My take on it is pretty simple: Is macOS the best operating platform for modern computing? Undoubtedly, in my mind, yes. Can it cope with a bit of criticism? I believe it really can.
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macOS is just a comedy of errors at this point, how did it come to this?
- Thread starter scheinderrob
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Sit right back and listen to a tale of a planned-obsolescence OS named Monterey....
A couple years ago, I sold a higher-end 27" system to a business (with a small graphics department responsible for layout advertising). It went with Mojave in an HFS+ partition for maximum speed and backward compatability. I warned them not to upgrade the OS. Two days didn't go by before somebuy couldn't resist going to Software Update, resulting in Monterey crashing the scene to not only murder off all their legacy software, but also pooch their 27" Cinema Display external monitors.
Further aside hilarity: Monterey is an eligible OS for one of the absolute slowest machines Apple ever made, the subbasement-model 1.4 and 1.5ghz "cripple-chip"* i5 21.5" iMacs sold to schools and libraries in 2014 and 15 -- These things were designed to turn on once at the beginning of their lives, run book-checkout software 24/7, then get junked five years later. Instead, many of them found their way onto the used market, where they looked identical to every other thinside iMac that didn't thoroughly suck in all conceivable ways.
(*The "cripple-chips" were processors which had one bank on the wafer fail during post-manufacture testing; the bad bank was blocked off, and the chips sold with half the speed rating. But they weren't merely half the speed, they were far worse because they lacked multi-threading. Try to envision one of these utter snails, which could barely run a "Cat" OS adequately, attempting to move under a telemetry-spamming APFS-hosted operating system grinding the machine's poor 5400rpm rotational drive to pieces. And Apple *knew* that APFS would kill these machines.)
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I have one of those chips in my 2014 mac mini. It runs Monterey ok for what it is, but it has real problems with running ventura or sonoma thru oclp because of the non upgradable ram.
That, and APFS will kill that '14's rotational drive. You really should backgrade the OS to something that'll run from an HFS+ partition. In exchange for forfeiting a few latest versions of subscription-model software, you'll be running at least twice as fast, and regain 32bit backwards compatibility (so at least the kids can play some classic games on the thing).
Since the late 70s and early 80s, I've been engaged with computers, both using and assembling them. My allegiance was to PCs until 2014, after which I switched to being a Mac user. My focus isn't so much on MacOS itself; I'm more interested in the applications it supports. As long as MacOS functions effectively, that's all that matters to me. I must confess, I don't miss the DOS era, particularly when it comes to operating systems, which is likely why Unix/Linux never really caught my interest, except for web development purposes. At times, I'm not even sure which version of MacOS my Mac Studio Max is running. 🤣
If your primary interest is in Mac applications, don't buy any Mac that requires Catalina or higher.
I’m very happy with MacOS, but I think MacOS would be far better if it was upgraded every two or two and a half years, instead of every year.
My opinion is the annual upgrade cycle is bad for the overall ecosystem of MacOS + third party apps and hardware which we all depend upon.
My opinion is the annual upgrade cycle is bad for the overall ecosystem of MacOS + third party apps and hardware which we all depend upon.
i honestly think if there is money to be earned by releasing macos every year then apple wont pass that up. i like every two years though
The purpose of the "modern" MacOS, same as of Windows11, is, foremost, data-collection aka SPYING. You'll be subject to 24/7 telemetry, prompted to regularly archive all of your personal information to the cloud (where it'll be pawed by the intelligence entities fronting all of "big tech"), and they'll have the chutzpah to sell it to you as "security".
The Earth is flat.
The moon landings were faked.
Kennedy wasn’t shot.
I’ve met with NSA before. They have far bigger problems than what’s on your grocery shopping list or whether you look at men, women or midgets in Private browsing mode.
Ah, sweet summer ostrich, permit me to help:
https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+spy+on+its+users
https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+spy+on+its+users
https://www.google.com/search?q=google+spy+on+its+users
Windows vista, 8,10,11 are all piles of steaming s**t. Switched to Mac during vista, have played with and tried to use windows 8,10,11 and very happy I still will never go back to windows s**tshow of an operating system.
…W11 is being turned into an advertising platform right in front of our eyes. That’s not a conspiracy, it’s demonstrable fact. How do you think Edge (which used to be great) now insists on being a shopping companion that nobody asked for?
Microsoft’s incessant Windows ads are getting out of control
Microsoft continues to experiment with different ways to annoy everyone—and it’s becoming increasingly worse.
www.pcworld.com
For all its flaws, Win8.1 and Win10 eventually matured into stable OSes, whereas Apple's implementation of a by-hook-or-crook yearly release cycle (with only three support years of "updates") guaranteed that each new version of the MacOS would be released as hot flaming garbage alphaware which hopefully would become reliable just before the version was artificially obsolesced.
*All* corporate OSes are now 1) ad-spigots, 2) propaganda spigots (see the undeletable "News" program that is now a fixture of the MacOS), and 3) data-harvesting engines.…W11 is being turned into an advertising platform right in front of our eyes. That’s not a conspiracy, it’s demonstrable fact. How do you think Edge (which used to be great) now insists on being a shopping companion that nobody asked for?
Microsoft’s incessant Windows ads are getting out of control
Microsoft continues to experiment with different ways to annoy everyone—and it’s becoming increasingly worse.
Well, maybe that is your experience with macOS, but it is surely not mine. Every time I have tried to use any Windows version past 7..... It is nothing but awful. Have had zero problems with any version of macOS, including running current versions on unsupported systems. macOS just always works and works very well for me, where any windows version other than 7 does nothing but give me attitude and fits, and does not work.
1) google "tron" + antimalware. Get 'n run.
2) google massgraves + activate.
3) install OpenShell.
4) acquire WinToHDD.
(I put El Capitan on blackback iMacs, High Sierra on silverbacks, and Mojave/HFS+ on thinsided imacs and whatever other Intel-macs will run it with hardware acceleration. Anything else gets Windows 10 Pro with OpenShell. --And all OSes are "debloated". The only annoyance I have with W10P is that I haven't found a utility that will incrementally update bootable clones into partitions the way CarbonCopyCloner used to be able to.)
The problem is the design decisions Apple have made are really smashing the strengths of it's Unix unpinnings - namely Keep it Simple Stupid.
Some of these that come straight to mind are -
* The complicated readonly multipartitioning of the system disk... This is just bonkers.
* Being so heavily reliant on server connectivity. Checking binaries md5sums everytime they are executed... are you joking. Mixing iCloud and local storage solutions.
* Using soldered on SSDs is always a bad idea, but when you absolutely smash them with aggressive page swapping... This should attract a lawsuit imho.
* Making mac OS updates on a treadmill.... very bad decision. How about "ship it when it's tested and works".
* The never-ending feature creep in the name of selling computers. Unfortuneately, this is a fact of life which microsoft begat
. Nothing sexy about bug fixes. The huge complexity of all the inbuilt mac apps is mind boggling.Anyway... just OTTOMH.
Sadly, embracing the Linux/Chromebook pain is becoming the best alternative. I loved Snow Leopard, and still run Mojave and Linux Mint myself.
Have you cloned Mojave into a MacOS Extended (journaled) partition yet? (And disabled MRT?) It'll run twice as fast.
Mighty Ming... Sorry, but i've given up on being terribly tech minded about OSX. I put off upgrading to APFS for ages, but somehow it was forced on me. I have an SSD with APFS, no sign of Malware Removal Tool afaics. Mojave 10.14.6... I used to worship CCC and sell quite a few repaired secondhand Macbooks, but when CCC became a chore and glued in batteries became the norm, I just gave up.
This sounds more like a skill issue than anything else - as anything Apple needs a lot less of that for bottom-feeder basic everyday use (and at the other end it can actually be a bigger pain than Linux, but that clearly won't affect you), it seems like you're where you should be.
i am concerned about the way W11 is going - not for telemetry reasons that people who wail about this who clearly don't understand the purpose of telemetry (or whether it's being collected in almost equal amounts by other commercial OSs) worry about, but the updating for the sake of it, ever-unready steaming pile of junk for power users track that it's following along with MacOS. WSL has been amazing but that's one highlight, there's just too many stuff broken in the core of Windows right now not getting fixed.
Its never been the year of the Linux desktop, but I'm kinda thinking one day I might be forced there for good - not because I'm a tinfoil hat, but because I want things to work and not get broken for the sake of embracing some new thing that'll be forgotten about in a couple of years.
Windows 11 has come a long way since windows 8, but there is too much wrong with it to be a pro operating system.