Live data from Hacker News

OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

sixcolors.com

81–90 of 138 posts

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#81
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If not, Google is coming down the road with Fuschia. I'm also hoping Fuchsia will save us.

How is Fuchsia pronounced? Is it like "f*ck+sia"? Or more like "fushia"? Edit: looking up in dictionay, it's actually /fjuːʃə/.

The color is named after the genus of plants which is in turn named after the German botanist Leonhart Fuchs.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#82
post #33
post #8

I would honestly love to see a ground-up rebuild, but not the kind that would probably happen. OSX is getting creaky; it seems like it's had an increasing number of integral bugs lately, and the "redesign" that came with Yosemite felt more like a rushed coat of paint than a substantial rethink of the UX. Here's what I'd like to see: a fresh desktop OS that actually innovates in the space. Desktop UX innovation has sl…

You're overlooking Chrome OS (with open source equivalent Chromium OS). While it might not be ready for pro-level production, it certainly is a revolutionary lightweight OS that's gaining more and more traction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_OS

It's a web kiosk, not a desktop OS.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#83
post #34
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're overlooking Chrome OS (with open source equivalent Chromium OS). While it might not be ready for pro-level production, it certainly is a revolutionary lightweight OS that's gaining more and more traction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_OS

I'm well aware of Chrome OS. It's great for casual use, but to my knowledge it's really not a reasonable development platform. Generally speaking, developers want/need: - A fully-accessible file system - A bash command line - Tool support. Repositories, code runtimes, compilers, IDE's, etc. I know there are some all-in-one web-based IDE's that you can work in, which are interesting, but I've yet to see one that could…

This should help: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/5/8/17318340/ch...

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#84
post #16
post #8

I would honestly love to see a ground-up rebuild, but not the kind that would probably happen. OSX is getting creaky; it seems like it's had an increasing number of integral bugs lately, and the "redesign" that came with Yosemite felt more like a rushed coat of paint than a substantial rethink of the UX. Here's what I'd like to see: a fresh desktop OS that actually innovates in the space. Desktop UX innovation has sl…

Microsoft brought their essentials — kernel, filesystem, API etc. — up to scratch in mid 2000s. Vista and and 8 may not have been successful, but they played an important role in the evolution of Windows and Microsoft is now reaping the rewards in the form of Windows 10 — an OS which was dubbed as horribly unstable at launch and yet has become rock solid with updates — except for some unfortunate decisions like force…

> Apple finally decided to overhaul their filesystem, but other things like the kernel, the API etc. still need the treatment.

And a large proportion of the kernel and APIs very obviously go all the way back to early NeXT days; they're really as old as WinNT is.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#85
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually like having to use third party utilities for things like snapping, because it means I can pick the snapping paradigm I want, rather than the one Apple chooses for me.

Gnome has built-in functionality, yet it can still be extended with third-party plugins. One doesn't preclude the other.

It depends on how the built-in functionality is implemented. If it's a plugin of some sort that I can remove/disable and replace, built-in functionality is ok. OSX doesn't generally pick that route, though.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#86
post #8

I would honestly love to see a ground-up rebuild, but not the kind that would probably happen. OSX is getting creaky; it seems like it's had an increasing number of integral bugs lately, and the "redesign" that came with Yosemite felt more like a rushed coat of paint than a substantial rethink of the UX. Here's what I'd like to see: a fresh desktop OS that actually innovates in the space. Desktop UX innovation has sl…

I personally disagree. OS X, even older versions, is to me worlds ahead of Windows 7/10. I love the menu bar at the top for application-specific menus, the tabbed file manager, Spotlight is the best system-wide search compared to Windows or any third-party Windows tools. Devices like audio interfaces and printers are so much easier to get working than on Windows. The system preferences menu is a lot cleaner and easier to navigate than control panel (you have to enable Small Icons or Large Icons to get to different parts!). I'm very happy with OS X and I hope for the near future they just work on the occasional bugs and improving hardware performance within it.

I will agree that window snapping should be native. Still, the three dots is overall more consistent and visually nicer to me than Windows' min/max/close.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#87
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I want for Christmas is macOS to stop showing me the SPOD whenever an external hard drive spins up. Reminds me of DOS days.

Don't even get me started on the SMB client. I have to use it at work and it has lovely features like: - Peppering the network drive with trash files containing OSX-specific metadata - Failing to reconnect when the computer goes to sleep, except not really because it thinks the drive is still there, but you have to go through the connection process all over again before you can actually use it. - Getting out of sync…

I was just thinking today it'd be nice if there was some kind of gitignore for SMB uploads to prevent Thumbs.db, Desktop.ini, and .DS_Store from ever uploading. I put a cron script on our work server to delete them periodically but that's the best thing I can find.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#88
post #54
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS does have — kind of — window snapping, doesn’t it? The split window mode? Or am I missing something? Although I agree that it should be more flexible and should have better keyboard controls....

It does not, or at least I haven't found it in the past four years of using OSX for all of my professional development. It has multiple desktop spaces, fullscreen mode, and "expose". It used to be that clicking the green dot on a window expanded it in developer-defined ways that were often unpredictable, but that got replaced with fullscreen mode.

If you option-click the green dot, the window will resize in the “classic” way.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#90

I see a lot of posts about updating / innovating the OS that mainly have to do with the GUI and app frameworks. Fair enough. Personally, I wish they would just quit innovating for a while and FIX THE DAMN BUGS. I am far more upset by a feature that doesn't work right, than I am an absent feature.

I agree with this, but also think that OS's largely don't need more features. In fact, they could do with significantly fewer in my opinion. The value of a Desktop OS is that it is a personal tool to manage workflows and acts as a stable platform for developers to target. It should do as close to the bare minimum as it can to make that possible. Give me simple tools, let me put them together in a way that works for what I'm doing. Don't try to make it "easy" by guessing at what my workflow is because you'll be wrong and just get in the way.
Post reply on HN