I've noticed that the MacOS codebase seems to have kibble. Features that used to work have degraded in quality for seemingly no reason over successive generations.
For example, Spotlight, ever since their updates, is now unable to find any of my applications, struggles to find PDF documents while being slower and worse than the spotlight I used to use in OS X Snow Leopard. Yes, my current Mac's spotlight has more features. But the core functionality no longer "just works."
Another example is networking. For some reason, MacOS is now really flaky when using VPNs and it seems to have struggle connecting with WiFi networks from time to time. It's bizarre.
I'm using the latest hardware (the 28GB M2 MacBook Air) — it shouldn't be this bad.
Let's not even talk about Apple Care. Apple Care theoretically does more now, but they've made it functionally worse for most consumers.
I look back at the leopard to snow leopard upgrade with incredible fondness. 2 years worth of work. "Zero new features": improved performance, better cpu + memory usage.
Probably the only stuff people Hacker News care for.
I remember my mom taking my White iBook G3 to the repair store and them upgrading me from Panther to Leopard in 2010. Completely blew my mind and I'm still in love with the UI.
It’s iOS, too - I recall their QA used to be impeccable - it all Just Worked, and user-facing bugs were pretty uncommon. I found myself a huge fan of the apple ecosystem 20 years ago after wrestling with windows and Linux for the previous decade, as the ease of it all was unbelievably refreshing.
I now find myself rebooting my iPhone (or it rebooting itself if things are sufficiently bad) on a daily basis, as it always ends up with things like file handling just breaking - I use SMB mounts in the files app and this seems to be a poorly tested edge case. Also, the keyboard thing, where input starts to buffer - I’ve seen it on other people’s phones, too. Seems like a pretty fundamental thing to not get perfectly right.
It’s not just bugs - usability has plummeted as stuff has been shoehorned in left, right and centre. Gone is the simplicity of past iOS - the convergence works both ways, I suppose.
Over the past few years I have encountered numerous issues in each of iOS and macOS which generally never get resolved - usually nothing earth-shattering, but stuff that speaks of a lack of QA, or planning, or a lack of care.
for over a year, pressing a volume button on an ios device then quickly locking the screen would make the volume go all the way in the direction you were pressing
imagine opening your phone to check your media player, then pressing the volume button up once to make something gently louder and locking the screen again before putting your phone down
then throwing your headphones on the ground for the tenth time because ios decided that was the secret button combination to blast at full volume
A few versions of MacOS ago, I noticed that mounting a network drive with NFS through the GUI (e.g. Command K) took far longer than it should; 15 to 20 seconds when it should have been nearly instant. And in fact if I had a terminal open when I did it, I could see that the drive was mounted and accessible in a veritable instant, while the GUI progress indicator just sat there for another 20 seconds. I never bothered to dig into it, but I presume it was waiting to stat all the files in at least the first level of sub-directories (more would have taken much longer, so it certainly wasn't doing the whole drive recursively.) I can't imagine any sane reason to delay showing the user the root directory of the mount before stating files in the sub-directories, but I also can't imagine any other quasi-legitimate reason it could have been taking so long.
I heard a story a while ago that some apps just create a fake progress bar/indicator. Because if it happened instantly people don't trust/believe the action actually happened.
I noticed issues with networking as well. For example if I plug in an Ethernet cable, it will still use Wi-Fi as the default route in many cases - so I have to disable Wi-Fi every time. This works flawlessly on Windows/Linux in comparison.
And on the window management side, OS X still doesn’t have the most basic way to lock windows to the side of the screen or create basic tiling layouts quickly - again something both Windows and Linux have been doing for years. They keep adding useless UX features without improving the most basic experience.
I mostly put up with it because battery life is great and my work requires it. And I do all my dev work on remote servers, so the sorry state of OS X package management / x86 compatibility doesn’t affect me.
Agreed with spotlight, and when searching in a folder in finder it just doesn't work - it's absolutely bizarre.
Say i open a folder with 50 files and i want to filter them quickly, i go to the upper right corner of the window and click the little spotlight icon, then at first the OS default is to search your -entire- computer, a hilariously bad design choice, then when you change that and start typing for the hundredth time it takes minutes for anything to show up like spotlight has to index the folder again.
And sometimes nothing happens at all, and since apple doesn't show any feedback or what's going on you've got no idea if scrolling will be faster - so it's one of apples infamous "nothing is happening because we are doing magic" moment you meet daily.
> Say i open a folder with 50 files and i want to filter them quickly, i go to the upper right corner of the window and click the little spotlight icon, then at first the OS default is to search your -entire- computer
Go to Finder settings, click on advanced, and change the option 'When performing a search' to just current folder.
I can't remember if that's the default or not, but it's easily fixed.
Took me years before I discovered you have to append "name:" at the start of your search for Spotlight to actually be useful when you know what you're looking for (i.e. the keyword should be in the filename). The default UX they went for is really puzzling.
Does anyone here or at Apple know why it takes almost a second to switch tabs in new "redesigned" settings dialog on a M1 Max laptop? There's a very perceptible lag now... how do you mess up a UI Window on supposedly fastest laptop in the world?
One thing I've noticed with the latest macOS and iOS releases is that I find macOS is being dumbed down while iOS has become incredibly complicated.
I can still do what I want in macOS, some things are just unnecessarily difficult to find, like Internet Sharing. I was only able to find it by searching for "Sharing". Staying with internet sharing, the interface for it is bonkers, you have to click a tiny gray (!) logo to configure it. That seems like someone ran out of space and just made something up, without the oversight of a designer.
While Apple seems hellbent on making macOS dumber, they've have no second thoughts about making iOS insanely complicated to use. Settings are all over the place, I frequently miss notification, because apparently I did something that disables them in some scenarios, no idea what that might be. There are so many features in iOS and very little is done to surface them or make them intuitive to use. I feel like they could yank 80% of iOS and I'd still have a workable phone.
Apple needs to take a break and reevaluate their design decisions for both operating systems, but neither is evolving in the right direction.
There’s nothing revolutionary here, when are we going to see the next generation of desktop computing?
There is so much potential to overhaul the desktop metaphor, rethink the finder, how we share documents and review edits in text based files, automate using modular blocks, share media with your tv and other devices, share information between multiple running apps, allow central software updates for non store apps… the list is endless.
Instead it seems we’re content with the status quo and adding cosmetics.
When document versions was introduced and spotlight I remember the envy running windows at the time.
Instead of overhauling the desktop metaphor I'd prefer if they improved the current state of the system. The Stage Manager is still very rough around the edges (obvious drag-and-drop interactions don't work, windows sometimes get randomly repositioned and can even land outside the screen area, ...). The fullscreen mode feels really sluggish because it's weirdly implemented using virtual desktops and thus has a one-second delay. The file chooser for saving files is completely frozen until all connected harddrives have spun up. Why does the browser have a back/forward swipe gesture but not the Finder etc.?
Though I agree completely new approaches to some things can be great, for example the Stage Manager turned out far more useful than I expected, it's like a taskbar for virtual desktops.
I don't want them to be courageous. Because that inevitably means taking away working workflows, making things harder for developers or anyone who doesn't want to conform to whatever new vision it is. This is what experimental systems are for - showing a new vision and then when anyone tries to use it finding out why things are the way they are.
OP's not asking for next generation in computing; mobile was that 15 years ago and maybe VR is next, but the OP wants a rethink of DESKTOP computing, not a replacement for the thing, an improved version in the thing itself. If it's not at a desk's top, with a screen, a keyboard, and pointing device, it's not really a DESKTOP.
I really resent the bloat of modern operating systems. MacOS in particular.
I feel like I need ridiculously powerful hardware now just to do the same things I was doing 15 years ago - web browsing, web development, a photo library and playing music.
All this crap they’re adding should be able to be toggled off.
No, I don't think it's only about "more complex websites", "more taxing multimedia" and so on - it's more likely also macOS and Windows bloat and questionable software quality getting in the way. I recently installed Ubuntu Linux with the LXQt performance-oriented desktop environment on a 10-year-old Intel i7 2600 workstation back from 2011 (16 GB RAM, an Intel HD Graphics 2000 built-in GPU, an Intel SSD with specs archaic by today's standards) and the system is extremely fast and responsive at everything including web browsing, multimedia playback, IDE-based development (e.g., CodeBlocks), app launching, etc. Website content and multimedia rendering alone is not enough to saturate even a 10-year-old CPU/GPU.
For me at least, I’d say the prior versions of windows were pretty zippy whereas now I don’t even know what’s going on behind the scenes and why it takes so long to perform basic tasks, even with 16 gb ram.
I feel like Mac has absolutely nailed feeling responsive and snappy. I have a full gaming desktop with enormous amounts of compute, but for some reason my MacBook Air _feels_ faster while the desktop just seems to miss beats or have occasional jank.
The M1 is 3 years old now but if you packaged it up in a new shell and told me it’s the 2023 edition, I wouldn’t know otherwise.
It was a bit of a one off OS release from Apple, and instead of being an intense focus on new features, the whole point of that release was to improve stability and performance.
They removed a ton of legacy support, but in the process gave all the core operating system mechanics a much needed house cleaning to improve performance. It breathed new life into older macs and made the OS significantly faster and more stable.
Since then we've had tons of bloat brought back in, then removed again, then added back in again (see widgets for example). It's time for another Snow Leopard.
This is a popular sentiment, but the last few releases were pretty tame feature-wise, and Monterey and Ventura have been quite solid for me. I think we are also looking back with rose-tinted glasses. I have been using macOS since 10.4/10.5 and those releases were quite rough. Even the initial 10.6 (Snow Leopard) releases were quite buggy, it was only towards the end of the end of the 10.6 release cycle (which was still two years) that it got really solid.
Especially the releases after Apple lost interest in the Mac (when they proclaimed the iPad was the future of computing) and later the Intel Mac were horrible. The mid to late 2010s were particularly horrible for Mac users. Bad hardware (the faulty butterfly keyboard, only 1 or 2 USB-C ports on many models, CPUs that got too hot for the limited cooling) and very buggy macOS releases.
I must be doing something wrong, because I don't hate this. And this is coming from someone using the Mac since 1985ish or so. Like I said, I'll try harder to hate on it more as that seems to be the cool thing to do.
Windows 8 went about this all wrong by just forcing everything mobile on desktop and removing the desktop features. Apple seems to have done this super carefully by copying over individual features in both ways and making sure it really works before releasing it.
Not actually. I've been using the Mac since 1985, but not exclusively. The same year I got more into the Amiga as it could do so much more...but Commodore didn't know what to do with the machine and now it's just a footnote.
I've also switched between PC/DOS to Mac to DOS to OS/2 to Mac to Linux to Windows back to Mac to Linux and now back to Mac. My media server here is run on Linux. I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to computers, it just so happens that at this point in time I'm using a Mac as my daily driver.
MacOS, once reliable and straightforward, now feels like a puzzle board. Snow Leopard was great, it prioritized performance and stability, not adding unnecessary bells and whistles - it was the best MacOS I've used to far. Both MacOS and iOS need to return to their roots. MacOS needs to prioritize performance and stability, and iOS needs to simplify. Trim the fat, focus on what matters, and make these platforms user-friendly again.
Even decade-old hardware running Ubuntu Linux can outperform MacOS. It's not about the hardware any more, it's about the software!
If you care about having the very latest versions of all apps, tools, compilers, etc. go with a "rolling distro" such as Manjaro (easier to setup) or Arch Linux (more advanced to administer). If you prefer upgrade stability (and a huge community with a lot of help), go with a "checkpoint distro" such as Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support). For a desktop environment, I found LXQt (Ubuntu + LXQt = the Lubuntu distro) to be both very fast and quite modern-looking at the same time (especially if you invest some time into customizing it), while KDE Plasma (Ubuntu + KDE = the Kubuntu distro) is probably the best looking Linux out of the box, but somewhat more resource hungry. (More info at: https://distrowatch.com)
Widgets on the desktop have a long history in currently mainstream OSes. I remember Windows 95 Active Desktop [1] which worked in combination with Internet Explorer 4. HTML widgets rendered on Windows' desktop.
Wasn't that running in its own window [1]? However I'm pretty sure that somebody made it render directly on the screen below all the other windows, or in front of them. I remember cockroaches scrambling to hide below windows [2] or snow accumulating above windows titles [3].
Readit News
For example, Spotlight, ever since their updates, is now unable to find any of my applications, struggles to find PDF documents while being slower and worse than the spotlight I used to use in OS X Snow Leopard. Yes, my current Mac's spotlight has more features. But the core functionality no longer "just works."
Another example is networking. For some reason, MacOS is now really flaky when using VPNs and it seems to have struggle connecting with WiFi networks from time to time. It's bizarre.
I'm using the latest hardware (the 28GB M2 MacBook Air) — it shouldn't be this bad.
Let's not even talk about Apple Care. Apple Care theoretically does more now, but they've made it functionally worse for most consumers.
Probably the only stuff people Hacker News care for.
I now find myself rebooting my iPhone (or it rebooting itself if things are sufficiently bad) on a daily basis, as it always ends up with things like file handling just breaking - I use SMB mounts in the files app and this seems to be a poorly tested edge case. Also, the keyboard thing, where input starts to buffer - I’ve seen it on other people’s phones, too. Seems like a pretty fundamental thing to not get perfectly right.
It’s not just bugs - usability has plummeted as stuff has been shoehorned in left, right and centre. Gone is the simplicity of past iOS - the convergence works both ways, I suppose.
Over the past few years I have encountered numerous issues in each of iOS and macOS which generally never get resolved - usually nothing earth-shattering, but stuff that speaks of a lack of QA, or planning, or a lack of care.
imagine opening your phone to check your media player, then pressing the volume button up once to make something gently louder and locking the screen again before putting your phone down
then throwing your headphones on the ground for the tenth time because ios decided that was the secret button combination to blast at full volume
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252351739
And on the window management side, OS X still doesn’t have the most basic way to lock windows to the side of the screen or create basic tiling layouts quickly - again something both Windows and Linux have been doing for years. They keep adding useless UX features without improving the most basic experience.
I mostly put up with it because battery life is great and my work requires it. And I do all my dev work on remote servers, so the sorry state of OS X package management / x86 compatibility doesn’t affect me.
Say i open a folder with 50 files and i want to filter them quickly, i go to the upper right corner of the window and click the little spotlight icon, then at first the OS default is to search your -entire- computer, a hilariously bad design choice, then when you change that and start typing for the hundredth time it takes minutes for anything to show up like spotlight has to index the folder again.
And sometimes nothing happens at all, and since apple doesn't show any feedback or what's going on you've got no idea if scrolling will be faster - so it's one of apples infamous "nothing is happening because we are doing magic" moment you meet daily.
What the hell is going on Apple?
Go to Finder settings, click on advanced, and change the option 'When performing a search' to just current folder.
I can't remember if that's the default or not, but it's easily fixed.
I can still do what I want in macOS, some things are just unnecessarily difficult to find, like Internet Sharing. I was only able to find it by searching for "Sharing". Staying with internet sharing, the interface for it is bonkers, you have to click a tiny gray (!) logo to configure it. That seems like someone ran out of space and just made something up, without the oversight of a designer.
While Apple seems hellbent on making macOS dumber, they've have no second thoughts about making iOS insanely complicated to use. Settings are all over the place, I frequently miss notification, because apparently I did something that disables them in some scenarios, no idea what that might be. There are so many features in iOS and very little is done to surface them or make them intuitive to use. I feel like they could yank 80% of iOS and I'd still have a workable phone.
Apple needs to take a break and reevaluate their design decisions for both operating systems, but neither is evolving in the right direction.
Deleted Comment
There is so much potential to overhaul the desktop metaphor, rethink the finder, how we share documents and review edits in text based files, automate using modular blocks, share media with your tv and other devices, share information between multiple running apps, allow central software updates for non store apps… the list is endless.
Instead it seems we’re content with the status quo and adding cosmetics.
When document versions was introduced and spotlight I remember the envy running windows at the time.
macOS needs a more courageous vision imho.
Though I agree completely new approaches to some things can be great, for example the Stage Manager turned out far more useful than I expected, it's like a taskbar for virtual desktops.
- dos / windows - game mode on/off - settings - dual booting
Etc.
Deleted Comment
I feel like I need ridiculously powerful hardware now just to do the same things I was doing 15 years ago - web browsing, web development, a photo library and playing music.
All this crap they’re adding should be able to be toggled off.
Beyond that, what actual stuff are you talking about?
The M1 is 3 years old now but if you packaged it up in a new shell and told me it’s the 2023 edition, I wouldn’t know otherwise.
Dead Comment
It was a bit of a one off OS release from Apple, and instead of being an intense focus on new features, the whole point of that release was to improve stability and performance.
They removed a ton of legacy support, but in the process gave all the core operating system mechanics a much needed house cleaning to improve performance. It breathed new life into older macs and made the OS significantly faster and more stable.
Since then we've had tons of bloat brought back in, then removed again, then added back in again (see widgets for example). It's time for another Snow Leopard.
This is a popular sentiment, but the last few releases were pretty tame feature-wise, and Monterey and Ventura have been quite solid for me. I think we are also looking back with rose-tinted glasses. I have been using macOS since 10.4/10.5 and those releases were quite rough. Even the initial 10.6 (Snow Leopard) releases were quite buggy, it was only towards the end of the end of the 10.6 release cycle (which was still two years) that it got really solid.
Especially the releases after Apple lost interest in the Mac (when they proclaimed the iPad was the future of computing) and later the Intel Mac were horrible. The mid to late 2010s were particularly horrible for Mac users. Bad hardware (the faulty butterfly keyboard, only 1 or 2 USB-C ports on many models, CPUs that got too hot for the limited cooling) and very buggy macOS releases.
But i agree you must be doing something wrong.
I've also switched between PC/DOS to Mac to DOS to OS/2 to Mac to Linux to Windows back to Mac to Linux and now back to Mac. My media server here is run on Linux. I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to computers, it just so happens that at this point in time I'm using a Mac as my daily driver.
Even decade-old hardware running Ubuntu Linux can outperform MacOS. It's not about the hardware any more, it's about the software!
Deleted Comment
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop
[1] https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xeyes
[2] https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xroach
[3] https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xsnow