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Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

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Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#131

Post by rowanG077 »

marmaduke wrote: post #48
bgorman wrote: post #41

I recently switched to macOS after using Linux pretty much exclusively for personal use over the last 5 years. (2020 MacBook Air) For me the most infuriating thing is that Apple completely hides what is actually going on from the user. Want to manually scale your display to an exact resolution? Go to Displays, Hold down the option key and then click on the text next to a radio button. WTF!!! Who designed this, this i…

> this is completely non nondiscoverable I also don’t find this discoverable, but option clicking was best analogy to right clicking on Apple since the mouse used to have one button. Your complaint is like saying that having to copy and paste with ctrl c and ctrl v is non discoverable in Windows with a two button mouse because in Linux it’s just select text and middle click somewhere else.

How is that non-discoverable? Most software literally tells you beside the copy/paste entry that it is ctrl+c/v.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#132

Post by chongli »

bborud wrote: post #96

I used Linux as my main operating system on the desktop for 16-17 years before switching to OSX. The reason was that I was tired of having laptops that didn't work properly and the endless weeks of tweaking whenever I got a new laptop. It also helped that Macbooks were pretty decent laptops. I needed a portable UNIX machine. First and foremost. The software available for it was a bonus. In the latter half of the 2010…

I honestly miss the classic Macs of the 80s and 90s. Sure they had their bad points. The operating system let badly-behaved applications stomp all over the address space and crash the machine, and preference files (as well as the desktop database) got corrupted frequently.

But they were so easy to use! The operating system was so simple you as one person could understand the whole thing. There weren’t countless background processes running all the time. You knew exactly which applications were running (only one, in the case of system 6.0 and earlier).

And Apple was a different company back then. They were artists and underdogs. Now they’ve become this ruthless capitalist machine of staggering scale. I guess nothing good lasts forever.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#133

Post by BatteryMountain »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #18
AnonHP wrote: post #14

It used to be a long running joke as well as practical wisdom on the Windows side to always wait for SP1 (Service Pack 1) for better stability and never to install the X.0 version. For all the “doubling down on Mac” that Apple’s senior employees harp about in interviews, macOS itself has been focusing more on eye candy and iOS parity than on stability. For my machines, I switch to Linux once macOS updates are no long…

> For my machines, I switch to Linux once macOS updates are no longer available What's the best way to use Linux on an old MacBook air? Should I be running it in a VM? Is there a way to dula boot? The laptop is quite old, it has 4GB of RAM. So I'm worried nothing will run well on it. Macos definitely feels sluggish on it now.

My office gives (almost) everyone a 2017 Macbook Air with dual core i5-5350U with 8Gb Ram and 128Gb ssd's. I installed Fedora last year October and been using it ever since.

Volume keys, brightness keys, touchpad & keyboard backlit all works perfect. Only problem is the kernel doesn't support the specific wifi module (broadcom) out of the box, so I installed Fedora via usb-lan dongle (netinstall), which the company also provides anyway. After installation you can install the broadcom modules yourself and it just work. Strange enough the bluetooth works out of the box.

I didn't dualboot or mess with any of that, just wiped the ssd clean and made partitions with the lvm automatic option in the Fedora installer.

Next time I will definitely install Fedora + Xfce instead of Gnome, since I'm using this combination on a another low spec machine and it's great. So maybe give the xfce spin a try.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#134

Post by sukilot »

jlokier wrote: post #24
perryizgr8 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For my machines, I switch to Linux once macOS updates are no longer available What's the best way to use Linux on an old MacBook air? Should I be running it in a VM? Is there a way to dula boot? The laptop is quite old, it has 4GB of RAM. So I'm worried nothing will run well on it. Macos definitely feels sluggish on it now.

On my Macbook Pro, I found Linux used more energy running directly, than running inside a VM (tested with VMware Fusion). So I'm happy running Linux in a VM. This might be due to the dual GPUs (on higher end MBPs), I didn't check further after the initial battery test. It's nicer anyway, because of the ability to run MacOS and Linux at the same time, and four-finger swipe between their desktops. That way I get the ni…

MacBookPro have a driver bug that makes the dGPU run at max power (20W) whenever it is on (which is always forced whenever an external monitor is connected). So that's not why Linux uses more energy. More likely Mac is better at turning down idle services like in Safari

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#135

Post by coldtea »

No, it's just a bizarro question. I've been using it since 2003, and it's stabler than ever, while doing more for the user than ever (new fs, virtualization support, Handover, Continuity, and tons of other stuff besides).

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#136

Post by beagle3 »

Voliokis wrote: post #40
bookmarkable wrote: post #21

I feel for developers on macOS bugs, bloat and unreliability, but for many users, it still works every day for 5 to 7 years without issue, and updates just mean some new emoji are available.

Unless you're on a device that can only be upgraded to 10.13, after which it won't get security updates anymore after 11 is released. Meanwhile, I can still put W10 on 10-12 year old PCs and it'll run fine (if the hardware wasn't particularly terrible even for back then). It might not support some of the latest features, but it works and you're not subject to some arbitrary decision by Microsoft as to whether you're…

My early-2013 (7.5 years old now) will be getting Big Sur and 3-4 years support after that.

And it still works like new - something that I’ve never heard about a similarly aged Win19 device unless it was very recently reinstalled.

You’re likely to have problems finding drivers for your other hardware, though - especially 10-year old printers or scanners (even though they are likely to work out of the box on Modern Mac and Linux)

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#137

Post by roboyoshi »

mschuster91 wrote: post #70
mindfulhack wrote: post #65

I think in general macOS is an amazing operating system, recent Catalina bugs aside. Something related: what I've been really living with is the T2 chip kernel panic hardware bug. Over 3 different models (the 2017, 2018, then the 2019 16-inch MBP which is my current), I've seen Apple go from: - The initial full-scale buggy behaviour of 1-2 complete system crash & forced reboots per week; - to Apple suddenly deleting…

> to observing Apple slowly tweaking how macOS responds to the kernel panic by no longer crashing the system but just freezing the screen and all controls for up to a minute (while sound continues) before unfreezing itself (this happens maybe 3-5 times per week for me, even more, it happens when watching full-screen video in any app). That's not a kernel panic then, by definition a kernel panic is an unrecoverable ev…

I have these regularly when I wake my 16inch macbook from sleep. Keyboard+Trackpad+(Touchbar) Freeze for 30s or up to 1min.. and then it continues like nothing happened. Haven't found much info about that, but reading this, it seems to fit. I'm really digging my machine, but those "silent" errors and apple not admitting anything takes a lot of fun out of it.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#138

Post by ivanche »

sumedh wrote: post #128
lordnacho wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the original commenter but I've had this issue where the laptop reboots instead of sleeping properly. Keeps happening, not sure why, and many others have had it too on forums.

Oh wow, this has been happening to my Mac as well. I am thinking of going back to a previous version.

I found that, paradoxically, putting a laptop explicitly to sleep (apple menu/sleep) before leaving the office helps ~80% of the time (i.e. in the morning it will not reset with kernel panic).

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#139

Post by gurkendoktor »

kergonath wrote: post #51
AnonHP wrote: post #14

It used to be a long running joke as well as practical wisdom on the Windows side to always wait for SP1 (Service Pack 1) for better stability and never to install the X.0 version. For all the “doubling down on Mac” that Apple’s senior employees harp about in interviews, macOS itself has been focusing more on eye candy and iOS parity than on stability. For my machines, I switch to Linux once macOS updates are no long…

Yes, QC of macOS releases is inadequate. I can’t say it’s really new though, even Tiger and Leopard had their issues on day 0 (it was also way worse in the 7.5.x era). On the other hand, it is entirely possible to stay on a given version for the entire life of its successor. It is also possible to wait for the next x.5 version to upgrade, notwithstanding the incredibly annoying notification about a new major version…

> On the other hand, it is entirely possible to stay on a given version for the entire life of its successor.

Or the successor of its successor:

Apple doesn't make any guarantees about it, but typically the _three_ most recent macOS versions receive security updates. Right now: 10.13, 10.14, and 10.15 (plus of course the 10.16 betas).

The real problem for many developers is that Xcode typically requires a fairly recent macOS version. Compiling for iOS is the one thing that developers absolutely _need_ a Mac for, so it's unfortunate that Xcode also forces you to be an early adopter on top of that.

Re: Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?

#140

Post by ffpip »

panzerboy wrote: post #82
randomsearch wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was thinking about jumping ship but: - MacBook Air is still lovely (once ahem I had keyboard fixed) - Basic productivity tools on Linux - eg email or word processing - still suck and I want native apps for such things. Any solution?

For email and word processing, it depends on what you've previously used. I would say that LibreOffice is quite all right for word processing. Also have a look at FreeOffice ( https://www.freeoffice.com/en/ ) which aims for great compatibility with MS Office. For an email client, I personally use the GMail web client nowadays, but I've used Thunderbird for a long time and it's fine (not as polished and good looking a…

Why is it free? What's the catch?

Ads, premium features?

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