Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattkevan | Hacker News Reader

I've used OS X since the very first betas. Every release has had its bugs, but every release has been an improvement too.

I don't get the praise/hate online for different releases, or the narrative that Apple's software quality is turning to crap. It's too shrill to be genuine.

Are there still annoyances or things that could be better in macOS? Of course. Is it better than the alternatives or than it used to be? Yes.

I also don't get why you wouldn't want to upgrade to the latest version. At least Apple never tried to force-update the machine I was using in the middle of an important client pitch, unlike other OS vendors I could mention.

Having said that, the initial release of 10.5 Leopard was known as Leper amongst my friends due to its general tendency to fall over all the time...

View on HN

There is one clear difference between past releases and current releases which would mean you and the complainers could both be right: the length of the release cycle. Starting with Mountain Lion, Apple committed itself to a yearly release cycle for macOS. Prior to this the releases would generally take about 2 years.

Now, if we take your premise that macOS releases today are no buggier than old releases, given the above it still results in people living with buggier releases, since we’ve removed a year of living under a stable OS. By the time the OS has shipped its .5 version and become rock solid, it’s just about time to upgrade yet again. The deal used to be that every other year you’d go through a few months of bug-time in exchange for new features, but this has now been compressed to be that every year you have to go through this process, which I personally find exhausting. This also effectively means that it’s harder to be the kind of person that waits for the bugs to be ironed out before upgrading because by the time the current OS feels good, the beta for the next OS is literally already out and it’s clear most of the work is being directed there.

This is the camp I’m personally in right now. I was waiting for High Sierra to calm down (given the particularly tumultuous security issues it had), but it’s now looking like I’ll just be skipping it altogether (this will be the first version of macOS I’ll skip).

Good point.

I'd be totally happy to go back to an 18-24 month update cycle.

Big structural changes every two years and point updates with feature releases (which would normally be in a new version) and bug fixes.

No need to try and wedge everything into an annual release, especially if it's still buggy or unfinished.

>This also effectively means that it’s harder to be the kind of person that waits for the bugs to be ironed out before upgrading because by the time the current OS feels good, the beta for the next OS is literally already out

I realised this a couple of weeks ago when Mojave was showcased. I've got about 30 Macs here, mostly running Sierra, because of bugs and infamous security failures in the new OS that I held people back from upgrading, but now I'm thinking it might be stable enough to use, 10.14 is on the cards.

You're right, it's exhausting trying to keep up. Could not be more thankful that Ubuntu (our other platform) has LTS versions!!

I think there are two dynamics operating in tandem to create the oft-voice antipathy toward macOS in these parts. They are:

1. People perceive the past through rose tinted glasses, so they remember past releases as being better than they actually were.

2. People notice the things which are going wrong more than they notice the things that are going right, so they think current releases are worse than they actually are.

I just miss the days when they named the OS releases after kitty cats. Snow leopards are adorable, but I don't feel nearly as much passion for a beach I've never been to.

That reminds me:

> the big cat in the OS's desktop pictures has some slight flecks of blood on its lower jaw, and its lower teeth are also slightly visible.

https://www.engadget.com/2010/03/30/10-6-3-update-makes-snow...

I agree, but I think they started running out of cats. Puma, Panther, and Mountain Lion are all distinct releases of MacOS, but they're the exact same species.

Funny enough, biologists complain about the very same thing. Common wisdom is that biologists who study "charismatic mega-fauna" get traction with public opinion / may find easier funding streams than researchers who study small ugly things.

And as an aside, Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle had a snow leopard kitten this year. Snow leopards are indeed adorable, and I did think to myself about Apple scoring a win in having such an illustrious association.

And they have those ridiculous tails. Snow leopard tails are a thing of beauty.

> 1. People perceive the past through rose tinted glasses, so they remember past releases as being better than they actually were.

So what's the explanation for why Snow Leopard specifically is being touted as being better than both previous and future versions? It's one thing if people said "it's gotten worse every release since Jaguar" (e.g. rose tinted glasses), but since people are referring to a specific release, I think this likely less the case.

I have a few theories.

- Snow Leopard was the last $99 upgrade, and I think people like to convince themselves purchases were worth it. That effect is entirely lost with free OS upgrades, I'm free to disparage them without feeling like an idiot for buying it.

- Many people in enterprise & education stuck with SL for longer than they usually would have on the server, because it was the last OSX with an actual server release. This ends up with a "people who know what they're talking about are sticking with SL" narrative that gets propagated sans the understanding of _why_ they kept it around.

- SL was the last release on physical media, which upsets the "they're turning my mac into a phone" narrative.

Interestingly, when Snow Leopard was current, everyone held 10.4 Tiger up as the canonical release in much the same way they later did SL. Snow Leopard wasn't cool until it was already dead. Part of me suspects later releases haven't been able to take this mantle simply because they don't stick around long enough to make a name for themselves. (Although Sierra is starting to get there, thanks to a crowd of people who are too scared of APFS to upgrade to High Sierra).

Snow Leopard was probably a local maximum, so it stands out in people's memory.

> I don't get the praise/hate online for different releases, or the narrative that Apple's software quality is turning to crap. It's too shrill to be genuine.

For example, its the introduction of new bugs in the Finder that started with Maverick and still haven't been fixed. Its not too shrill, it is the software version of the neglect we see with the hardware. Things just aren't being fixed and the OS is getting flaky. I am getting a little sick of filing radars with no response or fixes. I would imagine our Adobe classes are going to end up transitioning to Windows if this keeps up and that would truly suck.

Quality or rather attitude. Back then, each release felt like it had a meaning for the consumers. Time machine, quick look, better dock all somehow made it in a single update and Leopard was fine for me, never felt unstable and Snow Leopard even makes it faster and more lightweight. I was amazed how a newer OS could do that after using Windows for quite a while.

And today, I don't know what kind of difference I'm seeing from about the last 4 macOS releases except given OS names I can't even remember compared to simple animal names. I just update because apps stop working on older releases but not for the OS.

iBooks, iTunes Store, App Store, you name it, the quality is amazingly low and never gets better.

Just tells how the managements don't care to deliver quality products that I lost hope of them to put the quality back, just hoping they would just keep it at this level.

And they can't even keep up releasing all their hardware lineup like they used to, even let go of some good ones like routers and obviously I've stopped watching their keynotes as it's just boring these days.

Current attitude is not "make something good" but "keep investors feel good" but I guess everyone knew this was going to happen.

So, I wonder about this:

https://macperformanceguide.com/topics/topic-AppleCoreRot.ht...

I also think OSX have been less stable last versions. I need to kick Spotlight indexing almost each 1-2 weeks. I only note it when install a new app and after a while it fail to find it. Also small things here and there...

Agreed. Regarding why folks might not want to upgrade: for me the main reason is legacy hardware not performing well with newer OSes. For example I recently upgraded a 2012 Mac Mini to High Sierra, and the experience was unacceptably slow. Switching back to Lion, the overall experience feels snappy again. This has happened to me on both Macs AND iphones over the years. At least on a Mac it’s a little easier to hold off.

I had used Windows at school and home until '07, when I bought a 15" Pro. The J-Lab at college had a bunch of new G5 and I was tired of having to always hike there to work on stuff.

Anyway...

At some point, I decided to reformat the laptop as I had seen some weird behaviors after (incorrectly) uninstalling something. Fast forward 8 hours and I learn that Target Disk Mode exists.

10.5.2 Meh.

> It's too shrill to be genuine.

Such a horribly disingenuous way to dismiss the experiences of other people.

This is a particular pet peeve of mine [0]. It seems as though they wanted to add some new presence features and rather than build on top of what was there they decided to build a new DNS service from scratch. Something you should never do [1]

Hilariously this affected people more heavily invested in Apple gear than people maintaining a more heterogeneous set of technologies.

Thankfully rolled back now, but it showed such an epic level of ineptitude on so many levels (Design, Engineering, Product Management) that for me the spell was broken.

Another thing that irked me was the way they dumped iPhoto and replaced it with Photos. iPhoto had it's problems but I had a lot invested in it. I was using it to manage my photos, as you do, and after the transition to photos everything was just all over the place and has been ever since. I know iPhoto had its issues, but photos is hardly an improvement. With this I guess they demonstrated [1] as well.

And really, I just started off with one thing and other things are coming to memory now ... iTunes. What's that all about. Utter crap. Can I use an alternative? No.

Or iCloud messaging? Why can't I send and receive messages in my browser like I can with Whatsapp? They tried it briefly but had to roll back I suspect because their backend is crap and couldn't manage it.

And iMessage in general is just buggy and unreliable. Apple were far and away in the lead with iMessage and just messed it up.

I could go on.

All of this is notwithstanding of course that Mac OS for all its faults is still the best OS there is. Windows is closing the gap, but Apple at least will never shove updates down my throat for instance. I'd so love for Linux to be something I could use as my daily OS but it's just not there.

But for you to rubbish other peoples claims of poor software quality (especially when they're paying an ever increasing top dollar) is just crass.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/why-dns-in-os-x-10-1...

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

EDIT oh yeah and iOS 7 / Apple Maps

ANOTHER EDIT iOS 11 is lovely and has been a very welcome return to form. More please.

FINAL EDIT the spellcheck used to be good in iOS and is now nothing but a mess.

SORRY I KNOW I SAID THAT WAS THE LAST EDIT BUT THIS ONE'S A DOOZY https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/28/macos-high-sierra-bug-a...

> Windows is closing the gap

Seriously? While Apple has totally slowed down to a crawl in terms of invention, Windows 10 is totally unbearable.

Poor flat design that looks like Linux's KDE from 15 years ago, control panel is all but a mess split in 2 locations and every option having "Advanced" button which in turn has more tabs and checkboxes and leads to another config which itself can have another "advanced" config, things are just a joke. And what's worse, third party apps inherit that attitude that I feel I'm in a maze using Windows. macOS apps, not so.

And I don't know how people can live with its crappy default font rendering. Touching Windows makes me feel I'm rewound back 15 years.

I use it daily and it’s fine as long as it gets a reboot every night ... which is needed rarely on my MacBook. I also like the flat UI and configuration is a mess, just like on the other two OSes

> At least Apple never tried to force-update the machine I was using in the middle of an important client pitch, unlike other OS vendors I could mention.

You left out the part where you ignored ample warnings that a reboot was needed for days in advance.

> ample warnings

Ample warnings or not, this is unsatisfactory.

Wasn’t mine. It was the generic meeting room presentation machine.

Don’t care about what warnings were or weren’t ignored: the main lesson is that Windows will leave you in the lurch at the worst possible time.

That sounds like a failure of the IT department then to properly maintain the machines. Enterprise Windows can be managed very differently than the consumer versions.

As prominent tech CEOs have discovered, ‘You’re doing it wrong’ doesn’t go down all that well as a defence.

Nothing makes for better tournament streams than having the update box pop up during grand finals, or watching the stream lag more and more because of an update installing in the background.

I don't know what the future will hold, but I do know the present is a pretty frustrating time for this type of stuff.

The forced update stuff can be a real pain even if no reboot is needed. Many updates cause high CPU usage, making work rather slow going. Some even do this during the downloading step, so they can cause you trouble even during your active hours.

Even if you disable this stuff with the Group Policy Editor, you still have to be careful, because if you click the 'you need updates' notification (perhaps to see which updates are ready) you approve them for installation sight unseen. The entire system is unfathomably user-hostile.

What was really fun in 7 was the weird state Windows Update would be in if it had not received updates in a long time. It would hog CPU and do nothing. You would manually have to download a couple key patches and apply them before Update would be able to connect and install anything else.

That was so frustrating too. I remember the update to windows update usually fixed it if I could find it.

I did have a lot of success letting Windows Update run overnight though. Then it would inevitably be stuck at 2% waiting for a button to get hit.

We've come so far.

I think a lot of it is people are just adverse to change.

https://medium.com/@cwodtke/users-dont-hate-change-they-hate...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com