nothing will break—and this is your computer, so you should make it your own. You can always restore apps later using Time Machine. Just don't delete System Preferences, or anything in the Utilities folder.

This was pretty funny. “You can do anything, and you should be able to do anything, nothing will break”, then in the same paragraph “but don’t do this specific thing”.

Yes, there is immense value in being able to do whatever we want with our computers without restrictions. But let’s not pretend there isn’t value in being able to set restrictions too. Everything in computers is a tradeoff. Having an immutable signed OS has plenty of advantages, including for hackers: I feel much safer telling people to “just try stuff” when I know there isn’t a risk of them breaking everything and being left with an unbootable machine, leaving them feeling stupid and scared of trying anything else. More advanced tasks can come later.

Kudos for the project in general, though, I’m not throwing shade. I too am discontent with Apple under Tim Cook, but staying on an older version of macOS isn’t an acceptable solution for my use cases, I’d sooner switch to a BSD.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#27

Post by brewmarche »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #23
brewmarche wrote: post #9

The MacBook Air mentioned (2014) will install Mavericks when booted into recovery mode anyway (unless you use Option-Command-R which will give you the newest compatible version which is Big Sur). I did that a few days ago and I agree, it’s quite snappy! Missing certificates can also be installed manually (e.g. from the curl CA bundle), but even then TLS 1.3 support is lacking in most apps which breaks a lot of stuff…

> The MacBook Air mentioned (2014) will install Mavericks when booted into recovery mode anyway (unless you use Option-Command-R which will give you the newest compatible version which is Big Sur). Certain 2014 Macbook Airs, including my own, will install Yosemite instead in recovery mode for some reason, even though obviously I'm using Mavericks and it runs fine.

I think it depends on what was the current version when your model came out. Should have said mid-2014 like OP, sorry

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#28

Post by brudgers »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #3
brudgers wrote: post #2

It is an interesting article, but not really a Show HN because there is nothing I can play with or try out...unless you ship me an old compatible Mac... my email is in my profile :

...I'll admit I wasn't entirely sure if this could be a Show HN or not, I might have chosen wrong! However, the guide includes a ton of software I made, which can absolutely be tried out—Aqua Proxy, updated QuickTime components, SIMBL plugins, etc—by anyone with compatible hardware. I'm sorry you don't have the right hardware. :( You could use a virtual machine but there's really no point. But I don't think this in i…

I was wrong and did not read the fine print on the downloads.

Sorry.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#29

Post by Wowfunhappy »

wsc981 wrote: post #13

I noticed the app section included VPN. Recently I've been looking for some VPN solution and found that many are quite expensive, though often you get a decent enough discount if you subscribe for like a year or longer. Also, I believe many services are probably not trustworthy (regardless of their claims). A very affordable alternative is a DigitalOcean droplet with PiHole. You can connect with this VPN with Wiregua…

I haven't used WireGuard, but it looks like the main macOS implementation uses Go. Binaries built with Go 1.19 or below will work on Mavericks if you inject some compatibility libraries. (This is one of many things I haven't had time to fully document on the website yet, but I can help anyone who asks.)

But the big problem with non-native VPNs on Mavericks (by which I mean, any VPN which requires installing additional software beyond what is built-in to the OS) is that they tend to bypass any HTTPS proxies you have set up. Without an HTTPS proxy, Mavericks will have trouble connecting to most servers because SecureTransport doesn't support modern cipher suites. In e.g. Firefox Dynasty this won't matter since it ships its own (modern) SSL implementation, but Apple Mail (for example) will be unable to load most remote images.

This is why I have the note about privatevpn on the website—it took me a bit of searching to find a service that was low cost and supported a Mavericks native VPN protocol. I don't really "trust" any VPN service, but they're useful in certain specific situations.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#30

Post by Wowfunhappy »

brewmarche wrote: post #27
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The MacBook Air mentioned (2014) will install Mavericks when booted into recovery mode anyway (unless you use Option-Command-R which will give you the newest compatible version which is Big Sur). Certain 2014 Macbook Airs, including my own, will install Yosemite instead in recovery mode for some reason, even though obviously I'm using Mavericks and it runs fine.

I think it depends on what was the current version when your model came out. Should have said mid-2014 like OP, sorry

> Should have said mid-2014 like OP, sorry

I don't want to belabor the point, but just to be clear—I am referring to a mid-2014 MBA, anything newer and Mavericks wouldn't work! (There is no "late 2014" MBA as far as I'm aware.) Mine offers to install Yosemite in recovery mode.

It may indeed be based on when that specific computer came off of the assembly line or something, I have no idea, but for that exact model of computer you can get different results in recovery mode!

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