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Home truths about macOS

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Re: Home truths about macOS

#141

Post by flenserboy »

Maursault wrote: post #35
black_puppydog wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish Apple had development and stable branches for macOS, such that stable was plain and had very limited features, stayed compatible with decade-old hw The reason they don't have that is the same we don't have this for phones. No profit driven venture on the planet would go through that trouble just to hurt their own sales. Which is why free (as in speech) alternatives are so important.

It wouldn't hurt their sales. Users running old hardware aren't doing it to save money but instead because they can't afford new hardware, which isn't the same thing. Apple isn't getting those sales anyway. Mac sales are driven by new users and users that can afford to upgrade hardware every two years. These consumers aren't going anywhere, and if Apple remained committed to a minimal amount of support for older hard…

Especially as they're looking to expand profits from services. Including older hardware will only increase audience capture and the number of people using and paying for various offerings from Apple.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#142

Post by pram »

kennend3 wrote: post #131
alwillis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like how MS Windows ran on the DEC Alpha as well as X86? Or how Linux runs on X86 and ARM CPU's? It’s not the same thing. A macOS hard drive could boot either an Intel or PPC Mac and all of the apps ran on both types of machines. Apps that were “fat binaries” ran natively on both processor architectures. Same thing today with the apps and the operating system running natively on Intel and ARM machines.

Nothing you wrote is accurate. The apps ran on both types of machines thanks to rosetta and the performance hit this takes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) It is doubtful that a PPC system can boot an intel MacOS HD. One is RISC the other CISC. The reason you can "natively" run intel on ARM machines is Rosetta2 "Until recently, Mac developers only had to worry about creating Intel-based apps. However…

lol maybe you should do some reading before posting. Mach-O supports multi-architecture binaries. Rosetta is solely for things that haven’t been made “Universal”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_binary

Re: Home truths about macOS

#143

Post by lioeters »

kennend3 wrote: post #136
lioeters wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently my old MBP (2013 model) stopped working, with a mysterious kernel process taking up max CPU to grind everything to a halt on every boot. Fortunately I had its files backed up to a disk in Linux-compatible format (ExFAT32?), so I finally decided to wipe it clean and install Pop!_OS. https://pop.system76.com/ It gave new life to the laptop - I'd recommend trying it, you might be able to get more mileage out of…

I use to be a huge Ubuntu fan but decided to move back to a hackintosh ~2 years ago. I still use ubuntu often so i went with Ubuntu Budgie https://ubuntubudgie.org It has that whole "MacOS" dock look and feel right out of the box. Good that you found an alternative OS and kept your old mac running. So many people seem content to spend big money on a Mac laptop, have it reach EOL and become landfill as they run out an…

Ubuntu Budgie looks nice, thanks for mentioning it - I'll try it sometime.

An old Macbook with an Ubuntu variant is a nice combination of sturdy hardware, light(er)-weight operating system, and well-designed user interface. In a way, it feels more like the spirit of "Macintosh". And it would make for a good educational/toy computer for children and young people. If I see an opportunity, like family or friends who have old laptops or computers, I'm going to offer to set it up for them.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#144

Post by esskay »

leeches wrote: post #123

Apple needs to stop pushing annual upgrades. Please spend 2 years polishing the core system. No features. We need to rebase onto a more stable and reliable platform.

Basically we need a Snow Leopard. That was by far the most rock solid release they've done in years. It included a few new features but was at it's core a massive performance and bug fix release. The fact that it was also released on some very old macs at the time helped too.

This being said, day to day I cant remember the last time I experienced a bug on any mac I've used. It's generally very stable, but does need a maintenance release to refine a few areas.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#145

Post by jen20 »

kennend3 wrote: post #129
Maursault wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer BSD to Linux for a few reasons. Firstly, BSD is not encumbered by GPL. Also, any BSD is a complete operating system while Linux requires distros subject to the whims of their creators, which seem to focus on form over function. Any long term stability is almost accidental, and there is no standard edition of Linux. Lastly and I think most importantly, the centralized BSD ports system is more trustworthy than…

> Firstly, BSD is not encumbered by GPL. Also, any BSD is a complete operating system while Linux requires distros subject to the whims of their creators, which seem to focus on form over function This "BSD is a complete operating system" that you speak of... Do you mean FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragnonFly BSD, Darwin? Thankfully BSD is not subject to teh whims of any distro?

Each of {Free,Open,Net,DragonFly}BSD is its own operating system, complete with tree, system call interface and ports tree. This is not the same as the distribution model Linux has - the BSDs have diverged substantially from one another.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#146

Post by LoganDark »

melvyn2 wrote: post #125
LoganDark wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if just maybe an update might… fix a bug?

I've been looking for evidence that the bug's been fixed, but even upon bringing up the issue with Mozilla engineers, all they have to say is "turn overcommit back on, we don't support your configuration".

Excuse me, Mozilla? Firefox should not be collecting 20-30 gigabytes of committed memory in the first place. They must be high or something.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#147

Post by californical »

LoganDark wrote: post #84
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.

I have ~weeks of uptime on Firefox MacOS with two separate laptops, and no memory issues whatsoever. So likely just a bug with something on your version/system (edit: check your plugins too)

Re: Home truths about macOS

#148

Post by LoganDark »

californical wrote: post #147
LoganDark wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have ~weeks of uptime on Firefox MacOS with two separate laptops, and no memory issues whatsoever. So likely just a bug with something on your version/system (edit: check your plugins too)

macOS has overcommit and memory compression, so you wouldn't notice even if your Firefox did have a leak. macOS is cool that way, but Windows isn't.

FWIW, I would still be using macOS... if I had any choice.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#149

Post by ehutch79 »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #54
calvinmorrison wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just rereading the ppc history for Apple as they're doing it again for ARM and it seems quite reasonable to be honest. They pulled something off I think would be difficult for many others and have shown they're not married to a single architecture. Still RIP my favorite machine the last ppc Mac tower

Well, you can't run 2002 OS X software on a modern Mac anymore, but you can still run 2002 Windows software on a modern PC (and probably 2002 Linux software too). Actually, you can't even run 2010 iPhone OS software on a modern iPhone anymore (but you can run 2010 Android software on a modern Android phone).

That's not true in any practical sense.

Sure you can run the xp calculator app on windows 11, but so what? Most of the programs that people want backwards compatibility for, enterprise apps, won't run correctly. Yes that's mostly because of how they're coded, but even if the source code still exists, I doubt anyone is putting effort into updating them at this point, and is just running xp or 2000 in a vm.

Re: Home truths about macOS

#150

Post by vetinari »

kennend3 wrote: post #131
alwillis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like how MS Windows ran on the DEC Alpha as well as X86? Or how Linux runs on X86 and ARM CPU's? It’s not the same thing. A macOS hard drive could boot either an Intel or PPC Mac and all of the apps ran on both types of machines. Apps that were “fat binaries” ran natively on both processor architectures. Same thing today with the apps and the operating system running natively on Intel and ARM machines.

Nothing you wrote is accurate. The apps ran on both types of machines thanks to rosetta and the performance hit this takes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) It is doubtful that a PPC system can boot an intel MacOS HD. One is RISC the other CISC. The reason you can "natively" run intel on ARM machines is Rosetta2 "Until recently, Mac developers only had to worry about creating Intel-based apps. However…

> It is doubtful that a PPC system can boot an intel MacOS HD. One is RISC the other CISC.

That's the point of fat binaries: they contain .text sections for several architectures. Even the installation DVD was a single one, for both platforms.

Some more modern example of the same concept:

    Terminal: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64] [arm64e]
    Terminal (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
    Terminal (for architecture arm64e): Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64e
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