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Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

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Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#291

Post by sensanaty »

thewebguyd wrote: post #38
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…

My ideal laptop would be the macbook trackpad, monitor and battery life stuck inside any thinkpad. Or just anything non MacOS, even Windows, in the macbook. I despise MacOS with every fiber of my being, but the hardware is damned good.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#292

Post by KennyBlanken »

joezydeco wrote: post #42
spudlyo wrote: post #32

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…

My group makes a custom executable to reflash a hardware device we produce. We build it for Linux and Darwin. Trying to get the program to work with our Mac users has become harder and harder. These are all internal developers. Enabling developer mode and allowing Terminal execution isn't enough. Disabling the quarantine bit works - sometimes - but now we're getting automated nastygrams from corporate IT threatening…

There's extensive documentation. Examples:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/code-sign...

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizin...

There are dedicated sections of the developer web forums:

https://developer.apple.com/forums/topics/code-signing-topic

https://developer.apple.com/forums/topics/code-signing-topic...

...and there's an apple developer support person, Quinn, who appears to be heavily if not solely dedicated to helping developers do binary signing/notarization/stapling correctly.

They have written a slew of Tech Notes about signing and notarization. Main TN is at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/technotes/tn3125-i...

Quinn also has their email address in their sig so people can just reach out via email without even needing an Apple account, or if they prefer more confidentiality.

I mean, come on.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#293

Post by DidYaWipe »

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…

Spotlight was never useful, because of an absurd and glaring design defect: It doesn't show you WHERE it found stuff. There's no path shown with hits. Same blunder in Finder's search, and you can't even optionally add "path" as a column. WTF.

So... when the hits include six identically-named files, you can't eliminate ones that you know are wrong (on a backup volume or whatever). The level of stupidity here is just mind-boggling.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#294

Post by spudlyo »

benn0 wrote: post #193
spudlyo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem I had with living in a Gnome desktop environment, is with the keyboard. I'm not willing to abandon my use of Emacs control+meta sequences for cursor and editing movements everywhere in the GUI. On macOS, this works because the command (super/Win on Linux/Windows) key is used for common shortcuts and the control key is free for editing shortcuts. I spent a day or so hacking around with kanata[0], whic…

Love this, and I'm in the same boat. Is your configuration of kanata public at all? I know it's mostly muscle memory, but macOS shortcuts just seem sane and consistent and that has been one of the biggest frustrations when trying to switch. I found toshy[0] which does something similar - did you try that? The goal is purely macOS key remappings in Linux, so a much smaller scope than kanata. [0]: https://toshy.app

I didn't try toshy, I had a bad experience when I tried kinto.sh a couple of years back, and I had a pretty clear idea of how I could get what I wanted out of a fully featured keyboard remapping tool under Linux. I initially started with Kmonad, but once I found Kanata, and realized that it had a TCP interface for programmatically changing layers, I quickly switched.

I have a Kinesis 360 keyboard, and my config[0] probably won't work for other keyboards, but it can give you a starting point for your own config.

[0]: https://gitlab.com/spudlyo/dotfiles/-/blob/master/kanata/.co...

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#295

Post by datadrivenangel »

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…

And now spotlight defaults to the whole computer even when I start a search within a folder... for items in the folder... Turned to garbage sometime in the last ~18-24 months.

At least there's quicksilver

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#297

Post by sandreas »

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 personally think that it is reasonable to "want" an Apple notebook. They have great hardware, great battery life and an ecosystem where every device integrates. Only on macOS you can nicely develop software for iOS. Furthermore most vendors release software for macOS, while they don't for Linux (not only Adobe). BTW the apps I miss most on Linux is the Preview App and Apple Mail.

However I'm done with Apple. I think it's a decision - not "reasoning". That decision takes time and is painful. It's also a decision specifically against "the best" ecosystem available in favor of something "ok".

Not only they repeatedly disappointed my expectations - they just suck as a company (in my opinion). It's not about being less innovative for decreasing software quality, they have done so much for the market, that I think GNOME wouldn't even exist as it is without them... Its about sealing off every inch of their software and hardware they can. No repair without paying... Making RAM and SSD upgrades ridiculously expensive, you cannot even put default NVMe drives into a mac mini - everything is proprietary. Even their sensors have serial numbers to prevent hibernating if you change them out without "hacking" the firmware.

Hardware-wise I have high hopes for framework working with AMD - although they did not address the issues I'd suggest (speakers, lpcamm2), they're constantly improving without breaking their promises. This is hopefully not going to change when they get bigger.

OS-wise I'll stay on Linux. After a long journey going from Ubuntu to Debian to Fedora using GNOME, KDE and even NixOS with Hyprland for a short period, I gained enough knowledge required to really enjoy Linux. System76 is working on COSMIC, which could be pretty amazing, once it is released.

In case anyone would like to try my current Linux config, I'm constantly working on an "install everything" script (pretty early stage):

https://github.com/sandreas/zarch

HF ;)

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#298

Post by amluto »

ethersteeds wrote: post #232
ryandrake wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principle is what matters. The amount is not the issue. The issue is that there is a cost at all. "It's so cheap" is never an excuse for charging for something that should be free. In this case, running software you have no intent to charge for, on your computer. It's as if someone started charging $0.01/month for breathable air. "But $0.01 is trivial," would not excuse it.

It costs money, and isn't free, for a reason you're not acknowledging. I don't think it's a major profit center for Apple. It's about setting a higher floor for malicious actors than "random botnet residential IP + a captcha solving service". It's about proving some semblance of identity through a card number and a transaction that goes through without a chargeback. As the case upthread shows, there's plenty to disli…

I don't buy it. Or rather, I am willing to believe that some team at Apple has convinced itself that this makes sense, but they're wrong.

In particular, the security boundaries are nonsensical. The whole model of "notarization" is that the developer of some software has convinced Apple that the software as a whole (not a specific running instance) is worthy of doing a specific thing to the system as a whole.

But this is almost useless. Should Facebook be allowed to do various things that can violate privacy and steal data? What if the app has a valid reason to sometimes do those things?

Or, more egregiously, consider something like VSCode. I run it, and the fancy Apple sandbox helpfully asks me if I want to grant access to "Documents." The answer is really "no! -- I want to grant access to the specific folders that I want this workspace to access", but MacOS isn't even close to being able to understand that. So instead, one needs to grant permission, at which point, the user is completely pwned, as VSCode is wildly insecure.

So no, I really don't believe that MacOS's security model makes its users meaningfully more secure. At best, the code signing scheme has some value for attribution after an attack occurs, but most attacks seem to involve stolen credentials, and I bet a bunch just hijack validly-notarized-but-insecure software a la the VSCode example.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#299

Post by goalieca »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #290
cjk wrote: post #286

As a former Apple employee that left in part due to declining software quality (back in 2015!), and the relentless focus on big flashy features for the next yearly release cycle, I could not agree more. I recently had to do a full reinstall of macOS on my Mac Studio due to some intermittent networking issue that, for the life of me, I could not pin down. Post-reinstall, everything's fine.

Also as a former Apple engineer.... I've explained in another thread how this kind of thing happens. It may be the same at other large companies. Bugs come in (via Radar) and are routed to the team responsible. Ever since Jobs came back (and Apple became valuable again) it has also become very much top-down with the engineers, for better or worse, not calling the shots. Just an obvious example — there are of course n…

>Because, you know, you already shipped with it ... must not be that bad.

This hits right in the feels of any engineer at any company.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#300

Post by ballenf »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #282
adastra22 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and there is no longer any way to effectively prioritize the results I want (apps, not internet garbage) OMG this one drives me bonkers. If anyone out there knows how to turn off internet results, please share!

Open Settings, scroll down to Spotlight. Unselect the things you don’t want. You’re welcome :-)

Just noticed that I was sharing my entire Safari, Spotlight and Siri search history in that menu. Why is that setting in Spotlight settings and not under Privacy/Analytics?
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