macOS Big Sur • Hacker News Board

Re: macOS Big Sur

#661

Post by boardwaalk » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 4:33 AM UTC

wombat-man wrote: post #567

alwillis wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* I'm guessing on the OS itself they don't include the unneeded binary data.* The operating system can on both M1 and Intel Macs; therefore, the OS has binaries for both. Wouldn't be much of an operating system if the frameworks and APIs weren't available for applications regardless of which architecture they're running on.

why would a mac with an intel processor need OS binary code for an arm processor? I can understand apps having both, because the app needs to run on M1 or intel. But having both OS binaries is just dead disk space.

I mean, it wouldn't but that is the way it works. Ex:

    $ file /usr/bin/ssh
    /usr/bin/ssh: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64] [arm64e]
    $ file /Applications/Numbers.app/Contents/MacOS/Numbers
    /Applications/Numbers.app/Contents/MacOS/Numbers: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64] [arm64]

It's probably nice to have a single release for both platforms. And the installer and a clean install is only 12-14GB, not that heavy a lift.

Re: macOS Big Sur

#662

Post by greggman3 » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 4:38 AM UTC

patrec wrote: post #333

pkulak wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I eventually upgraded to a Linux distro and couldn't be happier. What finally did it for me was when I did an "ls" in a terminal after an upgrade, accidentally hit the wrong button when the OS asked for permission, and locked my terminal out of file system access. Mac OS is no longer any good for professional use, outside of media creation.

> Mac OS is no longer any good for professional use, outside of media creation. I agree, and I bet they will kick themselves for it in ~5 years time.

What makes it good at media creation? AFAICT almost all the major creation apps are cross platform. Further, there are entire media creation industries that are majority non-mac. CGI movie effects (Industrial Light & Magic, Sony Pictures, ...), CGI animation (Pixar, Dreamworks, Disney), Game Dev, VR, etc...

Re: macOS Big Sur

#663

Post by ashton314 » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 4:39 AM UTC

gnachman wrote: post #347

I released iTerm2 version 3.4.0 this morning with Big Sur support. Please update because 3.3 has various issues with it.

Another grateful iTerm2 user. A better terminal there is not.

Re: macOS Big Sur

#664

Post by vishnugupta » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

jkelleyrtp wrote: post #18

Just want to put here that if you're using a Mac and haven't tried Safari recently, you're missing out. A few things: - Battery life is fantastic compared to Chrome/FF - Privacy seems to be top-notch - The tab ordering situation is now chrome-like (my biggest gripe in older versions of safari) - Experimental features are 1 click away, easily enable/disable WebGL2 - Support for the WebExtensions standard means addons…

Can concur. Been exclusively on Safari ~6 months and I’ve gotten so used to it now that I feel crippled whenever I’m forced to use anything else.

A few more good things

- Credit/Debit Card store

- I browse on iPhone as well as Mac. They tabs are visible on both devices, including book marks etc

- The killer reader mode

- Reading List: it’s replaced Pocket app for me.

I think some of these aren’t new in the browser world but it’s just nice when I could use them without being hounded by a few thousand trackers.

Re: macOS Big Sur

#665

Post by makecheck » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

andreasley wrote: post #429

makecheck wrote: post #311

Not a great download experience so far. It has already failed twice partway through (2nd time after 9.0 GB out of 12.0 GB). And since this is Apple, who has somehow never figured out how to implement resumable downloads, it just starts from scratch again.

Even worse, other stuff is breaking because Apple's infrastructure is on fire. Apps don't launch because signature checks are failing (ocsp.apple.com and crl.apple.com seem to be unreachable for me) and my Mac Pro hangs randomly for a few seconds every minute or so. It's quite ridiculous. :)

Yeah, my mouse pointer was freezing for 90 seconds (and was jumpy at random times otherwise). If all of that was simply due to something being unable to phone home, then I think we have well surpassed any “benefits” of this “security” architecture.

Re: macOS Big Sur

#666

Post by yborg » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:21 AM UTC

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that skeuomorphism is back, baby! Updated icons for things like the iSuite apps are a step backwards, the old design was more coherent visually across the suite. Maybe we'll fully return to simulated woodgrain and rich Corinthian leather in macOS 12...

Re: macOS Big Sur

#667

Post by alwillis » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:23 AM UTC

wombat-man wrote: post #567

alwillis wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* I'm guessing on the OS itself they don't include the unneeded binary data.* The operating system can on both M1 and Intel Macs; therefore, the OS has binaries for both. Wouldn't be much of an operating system if the frameworks and APIs weren't available for applications regardless of which architecture they're running on.

why would a mac with an intel processor need OS binary code for an arm processor? I can understand apps having both, because the app needs to run on M1 or intel. But having both OS binaries is just dead disk space.

why would a mac with an intel processor need OS binary code for an arm processor?

Remember that all of the resources—images, text, icons, etc.—are shared between the Intel and ARM binaries.

There are a few use cases:

• For troubleshooting, you can have one external hard drive/SSD that can boot both Intel and M1 Macs. This is very handy; this was pretty common back in the PowerPC to Intel days.

• Same thing with running certain apps. You're doing some video rendering on an Intel Mac. Your buddy has an M1 Mac. You can boot his Mac with your external drive containing your Big Sur and your apps and you'll get the 3x speed up on your renders by using their M1 Mac mini or whatever. Back in the day, you could put an Intel Mac into Target Disk Mode where it would act as an external hard drive and boot a PowerPC from it.

• When Intel Mac users running Big Sur buy M1 Macs, they can use Apple's Migration Assistant which will transfer all of their settings, apps, etc. from the Intel Mac to the M1 Mac. No need to re-install the apps—they'll just work on the M1 Mac. The Universal apps will run natively and the Intel-only apps will run using Rosetta 2.

These Universal apps (or fat binaries as they were known back in the day, going back to NeXTStep in 1989 or 1990) aren't just a Mac-thing. When Apple transitioned iOS from 32-bit ARM to 64-bit ARM, apps contained the binaries for both. They later updated the OS to only download the version for your particular device, which made sense, since iOS devices then had far less storage than today's devices have.

Re: macOS Big Sur

#668

Post by erklik » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #648

mauflows wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they just don't own a Mac and have mixed results with virtualization. Maybe instead of blaming them recognize that Safari is extremely inaccessible software for most people

> Safari is extremely inaccessible software for most people How the hell is it "extremely inaccessible" for "most" people? It's Chrome that has an weirdass non-standard UI (the practice of showing app preferences/dialogs in a webpage needs to burn in the flames of Hades) and other niggles, not to mention being a privacy black hole. If they weren't told to use Chrome (i.e. Google didn't nag people to use Chrome when t…

> How the hell is it "extremely inaccessible" for "most" people?

Because most people don't own Macs. The last Windows compatible version of Safari was back in 2012 or so, and as far as I know, it was never available on Linux.

Therefore, for me to test on Safari, I either have to spend thousands to buy a laptop, or pay out of my pocket for some sort of cross-browser testing tool (even if it's free, I am spending extra time) while Chrome/Firefox are used by most of the world and ensuring that I deal with Safari's idiosyncrasies does nothing much for me.

> It's Chrome that has an weirdass non-standard UI (the practice of showing app preferences/dialogs in a webpage needs to burn in the flames of Hades) and other niggles, not to mention being a privacy black hole.

I would argue its more standard since it is the same UI in every OS I wanted to use. I honestly don't think people are that angry about preferences as a webpage.

In terms of privacy, Firefox kicks Safari out of the water, and in terms of performance, it is faster, and actually renders everything (something Safari fails way too often at).

> "most" Mac users wouldn't give a fuck about Chrome.

Eh. Safari not rendering elements of the page, constantly crashing, and other myriad of issues do well enough to push people to Chrome/Firefox. Also, most people quickly start using Firefox when they realize that UBlock Origin doesn't work on Safari and is easily better than anything that comes on Safari.

Honestly, for me as developer, Safari is the new IE6, except possibly worse because bugs for IE6 are very well-documented with good workarounds.

Re: macOS Big Sur

#669

Post by ben-schaaf » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:44 AM UTC

Osiris wrote: post #632

ryukafalz wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4, 7, and 10 are issues I've only experienced on systems running the proprietary NVIDIA driver. The cause isn't always clear, but I've easily had the most unexplainable graphical issues/crashes on my desktop with a GTX 980 compared to any of my Intel laptops running very similar software. Tend to chalk it up to that as a result.

Unfortunately I have to use that driver to support the external monitors on my laptop because the display ports are directly wired to the nvidia GPU and the open source one doesn't work at all for me.

I have the same problem. Luckily working from home means I don't have to touch my laptop any more and I can instead use the rx580 in my desktop, haven't really had any graphics problems with the AMD open source drivers.

Re: macOS Big Sur

#670

Post by dreamcompiler » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

sysashi wrote: post #427

I have not even upgraded to Catalina yet, fearing all the breaking stuff I've heard of on HN. I'm just so frustrated about upgrade process, 90% of the time it won't work first time and will break my Windows partition in some way. Why can't it be like upgrading bunch of packages with `pacman -Syu`...

Catalina's okay. I have a work Mac that came with it and it only kernel panics about once a week. Which is pretty good for Apple these days.

I still have a bunch of Macs at home running El Capitan and Sierra because they work and because I don't have two weeks to screw around moving each one over to Catalina. When they die I'll probably just move the whole house over to Linux because Apple has so completely lost the plot on what personal computing means.