I've been saying this for YEARS. In fact, I just published a blog post saying this very same thing SMH. https://blog.webb.page/2025-03-27-spitball-with-claude.txt
Apple needs a Snow Sequoia
241–250 of 801 posts
Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia
#242There 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…
> There are some factual "gaps" there about how good Snow Leopard was
Here are some data points I collected at the time:
https://blog.rongarret.info/2009/08/snow-leopard-is-disaster...
https://blog.rongarret.info/2009/09/esata-on-snow-leopard.ht...
In retrospect Snow Leopard deserves the love it eventually got, but at the time it was not entirely clear.
> Apple's software quality (either in terms of polish or just plain QA) has steadily decreased.
Amen to that.
Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use both Mac and windows extensively and I'm not sure what are you referring to. You can access most settings by Windows + "yourquery".
Using search as a UI is admitting the UI sucks. It is indicative of a failure, not a solution in and of itself.
I'm not sure I agree.
I admit I honestly have no idea where the system settings are located as I haven't pressed the start button in ages, but the same applies to MacOS as I would use spotlight there as well.
Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia
#244[dead]
Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't believe I'm saying it, but I agree with you about GNOME being my forever desktop. I used to really make fun of GNOME during the 2->3 transition, which seemed so profoundly misguided, but now I love it. I don't know if they've massively improved it or if my perspective has just changed with time.
Unified button that disguises as two different icons hiding other useful options You can only cycle windows in one direction even if you try to do some remapping Choosing keyboard languages hides a lot of options. Once you understand you need to click on English US to see more detailed options then you get them all, UK, Canadian... Then it's unclear which keyboard layout is currently selected and how to select one fr…
Default keybindings have Shift+Super+Tab doing reverse window cycling in GNOME. Just tried it. Also, which unified button masquerades as two icons?
Keyboard layouts are a pain, but there are some solid extensions that clean the flow up and may be upstreamed into GNOME at some point.
It's all opinions, but boy, compared to the mess that is macOS and iOS regarding discoverability ... I'll take GNOME any. day.
Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia
#246There 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…
i used to run debian on an intel macbook air. regular debian. was pretty nice.
Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia
#247Speaking of, I just bought a brand new M4 Air. The thing is amazing, except I swear that Command-Tab does not work consistently sometimes, it just does nothing and I have to press it again. It's baffling, has anyone had this before? Never had this issue on any computer in the past 20 years, it's strange.
Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using search as a UI is admitting the UI sucks. It is indicative of a failure, not a solution in and of itself.
I'm not sure I agree. I admit I honestly have no idea where the system settings are located as I haven't pressed the start button in ages, but the same applies to MacOS as I would use spotlight there as well.
Using search as a UI means you can only find things that you know exist, but there are plenty of important settings that I've only discovered by actually navigating through the UI.
Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s the actual argument that will credibly convince the top leaders of Apple, to push fixing MacOS up the list of priorities? Because right now it’s clearly so far down, beneath dozens of other priorities, that expecting it to just happen one day seems futile.
It's all their OS software. The Messages app on 18.3 will just... not open the menu to send a photo attachment about ~10% of the time now...
I’m pretty sure the touch target only covers the text label. Tap anywhere other than the text labels and it does nothing but close the menu. Really bizarre.
Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Exactly. People don't want animojis, and they don't want other trite new features that only seem to exist because Apple feels it needs to demo something new every year. What they want is something that just works without annoyances, distractions, failures, or complications. Give them that and they'll break down the doors trying to get their hands on it, because it's so far from how most tech works today.
Animojis really feel like peak corporate board asking, "What do the kids like these days?" and dumping that shit into the world. Honestly ... AVERAGE age of the Apple board is 68!! This is a company that's reached some sort of corporate red giant stage where it's influence is massive but it's ability to grow is over and it's only real purpose is to generate heavy metals and seed them throughout the rest of the universe after it's eventual explosive death.