Live data from Hacker News

MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

sigpipe.macromates.com

301–310 of 1001 posts

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That computers are just slower to interact with now is such a truism that we hardly remark upon it any more. It seems utterly insane that in the early 90's I could just run Windows 3.1 on a bit of kit that in all likelihood wouldn't even power a toaster today, and the experience was, well, frictionless. I don't recall ever thinking "wtf is this thing doing ?", whereas today, by contrast, if I have the audacity to be…

I recall windows 95/98 being pretty slow to boot. I also recall being warned by teachers not to move the mouse while things were booting as that would allegedly slow things down further. These days the only real time I wonder "wtf is this thing doing" is when I'm waiting about 5-10 seconds for my mac to wake up from sleep.

Win 95 and its descendants had legendary poor boot times.

Things finally improved with XP, but W3.1x and W95 were anything but fast - unless you were playing Solitaire.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#302

Up until the release of Catalina, I've always upgraded to the latest version of macOS within a month or two. But some of the changes this time is really stopping me from upgrading. As of Catalina, there's no sane way to install the Nix package manager without losing functionality because macOS now disallows creating new files in the root directory[1]. Nix stores its packages in the /nix directory and it's not possibl…

It's funny, I just had to do this a few days ago.

This comment has worked for me on two machines: https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/2925#issuecomment-539570...

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#303

Okay, I've tried this test on my MacBook Air 2020 several times, first by saving the "echo Hello" shell script in an editor and then, because I wasn't getting the results the author experienced, trying again exactly as he wrote it. Essentially the same result: airyote% echo $'#!/bin/sh\necho Hello' > /tmp/test.sh airyote% chmod a+x /tmp/test.sh airyote% time /tmp/test.sh && time /tmp/test.sh Hello /tmp/test.sh 0.00s…

[deleted]

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#304

I am using Ubuntu 20.04 on a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen2 and you would be surprised how "normal" it feels as a development machine. Sure there some little annoyances, the touchpad behaves a little worse than on windows, sound is a little worse. But the most important things, Keyboard and Screen are excellent. The system in general does not feel like the horror stories that people keep telling about linux on desktop(note…

The dual GPU is a pain in the butt since Nvidia still doesn't support Optimus on Linux (and probably never will).

That is not true anymore. With 20.04 it supports hybrid graphics just fine. The only issue I had was sharing cuda and OpenGL context since GL ran on the Intel card. This should not be a concern for most people I assume.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember being able to watch network traffic and if you (or some other actual person on you network) weren't doing anything nothing would be there . Yes even if you had a few webpages open but weren't clicking anything. Now your machine's "idle" and you capture on your network interface and it scrolls at hyperspeed.

This is upsetting for me, too. And for a few others. But actually very few people care because they just don't see it. The people who designed it this way take care that users at large have no idea what is going on.

It's really very sad, because users have no idea what is going on and there is no incentive for bad programs to improve (actually, there is generally incentive in the opposite direction, because it's work to write well-behaving apps). Users just know that they need to keep buying new computers and that their battery life is worse, but they can't figure out why so they point fingers at everyone but who they should actually be blaming.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#306
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That computers are just slower to interact with now is such a truism that we hardly remark upon it any more. It seems utterly insane that in the early 90's I could just run Windows 3.1 on a bit of kit that in all likelihood wouldn't even power a toaster today, and the experience was, well, frictionless. I don't recall ever thinking "wtf is this thing doing ?", whereas today, by contrast, if I have the audacity to be…

I switched to a linux desktop full time last week because of this exact problem. VPN w/ windows would flake out on me all the time, and I got sooo tired of just...waiting. Remember when windows search worked? Like, you could press the windows key, type what you were looking for and find it? Quickly? Being able to turn the computer on, type in my password and have it be just..ready is so incredibly refreshing. Having…

Rumors on the internets have spoken positively about Opensuse Leap & Tumbleweed, any truth to that?

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#307

Up until the release of Catalina, I've always upgraded to the latest version of macOS within a month or two. But some of the changes this time is really stopping me from upgrading. As of Catalina, there's no sane way to install the Nix package manager without losing functionality because macOS now disallows creating new files in the root directory[1]. Nix stores its packages in the /nix directory and it's not possibl…

For me it's aperture. I like the interface better than lightroom, and I don't want to pay a monthly fee to have access to my photo library which I only add to once in a while. It's a shame because it's a great piece of software, and even the UI doesn't feel dated, but I just won't be able to run it if I upgrade.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently learned that `xattr -cr path/to/my.app` solves the “this App is damaged would you like to move it to the trash” you get when you copy an app from one Mac to another.

That might be the Windows-iest feature of OSX I've ever heard of.

It seems macOS is going downhill fast these days.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#309
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use my work machine for work and my personal equipment for everything else. My iPhone is more standalone then they used to be. I don't see any reason why I'd ever connect my personal phone to my work computer. So I don't see many downsides to making the switch.

Well, I don't have 'work' computer. I have my personal macbook and even more personal iMac. Obviously in case you work only at the office or you use your computer only (lets say 90% time) for work - than there is no problem.

When I used my personal machines for everything, then I isolated my work from everything else. Remote servers are perfect for this, then you can just ssh in from any machine and do your work.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#310
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows 10 box to go sleep I know I am in for an infuriating waste of minutes' worth of disk thrashing before the bloody thing even deigns to reacknowledge my existence. Yeah, what the heck is this? I use a win10 box solely for gaming, and every single time I wake from sleep, Antimalware Executable keeps my machine from doing anything for several minutes. It's infuriating.

Just get a proper antivirus and it will probably disable the built-in security suite for you

While making your computer even worse?
Post reply on HN