MacOS 10.14 Wishlist
blog.sindresorhus.com
blog.sindresorhus.com
* Core Data's generated classes are broken for one-to-many relationships
* NSTableView is a total mess. Lots of things don't work quite right. For example, calculating the correct height for a row of wrapped text is nearly impossible without hackily adding a few points here and there.
* In Metal, constant buffers over 64k get silently truncated on some GPUs.
* MTKView is half-baked. Resizing it stretches the window's contents, for example. If you don't use layers it overlaps the window's rounded corners. If you do enable layers, the framerate drops by half.
* The one field editor per window hack breaks expectations every time I use it. It should be done away with.
* NSTitlebarAccessoryViewController is officially supported but was never documented and forces the entire window to use auto layout
Please don't add any features. Just fix the garbage fire you already have rather than throwing more garbage on it.
The only features that vital necessities.
* Peripheral Shield - “firewall” I/O security and disablement on 2008+ machines. Many a disk cloner and malware loaders use USB, Thunderbolt or FireWire to install their stack.
* Deep Sleep that works. /var/vm/sleepimage is 1 GiB but it has 16 of RAM.
* Official internal OS tweak platform that’s sandboxed.
* Open source much more of macOS and iOS.
My wish would be that actual computer users could look forward with excitement, the way we used to, at what new improvements were about to become available rather than dreading what they'll "courageously" take away next.
The sad part is that there's still no good way to use it as a Dock replacement, which seems to me like the really obvious thing that would actually make it a productivity boost rather than merely "nifty".
• Apple's ecosystem (at least for business leasing) is sort of like the luxury car ecosystem: there are rather few models, and they're not very customized, but there's a dealership close enough to you that if there's any problem—any problem at all—with your [under-warranty] device, the idiomatic "solution" is to give you a loaner (the exact same model, with your data copied over) while they attempt to repair yours; and then either you get it back fixed, or you keep the loaner. Like luxury cars, this enables them to use nice-but-brittle components, under the expectation that nobody will actually have to put up with the component being broken, instead just being fed a steady supply of working devices. (Anecdata: my MacBook's keyboard has failed five times. Do you know what that means? It means that I've received a same-day replacement MacBook five times!)
• I think you're confusing "professional" with "ruggedized." Apple has never made, or claimed to make, ruggedized hardware. (The iPhone is waterproof, I guess?) Apple has no product category aimed at e.g. the ThinkPad's "techs performing maintenance on cell towers in deserts/jungles/swamps" use-case. Apple makes its desktop products like most companies make servers, or scientific equipment: intended for climate-controlled, central-air-purified conditions, to be operated by techno-priests who take the proper ritual-purity precautions before touching them. The Macs really are workstations, in the sense that they are intended to do their work from a designated station. ;)
Thinner means more luggable, but if it restricts a workhorse machine from having more than the 16gb of ram the base model can also have because they can't fit enough battery to power it, then why not go all the way and shrink it to the size of the 12" MacBook? Well, because of the other components you might say! But, if the CPU throttles, the GPU throttles, the keyboard stops working and the anti-reflective coating peels off, all because of the thermal stress the machine is under when used as a workhorse, then is not much of a workhorse is it? Besides, no one is asking for an aircraft carrier, the thickness of the 2015 version was good enough for nearly everybody, specially when you do have laptops like the MacBook that do make those compromises.
Apple is sort of a luxury brand but the problem is they want it both ways. They want to be seen as an aspirational brand and as a workhorse brand. That is why they keep releasing FinalCut, Logic, and XCode. At some point those two ambitions are going to collide; most people think they already did.
No one is asking for a tank, you are presenting a false dichotomy as no one is confusing professional with ruggedized. Every serious complain about the MacBook Pro is about specs, ports and reliability, not unbreakability. In fact, based on your previous point about luxury machines I say you are the one that is confused. Are MacBook Pros professional machines or not? If they are luxury items as you claim then by all means don't make them waterproof but if they want to aim it at people editing 8K video on-site in Africa, which happens by the way, then ffs make the screen less reflective.
Personally, I see the MBP as a hybrid use-case device, much like the Nintendo Switch: it throttles when freestanding (because it has nowhere to dissipate its heat to), but it runs more quickly when "docked." So you can use it for light things portably, and for heavy things at a desk.
Unlike the Switch, there's no first-party dock for the MBP, but search "mbp cooling dock" and you'll see many accessories designed specifically for the MBP to enable this workflow.
> FinalCut, Logic, and XCode
Two of those persist for the sake of enterprise media-production companies that fund the engineering resources for them all on their own. If Apple were trying to push these for new customers, they'd still be making Xserves, as the hardware to go with this software. New companies need render-nodes, right? But they aren't, because these apps are only for these "legacy" media companies that already have render-farms and don't need Apple selling them render-nodes.
Xcode exists because Apple uses it to make macOS and iOS. (And because the period where MPW sucked and CodeWarrior was third-party and so hard to get new features supported in was a bad time to be an Apple system-software developer.)
> No one is asking for a tank
No, but a keyboard that'll keep working when you spill bacon grease on it, or a computer that won't choke in a sandstorm, is pretty damn ruggedized. Most computers, regardless of manufacturer, are not capable of surviving those onslaughts.
> editing 8K video on-site in Africa
See, this is what I was getting at with the difference in perspectives here. A ruggedized workstation would work just sitting around outside in the heat and dust and light of the savannah. Whereas a professional workstation is—like a server, or (in previous decades) a news crew's satellite uplink—something that exists in a designated editing-room in a designated trailer you're hauling around with the crew.
MacBook Pros throttle even on "docks". They can't magically dissipate more heat when stationary on a desk.
> New companies need render-nodes, right? But they aren't, because these apps are only for these "legacy" media companies that already have render-farms and don't need Apple selling them render-nodes.
Companies need lots of things. One of them is a Pro Apple laptop. Apple has no problems charging Pro prices, they should in return give a Pro machine.
> No, but a keyboard that'll keep working when you spill bacon grease on it, or a computer that won't choke in a sandstorm, is pretty damn ruggedized.
You are being unreasonably extreme. No one is asking for anything more than what we already had. A keyboard that is defeated by dust particles, dust!, is a failed product at any price and in any category, let alone in the luxury non-pro market where you want Apple to focus on. You should be even more outraged than the rest of us! Which Rolex dies when you eat a sandwich wearing it?
> See, this is what I was getting at with the difference in perspectives here. A ruggedized workstation would work just sitting around outside in the heat and dust and light of the savannah. Whereas a professional workstation is—like a server, or (in previous decades) a news crew's satellite uplink—something that exists in a designated editing-room in a designated trailer you're hauling around with the crew.
You should tell all the pros carrying their laptops into war zones that they've been doing it wrong all these years. No, wait, they have been working fine even in the dust and in sunlight, despite not having armor.
Cooling docks. The kind of docks that have case-fans in them, and often are made of porous metal than makes direct contact with a large portion of the surface-area of the bottom of the device, making them gigantic heat-sinks.
> You should tell all the pros carrying their laptops into war zones that they've been doing it wrong all these years. No, wait, they have been working fine even in the dust and in sunlight, despite not having armor.
Err... those are ruggedized devices, whatever you want to call them. By "ruggedized" I'm not referring to laptops with extra armour tacked onto them (e.g. "mil-spec ruggedization"); but rather to laptops built to certain specs regarding tolerances of heat/cold/light/dust/radiation/vibration/etc. You know, like how a satellite is ruggedized.
A lot of laptops are ruggedized, by this standard. Everything produced under the ThinkPad brand, the HPe brand, etc. is ruggedized. But, outside of these, most laptops aren't. Your average HP Pavillion, or Asus Chromebook, won't survive a war zone. In general, consumer electronics won't survive a war zone. (Some lower-quality consumer electronics won't even survive the cargo hold of a plane.)
And everything Apple makes, even for "professionals", is consumer electronics.
You wouldn't expect the iPad Pro to survive in a war zone without absolutely "babying" it, right? It's a piece of delicate, finicky consumer electronics that happens to be targeted at one particular type of professional—artists—whose needs don't include ruggedness. Well, Macs are pieces of delicate, finicky consumer electronics that happens to be targeted at college students, businesspeople and engineers, none of whose needs usually include ruggedness either. No real difference.
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> You are being unreasonably extreme. No one is asking for anything more than what we already had.
To be clear, I was replying explicitly to this line from the root of this comment thread:
> keyboards that ... go on working just fine when splashed with bacon & eggs
That's not your average laptop keyboard; that is, in fact, only the keyboards in ruggedized laptops that can do that.
Given how frequently I catch my Macbook Pro leaving the fan at 0rpm even when the CPU is 180F, I suspect they're capable of getting rid of a lot more heat than they're permitted to at the moment.
Even forcing the fan to stay on with 3rd party tools just makes it bounce back and forth, once the CPU is no longer hot enough to burn your lap the fan completely turns off again and the cycle repeats.
I'd love to know why Apple thought it was a good idea to throttle and retain a ton of heat instead of turning the fan on, the end result is that the laptop is both hot and slow at the worst possible times.
I can't name a single more consistently infuriating piece of software to interact with. It's been horrible as long as it has existed, without fail.
On second thought, perhaps its stalwart consistency as one of the most unusable applications in the history of consumer software is one of the few constants in this fast changing world. Perhaps its flawed nature is meant to remind us all of our own deep imperfections.
God I hate iTunes.
That's where my frustration over the app comes from. It used to be pretty much perfect.
It was so nice to rip a CD, have it part of your library, and well that's it. Search worked great, everything just worked.
The UX is just so bad now, I don't even want to listen to the music I have saved. It's literally changed my music listening behavior.
So far, the stillborn features don't bother me that much.
It's heavy and should be lighter, with the features not being used quietly swapped out and remaining there - it seems like it's trying to reanimate the parts that are not in use all the time and that may be the root cause of the humongous memory footprint.
Moving the store and sync out would somewhat make things better, but Windows users would need to run 3 apps instead of one.
Why? Isn’t iTerm better in every imaginable way?
> Markdown support in the Notes app. Including code blocks and syntax highlighting.
1) there’s plenty of good apps (better than Notes.app anyway) that support this already
2) I’d argue <1% of Mac owners know of Markdown, let alone use it. Sure, we both do, but I’d rather them focus on the important bits (stability/performance/etc) and leave the niche app features to the ecosystem.
(Desktop) iTunes is the way it is in order to present a unified, familiar experience between the macOS and Windows iTunes desktop apps.
In Windows, iTunes is essentially "just enough macOS to manage an iOS device"—with every disparate responsibility that management entails all smushed together. (It's been this way since it was iPods that were being managed.) And macOS iTunes is the same codebase(!) as Windows iTunes, so it's not like that codebase is somehow going to compile as eight apps with their own UIs on macOS, vs. one on Windows. It's going to look, and work, on macOS as it does on Windows.
… Mostly when I tell Siri to remind me to do something and she records the wrong time and the reminder comes up at 2pm at work instead of 8pm like I tried to record it.
Should just include those the app store as well.
Not mentioned are the many years old bugs with multi displays and networking.
I just want Apple to take a year and really fix all the core problems they've introduced. No more new features until the existing stuff works!
[1] https://www.axios.com/scoop-apple-delays-ios-features-to-foc...
Dashboard also has some users, and it’s deeply integrated into the Dock.
I have this issue on a 2012 and 2015 MBP as well as on a MP 5.1. With the built in screens, Eizos and a NEC SV. The only thing thats common across all builds is the OS.
If you think you dont have this issue, compare the rendering of Preview.app at 100% with that of Acrobat.
> At 100% zoom level, the type is not rendered with crisp edges. It looks as if someone had applied a mild gaussian blur. Only once you zoom in, the outlines are sharp as they should be.
a number of times.
Running on a 12" (Retina) Macbook w/ macOS 10.13.4 and Preview 10.0 (944.5).
1) Here's a screenshot (100% on left, zoomed in on the right) - https://s3.amazonaws.com/citruspi-tmp/Screen+Shot+2018-06-01...
2) PDF being used - https://cdn.beastnet.works/bfc7d34daac8e7630541d49b591b1b62/...
It also happens within the PDF viewer in Safari - text and icons look a lot crisper when zoomed in.
https://image.ibb.co/hXi53J/screenshot.png
15 inch MBP.
Happens on both my Macbook Pros, too - a early 2015 13" (i7-5557U) with Sierra, and a mid 2014 15" (i7-4980HQ with discrete GPU) with High Sierra. The symptoms for me, with the proviso that I'm not in OS X right now to double check:
1. set Preview to open PDFs at 100% zoom, 1 page at a time. Open a PDF. Preview opens the window at the right size, then pops some scrollbars in. Now the client area is smaller, and that means the window is the wrong size! - which means the mouse wheel scrolls the view, rather than scrolling from page to page. Gets me every damn time.
(This could be related, I imagine, to that setting that forces scrollbars always to be displayed. I suppose it's too much to expect Apple's QA to have a test matrix that encompasses this case)
2. scroll from page to page. Each new page appears blurry - or, if lucky, merely wonky - for a fraction of a second, then replaced with the clearer rendering one might expect. Actually quite distracting when scrolling page by page! - and when scrolling at keyboard repeat rate, the clearer version never has time to appear, making it impossible to scroll through a document visually at full speed
3. when resizing the Preview window, some sizes look mucky - looks like the sort of thing you get if you render to an offscreen buffer that's 1 or 2 pixel the wrong size, or add the 0.5 to only one edge of your quad, and so on. Really annoying
THIS drives me nuts.
That'd be swell.
(1) Karabiner: https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/ → Cf. Kellen Mace, "Separate Trackpad & Mouse Natural Scrolling in Mac OS X" (2014) https://kellenmace.com/automate-trackpad-mouse-natural-scrol...
(2) Scroll Reverser: http://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/
Unrealistically, there are number of relatively simple things Apple could do to improve the hackintosh experience.
I hide the dock and keep it off to the side, as I find it more annoying than useful.
Any time I use a different machine, those are the first things that I completely and totally disable.
For me, the dock and the menu bar are much better solutions than any of the above, and they are in the category of "if it ain't broke, don't bloody flippin' fix it!!!"
You two are the first people I've ever heard of complain about this issue.
YES! Please add native Snap in MacOS (and native Exposé in Windows).