I wish Apple would separate the updates of their bundleware from their OS. Some of the major updates have meaningful changes to the underlying OS (gatekeeper, SIP, etc.), but others - like this one - are primarily changes to frills like Messages, Notes, Safari and other Apple-native apps that I don't even use.
I have no problem with Apple bundling these apps and making them work seamlessly together, and I don't even mind that they're all updated simultaneously (except for Safari, which I wish I could update independently without relying on the "Technology Preview" beta channel). But I do have a problem with upgrading my entire OS and disabling the new bloatware features just because I want to keep auto-updates enabled. I used to delay updating and then would end up way behind, which is why I enrolled in auto-update. But now it feels like I'm being held hostage to their update schedule.
And for what benefit? There are hardly any useful OS-level changes in this release, but there are a bunch of new features I'll need to disable (while hoping the next auto-update doesn't break my external monitor), all powered by freshly written code contributing to an expanded attack surface. If I had my way, then I'd take the OS updates and skip all the apps. Keep the attack surface small while still meaningfully improving the core. I don't care about the rest.
You know what would be even better? If you could reliably uninstall all this junk or not even install it at all.
Every time I hit some button on my keyboard and the Music app opens asking me to create an account I am reminded how hostile all commercial operating systems are.
It's interesting, I've been using OpenBSD for the past couple years and it has _not once_ enraged me the way Windows and Mac do. I still use Windows for work, and own a ton of Macs (probably getting close to ~30 by now), but OpenBSD is the OS I use for most general computing stuff.
I mean, I'm using a GUI that is really primitive by comparison to Win/Mac (i3wm) but it's actually great. Extremely fast, efficient, and stays out of my way. There is literally no mechanism in the OS to pop up a notification or bounce an icon or blink anything at me. It couldn't interrupt me and piss me off even if some piece of software wanted to. It's amazing. Nothing updates on its own, and the OS runs very very few services or other background stuff -- basically only whatever I have explicitly configured and enabled. Again, awesome. I'm easily aware of every single process that runs on this machine, and if there's one I don't know about, there's comprehensive documentation about it, including how to configure it. That's honestly effectively impossible for someone using Mac or Windows.
Oh, I just installed a security patch in about 20 seconds. Open terminal (winkey->enter), "doas syspatch -c", type pass, see there's a patch, "doas syspatch" to apply it, done in 2 seconds. Once I reboot the newly-patched kernel is active. There is full documentation of the patch, including why it's needed, how the patch resolves the issue, and a diff of the patch is included.
Oh man, it gets worse than that. After updating to iOS 17 the other day, I said to my phone "play OverCast" (my podcast app). It used to start playing from that app. This time, it started playing a band called Overcast, and told me I had just started a 7 day free trial of Apple Music. What the actual fuck.
Somehow on migrating to a new iPhone the music app decided it needed full notification permissions, apparently because a new Taylor swift album is of the same notification level as an incoming missile strike.
Reliably removing the U2 album from Apple Music seems impossible. Deleting the album which has helpfully redownloaded itself is now a ritual before I start my car - otherwise it starts playing as soon as bluetooth connects - which is just what I need when I'm pulling away in busy traffic.
I have similar feelings. Apple did a wonderful job with M1/M2, but on the software side, I have mixed feelings. Xcode is a mess, and Swift UI is not a complete replacement for Cocoa.
And on the OS side, I feel like Apple is creating features that I instantly disable because they do the exact opposite of what I want.
Apple's hardware is incredible but the software is increasingly grating for any kind of power usage. Xcode is frustrating, the permissions system is flagrantly designed for Apple's self interest, window, monitor, and app management is rife with ancient bugs and half baked design decisions.
XCode is refusing to install. Fails with some error, and asks me to download XCode again. Also now the system needs 70-80 GB of free space to install XCode. One of the funny upgrades so far
Xcode is a mess in many fronts. For example my Xcode updated automatically to a version which couldn't support Ventura anymore, the OS I'm still running. I had to uninstall the app store version and manually download older one to fix the situation.
> I wish Apple would separate the updates of their bundleware from their OS.
In a way it's a bit of a philosophical standpoint: macOS is the whole indivisible thing developed, built, and released in lockstep, kinda like FreeBSB base is the whole indivisible thing developed, built, and released in lockstep (and the rest is ports). In a way, removing tcsh from a FreeBSD install because you only ever use bash from ports does not make sense and may break things; so you just ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist.
Something cool however is you can actually build the open-source WebKit browser engine yourself and make closed-source Safari use your locally built version.
For tech minded folk, the upgrade-everyting-or-nothing is indeed unwanted.
But I love the facts that I can tell my family to upgrade and they will have all the new stuff at once, like with an iPhone or iPad. That is for most users what they want and/or need.
Maybe Apple should consider dev editions for MacOS that allows more customization during setup. MacOS is still heavily used by web and mobile developers, so I'm sure this would be received well.
I do end up removing many of the Apple apps, but recently started using Safari, Notes, and Reminders more. Apple does an excellent job making their apps work seamlessly within the Apple ecosystem.
Wow, so much unwarranted hate. It's one download and you have everything updated. If you believe you do not need a new OS version for your laptop for whatever reason, you can always keep using Ventura or whatever you're running now and update that until it is end of support.
I don't think you understand how helpful it is for "normal" users to push a button and have a brand new version of everything. And being afraid of new features that you don't use... pretty irrational.
It is by no means irrational to hesitate on a new major release of an Apple operating system. MacOS upgrades have caused many people all kinds of issues, for instance a Big Sur update broke a metric fuckton of USB-C hubs and they didn't address it for 6 months.
Warning: You are using macOS 11.
We (and Apple) do not provide support for this old version.
It is expected behaviour that some formulae will fail to build in this old version.
It is expected behaviour that Homebrew will be buggy and slow.
Do not create any issues about this on Homebrew's GitHub repositories.
Do not create any issues even if you think this message is unrelated.
Any opened issues will be immediately closed without response.
Do not ask for help from Homebrew or its maintainers on social media.
You may ask for help in Homebrew's discussions but are unlikely to receive a response.
Try to figure out the problem yourself and submit a fix as a pull request.
We will review it but may or may not accept it.
Yea the homebrew dev team is pretty user hostile tbh.
The more you read their github, the more you realize how insufferable and arrogant they are. It leaves a very bad impression.
Also, if you are not going along in the upgrade rabbit race, homebrew gets really annoying and actually in your way at some point.
I see myself moving to macports soon, if brew gets worse and the stability of my setup is compromised (lots of php versions with valet for example).
I guess brew is now more targeted at “prosumers” now since it is imposing unnecessary limits on what “pro” users want and need.
The homebrew team seems incredibly burnt-out, to the point of hostility. I've really enjoyed the nixpkgs community so far and encourage others to check it out; it hasn't replaced homebrew entirely for me (yet), but it's getting closer every day.
I want to like Nix but those installation instructions for macOS (and their removal friend) are just crazypants as compared to the `sudo mkdir /nix && sudo chown $USER /nix` from the Linux version
And that's not even getting into the "waaa?" from `du -hs /nix` although I am open to that being a misleading number due to hardlinks and other trickery that du may not correctly surface
My issue with Nix is that you are forced to install packages in a global location. Why is it that every package manager assumes I’m an administrator on my machine? Even if I am, how does it make sense to take over a global directory as a single user?
These warnings keep getting longer every homebrew release. You may want to try macPorts, which goes out of their way to explicitly support releases all the way down to 10.5.
One of the cooler experiences I've had with MacPorts was seeing some people go out of their way to ensure builds still worked on PPC Tiger and PPC Leopard.
I remember seeing SBCL builds broken on Darwin/ppc for a long while, and eventually SBCL decided to drop support for Darwin/ppc altogether. Still, these ports maintainers did not give up and eventually found a way to fix SBCL builds on PPC: https://trac.macports.org/ticket/65484
I recall seeing some work to bring back PPC support upstream, but I am not sure what the progress on that is. It's still cool seeing downstream users fix builds that simply didn't work (and to the point where upstream decides to remove support entirely since they couldn't build it anyway).
Wow! That's quite impressive. Meanwhile there was a latent bug in the Homebrew formula for Rust that affected 10.13 for a year until I finally spent a few hours to investigate it.
"If you see a Homebrew maintainer walking down the street in your direction, find the nearest wall and bury your face in it in shame and deference until they pass."
All I see is, they protect themself from each and every script kiddy that runs to reddit or github when something doesn't work because of their own config issues.
Oh oh, it's getting closer. Currently on MacOS 12 with my trusted 2015 Macbook Pro. It still goes strong, but looks like the next major release may see the end of homebrew for this one. There's really no issue with this computer other than 16gb of RAM being a bit tight when every modern app is using Electron. Oh well, see how we go.
(Message also for your parent) Last week, I saw the writing on the wall. I installed OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher on two MBPs from 2015, updating 12.7 to 13.6. It is a MBP 13" 2015 (early 2016 variant) and a MBP 15" 2015 (late 2015?). Works very well but you need to follow the guide. Both machines are still working well, 'cept for the battery (already replaced on the 13"). Esp the 15" is still in good condition, my wife happily uses it and insists on needing a 15". So a replacement would be expensive.
I'm surprise Apple doesn't, even unofficially, upstream fixes to Homebrew before a new macOS version is released. Why let Homebrew break for so many macOS users on day 0? I know Apple is secretive about unreleased products, but the type of fixes for Homebrew wouldn't reveal too many Apple secrets. Do Apple engineers not use Homebrew on their own Macs while developing macOS?
I see other replies as well, but I just want to tell you guys I came here to recommend mac ports. It’s a shame brew is so popular and mac ports having only a fraction of that attention.
I assume that the message means that Homebrew is incorrectly identifying the installation of MacOS Sonoma as “out of date”, and that means updating Hombbrew is a side-effect of updating the OS.
Once again a good time to remember that there were multiple perfectly good package managers available when Homebrew was invented, they were more future-proof (by eg not putting files in /usr/local), and everyone only switched to it because for some reason Ruby programmers wanted all of their tools to be written in Ruby (and possibly by people with waxed mustaches.)
I switched to it because it worked much better out of the box and required next to no fiddle-fucking to install tools I need, so I can spend my time doing what I'm actually paid for, and good at. I have no idea whether the alternatives improved in the intervening 10-ish years, any I have no good reason to look into it since homebrew still works.
I don't care what language Homebrew uses, it just works. When I got my M1 MacBook in 2021 I saw some of this negativity about Homebrew, and since I was doing a clean install anyway I decided to try out MacPorts. I quickly ran into problems and switched back to Homebrew and it's been smooth sailing.
Ultimately users will go where the package maintainers are. There are more people out there willing and able to write Ruby today than Perl (Fink) or TCL (MacPorts).
I'm sure someone will start a macOS package manager based on python and yum to signal the waning days of those technologies.
I switched because Macports reliably borked itself doing ordinary operations every 4-6 months, and Brew didn’t. That was like 2012 to be fair, but Brew’s never given me much trouble and the package selection is insanely good, so I’ve had no reason to look at other options since.
Its being in ruby is a strike against it, for me. I use it anyway. It’s probably my favorite package manager, all things considered, and I’ve used a lot.
I'm sure some Ruby programmers were attracted to Homebrew because it felt more familiar than something written in a language like Tcl.
But Homebrew's fundamental tradeoff w/r/t purity was also a huge boost to installation speed at a time when most package managers for macOS still required you to build most things from source.
That and the slick, user-friendly UI were probably the biggest factors for Homebrew's success when it came out.
Does anyone else have no idea what macOS version is which? Which came first? Is there some hidden naming protocol that I just don't grasp?
I've only started using a mac part-time while I've been developing an iOS app over the past few weeks, and I keep seeing different names for the OS version. I have no idea what version I'm on, or if Big Sur came before Sierra, or what. I know I could look it up, but it seems that in the name of good user-experience, I shouldn't need to.
You'd think they'd at a minimum say "people aren't going to be able to figure out which is which, so let's go in alphabetical order with our naming.
Yeah, at this point I wish they'd just use numbers like iOS.
So we're at iOS 17 and macOS 14.
Because honestly I stopped caring about keeping track of the names long ago. It's cute if you care, they can still put it in the About window for the sake of tradition, but it would be a lot more helpful if it were just referred to as macOS 14 in the press and documentation.
It says the <Name> <Version> in the "About This Mac" Apple menu item. In this case, it will be Sonoma 14.0.
Historically versioning is weird due to the integration of NextSTEP after Job's return to the company. First it was versioned up to 9, then the NextSTEP integration was 10, then subsequent major releases were minor bumps (ie 10.1, 10.2) as OSX was a brand unto itself until 11 which rebranded to MacOS and full versions were used again. So Sonoma is the 14th release from the NextSTEP integration. I think referring to them by names eased the confusion some.
Sonoma is the 21st release of a Mac operating system based on NeXTSTEP. The switch to 11 marked the transition to Apple Silicon. The code names have been used as an alternate name since 10.2 Jaguar as a way at the time to differentiate from and shame Microsoft’s Longhorn (Vista).
I went to the wikipedia page, which is kinda the point. No other OS requires you too look it up. Even WatchOS and iOS directly use version numbers.
Saying it's due to NextStep integration sounds like a strange defense of this naming strategy (if that was your intention). They have version numbers, but they decide to use the "code name" as a product name.
Mac OS X Server version 1.0 was Rhapsody 5.3. It still doesn't make sense even if you know the MacOS System was renamed to OS 8 to kill the clone license.
No, I have no clue. I don't even know my current version (number nor codename). But when I need to check, I click the Apple logo in the top left, "about this mac," note the version number and then search Google for "latest macOS version" (it took a long time to break the habit of typing "OS X").
The name is meaningless. It’s just marketing; every version is named for another location across California. Before that they were named for big cats.
Each version has a number that is sequential though. I think it’s just an effect of sheer quantity. They release a new version every year. It’s hard to keep track.
I wish they’d just get iOS, the iPhone, and macOS or whatever it is called now all the same. Today I should be running iOS 15 on an iPhone 15 talking to macOS 15.
I do wonder the longevity of alphabet-based naming...
It _sort of_ reminds me of a time I spoke to a colleague and said I wanted to try a project (only a couple of years ago) that required Red Hat Linux 5 and he said "oh sure, here's some CDs" and realised, "nope, not RHEL" (to which the response was.. "oh, here be dragons")..
If you loop the alphabet and I reckon you'll inevitably get confusion.
"Hey, Android Juniper has been released" - "Ah cool, I can upgrade from Ice-cream".. "oh no, wait, mine's 27 releases old!".. "No, sorry, it's actually 53 releases old"
> If you loop the alphabet and I reckon you'll inevitably get confusion.
These releases tend to be yearly or half-yearly at most (e.g. android or ubuntu). So a wrap around happens after 13 years at the earliest. Having a 13 year old completely un-upgraded phone (or AR brain worm or whatever we will have in 13 years) wrapping around seems quite unlikely to cause any surprise.
If you have weekly releases or something, then I would see your point.
When there were multiple years between Mac OS releases, it was not as difficult. I also found big cat names easier to remember (perhaps because I’m more familiar with them than California landmarks). I also liked the Leopard/Snow Leopard and Lion/Mountain Lion cadence.
Perhaps I just don’t put as many cycles into following Apple anymore.
It works like airplanes. Some people see Tomcat and know immediately what it refers to. Others prefer the numeric F-14. I still remember NATO codenames from 40 years ago, without the letter/number. Sidewinder, for example.
I have the issue you describe with Ubuntu and (less so) Debian codenames and also with Android codenames. With Ubuntu though, the number is descriptive, like Russian tanks (T-90 etc), so using it is worth more.
But it's alphabetical, if you see Ignorant Ibex and Jaundiced Jackalope, you know that (after singing the alphabet song to yourself quietly) that II came before JJ.
> The implementations of the exfat and msdos file systems on macOS have changed; these file systems are now provided by services running in user-space instead of by kernel extensions.
This sounds interesting!
I really wish there was a native FUSE alternative on macOS; just recently I found myself in a pickle due to not being able to mount an ext4 boot volume on an SD card on my Mac at all. (Passing through to a VM works only via USB.)
“DriverKit is the framework that allows developers to create device drivers that the user installs on their Mac. Drivers built with DriverKit run in user space, rather than as kernel extensions, for improved system security and stability. This makes for easier installation and increases the stability and security of macOS“
I wish they did something so deleting files from the bin wouldn't take millenia on my iMac Pro. Yes, it's an old computer, but shouldn't that be a solved problem?
This wasn’t slow for me unless I was deleting a node_modules folder or something with a gazillion files in it. Sounds like something’s weird on your not-that-old iMac Pro.
Doesn't that require breaking glass in Secure Boot these days, just like macFUSE?
I'm not really willing to install a third-party kernel extension just for a custom file system I need once every few months anymore, especially given that Apple's native exFAT drivers now apparently run in the userspace.
They should just make that capability available to the actual-userspace!
> Explicit language handling. The keyboard will add explicit language that you use to your personal vocabulary list and will learn this usage for each different app. Explicit language that is learned is used for autocorrect and suggestions
I wonder how atypical I am as there was literally nothing in the list I cared about. In particular the widgets seems unfathomably pointless. I don't even use them on the phone, but at least there I can kind of see the point.
This release does add AV1 support, just only for devices with hardware decoding support [1]. I’m not entirely sure that restriction applies to desktop as well as mobile, it doesn’t work on my Mac without hardware support even after enabling the disabled feature flags, but I only upgraded Safari, not macOS.
Hardware-only is the right move IMO. Literally earlier today I was dealing with stuttering video that turned out to be caused by Chrome putting me on a software implementation of a “better” codec. These new codecs are only better on devices that can run them without stuttering, heating up, and chewing through battery.
I empathize with your feeling, each OS release has been less and less interesting.
Widgets? I didn’t care for them on Leopard or iOS, why would I clutter my desktop with them now?
Notifications have gotten worse and worse to handle. System Preferences is awful to use now. All the cutesy apps you can’t uninstall…
I’d be happy to pay again for macOS if the list of ‘features’ included fixing long-standing bugs and annoyances, making things more stable, and bringing back features and UI that were both simple and effective.
The number of 'system' features for an OS update is small. The most interesting one to me is the AirPods variable noise cancellation which is more along the lines of hardware accessory support. There's something not quite right when an OS update mainly updates web browser, apps, widgets, etc.
Is there another set of notes that has all the underlying API changes supported that 3rd parties can use?
I was just about to say that there isn't any changes worthwhile in this release and that Apple employees x people in the marketing sub department that takes care of the yearly releases and they will – regardless of anything else – do the yearly release fanfare with all the bells and whistles :-).
Every time a new MacOS version is announced the 1Password staff must be all sitting around praying Apple doesn't add any more bells and whistles to Keychain.
I doubt they care about Mac customers. If they did, they would have avoided ruining the app's UI so that customers don't have a good reason to jump ship at the first opportunity.
The new UI is such a downgrade. It took the app from feeling well made to feeling like your average bloaty SaaS app. I’m gonna have to figure out an alternative once 1PW 7 is no longer supported.
Yeah 1Password 8 is really bad compared to 7, ignoring how awful electron is for a password manage it doesn't even have basic feature parity like finding and removing duplicates, completely hiding vaults etc
They only really care about enterprise customers as is pretty obvious, but they haven’t QUITE made it crappy enough for me to bother switching to keychain entirely.
They started with a huge advantage and squandered it with a buggy cloud subscription model and an electron downgrade. Their fate is their own at this point.
This was the release that got me to migrate from 1P to Keychain. Keychain finally has enough features and the 1P’s browser extension has been finicky for me and the UX of 1P8’s desktop app feels like a considerable downgrade from 7.
Can Keychain store anything that's not passwords yet? I like using 1Passwords for all sorts of stuff like SSN, drivers license, passport details, membership details, SSH keys etc
In Safari, keychain and 1password certainly are fighting harder for my attention than they have in the past. I want to use a workflow where passkeys live in iCloud and normal login pairs live in 1Password. 1Password's passkeys implementation is a nice way to keep keychain from being the only player in the game but I like how much faster they work stored inside of the OS better.
Really the only thing keeping me from going all in on keychain is the lack of a UI for the times when it doesn’t autocomplete or I need a password in terminal or something.
I’d pay for something that provided a global hotkey and an interface that isn’t nested in Settings.
Consumer password management companies compete on the multi-device angle, including Android and Windows. That's not something Apple's going to touch for awhile.
Apple is also certainly not going to touch the more enterprise aspects of password management.
1Password overdid it a while ago for me and I switched to KeePassXC. It is certainly not as polished as 1Password but the developer team is very responsive and since I started using it, especially on macOS, things have improved a lot already. It is a pleasure to watch things evolve and Passkey support is the next big thing that will be added.
Compared to Keychain Access, KeePassXC works cross platform and I need that, since my devices are cross platform. Also helps to avoid vendor lock-in.
That's why they switched to focus on Enterprise customers a while ago. It's all about being a secret store for Kubernetes and other deployments now. I doubt they lose a lot of sleep over personal licenses and the loud group of people complaining about the non-native macOS UI (Including myself there).
I’ve been on the release candidates and the OS is very stable and I haven’t found any major breakages or random crashes . Also, homebrew has been working great and lots of other open source software S
Have been using macOS Sonoma since DB1, this is probably the most favorite update of the OS that I had in a while:
1. Safari Profiles. I used this browser as my primary browser for a long time, but had to use another browser (Chrome) for work, to be able to separate sessions, etc. Since DB1 I use only Safari. And it works great.
2. Widgets. I have two monitors, and love that in one of them I can see widgets with some useful information. Just wish more apps were ready with widgets.
And a quick self-promotion. I am developer of the application OpenIn, and for macOS Sonoma I have added support for Safari Profiles https://loshadki.app/blog/2023-08-23-openin-4-1-beta/, this is the only (as far as I know) app that will let you redirect links to a specific Safari Profile based on various configurations you make.
I am pretty happy with how my M1 mac performs on Monterey. Would you share your opinion/guess on if I will feel a difference going from Monterey to Sonoma? I will go look through the details later. However, you are in the trenches so perhaps you have thoughts?
To be honest I am always on the latest versions of the OS. One of the reasons because I have a lot of pet projects built mostly with SwiftUI. And each release adds some nice new features. And unfortunately to use those new features you have to use latest versions of macOS/iOS.
Ventura overall did not really had any OS features that would force me to upgrade. Just a little more annoying like new Settings app, that was unusable so many times. Freeform I have never used, Weather app is nice, but there were always alternatives.
Sonoma gave really good upgrade for me, those two features like Safari Profiles and Widgets.
With two OS versions upgrade what you will like/hate:
- new Settings application. You get used to it. But would take a while to be able to find things.
+ new dynamic wallpapers. This will be mostly for people who use external monitors/always connected monitors.
+ Notes/Reminders - if you use it a lot, you can use tags and links between notes.
+ If you use Docker and similar software, Virtualization framework is getting a lot of upgrades, so you might see them to work better.
+ Safari Profiles and Tab Groups. If you are Safari user.
+ Widgets might be good only on monitors, you probably would not see them on laptop screen.
Readit News
I have no problem with Apple bundling these apps and making them work seamlessly together, and I don't even mind that they're all updated simultaneously (except for Safari, which I wish I could update independently without relying on the "Technology Preview" beta channel). But I do have a problem with upgrading my entire OS and disabling the new bloatware features just because I want to keep auto-updates enabled. I used to delay updating and then would end up way behind, which is why I enrolled in auto-update. But now it feels like I'm being held hostage to their update schedule.
And for what benefit? There are hardly any useful OS-level changes in this release, but there are a bunch of new features I'll need to disable (while hoping the next auto-update doesn't break my external monitor), all powered by freshly written code contributing to an expanded attack surface. If I had my way, then I'd take the OS updates and skip all the apps. Keep the attack surface small while still meaningfully improving the core. I don't care about the rest.
Every time I hit some button on my keyboard and the Music app opens asking me to create an account I am reminded how hostile all commercial operating systems are.
I mean, I'm using a GUI that is really primitive by comparison to Win/Mac (i3wm) but it's actually great. Extremely fast, efficient, and stays out of my way. There is literally no mechanism in the OS to pop up a notification or bounce an icon or blink anything at me. It couldn't interrupt me and piss me off even if some piece of software wanted to. It's amazing. Nothing updates on its own, and the OS runs very very few services or other background stuff -- basically only whatever I have explicitly configured and enabled. Again, awesome. I'm easily aware of every single process that runs on this machine, and if there's one I don't know about, there's comprehensive documentation about it, including how to configure it. That's honestly effectively impossible for someone using Mac or Windows.
Oh, I just installed a security patch in about 20 seconds. Open terminal (winkey->enter), "doas syspatch -c", type pass, see there's a patch, "doas syspatch" to apply it, done in 2 seconds. Once I reboot the newly-patched kernel is active. There is full documentation of the patch, including why it's needed, how the patch resolves the issue, and a diff of the patch is included.
At least it’s easy enough to turn off.
And on the OS side, I feel like Apple is creating features that I instantly disable because they do the exact opposite of what I want.
In a way it's a bit of a philosophical standpoint: macOS is the whole indivisible thing developed, built, and released in lockstep, kinda like FreeBSB base is the whole indivisible thing developed, built, and released in lockstep (and the rest is ports). In a way, removing tcsh from a FreeBSD install because you only ever use bash from ports does not make sense and may break things; so you just ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist.
For me the Safari update is always a seperate update in System Preferences which I can install without updateing the OS
But I love the facts that I can tell my family to upgrade and they will have all the new stuff at once, like with an iPhone or iPad. That is for most users what they want and/or need.
I do end up removing many of the Apple apps, but recently started using Safari, Notes, and Reminders more. Apple does an excellent job making their apps work seamlessly within the Apple ecosystem.
Microsoft has the issue that it's hard to sell why you would need to upgrade and not just update.
I can. Great dev tools, and usually is ahead of other browsers in implementing web apis.
What Safari team presented at WWDC this year regarding PWAs as something revolutionary has been available in Chrome for years.
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I don't think you understand how helpful it is for "normal" users to push a button and have a brand new version of everything. And being afraid of new features that you don't use... pretty irrational.
Also, if you are not going along in the upgrade rabbit race, homebrew gets really annoying and actually in your way at some point.
I see myself moving to macports soon, if brew gets worse and the stability of my setup is compromised (lots of php versions with valet for example).
I guess brew is now more targeted at “prosumers” now since it is imposing unnecessary limits on what “pro” users want and need.
The homebrew team seems incredibly burnt-out, to the point of hostility. I've really enjoyed the nixpkgs community so far and encourage others to check it out; it hasn't replaced homebrew entirely for me (yet), but it's getting closer every day.
And that's not even getting into the "waaa?" from `du -hs /nix` although I am open to that being a misleading number due to hardlinks and other trickery that du may not correctly surface
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Dead Comment
I remember seeing SBCL builds broken on Darwin/ppc for a long while, and eventually SBCL decided to drop support for Darwin/ppc altogether. Still, these ports maintainers did not give up and eventually found a way to fix SBCL builds on PPC: https://trac.macports.org/ticket/65484
I recall seeing some work to bring back PPC support upstream, but I am not sure what the progress on that is. It's still cool seeing downstream users fix builds that simply didn't work (and to the point where upstream decides to remove support entirely since they couldn't build it anyway).
It’s better suited for a multiuser system (and I share my desktop with my wife who has a different login) and is more stable, too.
Then I used macports. What a nice experience. Provided what I’m after is listen on there!
All I see is, they protect themself from each and every script kiddy that runs to reddit or github when something doesn't work because of their own config issues.
[1] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/INSTALLER...
I run:
$ sudo bash
# port selfupdate && port -u -c upgrade outdated && port reclaim
once a week.
When I upgraded to Ventura (from Big Sur), I followed the instructions for an OS upgrade and everything moved across cleanly.
It installs itself in /opt
It works with MacOS's Frameworks for stuff like python and java.
It allows you to run multiple versions with "port select".
Why would I want to run anything else?
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why pay for work when it would've been done for free and apple gets to reap the financial benefits?
I for one, am shocked.
Maintainers of popular free, open source community tool are tired of being asked to support out of date OS.
Colour me even more surprised!
I'm sure someone will start a macOS package manager based on python and yum to signal the waning days of those technologies.
Its being in ruby is a strike against it, for me. I use it anyway. It’s probably my favorite package manager, all things considered, and I’ve used a lot.
But Homebrew's fundamental tradeoff w/r/t purity was also a huge boost to installation speed at a time when most package managers for macOS still required you to build most things from source.
That and the slick, user-friendly UI were probably the biggest factors for Homebrew's success when it came out.
I've only started using a mac part-time while I've been developing an iOS app over the past few weeks, and I keep seeing different names for the OS version. I have no idea what version I'm on, or if Big Sur came before Sierra, or what. I know I could look it up, but it seems that in the name of good user-experience, I shouldn't need to.
You'd think they'd at a minimum say "people aren't going to be able to figure out which is which, so let's go in alphabetical order with our naming.
So we're at iOS 17 and macOS 14.
Because honestly I stopped caring about keeping track of the names long ago. It's cute if you care, they can still put it in the About window for the sake of tradition, but it would be a lot more helpful if it were just referred to as macOS 14 in the press and documentation.
Historically versioning is weird due to the integration of NextSTEP after Job's return to the company. First it was versioned up to 9, then the NextSTEP integration was 10, then subsequent major releases were minor bumps (ie 10.1, 10.2) as OSX was a brand unto itself until 11 which rebranded to MacOS and full versions were used again. So Sonoma is the 14th release from the NextSTEP integration. I think referring to them by names eased the confusion some.
This gives a good rundown:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_version_history
1. Mac OS X Public Beta (Kodiak) - 2000
2. Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah) - 2001
3. Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma) - 2001
4. Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) - 2002
5. Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) - 2003
6. Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) - 2005
7. Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) - 2007
8. Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) - 2009
9. Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) - 2011
10. OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) - 2012
11. OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) - 2013
12. OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) - 2014
13. OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) - 2015
14. macOS 10.12 (Sierra) - 2016
15. macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) - 2017
16. macOS 10.14 (Mojave) - 2018
17. macOS 10.15 (Catalina) - 2019
18. macOS 11 (Big Sur) - 2020
19. macOS 12 (Monterey) - 2021
20. macOS 13 (Ventura) - 2022
21. macOS 14 (Sonoma) - 2023
Saying it's due to NextStep integration sounds like a strange defense of this naming strategy (if that was your intention). They have version numbers, but they decide to use the "code name" as a product name.
Each version has a number that is sequential though. I think it’s just an effect of sheer quantity. They release a new version every year. It’s hard to keep track.
It _sort of_ reminds me of a time I spoke to a colleague and said I wanted to try a project (only a couple of years ago) that required Red Hat Linux 5 and he said "oh sure, here's some CDs" and realised, "nope, not RHEL" (to which the response was.. "oh, here be dragons")..
If you loop the alphabet and I reckon you'll inevitably get confusion.
"Hey, Android Juniper has been released" - "Ah cool, I can upgrade from Ice-cream".. "oh no, wait, mine's 27 releases old!".. "No, sorry, it's actually 53 releases old"
These releases tend to be yearly or half-yearly at most (e.g. android or ubuntu). So a wrap around happens after 13 years at the earliest. Having a 13 year old completely un-upgraded phone (or AR brain worm or whatever we will have in 13 years) wrapping around seems quite unlikely to cause any surprise.
If you have weekly releases or something, then I would see your point.
Perhaps I just don’t put as many cycles into following Apple anymore.
MacBook Pro https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201300
MacBook Air https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201862
iMac/iMac Pro https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201634
Mac Pro https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202888
Mac Studio https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/
Mac Mini https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201894
It works like airplanes. Some people see Tomcat and know immediately what it refers to. Others prefer the numeric F-14. I still remember NATO codenames from 40 years ago, without the letter/number. Sidewinder, for example.
I have the issue you describe with Ubuntu and (less so) Debian codenames and also with Android codenames. With Ubuntu though, the number is descriptive, like Russian tanks (T-90 etc), so using it is worth more.
Reminds me of getting horribly confused reading War and Peace h til I realized one character had like fifty names.
That ship has long since sailed with Apple, on so many fronts.
This sounds interesting!
I really wish there was a native FUSE alternative on macOS; just recently I found myself in a pickle due to not being able to mount an ext4 boot volume on an SD card on my Mac at all. (Passing through to a VM works only via USB.)
Instead we get widgets on the desktop like it’s 2005 again.
Isn’t that what DriverKit can be used for?
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/secd0a47c14c:
“DriverKit is the framework that allows developers to create device drivers that the user installs on their Mac. Drivers built with DriverKit run in user space, rather than as kernel extensions, for improved system security and stability. This makes for easier installation and increases the stability and security of macOS“
There needs to be some OS-side FUSE-like kernel interface for userspace drivers like this to be able to actually mount them in the VFS.
I can't even begin to imagine. If I'm deleting 200 files on my M1 MBA, that's still going to take 30-45 seconds.
It's doing something. What is it doing? Does it have something to do with Time Machine or file versioning or secure erase or what?
Everything else is blazingly fast as it should be.
I'm not really willing to install a third-party kernel extension just for a custom file system I need once every few months anymore, especially given that Apple's native exFAT drivers now apparently run in the userspace.
They should just make that capability available to the actual-userspace!
https://www.apple.com/macos/sonoma/pdf/macOS_All_New_Feature...
This is ducking great.
Yes, not in Outlook, please.
Meanwhile there's still no support for AV1.
Hardware-only is the right move IMO. Literally earlier today I was dealing with stuttering video that turned out to be caused by Chrome putting me on a software implementation of a “better” codec. These new codecs are only better on devices that can run them without stuttering, heating up, and chewing through battery.
[1]: https://webkit.org/blog/14445/webkit-features-in-safari-17-0...
Widgets? I didn’t care for them on Leopard or iOS, why would I clutter my desktop with them now?
Notifications have gotten worse and worse to handle. System Preferences is awful to use now. All the cutesy apps you can’t uninstall…
I’d be happy to pay again for macOS if the list of ‘features’ included fixing long-standing bugs and annoyances, making things more stable, and bringing back features and UI that were both simple and effective.
Bah.
Is there another set of notes that has all the underlying API changes supported that 3rd parties can use?
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note...
I’d pay for something that provided a global hotkey and an interface that isn’t nested in Settings.
Apple is also certainly not going to touch the more enterprise aspects of password management.
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* Little Snitch needs a nightly build (status: fixed)
* SoundSource doesn't work (status: fixed)
* SpamSieve v2 doesn't work because Mail.app removed plugin support in favor of extensions. (status: SpamSieve v3 is out now and works)
* Marked 2 broke on docs shorter than 999 visible bytes (status: still broken. Workaround: BBEdit text filter to add a bunch of lorem ipsum)
* Bartender 4 doesn't work. (status: Bartender 5 is out and works)
The OS itself and 1st-party apps have been mostly fine from the first beta.
Time to put all these damn shoves and pitchforks back ...
What the hell does that mean? If it is fixed, doesn't it means it works?
1. Safari Profiles. I used this browser as my primary browser for a long time, but had to use another browser (Chrome) for work, to be able to separate sessions, etc. Since DB1 I use only Safari. And it works great.
2. Widgets. I have two monitors, and love that in one of them I can see widgets with some useful information. Just wish more apps were ready with widgets.
And a quick self-promotion. I am developer of the application OpenIn, and for macOS Sonoma I have added support for Safari Profiles https://loshadki.app/blog/2023-08-23-openin-4-1-beta/, this is the only (as far as I know) app that will let you redirect links to a specific Safari Profile based on various configurations you make.
Ventura overall did not really had any OS features that would force me to upgrade. Just a little more annoying like new Settings app, that was unusable so many times. Freeform I have never used, Weather app is nice, but there were always alternatives.
Sonoma gave really good upgrade for me, those two features like Safari Profiles and Widgets.
With two OS versions upgrade what you will like/hate:
- new Settings application. You get used to it. But would take a while to be able to find things.
+ new dynamic wallpapers. This will be mostly for people who use external monitors/always connected monitors.
+ Notes/Reminders - if you use it a lot, you can use tags and links between notes.
+ If you use Docker and similar software, Virtualization framework is getting a lot of upgrades, so you might see them to work better.
+ Safari Profiles and Tab Groups. If you are Safari user.
+ Widgets might be good only on monitors, you probably would not see them on laptop screen.