Home truths about macOS
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Home truths about macOS
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Re: Home truths about macOS
#2It works as long as you’re willing to stay current on Apple hardware. If you’re not… then macOS probably isn’t for you…
Re: Home truths about macOS
#3This was my personal favourate statement in the article.
"Deciding whether and when to upgrade macOS is one of the more difficult choices we face. If your Mac isn’t capable of running the current release of macOS, or you’re dependent on key hardware or software which is incompatible, then the decision is made for you."
If you head over to the hackintosh side of things you will notice that very rarely does a hackintosh not upgrade to the next version.
I don't want to get "conspiracy theory" here but I do wonder how often the next release is blocked by Apple, not by hardware?
There are hacks to allow the new OS to run on real Apple hardware despite being blocked and people who have done this seem to be running the new OS just fine?
Releasing an OS with serious bugs, then limiting someone from upgrading to a newer one which fixes those issues is just bad.
Re: Home truths about macOS
#4> One factor that makes recent memory an unreliable indicator is the series of changes to macOS to prepare for Apple silicon Macs.
Slightly off topic, but such changes from High Sierra kinda makes sense now. Back then it seemed like Apple engineers were dropping backward compatibility just because of their own convenience...
Re: Home truths about macOS
#5It works as long as you’re willing to stay current on Apple hardware. If you’re not… then macOS probably isn’t for you…
To be fair, I've always upgrade my hardware before the hardware has lost OS support.
If I really wanted to I guess I could run linux on these and use them for something, but I never do (I have one server in my house, it's enough). I upgraded the hardware for a reason.
Re: Home truths about macOS
#6> What other actively exploited bugs are Big Sur and Monterey now vulnerable to?
Actually, Apple sometimes patches actively exploited vulnerabilities in "unsupported" older versions of both macOS and iOS. The vulnerabilities that don't get quickly patched are the ones that aren't actively exploited.
In any case, security researchers talk about known vulnerabilities that have or haven't been patched, but as the author says, "New versions of macOS are full of bugs". This includes security vulnerabilities! Every new major OS version has brand new, unknown (to Apple) vulnerabilities that did not exist in the previous version. So just because the latest version is "fully patched", that doesn't mean it's "safer". I've seen it happen many times in the past where a new security vulnerabilities in a new OS isn't discovered by the public until many months later.
As far as stability and safety is concerned, I personally consider macOS N-1 to have the best tradeoffs.
Moreover, the most dangerous software on your computer is not the operating system per se, it's the web browser. The browser is where you're mostly likely to encounter "malicious crafted code" (i.e., JavaScript). Apple supports Safari for macOS N-2, and Safari on macOS N-2 is more similar to Safari on macOS N than macOS N-2 itself is to macOS N. In other words, Safari is likely to be fully patched even if macOS isn't.
You can also use another browser such as Firefox or Google Chrome, which ironically support older macOS versions than Apple supports, and the latest versions of those apps are identical and fully patched on every macOS version they support.
Re: Home truths about macOS
#7This was my personal favourate statement in the article. "Deciding whether and when to upgrade macOS is one of the more difficult choices we face. If your Mac isn’t capable of running the current release of macOS, or you’re dependent on key hardware or software which is incompatible, then the decision is made for you." If you head over to the hackintosh side of things you will notice that very rarely does a hackintos…
We can indeed run newer macOS on older macs with the Opencore Legacy Patcher - https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/ . But the bugs aren't the only concern. There's also the revised terms of services and privacy policies that we have to consider with each new macOS, as Apple plans to become a service company at our expense. It is also clear that Apple has been taking away developer options, and rearchitecting macOS to be more and more like ios / iPadOS to have greater control of over what developers can do on the system. (There's now even talks of Apple working on a hybrid macOS and iPadOS merge so that they have one common OS for both platform).
Re: Home truths about macOS
#8This was my personal favourate statement in the article. "Deciding whether and when to upgrade macOS is one of the more difficult choices we face. If your Mac isn’t capable of running the current release of macOS, or you’re dependent on key hardware or software which is incompatible, then the decision is made for you." If you head over to the hackintosh side of things you will notice that very rarely does a hackintos…
There is no excuse for the most profitable company in the world to drop support for working hardware. It's entirely within their capability to support even PowerPC macs. And that's besides fact that Apple has an incredibly small portfolio of hardware to support; so much so that they could trivially exhaustively test every update on every possible piece of hardware.
Re: Home truths about macOS
#9This was my personal favourate statement in the article. "Deciding whether and when to upgrade macOS is one of the more difficult choices we face. If your Mac isn’t capable of running the current release of macOS, or you’re dependent on key hardware or software which is incompatible, then the decision is made for you." If you head over to the hackintosh side of things you will notice that very rarely does a hackintos…
I have a Macbook Pro 2015 and the latest OS it supports officially is Monterey. The new Ventura (2022) is not supported anymore. I consider my device to have had software support for about at least seven years so far and until when they stop releasing security fixes for Monterey. I believe this to be sufficient for my needs and the frequency of which I upgrade the laptop.
P.S. I don’t think that it’s ok for Apple to stop supporting older devices. I am just pointing out my personal view concerning my needs.
Re: Home truths about macOS
#10This was my personal favourate statement in the article. "Deciding whether and when to upgrade macOS is one of the more difficult choices we face. If your Mac isn’t capable of running the current release of macOS, or you’re dependent on key hardware or software which is incompatible, then the decision is made for you." If you head over to the hackintosh side of things you will notice that very rarely does a hackintos…
There is no excuse for the most profitable company in the world to drop support for working hardware. It's entirely within their capability to support even PowerPC macs. And that's besides fact that Apple has an incredibly small portfolio of hardware to support; so much so that they could trivially exhaustively test every update on every possible piece of hardware.
I was just rereading the ppc history for Apple as they're doing it again for ARM and it seems quite reasonable to be honest. They pulled something off I think would be difficult for many others and have shown they're not married to a single architecture.
Still RIP my favorite machine the last ppc Mac tower