A browser shouldn't be so integral, that if it breaks the only option is to wipe your computer and start again.
As for Safari, I switched to Firefox when they disabled uBlock Origin, so I don't know how it works these days.
Everything else was optional.
Macs, to boot today, need, at a minimum:
* three partitions
* two OS installations comprising dozens/hundreds of files (three separate macOS installations on M1 macs)
* T2/M1 hardware-specific activation data
* BridgeOS (on T2 systems)
I remember being worried when OS X was first previewed (btw, everyone, for the last time it's pronounced "ten") that they would ruin the "drag and drop two files and a folder" simplicity that the mac was known for with this complicated new system.
Indeed I was right. It's a real bummer how non-modular macOS is these days. It's a giant ball of mud, and the only recommended method of modifying it is format and reinstall, which burns a couple hours: just like Windows.
What I don't understand is why the apple installer and updater seems to do a lengthy installation, when it seems to be effectively creating a "sealed image". Does anyone know of a good resource explaining the modern MacOS installer?
It strikes me Apple could ship a delta image for the system subvolume, and just ensure the hash is correct before rebooting. That seems to not be what's being done, given the length of time an update takes. I wonder why they don't do this though, given it seems nothing can edit the system volume, so it ought to be shipped as an image?
However, you can run a Terminal command to disable it again, which works great...except for the new version of Safari, where all the fonts look ridiculously bold [0]
[0] https://imgur.com/a/IJBGjHu The top comment of this thread; Safari on the left, Firefox on the right.
Turns out Imgur adds random stuff under your post, because now it's a social network and not an image host. Validates my decision to make my own image host.
https://i.imgur.com/Dwd5Dzg.png - much better!
Subpixel antialiasing has been disabled and steadily pruned from the OS since Mojave if that's what you're talking about:
With that toggle gone, it can still be toggled using the "AppleFontSmoothing" defaults key.
* {
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important;
}
But see also: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/
Here's a screenshot off the laptop display (2560x1600 running at 2x scaling—the "looks like 1280x800" setting): https://imgur.com/a/zS0dyF6
Click to zoom—imgur's thumbnails are garbage quality.
The cause was calling focus/setSelectionRange on a textfield within a click handler. When I commented these out then the problem disappeared.
Not a rare combination and I’d have thought beta-testing should have flushed this out, but there you go.
Edit:
If you want to try reproducing this, go to https://cycle.travel/map/mobile?debug=1 , and click within the 'From' or 'To' field. It crashes every time on my iPad running iOS 14.5.
Your users aren't always tech savvy. Sometimes quite the opposite. A single change, even if it isn't a bug, can render your program unusable by some because it's so different.
The UX of my son's iPad is almost enough to drive me insane. So many counter intuitive ways to do things, such as completely invisible (ZERO freaking indicators) swipes needed to access extra info etc.
My present favourite is how the current keypad for entering extra time on an app (yes I managed to set up parental guidelines for that POS) is cropped in half so that you have to rotate the screen in order to see the full keypad.
Plenty of room on the lock screen that's displayed for this purpose, only showing the numbers keypad - they just made it so tiny you can't pick half the numbers some of which are in my parent pin.
How they're selling this crap for billions of dollars is beyond me.
Too many ways to accidentally make crap pop up or get stuck in weird states on iOS, now. Even the old folder behavior, that "split open" the screen to reveal the folder, made it much, much clearer to navigate for non-tech-geeks. Lots of little things like that, plus tons of gesture-initiated overlays and switching-about.
Which is the underlying cause of the universal “I didn’t do anything” disclaimer before they even start explaining the issue. And the aggressivity if that tension is not defused before replaying their actions to get the context.
Solving issues requires way more social skills than people assume.
How would the reporter know if the issue is specific to them or applies to everyone without posting a thread about it?
I was actually pleased they’ve finally implemented date/time inputs so I can stop using JS calendars now.
Not saying macOS wasn't great. It was. But Apple aren't investing in it anymore.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/04/28/aapl-q2-2021-re...
If you think that increases in Mac sales mean that macOS is a growing part of Apple's revenue: it isn't: macOS is dwarfed by other products more every year.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/382136/quarterly-segment...
There's only "an app for that" if you have developers.
Having said that Apple needs only to meet the very, very low bar of having a better ecosystem than Android.
I'm not saying the problem doesn't exist and/or that it's not Apple's fault, but, possibly, it's not strictly related to Safari.
DEBUGGING MINDSET: On MacOS, this Safari update was pushed along a MacOS update. (and maybe in iOS as well, along the 14.5 iOS?). How can you say the problem is within Safari? There's even a user complaining about a problem in Apple mail (a network timeout).
This problem could lie anywhere in the network stack, and maybe Safari is using a specific pattern that triggers the bug very often on some specific hardware. It could be a driver issue for what we know.
Now I'm trying to update my other machine (2015 Macbook Pro 15").
Every time it crashes in the same place and leaves this in the logs:
Dyld Error Message:
Symbol not found: __ZN6webrtc24setVideoDecoderCallbacksEPFPvRKNS_14SdpVideoFormatEEPFiS0_EPFiS0_jPKhmttEPFiS0_S0_E
Referenced from: /System/Library/StagedFrameworks/Safari/WebKit.framework/Versions/A/WebKit
Expected in: /System/Library/StagedFrameworks/Safari/WebKit.framework/Versions/A/../../../libwebrtc.dylib
Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 dyld 0x000000011767f3ba __abort_with_payload + 10
1 dyld 0x000000011767ebac abort_with_payload_wrapper_internal + 82
2 dyld 0x000000011767ebde abort_with_payload + 9
3 dyld 0x000000011763ea9d dyld::halt(char const*) + 343
4 dyld 0x000000011763ebc7 dyld::fastBindLazySymbol(ImageLoader\*, unsigned long) + 167
5 libdyld.dylib 0x00007fff60f4f32e dyld_stub_binder + 282
6 ??? 0x0000000108649008 0 + 4435775496
7 com.apple.WebKit 0x00000001083c758d WebKit::LibWebRTCProvider::createEncoderFactory() + 27
8 com.apple.WebCore 0x000000010ae7bdc9 WebCore::LibWebRTCProvider::createPeerConnectionFactory(rtc::Thread*, rtc::Thread\*) + 153
It’s a browser I want to love – especially for its performance – but it’s becoming harder.
It feels like every dev tool sucks for me though. Chrome regularly froze the whole tab and crashes the tools on my old computer. Firefox I don’t remember exactly but also it was a PITA
So in this case, less than ideal.
New bugs in OS + new bugs in Safari is not a good combination.