Hacker News Reader

Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

Makes sense. Realistically the last killer feature in an OS X release was probably spotlight in 10.4. Consumer hardware hasn't gotten much faster since then, and the last six OS X releases have all been pretty much just rearranging furniture.

I can't see much innovation happening in the OS space for a few years until we get widespread adoption of memristors, perhaps in 2020 when HP comes out with The Machine.

View on HN

Are you kidding? No hardware improvement in 10 years? I have a PowerPC machine powered off in a closet that runs 10.4, which somehow I can't move myself to get rid of. Today's smartphones are more powerful. They have more RAM and a better CPU.

On the software side, I powered it on a year or so ago. Felt pretty different from recent OS X. I didn't remember it being as different as it was. (If you had said little substantive change since 10.6 I may have agreed more.)

There's no question smartphones are completely different, I'm talking about laptops and desktops. I'm writing this comment from my late 2008 MBP, which in terms of perceived speed is identical to my 2014 MBP work computer. If the new MBPs have Skylake then I'll upgrade because this one is starting to fall apart, but I'm certainly not pretending that it's going to make me more productive or have any tangible benefit.

> which in terms of perceived speed is identical to my 2014 MBP work computer

Yeh that's great if all you are doing is mild web browsing and sending emails. Last year I ditched my late 2008 MBP for a 2014 MBP (both 15") and the difference is astounding. I can play CSGO at 150fps rather than 25. Furthermore it doesn't overheat and shut down while playing CSGO. For work it is also a massive improvement when I run MATLAB scripts that involve huge matrix multiplications, inversions, SVDs etc.

> There's no question smartphones are completely different, I'm talking about laptops and desktops.

My point was that the thing in your pocket runs circles around the 10.4 machine, and the high-end desktop machine runs circles around that. But I agree with sjtrny's comment that you might not notice it if you don't try it with the right workload. (Although, with the way web browsers burn cycles and RAM these days ...)

To be fair, your machine is probably one of the oldest to run 10.4. I have a 32-bit Intel Mac Mini that shipped with 10.4, and it still works.

I also have a PowerPC machine on 10.5 that I power up every now and then, and every time I am surprised how similar it is to 10.9. Maybe that's because my Dock hasn't changed a lot since 10.4, and I avoid the cloud and notifications like the plague.

The changes started in 10.7 to modernize OSX with some iOS inspired features have grown into killer features for me. When you add up everything from the last few years it's an impressive list:

* HiDPI support & Retina scaled resolutions * AirPlay video / desktops * Photos / iCloud Photo Library * Notifications * Handoff / Continuity * iMessage / FaceTime (bundled in 10.7) * Voice & SMS relay * Find my Mac / remote lock & erase via iCloud * Automatic cellular data tethering * MailDrop for sending large Mail attachments * AutoSave (app state save/restoration) * 32->64 / ALSR / kext signing / GateKeeper * Rotating TimeMachine backups * EFI OS Recovery

Lets be honest though. I am a big fan, a convert even. An impressive list, maybe, but when the parent talks innovation, how many of these fit the bill? These don't, to me: photo library, notifications, iMessage and FaceTime, sms relay, remote lock and erase, cellular tethering, 32>64, next signing, all borrowed HEAVILY from competitors.

I'm not sure what definition of innovation you use but I assure you it does not require invention from first principles.

It also does not mean "feature X, taken (in some cases almost cloned) from somewhere else, is now an 'Apple innovation'."

I like all of those features (though AirPlay still is a struggle with HD, though to be expected; and handoff for voice is still very buggy). And others are genuine innovations or things that Apple has polished. But to point to, for an egregious example, "Look, Notifications, how innovative that is" is also disingenuous.

If you're going to play that game, there's been no innovation whatsoever since day 1. GP mentions Spotlight but that was just stolen from BeOS, the leaked WinFS plans, etc etc.

Spotlight stolen from BeOS? LaunchBar which goes back to the NeXT days has the basic Spotlight features and more. While it's not a NeXT company product, it was a third-party product for their OS. I'd say it's more likely they borrowed ideas from it, if anything. But given they had Sherlock (where the initial version predates OS X), I'd say it was initially more of a re-imagining of Sherlock.

Computers that update themselves in their sleep, time machine, continuity, notifications, the app store (and gate keeper), high resolution support, and mission control are all pretty huge in my eyes.

Plus all that fantastic stuff under the hood like Fusion Drive support, App nap and allied technology, memory compression etc etc

Do you call Retina/High DPI support not a killer feature? If you care about typography, the video output of 10.4 feels like the stone age.

However, it also feels more like something that everyone played around with on 10.4, and 10.7 only happened to make it finally work ;)

Look for "Scalable User Interface" here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2005/04/macosx-10-4/20/

(Not entirely serious, I think HiDPI this is the best new thing to happen since 10.5, and I can't wait until I can actually buy HiDPI displays.)

I think the continuity features like automatically being able to load a Safari tab that I've loaded on any other Apple device is great. I thought Spotlight wasn't very good until I used it with a SSD. Many of the Yosemite features will probably become better over time as they mature, too.

I'd checkout Flashlight.

http://flashlight.nateparrott.com

It's a system for Spotlight plugins on Yosemite. It works similar to Alfred, LaunchBar or Quicksilver. It's open source and fairly simple to write your own plugins for the system (in Python or Javascript).

Mission Control and Notifications have made a pretty big difference in my workflow, but yes, I'd agree that the changes are getting smaller over the years.

It's interesting - I use a lot of features of OS X that I think most people don't touch often (I'm probably one of the only people on HN who frequently launches apps from Launchpad with the four-finger squeeze, for instance) - but notifications bar and mission control are two that I've never found any use for. (I'm an Cmd+Tabber)

Indeed, Notifications has an annoying habit of locking up an otherewise solid 10.8.5 so I can't command+tab between apps. It always returns after 45-90 seconds, and I can kill it by bringing up spotlight and launching activity monitor - but that's the only impact that the notification tray has made on me. (Though, notifications themselves, akin to what Growl used to do, are kind of handy - except for the annoying one telling me I have to update my computer that I can't stop from coming back - particularly harsh when you are doing a presentation on a projector)

I'm with you. I gave Mission Control.app a serious try, but have no use for it.

>the annoying one telling me I have to update my computer that I can't stop from coming back

That one caused me to disable OS X notifications altogether. If Apple wants to silently upgrade the OS without notifying me, I would be OK with that (though I'd appreciate an email) but interrupting me without giving me any way less drastic than rebooting to turn off the stream of interruptions is just not OK with me.

(Yes, I realize that I'm more intolerant of interruptions than most people.)

I have 4 spaces (or whatever they are called now) to which I assign various applications, each of which can have several windows open, so that's my use case.

I command-tab as well, but I find it useful to have an overview of everything going on, and jump straight to a window (without command-tabbing, then command-tilde'ing depending on the application)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com