The average user won't be going for the options that are only in the terminal, that's why they're there.
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OS X El Capitan's Disk Utility is a mess
- Thread starter jonblatho
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The average user won't be going for the options that are only in the terminal, that's why they're there.
OK i'll bite.
What end-user feature is missing from GUI disk utility?
What percentage of OS X users ever even enter disk utility?
Do you think adding advanced GUI options to disk utility (given it has been re-vamped no doubt for improvements apple has or is making to the filesystem/core storage/etc.) is higher priority than fixing bugs, getting metal out the door, etc.?
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furthermore - command line is easier than GUI if you are attempting to direct someone to do things from remote. they can cut/paste.
I don't think that you do understand. Command line does not 'have its uses'. It is the most direct and many cases most efficient access to the OS. The administrative UI, in majority of cases, is simply a wrapper around the command line. The UI can be used to make some frequently used actions more convenient, at the expense of flexibility and power. Trying to implement all the options in the GUI always results in cumbersome, bloated software. I don't understand why Apple should waste development time on that, when they can provide a basic utility that can cover 99% of the cases. And for the rest there are perfectly clear and well documented administrative tools. And yes, I believe that every OS X user should learn the basics of the command line, just as every driver should have some basic understanding of the technical working of a car.
Your entire premise is moot anyway, because I am still looking for those 'removed powerful features' from Disk Utility and I can't find them.
Maybe you missed my post at #66 about burning bootable CDs/DVDs with an on-board tool in OS X.
Just in case it's available via command line I doubt it's as comfortable as via UI..
Oh, true, I did miss it, sorry. About that: I am sure that it is deliberate. Optical media have been made obsolete in the Mac line some time ago. I don't think they would invest even a minute of development time into something they clearly want gone from their platform. I don't see it as dumbing down or removing features. Its just culling legacy stuff.
So you won't be able to revive that PPC Mac you still have lying around and lost the original install media from using OS X El Capitan. I really don't see the issue here since all modern Macs and PCs are able to boot off of USB.
Let me quote another, not unimportant option that used to come in handy
BTW I don't think the majority of mac users has abandoned optical media altogether just because Apple did.
BTW I don't think the majority of mac users has abandoned optical media altogether just because Apple did.
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I upgraded firmware using a USB drive over optical media in the past just fine. It's a lot more convenient than having to burn a CD every time. Anyway, if you have a working Linux installation at your disposal just use that to burn said firmware CDs/DVDs.
Furthermore, if you DO want to burn optical media, there are apps for it. For those macs that actually still have optical drives. That run El Capitan.
I have a PC with an optical drive i have not used in 2 years (it was used to install Windows and that's it).
I have used the optical drive on my 2011 machine maybe 3 times.
With cheap USB sticks in the order of 16-64 GB or more, streaming services, etc. there's little reason to bother with a DVD drive any more. You could maybe argue the case for back up to Blu-Ray, but that hasn't been available on the Mac in any case and doesn't work with time machine.
The emphasis was on bootable. Thanks, I've been using Toast since v5, it never was as reliable burning anything OS related as Disk Utility.
But its the same thing. Third party SSDs are not officially supported by Apple and it has been ages since they sold a computer that could officially be upgrade with a third-party SSD. It is of course a different question whether its friendly to the customer or not, but the fact remains — Apple has been very clear that they don't support certain things.
Why are you booting optical media when USB thumb drive is faster to install from? It's not like say 8 bucks is expensive if you need a USB stick to do it with.
Ever owned a 3rd party SSD from Samsung or Cruical for example? Good luck getting their firmware update ISOs on a USB stick.
LOL thank you, you are a true genius. Check the feedback reports, there's a fifty-fifty chance for success. I'd bet you never tried this yourself.
I don't consider 3-4 years "ages", and I don't consider optical media obsolete period. Many people still use external optical drives with the latest macs. Maybe thats just me but I just can't see the urgent need to remove this functionality to handle them from Disk Utility. Over and out
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Why put something in the UI that most users will not ever need. Simply move those options to still be accessible from the command line. And how many people do you think will need to access those options? Moving an option out of the GUI has a benefit of a less cluttered UI interface. Personally, as long as the option is available I really don't see the problem that I have an extra step to open the terminal app to execute the option. When I do it isn't very often. And hence why it is only accessed from the command line.
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You were complaining that they were removing features from the GUI that more powerful users are after. My point was that you don't really need to whine over it, the features are still available in the terminal and through other means, and 'power users' will be comfortable going that route.
Most 'average' users are not going to be going into the disk utility to do anything other than format a disk; and this is UNFINISHED, BETA software, it's a little early to be making judgments on it.
When it's a feature that's
1) only relevant in edge cases,
2) more likely to be misused that used correctly,
3) likely to be used correctly by those who frequent the command line,
then, sure, it's quite a good idea.
What do people frequently use optical media for?
Software? That's mostly gone. Music? Long eclipsed by downloads. Backup? A useful archiving medium, but rather niche.
That mostly leaves us with video. Macs never adopted Blu-Ray, so you'll be using third-party software and hardware there anyway.
But this isn't even about optical media in general; it's about uses for optical media in Disk Utility. That mostly means burning disk images. Which brings us back to… software.
Neither OS X nor Windows get primarily distributed in physical media any more. You can make discs of them, but you typically don't have to; instead, you do an in-place upgrade or an install from a recovery partition. For Linux, install from disk is still common, but even that is only relevant when you're talking about a physical machine; increasingly, you just do VMs, in which case an ISO will suffice.
Sounds rather niche to me.
Oops overlooked this sry. Still, you're missing the point. It's not about some teenage hipster MBA users that won't miss, and probably never noticed the feature to burn optical media in Disk Utility. It's about all the others.
Have a look at which macs are capable to run El Cap, and even those silly nerds posting ****** links (that was last funny in the '00s) will understand that a considerable part of the mac lineup and their users are affected
- iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
- MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
- MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
- Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
- MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
- Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
- Xserve (Early 2009)
.
Probably a minority by now. And the question really isn't "how many have a SuperDrive", but "how many are used by people who use the SuperDrive to burn disk images in Disk Utility".
I'm pretty sure you can just right click on the ISO or whatever disk image and select "burn disk image". Seems a whole lot easier and quicker than having to go into disk utility or anything else really.
I did this for a Windows 10 disk and works just fine.
For the record I have a multiboot system and can easily boot into earlier OS X versions or Win to sail around the issue. But the point was, there's absolutely no need to cut away such features yet, and currently most average users who will miss them haven't even noticed yet. Why is it that people are defending such incomprehensible examples as perfectly fine? Because Apple knows best which features people want to keep and whats superflous?
Will be fun to quote some guys here when El Cap is released and the whining really starts.