Live data from Hacker News

Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

reviews.ofb.biz

781–790 of 801 posts

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#781
post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No: you are supposed to read the documentation to learn about power user features. Microsoft also doesn’t shove the advanced keyboard shortcuts in your face; you need to read the manual to learn stuff like this.

Showing WHERE things are found when you do a search is not a "power-user" feature. It's an essential aspect of what the user is trying to accomplish. The whole point is that secret hotkeys are design dereliction.

Is it, though? Most people don’t really have a notion of the file system, or hierarchical file structures. They drop files onto their desktop, or keep them in the downloads folder. Just ask a parent or your next-door neighbour.

That’s a bit of a problem when discussing problems of normal users with power users, because they don’t even realise how what they’re doing is actually not what normies do.

I’m inclined to agree that hotkeys in MacOS are hard to discover, but cluttering the interface with stuff many users simply do not need cannot be the correct answer.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simplicity is fine for a hobby project. An operating system having zero concern for any kind of security is a non-starter today. It's amazing the rose tinted glasses people have about the original Macintosh environment. It was insanely janky and (unless you were ruthlessly conservative) insanely unstable by today's standards. By version 10.5 (Leopard) the modern UNIX-based MacOS was unequivocally superior to Classic…

I understand the trade offs and accept them. I was trying to point out where the split is and how it won't go back. I think the point of view expressed in your comment is s distorted as the ones your derding. I also believe that the simplicity could have security as performant. The real advantage of the Unix layer is compatibility that the Macintosh was missing.

I sincerely tried to interpret what you meant here, but I failed. I understand the words, and the fragments of every sentence, but I wasn’t able to deduce the intent of your reply.

Are you trying to say that it’s possible for a system to be both simple and secure? Absolutely that’s the case, but with a trade-off — either it needs to restrict the user’s freedom, or be fully disconnected from the outside world.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#783

In my own experience, I have noticed that Apple's software 'breaks' more on older hardware, be that Mac's, iPhones or iPads. For all the credit apple gets for supporting older devices, those devices are definitely not treated as first class citizens. For example, the touch keyboard on my (work) iPhone 12 Pro works decidedly worse than on my (private) iPhone 16 Pro. The error rate is much worse, and I believe it's due…

Adding my comment as reply as well as it is relevant: --- I've been holding over and running 10.5 on my iMac 2019, but then in the beginning of the year had to upgrade to Sequoia (due to software dependencies). Of course this is just a correlation, not necessary a causation, but within a month the iMac's internal SSD was corrupted to the point that it was unrecoverable, and my 40GB RAM corrupted. So, yeah, at the ver…

The RAM got corrupted?

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple delivered on Steve Jobs' vision of an "appliance computer". You might not want one though.

Yeah... probably. I forgot to mention that Apple computers are a pretty good deal if you are looking for an AI / LLM experimentation machine due to unified RAM which nearly translates 1:1 into VRAM.

"Apple is ripping you off on DRAM" vs. "Apple is a great deal for VRAM." ;-)

You don't get nearly as much compute as you would with 6 GPUs, but it also uses less power than a single GPU.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also while Apples software quality has definitely diminished over the years, Windows in the same period has utterly CRATERED. Like I get along fine with 11 for my gaming PC but with every single update one feature or another becomes notably broken.

Windows is indeed an execrable shitshow. Every aspect of it assaults the user with incompetence or outright hostility. First is the endless badgering to log in, LOG IN, LOGGGG INNNNN with an asinine Microsoft account. If you can tolerate that and actually get the OS running, you're wading through a wonderland of UI regressions and defects. The default hiding and disabling of options is infuriating. Try showing conten…

Win 11 must have some sort of contextual HDMI audio switching where it figures out exactly where you want your audio to go and then does the opposite. Because my Win 11 work laptop loves to re-enable HDMI audio and make it the active audio connection despite the fact that neither of my monitors have built in speakers.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly recommend using Alfred. I’ve been using it since before Spotlight came out, tried and then disabled Spotlight, and went back to Alfred. It’s extremely configurable but highly usable out of the box. Sort of like creating your own CLI shortcuts to open files, apps, copy things to the clipboard, etc. https://www.alfredapp.com/

I still use Quicksilver[1], the open source app that long predates Alfred and was the inspiration for it. I tried Alfred a few years ago but didn't see anything compelling enough to switch. Am I missing anything? [1] https://qsapp.com

I use Alfred and I used to use Quicksilver.

Probably not.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#787
post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Showing WHERE things are found when you do a search is not a "power-user" feature. It's an essential aspect of what the user is trying to accomplish. The whole point is that secret hotkeys are design dereliction.

Is it, though? Most people don’t really have a notion of the file system, or hierarchical file structures. They drop files onto their desktop, or keep them in the downloads folder. Just ask a parent or your next-door neighbour. That’s a bit of a problem when discussing problems of normal users with power users, because they don’t even realise how what they’re doing is actually not what normies do. I’m inclined to agr…

If it's cluttering the interface, the interface design was incompetent to begin with.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#788
post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it, though? Most people don’t really have a notion of the file system, or hierarchical file structures. They drop files onto their desktop, or keep them in the downloads folder. Just ask a parent or your next-door neighbour. That’s a bit of a problem when discussing problems of normal users with power users, because they don’t even realise how what they’re doing is actually not what normies do. I’m inclined to agr…

If it's cluttering the interface, the interface design was incompetent to begin with.

That’s just ridiculously broad. You cannot cram an infinite amount of information into an interface, there is a maximum density for your design goal.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#789
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I stopped using spotlight a few years ago. I didn't really notice that I stopped using it until recently. It just became useless. I reorganised my stuff carefully so I know where I put it. I think that turned out to be more powerful than hoping a search engine over the top would be able to sift through the nuances.

... I'm not sure I've ever found any GUI system search reliable enough that I've used it on-purpose (though accidentally, sometimes) on Windows, Linux, or Mac. I always just use "find" and "grep" (and ripgrep when I remember that exists and realize I just grepped a lot and will be waiting for like an hour if I don't re-run the command with rg instead). Or nothing on Windows, which is fine because I haven't used Windo…

I've only started using gui search since using fedora. the tracker search in the activities view is fast and finds files in the home folder by name pretty well. The only shame is that the pdf-content search doesn't work in the main search interface but only when searching in the file manager.

Re: Apple needs a Snow Sequoia

#790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the trade offs and accept them. I was trying to point out where the split is and how it won't go back. I think the point of view expressed in your comment is s distorted as the ones your derding. I also believe that the simplicity could have security as performant. The real advantage of the Unix layer is compatibility that the Macintosh was missing.

I sincerely tried to interpret what you meant here, but I failed. I understand the words, and the fragments of every sentence, but I wasn’t able to deduce the intent of your reply. Are you trying to say that it’s possible for a system to be both simple and secure? Absolutely that’s the case, but with a trade-off — either it needs to restrict the user’s freedom, or be fully disconnected from the outside world.

I have pondering these ideas a long time and what is needed is an intense glossing over of all the details. The original Macintosh did exactly this and was called a toy and with 128k completely useless. Alternatively my unsophisticated Mom saw the Mac 128k demoed at the mall and went into a frenzy to get that tool. She wanted to publish documents.

The threats in the world are real and the internet doesn't help. I 100% agree that a network connection needs to be kept at a distance to make things simpler.

I think the power of language used to describe a system is where simplicity begins.

What I'm working on is creating a crisp line of delineation between "local" and "public" networks.

If by default after is on the "local" network auto-discovery is secure. If things are explicitly needed a user can publish them through physical manipulation to publish to the outside world.

The outside world can now be described using classic Users and Groups which is cultural easy to understand.

I'm trying to create an environment that focuses on making those 2 things plus a third element simple to understand and physically manipulatable.

The freedom I'm looking for is available on the "local" network. The "public" network is where our data is interchanged with the outside world based on our publishing. I don't expect people to interact with this layer much. I expect people to configure it for whatever institution/organization/government.

Most of the complexity I see in computing these days is market drive demand for eyeballs/clicks/...

Post reply on HN