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Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

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Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#451

Post by jillesvangurp »

t1234s wrote: post #285

Apple needs to make all of the accessory apps (photos, music, news, maps, mail, etc..) uninstallable and able to be added later if needed through their app store. Every MacOS update brings along this bloatware that is not easily removed.

Most mac os feature updates are just updates to all that bundled stuff. I use none of that. I use my laptop to run various OSS developer tools, browsers, etc. 99% of it is available on Linux. And I have moved my workflow to a Linux laptop a few years ago. I went back for performance reasons; not for feature reasons. I can do that again. There's nothing really stopping me. But I like the Apple hardware.

This is also the reason that I don't mind the current version of Mac OS. Yes everything you mentioned is a bit meh. Which is part of why I don't use any of those applications. So I don't care. I've disabled Siri. Never used Facetime. Maps, Numbers, and all the other of the dozens of things they bundle: I never touch any of it. I don't need that stuff and when I do, I use alternatives. I have an Android phone so all of the IOS integration stuff is redundant to me as well. They've not locked me into their ecosystem. And I like it like that. I don't allow myself to be locked in.

As a work horse for doing development MacOS is still a fine OS. It does the job. Most updates of the last 10 years or so have been minor window dressing that you barely notice, some under the hood changes, and misc tweaks that mostly fall into the "whatever" category for me. For me the annoying thing is just having to sit through these lengthy updates. I keep postponing them because it's never convenient to take an hours long break when it prompts me.

And I don't really get much out of these updates. To be honest, I can barely tell apart the different versions of their OS. The main notable visual change seems to be the desktop background. Which is usually hidden by applications. So I rarely look at it.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#452

Post by Cthulhu_ »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #439
aylmao wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I found annoying at a previous big-tech work, was how the focus on top-level metrics (read, revenue-linked metrics) meant we couldn't fix things. There were a lot of smart people, very interested in fixing things— not only because engineers tend to like fixing things, but also because we, and everyone around us, were users too. For example, many things related to text input were broken on the site. Korean w…

You're implying that buggy software has no impact on the bottom line. I'm not so sure. Users weigh the availability of features against the quality of features. Getting bugs fixed is not necessarly the highest priority for users either. It's a trade-off. Our use of Microsoft 365 is a pretty good example of that. I moved our company to Microsoft 365 because it had some features we wanted. Then I moved the company off…

> You're implying that buggy software has no impact on the bottom line. I'm not so sure. Users weigh the availability of features against the quality of features.

The problem is that managers / those that determine priorities don't get the numbers, they don't see a measurable impact of buggy software. There's only two signals for that, one is error reporters - which depend on an error being generated, that is, software bug - and the other is user reporting, but only a small fraction of users will actually bother to make reports.

I think this is a benefit of open source software, as developers are more likely to provide feedback. But even then you have some software packages that are so complex and convoluted that bugs emerge as combinations of many different factors (I'm thinking of VS Code with its plugins as an example) that the bug report itself is a huge effort.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#453

Post by Cthulhu_ »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #412
chii wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> first job 13+ years ago any QA... such QA jobs no longer exists. Ever since the software dev world has moved to doing one's own QA during development, software has been consistently worse in quality. May be there's a correlation there!

The underlying cause of this is online software updates. Knowing you can fix bugs any time removes the release date as _the_ deadline for fixing all egregious bugs. And so the backlog of bugs keeps growing.

The backlog is down to management and priorities, not testing per se.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#454

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

sofixa wrote: post #409
canpan wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently also looking at Framework+AMD. I want Mac hardware but Linux software. The other makers build quality is horrendous. Especially in the 13inch segment which is my favorite. Using a pretty old laptop because there is no replacement right now. The new Ryzen AI looks really interesting! Sadly there is no Framework shop for me to look at it and they not ship to Japan..

> The other makers build quality is horrendous Out of curiosity, what are you basing this on? From having spoken to people who manage IT fleets, and being the person regular people ask for advice for what device to get, with the occasional exception (which Apple also had plenty of, cf. the butterfly keyboard), you get what you pay for. A 1k-1.5k+ Asus/Dell/HP/Lenovo will get you decent and good build quality. The che…

At work, our Windows devs use expensive XPSs that are complete crap failing constantly, both hardware and software. As someone who used Latitudes and Precisions when these were the reliable workhorses you seem to describe, the new stuff is just outrageous. (My personal laptop is still an e6440).

My work machine is an M2 Pro MBP and except the shitty input HW (compared to the golden era of Thinkpads/Latitudes without chiclet keyboards) and MacOS being quite bad compared to Linux, it completely trounces the neighbouring Dells that constantly need repairs (mostly the USB-C ports and wireless cards failing).

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#455

Post by trbutler »

lapcat wrote: post #80
grandempire wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> later versions of Snow Leopard after almost 2 full years of bug fixes. This is what’s being asked for in the article.

I disagree. From the article: "The same year Apple launched the iPhone, it unveiled a massive upgrade to Mac OS X known as Leopard, sporting “300 New Features.” Two years later, it did something almost unheard of: it released Snow Leopard, an upgrade all about how little it added and how much it took away. Apple needs to make it snow again. Snow Leopard did what it was made to do. It was one of the most solid softwar…

Grandempire is right on my overall sense in the piece, though perhaps I should have made its ore explicit. I actually faired quite well with 10.6.0. But, the lack of push for a yearly set of headlining features did allow the OS to age quite well in the years after, too. It's the drumbeat of what 10 stunning new features will be unveiled each WWDC for each platform that means past features rarely get the continued polishing they need to shine.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#456

Post by mythz »

pjmlp wrote: post #396
thewebguyd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The reason that keeps me on Windows, is that you left out of your list gaming and 3D graphics on laptops. Metal isn't really on pair with Vulkan and DirectX in terms of relevance for graphics programming, the M chips aren't up to NVidia ecosystem, SYCL, the two major compute APIs for any kind of relevant GPGPU workloads, and thus don't really matter. And gaming, well, even though all major engines support Metal, ther…

Gaming/WSL kept me on Windows for a lot of the last decade, however after Windows 10 became EOL'd and Windows started turning into ad/spyware I finally gave it up over a year ago after 25+ years on Windows Desktops.

Anyway Linux is liberating, Fedora Desktop is great, no ads in the OS, a Software Store/Installer I actually like to use, curated by usefulness instead of scam Apps. All my Windows Steam Games I frequently use just worked, I have to login to X11 for 1 title (MK11), but everything else runs in the default Wayland desktop. Although I'll still check protondb.com before purchasing new games to make sure there'll be no issues. Thanks to Docker, JetBrains IDEs and most Daily Apps I use are cross-platform Desktop Web Apps (e.g. VS Code, Discord, Obsidian, etc) I was able to run everything I wanted to.

The command-line is also super charged in Linux starting with a GPU-accelerated Gnome terminal/ptyxis and Ghostty running Oh My Zsh that's enhanced with productivity tools like fzf, eza, bat, zoxide and starship. There's also awesome tools like lazydocker, lazygit, btop and neovim pushing the limits of what's possible in a terminal UI and distrobox which lets me easily run Ubuntu VMs to install experimental software without impacting my Fedora Desktop.

Image editors is the one area still lacking in Linux. On Windows I used Affinity Designer/Photo and Paint.NET for quick edits. On macOS I use Affinity & Pixelmator. On Linux we have to chose between Pinta (Paint.NET port), Krita and GIMP which are weaker and less intuitive alternatives. But with the new major release of GIMP 3 and having just discovered photopea.com things are starting to look up.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#457

Post by tonyedgecombe »

notShabu wrote: post #74

what are some good alternatives to mac os? there some features like image/text copy-paste being cross device that are insanely useful that make it hard to switch

>what are some good alternatives to mac os?

There are three main choices and they are all compromised in their own way. You just need to figure out what is important to you and what isn't.

What you shouldn't do is take too much notice of posts like these, I've read through the whole thing and haven't had any of the issues mentioned. I've also not seen a mention of the issues I do have. HN has a negative tone, it seems we like to whinge.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#458

Post by nottorp »

sofixa wrote: post #409
canpan wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently also looking at Framework+AMD. I want Mac hardware but Linux software. The other makers build quality is horrendous. Especially in the 13inch segment which is my favorite. Using a pretty old laptop because there is no replacement right now. The new Ryzen AI looks really interesting! Sadly there is no Framework shop for me to look at it and they not ship to Japan..

> The other makers build quality is horrendous Out of curiosity, what are you basing this on? From having spoken to people who manage IT fleets, and being the person regular people ask for advice for what device to get, with the occasional exception (which Apple also had plenty of, cf. the butterfly keyboard), you get what you pay for. A 1k-1.5k+ Asus/Dell/HP/Lenovo will get you decent and good build quality. The che…

Maybe if you run a fleet that's statistically true. If you're a regular person you can have incredible bad luck with specific models.

Got two "2k" Lenovos at 4 year intervals.

The first one worked fine but that model was known to have a weak hinge. Had to replace it three times.

The second one had a known problem that some units simply stop working with the internal display and the only solution is replacing the motherboard. My unit worked about a week for me. Seller refunded me instead of repairing because it was end of the line and they didn't have replacements.

Got a "2k" Asus ordered now, let's see how that goes :)

Compared to that, even the one emoji keyboard macbook pro that i had worked for years. The keyboard on those models is defective by design and kept degrading, and I still think Cook should take his dried frog pills more regularly, but the rest of the laptop is still working. Not to mention my other, older apple laptops that are still just fine(tm), just obsolete.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#459

Post by trbutler »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #449

> In an era when people still paid money for operating system upgrades every few years (anyone else remember standing in line for Windows 95?) No, and I would have been too young to purchase it. But I'd be surprised at the idea of massive demand for an upgrade to Windows 95. What we did was buy a new computer that had Windows 95 on it. Computers used to go out of date very quickly. We kept our older computer that ran…

Believe it or not, it was a huge deal. I went to two launch parties -- one hosted by CompUSA and one by a local place -- the night it came out. This wasn't in Silicon Valley, but in the U.S. Midwest (St. Louis, MO). Hundreds of people stood in line at midnight to get the first copies at the two places I went to and the same thing happened all over the world. (Of course, CompUSA also had a whole display of upgrades to get your computer running better if it wasn't ready for Windows 95.)

The same sort of late night excitement existed around each early Mac OS X release, incidentally.

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