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Re: Broken

#41

Post by cfallin »

Porthos9K wrote: post #10
recursive wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about running it as a BSD system?

If you want a BSD system, run {Free,Net,Open,Dragonfly}BSD. You can do it on cheaper and better hardware than Apple offers. It just might not look as stylish, but who cares? T-series Thinkpads have better keyboards than Macbooks, and you can still get a used T60 for less than a hundred bucks. (More recent models will cost more, but you'd be shocked at what you can do with a T60 once you get a new battery, max out the…

I'd just like to second the used-Thinkpad route. I picked up an X250 (Skylake i5) on eBay last spring for $160, and after maxing out RAM (8GB), a decent SSD and a new battery I'm out ~$350 for something that is both indestructible and quite zippy. Yes, it's not shiny, but IMHO it's a far more practical Unix-y workstation. (I mainly run Linux but I've tested OpenBSD too and everything Just Works.)

Re: Broken

#42

Post by justinator »

fortran77 wrote: post #27
schappim wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> don't try to use the version of Linux under MacOS MacOS is based on Unix not Linux. However, I mostly agree with your sentiment and would extend it to “use the right tool for the job”. Use launchd (although I hear it is on the way out) instead of Cron etc.

It's based on Mach via NeXTStep. Not Unix.

Way back in the day, Mac OS X was, "Unix Certified(tm)", so it's correct to say it's unix, technically. Has that certification changed?

Re: Broken

#43

Post by rtempaccount1 »

It's interesting to see this from a MacOS release and the security complaints are similar to what's been seen about recent versions of Windows.

To me, both are a manifestation of the idea that these two Operating Systems are moving in the direction of being safer for "ordinary users" at the expense of annoying more technical users who want to do less common things which can be dangerous if you're not careful (like running software as root)

Given that "ordinary users" outnumber technical ones, I guess that makes commercial sense...

As a result of that, I prefer working with Linux where possible as (generally) it lets you do what you want, even if that's really dumb/dangerous. If I say `kill -9 x` or I sudo to root and do `rm -rf .` by accident it's on me.

Re: Broken

#44

Post by jcelerier »

arboghast wrote: post #30
mherrmann wrote: post #22

Can I just say how happy I am with Xfce. It's a Linux desktop environment that looks like in the early 2000s. It's fast. There are no unnecessary frills. It just gets the job done. Its release cycles are measured in several years, and keep it minimal. I used to be on Windows, then macOS, then Ubuntu and now this. As a developer with soon to be 20 years of experience, it's the best environment I've had.

So was I until I switch to a 4k monitor and realize that there's no real, stable, functional fractional scaling on Linux, even less so on XFCE, unfortunately.

typing this from a Linux desktop on a 4k screen, don't understand what does not work ? I can set whatever dpi in my .Xresources's Xft.dpi key and it looks fine

Re: Broken

#45

Post by tpmx »

This is a sure sign that the key people who used to run OS X development have moved on. Probably years ago, and we're just witnessing the gradual atrophy. The maintainers they left in their places probably kept it mostly working for 2-3 years. That is all.

Re: Broken

#46

Post by ISL »

mherrmann wrote: post #22

Can I just say how happy I am with Xfce. It's a Linux desktop environment that looks like in the early 2000s. It's fast. There are no unnecessary frills. It just gets the job done. Its release cycles are measured in several years, and keep it minimal. I used to be on Windows, then macOS, then Ubuntu and now this. As a developer with soon to be 20 years of experience, it's the best environment I've had.

I've been running fluxbox on Debian since ~2002. Works great; does everything I need.

Re: Broken

#47

Post by PragmaticPulp »

> The final (well, first) Catalina release along with the outright awful public beta makes me think one thing. And that is Apple’s insistence on their annual, big-splash release cycle is fundamentally breaking engineering. I know I’m not privy to their internal decision making and that software features that depend on hardware releases and vice-versa are planned and timed years (if not half-decades) in advance, but I can think of no other explanation than that Marketing alone is purely in charge of when things ship.

I don't work at Apple, but this part hit home for me. In the past few years my jobs have revolved around shipping features at all costs with zero regard for engineering feasibility.

We all like to criticize CEOs for prioritize short-term stock prices over long-term company goals, but I'm beginning to think the average employee or middle manager has even more perverse incentives to make poor short-term decisions. I've seen a lot of engineers and managers swing for the fences to deliver headline features that can't possibly be completed on time with any standard of quality, testing, or long-term support. It doesn't matter, though, if your goal is to add that accomplishment to your resume so you can pivot into the next higher-paying job elsewhere. After that, your mess becomes someone else's problem and you're off the hook. Up or out.

Re: Broken

#48

Post by tylerhall »

DeadBabyOrgasm wrote: post #40

Looks like it's the HN hug of death for this one: https://web.archive.org/web/20191010183502/https://tyler.io/...

sigh I switched back to WordPress literally five days ago and haven't yet gotten around to installing a caching plugin. My bad. I've turned Cloudflare caching on in the meantime.

Re: Broken

#49

Post by derefr »

grzm wrote: post #18
GordonS wrote: post #12

I just upgraded to Catalina today on my MBP, and that screenshot of Allow/Deny notifcations hits the nail on the head! Likewise the popups about allowing apps to control other apps - what a wonderful way to introduce me to Catalina! I mean, come on, there has to be a better way than this, especially from a company supposedly famed for it's user-orientated designs and thinking?

How would you choose to handle it?

Maybe Apple could have gone through all the apps on their own App Store, built a whitelist out of the privileges that each of those apps effectively needs to do its job at all (not optional features, just the “makes the app more than a paperweight” feature-set), and shipped Catalina with said whitelist.

For example, if, when you upgraded to Catalina, the App Store version of Alfred was already installed on disk, then macOS should assume that you’re an Alfred user, who wants to continue to be able to do “the thing Alfred does” (launch apps) without asking.

And before you say “but what if this whitelist authorizes malware to continue being malware”—if there’s malware on the App Store, then they should probably solve that by removing the app from the App Store and deauthorizing the developer’s code-signing cert, so that Gatekeeper won’t run it any more. Just kill the vampires; don’t ask the user if they want to let them in.

Re: Broken

#50

Post by temac »

navidkhn1 wrote: post #24

I'm not sure if anyone has seen this yet, but Catalina is letting me login without entering my password! I have two users on my machine. 1. I "lock screen" from the Apple menu and close the lid. 2. I reopen the lid and it does not ask for password. 3. I start using laptop and lock screen suddenly pops up, but asks password for the wrong user. 4. I hit random key and the screen goes away, and i can continue working. A…

Despite having a lower quality than before since a few years, Windows has login and locking features that actually work (and I don't even really remember of bugs in there, like ever), so no, from what you describe it does not feel like Windows at all, it feels like some completely broken crap.
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