undefined | Better HN

0 pointspsychometry4y ago0 comments

MacOS major version release are so underwhelming to me. They're not so much OS updates as they're updates to built-in apps I don't use or use at a very surface level: Safari, Facetime, Apple Maps, Messages, etc.

I'm not really sure what I'd want out of a new MacOS, though. It's been stable and (for my purposes) feature-complete for many years now. I don't remember the last time a MacOS upgrade added a feature I wanted but didn't yet have, nor the last time they added a feature I didn't realize I wanted because I'd never imagined it. The latter used to be what made Apple products stand out to me.

0 comments

13 comments · 8 top-level

sergiomattei4y ago· 4 in thread

I'm impressed. People really will never be satisfied.

A relatively low-key, under-the-hood Mac release? "Man I miss when the Mac was innovative. These releases are a snooze fest."

A big release, packed with features? "Man I miss when Apple cared about their OS stability. We need a new zero features snooze fest like 10.6. Take me back to Snow Leopard :("

Only HN can pull off such astounding mood swings. I know this site isn't a monolith of opinions, but come on.

movedx4y ago

This reminds me of a conversation I heard once in London.

I was in a line for some food at a Puppet (the config management tool) conference and two guys in front of me were chatting about their Puppet runs.

One turned to the other and said, "My Puppet runs are really slow. It takes 10-15 minutes for it to run and apply state to all 15,000 servers."

I couldn't believe it. The guy was complaining about having to wait 15 minutes to apply state to 15,000 operating systems.

What is wrong with people? You haven't got to go back far to take all of this innovation away and still people aren't pleased.

TomSwirly4y ago

These releases offer me nothing, take a big chunk of time to operate, and break my old software and device.

And bugs linger for years and never get fixed.

I think it's very reasonable to complain.

asdff4y ago

You can do both things at the same time, add new features that don't alienate their powerusers while also having a stable OS. Maybe if Apple delivered on both counts more in recent years people wouldn't feel the need to complain so much. It was complaining after all that got them to wake up and kill the touchbar and that butterfly keyboard.

psychometryOP4y ago

Wow it's almost as if multiple people comment on things here and they have different opinions!

1 more reply

kube-system4y ago· 1 in thread

I personally prefer the incremental yearly updates to huge changes on a longer timeframe. I'm pretty excited about Live Text, personally. I've been getting a lot of great use out of it on iOS.

If we're talking about other recent releases, ARM (/iOS app interoperability) support was definitely a huge change :)

gremloni4y ago

Every time I hold on a pic on my iPhone to preview it it highlights the text in there instead.

memco4y ago

I would love a more detailed change log of the actual OS level changes because sometimes there’s useful tidbits but you often have to be watching the WWDC content in order to see what will be in the upcoming OS. There have been some under the hood things like the APFS switch, Rosetta, and other under the hood changes that can significantly impact the OS. In this release I saw that there is a new copy mechanism in the finder which seems pretty significant but there isn’t a lot of detail about the technology behind it. I am also interested in the universal control and the ability to use your mac as an airplay device so now you can stream another Mac which used to be some thing then I did using a lunar display adapter. I also saw there’s a built in TOTP feature now which might be handy. I agree though most changes seem like app changes and services that could be decoupled from an OS update.

inDigiNeous4y ago

At least they've managed to optimize and make the OS faster. Mojave feels faster on my 2014 MPB than previous installations did. Would wish they would focus on the apps and not revamping the system each time they do an update.

theonemind4y ago

I find them worse than underwhelming. Generally, the thing that usually pushes me to upgrade is EOL of the OS I'm on, or escaping some abomination perpetrated by the OS I'm on. It's almost never a compelling feature, because I need an OS to run applications, mostly.

The abomination that would get me off of Big Sur is the ridiculously low contrast difference for titlebars between foreground and background apps. Turning on the contrast accessibility option looks horrible. However, it's looking like thanks to HazeOver, this is a wait-for-EOL cycle.

lkbm4y ago

Same here. Looking through recent release highlights, Mojave adding Dark Mode is the mot recent stand-out I spotted, and even that I don't really care about all that much.

Universal Control has potential to be valuable.

foobarian4y ago

I have my pet peeves I would love to change. But they are mostly not close to kernel or "OS" level; rather they are UI quirks.

theshrike794y ago

Underwhelming updates are good, that way corporate IT doesn't take 3 years to approve updating company computers.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse