I think High Sierra is the worst Mac OS release yet.
I’m sure there’s a cognitive bias partially to blame (since it’s the most recent) but it looks like we are way past that.
I’m sure there’s a cognitive bias partially to blame (since it’s the most recent) but it looks like we are way past that.
In any case, I would say that even a single data point of a kernel crashing bug is cause for concern.
That's why they gave everyone free CDs with 10.1.
Another reason they killed OS X Server maybe.
Remember Apple started down the "server" road decades ago with their A/UX UNIX server (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX). Throughout the 1990s you could get a high-end Mac spec'd as a UNIX machine if you wanted, though I've only ever seen a handful in the wild.
The introduction of a special-purpose server was an anomaly, the Xserve had no specific predecessor, perhaps some kind of "go big or go home" effort on Apple's part.
While that system wasn't bad by the standards of the time, it couldn't compete with the likes of Dell, HP and others who offered way more flexibility on configuration and who would seemingly sell super budget low-end servers at a loss to lock people into their product line so they can squeeze them on support costs, a model Apple's allergic to.
Now there is only Mac minis for it.
You're right that the Mini is a very capable workgroup server, and providers like http://macminicolo.net/ are hosting Mac "servers" by the thousands, so it's not like they've completely given up. Intel's the only other player in this space with their NUC machines and those tend to cost as much or more.
Hopefully they'll kit out the Mini better in the 2018 iterations. That 2012 quad-code i7 variant was an exceptional unit.
What attracted me to move to Mac OS in the first place some 15 years ago was the sheer quality. It was thrilling to use a computer that Just Worked, with no BSODs or the endless dependency hell that was Linux at the time.
It doesn’t feel like that any more, across either OSX or iOS - it feels fragile. Things crash, behaviours are inconsistent, and it feels like more emphasis has been placed on immediate commerciality than long term retention through quality.
For what it’s worth, I’m in the process of moving to Linux on my MBP. The pros of OSX just aren’t as strong any more.
Ubuntu still doesn't let me change my IP address to a static one via the UI and video drivers still crash or result in hours of googling and reading contradicting articles on how to change xorg.conf
Software has bugs. Operating systems are hard. It doesn't matter where you will go, you will most likely deal with similar issues. Whether it be Linux, Windows or macOS.
What do you mean? It doesn't get applied?
Sure, but it doesn't help when you are rewriting fundamental parts of the stack like the window server, for instance.
And I'm very glad that they did, the move to Metal shows they are committed to the Mac and not standing still. Just don't treat us as involuntary beta testers.
The same criticism applies to Windows - give it away for free and I might care less about crashes and the huge slide in quality over the last ~5 years.
Xorg.conf is a delightful stroll through a meadow compared to the nightmare fuel that came before, and in setting Linux (Kali,Ubuntu) on several machines of various spec over the last weeks, it has Just Worked.
As it is, it’s the opposite: Macs run both Windows and Linux “easily”, while other vendors’ buggy hardware has to be patched over with heuristics in these OSes because it has non-conforming device names, responses to introspection queries, etc. Apple hardware is uniquely well-engineered. If you’re writing your own hobbyist OS, it’s a breath of fresh air to run it on a Mac, compared to other kinds of PCs.
This is, coincidentally, also the reason it’s so hard to run macOS on other vendors’ machines. Windows and Linux paper over all the brokenness in hardware land, and so machines built for Windows/Linux rely on these heuristics with sloppy integration work. Apple, meanwhile, just does the integration to the standard in their hardware, and then relies on said standards-conformance in their OS. If everyone conformed to hardware ABI standards as well as Apple does, Hackintoshing would be a matter of just dropping a patched dont-steal-osx.kext into your install disc and calling it good. Everything else you have to do is the hardware vendors’ fault.
> As it is, it’s the opposite: Macs run both Windows and Linux “easily”, while other vendors’ buggy hardware has to be patched over with heuristics in these OSes because it has non-conforming device names
> This is, coincidentally, also the reason it’s so hard to run macOS on other vendors’ machines
Are you not aware that OS X does various explicit checks to make sure it is running on approved hardware, regardless of compatibility and capability attestation? Apple doesn't want OS X running on non-Apple hardware.
Er, yes, that's the "dont-steal-osx.kext" that I mentioned. My point was that thwarting those checks is a very small part of getting macOS to run on a system (and is a solved problem—if it was all that was required, Hackintoshing would be a one-and-done thing, rather than something that breaks on every system update.)
The majority of the (continuing) effort of getting macOS to run on arbitrary hardware—hardware that, by its components, should be compatible with macOS's drivers—is dealing with vendors' whack-ass "doesn't even pass static analysis using Intel's own provided AML compiler" DSDTs (which macOS rightfully tosses its hands up at, but which Windows and Linux heuristically munge into something barely passable and then use it.)
> latest high-end Apple and Dell laptops
Dell (along with HP and Lenovo) are the better vendors as far as spec-compliance goes. Really, any of the PC makers who have an "enterprise workstation" arm, have the in-house expertise for things like ACPI compliance, or UEFI compliance, or PXE compliance, etc. But other vendors? Acer? LG? Xiaomi? Razer? Better to not even try.
The result is they have a lot of problems with tin whiskers. Which is why you'll find about a billion forum threads about people baking their macs in ovens, and similar hijinks.
Granted, if you're not using a mac for anything that intensively uses the hardware (for instance, just text editing) you'll never run into this problem.
Optimus is one of those ideas that’s cool on paper, but horribly implemented.
10.4 felt like the first version that was a pleasure to use. It felt like the polish had finally caught up with OS 9.