It can do almost anything with the keyboard. I'd suggest just checking it out. A lot of people make changes to caps lock, shift key, left/right option/command, etc. I only do two things, setting fn to send hyper and swapping semicolon/colon. It's more about individual rules than a new keyboard layout (which is what Ukulele appeared to be in my 5 minutes with it).
Maybe other people can chime in on their uses, since I'm not the best to fully answer your question.
It also has a lot of prebaked configurations in it. For example there's one that changes Slovenian Apple layout (which is pretty nonsensical with @ on 3rd level) to the standard layout used by PCs. That's hugely useful for people who use Mac Minis / iMacs with non-Apple keyboards (since Apple refuses to add the standard layout to OS X).
Karabiner has support for most, if not all, keys on the keyboard. On a Mac, the Function keys aren't properly supported by the other key remapping apps. With Karabiner, I can use a PC keyboard to change screen brightness, volume, etc. I can also remap Fn+JKLI to the arrow keys, and much more.
Sticky keys are the big one for me. I have Ctrl mapped to act as Ctrl when pressed at the same time as another key, or to act as Esc when pressed alone.
It's not currently supported by Karabiner-Elements; I haven't found a way to do this on macOS Sierra yet.
Not to diminish the current author at all. But it was as old as OS X itself. The style, depth, hidden jokes and all, kind of a tradition. Something I would look forward to almost as much as the upgrade itself
The Ars Techinca review is missing the most important section though -- the conclusion. Usually I would just skip to that and do whatever they said, and then go back and read the rest while it downloaded.
I've been running the final beta for a couple of weeks, tonight I plan on downgrading to El Cap, and staying there for a few months.
I have not found a single useful feature, and many bugs, both on the OS (time machine seems more broken than usual) and in other apps (notably Emacs keeps crashing).
Maybe I'm getting old, but I would strongly recommend leaving this one until at least .1, if not .3
I usually only upgrade to a major OSX version when the next version comes out. I broke that rule with El Capitan because Yosemite was so fucking broken.
> "Copy a quote, image, or video from an app on one device and paste it into an app on another device."
Oh my I'm looking forward to this. How many silly workarounds (pastebins, email drafts, iMessages to self, Safari bookmarks) have we used to approximate this?
While they're at it, can we make paste and match style the default? I can never remember the four key chord to do this and as a result send emails that look like ransom notes because of mismatched formatting.
If you're using chrome, the omnibar seems to send out whatever you type to (google's?) server for search suggestion, so you shouldn't do that if you're copying sensitive data. You can use ⌘+shift+v to paste the text without formatting (and without sending your data to some random servers).
I also find this frustrating. For applications where it happens frequently, you can map paste/paste-and-match to keystrokes you can remember using System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts. There isn't a global change you can make without 3rd party tools, AFAIK.
For frequently-used shortcuts that have hard-to-remember modifiers, I change them to the full set of shift-ctrl-opt-cmd so that just mashing my hand across the entire corner of the keyboard will get the job done. Has the nice side effect of (usually) avoiding the unexpected overwrite of other default app shortcuts.
I use Plain Clip (https://www.bluem.net/en/mac/plain-clip/) which is a tiny application which will remove formatting from text in clipboard. It's meant to be triggered from a hotkey / launcher app like Alfred or Spotlight. One plus is that you can set preferences to remove extra spacing or new lines.
Just cmd+shift+v pastes without formatting ... which is often just whatever is in the target. The explicit 'with formatting' paste is hard to remember though.
Having I iCloud access to your clipboard is scary ( unless it is encrypted E2E).
Now your data, that was otherwise not meant to go to cloud, will endup being there.
I assume it will be backed by the same transport channel used for Handoff / Continuity, which is E2E-encrypted between devices and work on either wifi or bluetooth.
I recall hacking together a something like this with automator,short cut key and an api call that would send my iPhone 3g/3gs a push notification or mms around 2008-2009. Moved off iPhone eventually.
AirDrop doesn't require you to be on the same wifi network, or even for the devices to have internet access. I use it to toss files from my Macbook to my (completely offline) iPad regularly.
I keep hearing, both from the media and individuals, Apple Watch is way better at dictating than iPhone (nobody really knows why). I have seen increases both in latency and accuracy using the same phone/mic. I wonder what the major issues are for bad Siri experience? It does seem like they're continuously improving it. Often, it seems like a technology like this gets released, it kind of works, and you don't see any more development.
> Siri and Google both do fine with my general questions and commands
I think it depends. For instance asking Siri while my phone is locked what time it is and Siri will tell me (useful when I'm across the room, in the shower, etc). Google? I ask it for the time and it tells me to unlock the phone. Yet Siri can't handle asking anything about current events whereas Google can.
If only there were a way to combine them or at least see progress on them working on their shortcomings.
For non-technical users, is there a good tutorial I can point them at to disable iCloud Desktop/Document deleting? This is extremely bad behavior and I have no clue why Apple thought this was a good idea.
Like, this is class action material imho. You can't just take people's files and lock them behind a paywall just because they previously opted into the paywall on a case by case basis.
Edit: For those downvoting, it doesn't change the fact that Apple is turning file deletion on by default. This is not a good idea, especially when most of the world and part of the US still has pretty shitty Internet, or people have Internet caps.
The "Optimize Mac Storage" functionality you're referring to is not enabled by default.
You can manage settings for this and other storage optimization features in About this Mac -> Storage -> Manage, and System Preferences -> iCloud -> Option... (beside iCloud Drive).
Apple does not make this clear on their Sierra micro-site, and acts as if it either enables by default, or asks you with their typical confusing dialogs to enable it when low on space (which most users would get confused and click enable).
No, it deletes documents off your computer and puts them in the cloud.
If you subsequently stop paying for iCloud, you risk losing them. Or having to pay to restore them.
Yeah, it's opt-in and somewhat "implied", but I think the OP is saying there really should be an "* if you use this feature, an active iCloud subscription is required"
Finally need a new Mac ! My 2009 MBP has been cast off from the upgrade train - forever to be stuck in ElCapitan :(
Over the years I could upgrade the HD speed and size from 5400 rpm -> 7200 -> Momentus -> 512 GB SSD. Can't say that about the newer MBPs .. (waiting for October to see what comes out)
I have the same feelings about my infrequently used but trusted 2009 Mac Pro. After upgrading RAM, GPU and spending SSD disks it was performing "well-enough" after all these years. It's sad that I have to replace it not because of performance issues but being stuck with an old OS now.
Well, I don't know what the next nMP looks like, but presumably it will have the same form factor, so... none of it is upgradeable (apart from RAM, but... RAM is basically infinite these days)?
I've had a lot of issues with it, specifically:
1. Does not send display signal over mDP consistently. I have 2x 30" Apple Cinema displays connected to it. Sometimes it boots up without displaying anything on them. I have to restart it several times, unplug-and-replug both mDP and USB (the Cinema Display needs USB plugged in to work), clear NVRAM, etc until I finally see the login prompt.
It's not my machine because my partner has the same exact machine with the same configuration and it happens to her.
This is with the D700's so... who knows.
2. USB power is hit and miss. Sometimes it won't power up my Apple keyboard (no key input registered, caps lock light won't turn on, etc). Sometimes it won't power up anything on a specific port/bus until reboot. Again, not machine specific.
3. The SSD (Model: APPLE SSD SM0512F) is slow. I paid $$$ for the 512Gb SSD (the 1Tb was some ridiculous $ at the time, and I thought the better allocation of $ was to the GPU -- I regret this decision now because I'm SOL and can't expand my internal storage. I have a SSD-on-USB3 connected now for my VMs and what not). Sometimes I launch Finder and have to wait like 4-5 seconds before it shows me my home directory. There's really not much in there. A lot of other FS operations take longer than expected.
It's a longer list than this, but I really feel this thing is a lemon.
Maybe they'll address all these issues in the next rev, but my 2008 MP was on its last legs and I needed something to drive two monitors.
The iMac 5k is basically an awesome screen with a free computer attached. You can throw it out (or donate it, or whatever) and buy a new one every 2 years with the money you'd spend on the nMP every 5-6 years. It might not be the most powerful computer in the world, but it's good enough for like 95% of use cases.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think any of the parts in the current Mac Pro are internally upgradable. OWC might have an upgrade option for the SSD though.
Otherwise you've got to put everything through the external thunderbolt 2 ports. They're fine for storage and there's been some progress on using them for home made gpu expansion boxes but really you'd be better off waiting for Apple to offer something with thunderbolt 3 or internal pci card slots.
Same. I guess 7 years is a good run. Also I can't play 1080p Youtube videos anymore (I could play it at 30 fps, but Youtube almost always delivers 1080p as 60fps which is too taxing.)
Yeah, same with my late `09 Mac Mini. This year I maxed out the Ram, installed an SSD drive, and did a clean install of El Capitan and it's running sweet as can be.
I knew Apple was planning on obsoleting it when they broke some USB-2-ethernet software with a update last year but it's lasted longer than any Mac I purchased before and I figure it will be good for another year or two at least.
We really just need new hardware!!
What is worse is they're selling their hardware at full price. I was in the Apple Store and the rep was trying to sell an iMac / Mac Pro to a poor punter who had no idea of their age. I didn't quite have the courage to interrupt the conversation but I did leave this little gem: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hgury35bsickbvu/MacProProtest.jpeg...
So, there's no new features that anybody asked for, save the clipboard thing, which has unfortunate security implications, and there's a ton of nonsense none of us will ever use, as the Mac platform gets increasingly complex ("the computer for the rest of us" is now anything but), moves away from Unix compatability, and doesn't do anything useful with this additional complexity, but does cause emacs to crash.
I'd wait until they stabilize it a bit before upgrading. Or just don't upgrade.
>So, there's no new features that anybody asked for
Many asked for tabs in every app, shared clipboard, more voice control, improved Photos app and better iTunes, picture in picture, and more full featured Messages app. Plus few would ask Apple to take back the ability to save space (up to tens of GB) through iCloud/Desktop integration and more.
In the meantime, there's also a new filesystem on the way, already in early public developer versions.
>and there's a ton of nonsense none of us will ever use, as the Mac platform gets increasingly complex
Like? I can't possible thing anything that got made more complex, save for a couple of trivial things (with an equal amount of other stuff or more becoming easier).
>moves away from Unix compatability
In what way it had moved one iota from Unix compatibility?
>and doesn't do anything useful with this additional complexity
What complexity? What exactly did you find more complex compared to 10.10, or 10.7 or 10.5 or whatever?
Besides something like "sandboxed apps make it difficult to piss all over the filesystem, like old apps could".
>Like? I can't possible thing anything that got made more complex, save for a couple of trivial things (with an equal amount of other stuff or more becoming easier).
UI complexity: Apple keeps moving the goalposts on its UI focus, and it shows: The new interface is WAAY more complex.
EC did some interesting unix things, which broke some stuff IIRC.
>UI complexity: Apple keeps moving the goalposts on its UI focus, and it shows: The new interface is WAAY more complex.
What would be a concrete example?
(And is that example major and/or indicative of lots of changes towards difficulty, or just a random example, among other things that got easier and some that got harder?)
>EC did some interesting unix things, which broke some stuff IIRC.
Well, even Linux might break some UNIX stuff ocassionally (systemd anyone?). But is there anything specific and important in EC or Sierra regarding that?
>The new FS will be nice, but it's not there now.
A developer version is included with Sierra, but yes, it's no there fully formed and default.
Funny I don't particularly find anything interesting after Snow Leopard.
After Jobs left, they decided not to decide on anything and just sit on what was already there. At least they're free.
Perhaps the most interesting thing these days is what kind of new name they come up with.
Feel free to continue using Snow Leopard if you're happy with it. Here are a few things I've liked in subsequent releases (sorry if some are actually in Snow Leopard and I forgot):
* Notifications
* Air Drop
* Face Time
* Native Full Screen apps
* Multi-touch gestures (mostly use with multi-desktop and fullscreen apps)
* Mac App Store (I like it better for OS updates)
* Recovery Partition
* App Resume
* Terminal improvements (I stopped using iTerm)
* Air Play mirroring
* Notes (and syncing with phone)
* Compressed memory
* Full Disk encryption
* Improved multi-monitor support
* Spotlight improvements
A few things I'm looking forward to when I do upgrade my hardware:
Maybe it upset you but apparently keep using Snow Leopard would not let me use any of the recent third party apps and it is totally useless to do so now.
- Notifications : Had Growl, nothing new.
- Air drop : Perhaps but personally in no need.
- Native fullscreen : This is crazy. I turn iTunes fullscreen on secondary display and somehow it blacks out the primary screen for no good reason. Never using this feature.
- Multi touch gesture : Customizability is a joke. BetterTouchTools is what is keeping my sanity by applying custom trackpad gestures.
- Mac app store : Apparently this is big.
- Recovery partition : One of the great invention was network recovery but not like I use it often at all.
- Terminal : It was ok back then. Perhaps better if you say so. I do use SSH all the time. Never needed third party terminal.
- Air play mirroring : Don't have experience.
- Notes : Calendars, notes, reminders, stickies... What's coming next for note taking app? It's just cluttering my app folder.
- Compressed memory : Sorry I don't know what this is. Does this help you daily?
- Full disk encryption : Important feature.
- Multi monitor support : It was fine back then. As said above, part of it is a joke now.
- Spotlight : Maybe. I keep my files and mails all tidy, so I don't need a search helper.
I mean, Leopard brought Time Machine, grid view folder display from dock, quick look just to remember from top of my head which are all vastly useful and Snow leopard perfected it by making it lighter than previous OS. And today they boast they added like 100 new stuff which almost doesn't matter and I doubt things ever get lighter than previous OS these days.
Ever since they thought merging iOS feature into OSX was a good idea, it keeps adding useless pieces and they call it the best release ever.
Back then I thought Windows had tons of crapware on newly bought machine but funnily lately OSX is almost a victim of that from the vendor itself...
I love using OSX because of high quality third party apps. And in my opinion frankly Windows is still far worse.
And for OSX naming... I thought Apple is an international company. Tiger, Leopard etc was easy to read and understand as a word for us foreigners and now what? El capitan? I must think their vision is just getting narrower naming a OS to some local name they thought was cool.
> Maybe it upset you
I only said that because I didn't want my comment to come off as goading you into upgrading for the sake of it. I know a bunch of people using older versions of software and are very happy doing so. I was just pointing out a few things off the top of my head I've liked in newer versions in case you weren't familiar with them. Many of them were better integrations with things like iPhone and AppleTV, which might not apply to many people.
a few sporadic replies:
* Notifications: very few things apps supported growl and I like the integrated implementation better. Growl also started charging money, which is fine, but yet another thing to juggle licensing and that friction drove me away.
* multi-monitor: People complained about multi-monitor handling in OSX /a lot/ until the last few years. I haven't heard of any problems recently (maybe I've missed it). I don't deal with it that much, but I still have problems with Windows and Linux...dialog boxes popping up straddling two windows, for example.
* Native fullscreen: Fullscreen API was added in 10.7, then changed in 10.8 and again in 10.9. It sounds like because of a limitation at the time of the initial implementation it was integrated with Spaces which blanked out the second monitor. If I remember, there was an option to have each screen use separate "Spaces" to avoid this and in recent version it works out of the box. I think some apps like VLC or iTerm still use their own fullscreen implementation--but now all apps can be fullscreened without developer intervention. I just pointed it out because as it exists today, it's a new feature like to use.
* Compressed memory: compresses RAM when it can. Improves performance on lower-end hardware. I don't know about this specifically, but I've seen this kind of thing actually increase performance where i/o is more of a bottleneck than compressing.
* Spotlight: I rarely use it for file search (that in itself hasn't changed since SL), but I use it all the time as an app launcher and calculator.
My beef with Windows crapware was always applications that run on boot, or something that would throw pop up notices after they expire in 30 days. OSX has always had a bunch of application I never use: Automator, Calculator, Chess, Dictionary... just hide them, delete them, or ignore them.
The reason your new applications require new versions of the OS is because the frameworks got better. If new versions of the OS were just adding new applications you don't use, then people would still write their applications with the older, better APIs.
At least in El capitan, I can no longer even touch any of system files even with root privilege. And then I could put shortcuts of the only apps I use in a separate folder but they add arrow badge at the bottom corner for each icons which is visually annoying, and I try to find out how to remove it, searching reveals I could rename the image file for that arrow but turns out I can't touch system files. No, I don't want to turn off that security feature just for this.
Next iOS feature that needs merged into macOS is, hide first party apps.
> And for OSX naming... I thought Apple is an international company. Tiger, Leopard etc was easy to read and understand as a word for us foreigners and now what? El capitan? I must think their vision is just getting narrower naming a OS to some local name they thought was cool.
It's not just foreigners. Even us on the opposite side of the United States have no idea what El Capitan or Maverick is or means.
Yep, I'm already planning my eventual switch to full time linux. In previous releases there has been at least one thing I look forward to, but this one has nothing. Just features that I would rather not have included.
I was recalling the other day that I switched from Windows to Mac as my primary operating system because Windows kept popping up notifications for things I didn't need to see. Now OS X is doing the same thing with all the automatic update notifications that need user input to dismiss.
You'll be more or less forced to upgrade at some point. Chrome, Slack, and pretty much everything else stopped supporting 10.8 this year. Even CLI apps like Keybase refuse to run.
AS an outsider looking in. What is holding a developer from moving to Linux? I don't understand the draw of OS X for developers especially the past few years. These yearly updates seem to break everyone's workflow for a while.
I've been actively looking for a MBP-quality laptop that shows up on my doorstep running Fedora for about 2 years, but at this point all I'd need is a significant uptick in hardware to justify starting fresh.
I'd also point out how frustrating it is that Linux laptops tend to be on the cheap side (on par with a 13" Air), or generally massive, plastic, and loud.
>AS an outsider looking in. What is holding a developer from moving to Linux? I don't understand the draw of OS X for developers especially the past few years
I've used UNIX for ages, started on Sun OS (pre-Solaris), HP-UX, have used several early Linux distros, RedHat, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake (!), FreeBSD for a year or so, and now I use Ubuntu for personal stuff and Centos professionally.
I wouldn't use a Linux loaded laptop.
What OS X has?
Great hardware (Linus himself used to praise the Air for example -- which he used as a personal machine until 2014, and complained why no other company could make something like that -- he now uses a hi-end Chromebook).
No messing to get it to sleep, work with external monitors, including dual 4K, import camera photos and videos, work with new RAW formats, external peripherals etc. And by no messing I mean "an order of magnitude less messing that those things take in Linux".
Certified UNIX with full terminal access, bash, classic userland, etc.
Several package managers (brew, macports etc) to get 99% of anything one will need in Linux. And make && make install etc usually just works too, if one is so inclined.
Runs Linux on a VM just fine -- why would a developer pollute their OS with development environment stuff like installing DBs, compilers etc directly? And if you don't run it directly, then OS X is as good as Linux to host your developing VMs -- or SSH to some remote host.
A full, well thought out UI, even if it's not perfect. Even from 10.1 to 10.12, it never has the sudden "let's change everything and break everybody just because we can" turns that Gnome and KDE have had (I've used KDE but stopped with the 3 to 4 transition -- now I just run bare Linux or when I need a UI Linux whatever comes with Ubuntu).
Ability to run basic proprietary apps: Adobe Creative Suite, MS Office, etc. Lots of developers need those too, and I, for one, sure do for my sideprojects.
>These yearly updates seem to break everyone's workflow for a while.
No, it's just the vocal minority. Have used OS X since 2003, using it for programming (JS, Python, Java, Go, PHP, some C), video editing and music (various DAWs), and never had my workflow break, and I usually jump at a new OS the first day it comes out. The worst case was having to wait 1 month for Cubase 8.5 to support 10.11 -- but that's the fault of Steinberg for milking their customers, as other DAWs I have worked just fine, or had updates within the week or so.
Linux changes break just as many workflows (percentage wise) but there are so fewer (1/10 or so) Linux desktop users and even they so fragmented (different DEs, desktops, WMs, etc) that their laments are not really heard. Of course most major tech outlets hardly ever publish Linux related stuff in the first place, in contrast with Apple stuff that helps get eyeballs...
Minor critique - Getting a MBP to run with dual external monitors is a complete and absolute nightmare involving propriety standards (thunderbolt), OS lockouts (MST works with bootcamp, but not OSX), and expensive Apple hardware (outdated $1000 monitors only). Apple is no longer the company of simplicity from yesteryear.
But Thunderbolt is not "proprietary" is an open standard adopted by the industry at large, including PC makers.
Also the "expensive Apple hardware (outdated $1000 monitors only" is not really apt. It's not that running dual monitors necessitates using old Cinema Displays. It's just that Cinema Display's are old, and Apple hasn't made any new monitors for a few years. But no need to buy/use Apple monitors for that -- and it would be foolish to buy them when there are 4K ones around by Dell etc. Apple even keeps a page with supported and tested third party 4K monitors.
I was able to hook up my MBP to two external 4k displays and drive those and the internal screen at 60Hz with no problem. 2015 MBP with discrete AMD Radeon graphics chip.
Wait? What about Systemd BESIDES philosophy conflicts is annoying? Especially for develops. (I don't want to start that war again but I am curious what real world issue someone is talking about. I see systemd as awesome for developers #1 and users #2.
The default kill on logout behaviour is a pisser, and relearning the new, more complicated way to do a wide variety of things (set hostname, automount, timed jobs, etc) is annoying, and the whole thing is a massive attack surface.
But it's certainly not unusable. It's not a good thing, by any stretch, it's a pretty face over a horrific monstrosity, but it's usable.
But the fight between the systemd/non-systemd camps, especially in the form of docker/rkt, is a real pain for both sides.
I would be more concerned about security updates. Does Apple still publish security updates for those old versions or even for 10.10 since El Capitan has been out for a year?
I'm pretty sure Mountain Lion no longer gets security patches. They're kind of vague about it. Basically, they only really support the previous release of OSX (macOS) and that's it.
Frankly, I find the experience of stumpwm to be far more modern and futuristic than that of macOS or Windows. They both seem very 1980s and dated in their concepts.
> What about multimedia? Or an IDE? Or my proprietary apps like Photoshop and Premiere?
Ummm, Debian plays music, videos and games just fine. Firefox plays music, videos and games just fine.
emacs is my IDE. I could also use Eclipse, IntelliJ or whatever if I enjoyed pain and suffering.
I've no desire to use Photoshop or Premiere, but if I did I'm sure I could run Wine.
In the immortal words of Jeffrey Lebowski: Well, that's like, your opinion, man. Good IDEs like IntelliJ and VS have so much better integration for given languages that only result in ad-hoc, ho-hum solutions in Emacs (if one can suffer the millions of key bindings).
>Your browser is usually good enough for multimedia unless you're talking about creating it.
Well, if multimedia we mean "watching web video" or some flash pages. The browser can't even put up with viewing RAW images or playing FLAC files...
But true, I'm talking about creating (which doesn't mean anything at the Michael Bay level -- even something as simple as family vacation video or high school project).
Sure, you're swatting down his arguments, but not Linux. IntelliJ works for Linux--I'm not sure why VS was mentioned since this is a thread about moving from macOS to Linux. VS Code works just as well in macOS as it does Linux.
Of course the browser can't play back all multimedia. With its pedigree, I'm sure FLAC was running Linux before it was running on Linux or Windows. I haven't heard of much of an issue with RAW files in Linux either. VLC works better more reliably than anything proprietary for macOS or Windows.
Creating videos is something that seemed "the thing to do" in the early 2000's. IMHO, Apple did have the best consumer tools back then. But I haven't really hear of much use in the last 10 years. Linux might have decent tools? I wouldn't know.
Yes, but IDEs being more integrated with certain languages (e.g. IntelliJ and Java, VS and C#) instead of ad-hoc collection of scripts for a language that Emacs offers (except perhaps for Lisps) is a fact.
Emacs has some pretty good support for many languages. For languages like Javascript, LaTeX, Python, C/C++, and the Lisps, it's absolutely a solid environment, with good integration with the tooling. You can at least expect basic syntax highlighting for every language under the sun, and ectags means you get code navigation for most of them as well. Java support is meh at best, true but Java isn't my main language, and I'd rather not learn another new, inferior text editing environment every time I learn a new language: Emacs is universal, and is sometimes surprisingly well integrated. Flycheck also covers for another common IDE feature. Besides, how much of an IDE do you really need?
Besides, does your IDE read email, come with an integrated tetris package, and also contain one of the finest tools for outlining, planning, todo lists, writing and publishing, literate programming in any language ever devised (if it wasn't obvious, yes, I'm talking about org-mode)? No? Well then, I'll stick with emacs for now. :-D
>Java support is meh at best, true but Java isn't my main language, and I'd rather not learn another new, inferior text editing environment every time I learn a new language
Only most of the work we do while programming is not text editing -- we're not courtroom clerks or secretaries -- it's reading code, with a modicum of writing (less than 300-500 lines per day).
For this, a "great text editing mode" is almost of no use, compared to great language-related facilities for code navigation, AST-based autocomplete, intelligent refactoring, integrated debugger and build system, etc etc.
>Besides, does your IDE read email, come with an integrated tetris package
You know, you're kinda right. Emacs has most of that though.
>great language-related facilities for code navigation
ectags, Semantic, and various other extensions for various languages
>AST-based autocomplete
Various autocompleters, including Autocomplete (not AST-based, AFAICT), company mode (which is, I think).
>intelligent refactoring
CEDET, Semantic Refactor, and various modes for various languages, provide a good bit of this (although it's not up to Java IDE standards).
>integrated debugger and build system
Check, check, and check. We've got GDB integration, as well as GUD, which can run DBX, SDB, XDB, the perl debugger, PDB, and JDB. integration with make, or any other command-line build tool you want with M-x compile.
So yeah, refactoring aside, we're actually pretty well off.
Well, Macs have a larger software base: If you want a Unix with app support, and Wine won't cut it, OS X does a neat job. But I'm running Arch myself, so I'm not one to talk.
Who else is going to wait for the .2 or .3 release for better stability?
It used to be that Windows was the one that was always made fun of for its instability and bugs, and everyone would upgrade to a new version only after SP1 was released. Well, at one point it got even more funny (for other reasons) when the very first release of Windows Server 2008 was actually Windows Server 2008 SP1 (so the first "service pack" released later was SP2). [1]
The scene on the OS X/macOS front has not been good for a long time with respect to .0 releases. If there is one release of Mac OS X that will be held dear and always remembered of fondly, that'd be Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It came nearly two years after its predecessor, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and had only under-the-hood improvements. [2] But subsequent releases after it have become more bloated and not provided a great experience in their .0 versions. After a long gap, OS X El Capitan was supposed to be like Snow Leopard, with improvements mainly in stability and performance.
The problem with bloated and less stable major releases is that whenever a better release comes along, many Macs may not be eligible to upgrade to them. This leaves the owners of those machines stuck with a relatively newer but somewhat crippled OS with no easy way forward. It would be good to have Apple focus more on the stability and performance aspect in every single major release, but that's just a dream.
I think your feeling that Apple keeps dropping support for computers by releasing bloated, less stable releases is a bit off base.
I can't remember who, but I was hearing an ex-Apple employee (it was someone like Don Melton who lead the Safari and WebKit team) talk about Snow Leopard after they left Apple. They were saying the "No Major Features" tagline was something that was thought up by marketing very late in the process. Also, the bug count was on par with other releases. Sorry to drop such a bold claim without a specific citation. I think if it was more rock-solid than other releases it was more luck than anything else.
While that may not have been their goal marketing/Steve Jobs might have picked up on how that version developed. Snow Leopard dropped PPC support, which I'm sure streamlined a lot of things and shrank the size of their fat binaries. Finder was rewritten in Cocoa--which is very user-facing (and could have introduced major bugs). With the drop of PPC support it dropped support for the largest number of computers I saw in use by friends and family. OSX releases from Mountain Lion (2012) until just today with Sierra, didn't drop support for any computers. Even then, the newest computers they dropped support for were from 2010.[1]
I'm not saying new versions aren't slower than predecessors. OSX 10.0 was incredibly slow and I think there was a lot of low-hanging fruit to increase performance (heck, moving desktop rendering/compositing to the GPU lightens the load on the CPU a lot).
Is there anything noteworthy under the hood that would compel power users to upgrade? None of the features listed on Apple.com look like things that would be useful from my perspective.
Ars Technica has written a detailed review [0], there's some things on the networking side related to IPv6 and ECN, but that's pretty much it. APFS preview is interesting, but not really stable/usable yet from what I understand.
Hmm, there's surprisingly little in there if you don't have (or want) an iPhone. Is it time for us that don't want to use (and only use) Apple devices to shop elsewhere?
It's free, adds lots of stuff in the backend (libs etc), it's the default version from now on (the one with all the new hardware support, security updates, etc), it fixes several bugs from older versions (and of course will introduce some new of its own, nothing is perfect), and for those "without an iPhone" it has better voice control, tabs everywhere, new Messages and Photos app, updated Mail app, and a nice Cloud integration to save you space, with on-demand transparently downloaded files.
OS X is not like some third party program that works for decades and you decide whether to bother to uprgade to the next version or not. It's more like modern browsers: it's evergreen and you're supposed, if your hardware supports it, to be running the latest version.
If you use tmux you need to use reattach-to-user-namespace if you want copy and paste to work. I had removed this from my config since I didn't need it for El Capitan, but just had to re-add it for Sierra.
Yeah, it is appalling. Making Macs has truly become a tiny side business for Apple in more ways than one. It's clear that Macs don't make a dent in its profits and so aren't important. Considering how much money Apple has, it's not an issue of not having people to work on this or of lack of talent.
I'd love a new Mac as much as anyone else, but really for what they do, they do most everything well right now. Until prices favor a major upgrade or Apple favors a major change to macOS, I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to do an iterative update of the non-mobile line. A new iPhone moves products. A new Mac, not as much.
The desktop/laptop realm enjoys a great amount of freedom in that most everything works well and there just aren't a lot of features that Apple is ready to compete on. They aren't going to win with gaming, they aren't controlling enough of the market to battle for niche programs, and the major software suites they do have run pretty damn well on current hardware.
It would be a numbers update only and I just don't really see a lot of reason until Apple starts doing something to justify the numbers. Youtube and Facebook can only load so fast for their users.
I get your points, but Apple's inattention poses a few issues for certain users:
a) There are machines with better spec'd hardware from other vendors while Apple sits around doing nothing or close to nothing for a few years.
PLUS
b) At any point in time, there are people with older Macs who'd like to upgrade to the current state-of-the-art...or more importantly, to get the best bang for their buck.
PLUS
c) Apple continues selling older hardware at the same prices and does not reduce prices over time until it releases a new model, which could be several years later. This makes the hardware overpriced compared to non-Apple ones.
The above combination of factors make it quite hard to justify expenses on older hardware for a good number of Mac users (as can be seen on various forums) who're invested in the Mac/OS X platform and wouldn't want the hassle of switching to Windows or Linux. It thus creates a lot of fence-sitters who keep refreshing the Macrumors Buyer's Guide regularly and hope for something to happen.
c) resonates the strongest for me out of the arguments, as the first two are just sort of different versions of the same argument (just want bigger numbers), though I do appreciate both.
I would think though that in most cases, the persons considering a Mac are rarely looking at the specs to make the decision - Apple hasn't tried to compete with specs for a long time, and instead relied on word of mouth and OS X to carry them. Maybe a refresh would help make that a bit better, but I also feel they're stuck in a bad loop where because of how long it has been since a refresh for some devices, they need to really release something crazy good for the price to avoid the ire of purchasers.
Why? Aside from 'just because' and 'gaming' I don't really see much in the way of big beneficial improvements. Intel's CPU haven't gotten that much better since the 2nd generation core series, and aside for efficiency, you're probably not going to notice anything using a non-workstation setup.
I'm not so sure how i'll use siri. I think i'll be faster and more precise with the keyboard, forever. There is the inverse, the good old "say" command.
"say" is wonderful. Try peppering bash scripts or build systems with verbal status about success or failure. Seems to cut through the context switch time really well.
Does anyone know if a different storage engine can be used in place of iCloud?
(I ask because I'm not keen on my data being exported to foreign country with very different privacy laws and I'd also like to be able to shop around without being tied to a single storage supplier).
Well Apple have opened APIs to third parties before.
To say they're not doing something right now is one thing, to say that they would never and could never do it for technological reasons is quite another.
NAS companies like Synology and QNAP are able to offer pluggable storage options so it seems like it should be possible from tech perspective.
Conceptually, any such application is just an internet-connected filesystem driver with (presumably) a local cache in front. So there's no technical reason it couldn't be pluggable, just Apple being Apple as usual.
>Conceptually, any such application is just an internet-connected filesystem driver with (presumably) a local cache in front.
If we oversimplify to death, yes.
In the real world, it's an application created on a deadline, to work on a specific backend and take advantage of its features, and to serve as a basis for future development (and to work across OS X, iOS, etc). Some of the stuff also includes tight integration with the filesystem and/or kernel -- which would be a gaping security hole to pass to third parties to play with.
>So there's no technical reason it couldn't be pluggable, just Apple being Apple as usual.
It's a for profit company being a for profit company as usual. No proprietary OS maker develops such a flagship feature as an interchangeable pluggable infrastructure to hand to competitors (Google Drive, MS equivalent, etc).
Not only it makes no sense from a competitive point of view, it would limit them technologically too, as they would need to specify entry points and APIs that they then can't change.
> as they would need to specify entry points and APIs that they then can't change.
Presumably they could add new extensions as they go, and disable functionality that depends on them if they're not available. This stuff isn't exactly rocket science.
They could, but apps would break (especially ones whose devs are not quick to update or have abandoned), third party devs will complain on changes, etc. They wouldn't be able to iterate as they like, or make it depend on stuff only deep integration can provide.
And what would they get in instead? The ability to have the storage be powered by a third party cloud service because some folks might not trust or wont adopt iCloud?
If anything, they want folks to have reasons to adopt iCloud, not commoditize it.
I've written it elsewhere, but it might be worse repeating here:
OS X is not like some third party program that works for ages and you decide whether to bother to upgrade to the next version or not.
It's more like modern browsers: it's evergreen and you're supposed, if your hardware supports it, to be running the latest version.
Regardless of any major new features, a new version gets the security updates going forward, the bugfixes that stop for the previous OS, is the one compatible with new hardware, etc.
To play devil's advocate; I honestly don't see that many bugfixes in new OS releases that weren't introduced by the major release.
I think a lot of people might be much happier if they just stuck to what was installed when they bought it. You don't have to worry about performance degradations, things in the UI moving around, new bugs, etc. People complain about their phones becoming so slow and unusable they feel "forced" to upgrade. If they stuck with the version of software installed when they got it, it would perpetually perform the same. In the old days Windows was an exception to this. As you used it, it would get slower, required routine maintenance and seemed to benefit from the occasional re-install. Phone calls, e-mail, audio playback, twitter, basic browsing, and the fitness app you might use doesn't really need the latest version.
Like you mentioned, you miss out on modern security updates. The other big thing (you also mentioned) is buying a new shiny device and finding out you need a newer OS to support it.
I tend to update everything, but I'm also willing to take the time to read and debug so I know what's happening inside and out. I don't blame people for not wanting to spend that energy or deal with the hassle.
When I try to visit this page on my iOS device, it opens the App Store instead, where I am shown a nearly-blank screen informing me that "macOS Sierra is only available on macOS". I can then click a link to "Learn More [sic] about this app", which opens the page I originally wanted to view in Safari.
Does anybody know if the upgrade to Sierra also takes an eternity if you have many files in /usr/local? (homebrew, tex, etc.) Previous upgrades moved all files, one by one, out of /usr/local and then back in during the upgrade.
That sucks. Are you sure you weren't using iCloud library and need to enable it to download the music? Or perhaps iTunes by default doesn't show music in the cloud? Would be interested in your resolution, though I've not heard of this anywhere else.
New OS versions are not considered "updates" to anything so you have to look for them on the Mac App Store. Though Apple usually puts a big link on the front page.
I haven't installed yet as I'm just waiting for a current backup to complete. However, generally you have to run the command below after every OS update since El Cap.
had to reinstall xcode command line tools (which I should have seen coming) and then run an update on home-brew itself but all appears well now. brew doctor passes, and it updated my outdated packages just fine
OP here. OT, but I came across a post on HN saying macOS Sierra was out, and it gave instructions on how to navigate to it from the App Store for download.
So I did, then I copied the direct link and posted it. Now I'm on the front page. HN is funny.
When it was announced in WWDC, Apple clearly said APFS would be released in 2017. As announced then, what's available now is a developer preview.
> "So Apple File System will ship, by default on all devices in 2017. So to summarize, Apple File System will be the default file system for all Apple products 2017,... " [1]
I figure that's a more popular app among HN crowd than most places, and losing it is really painful.