I always find myself clearing the drive in order to install the latest macOS. Perhaps psychological, but it always gives me a fresh starting point that is benefited by an implicit boost in performance. While it does require some time for setup, and much of what I do is manual, I never regret it --almost like spring cleaning.
I don’t know what settings I changed six months or a year or four years ago. I just know that my mouse should scroll that way, not this way. Time Machine makes sure these settings persist between disasters so I don’t generally try to track them. Historically upgrades maintained the settings where they make sense. Over time my environment adapted to my preference.
But with the recent more drastic changes in Big Sur (and my fresh start) I find myself constantly having to re-learn really basic things like how to manage notifications. What used to be one click is three, or gestures that used to do one thing (drag right to dismiss) now do something unexpected (dismiss all notifications for an app). I don’t know how much of this is a setting and how much is just new behavior.
It has been an infuriating experience. I don’t even know how to use my computer and I feel powerless. I also have very little motivation to learn the “new” way because I know it will just change again in a year. So the time I invest now will be wasted.
It’s extremely demoralizing. One of the hardest things I do during the day is try to navigate my desktop environment. I have an adversarial relationship with my MacBook. There’s very little cognitive energy left to do my actual job. I don’t feel like it is improving, my computer is just in my way.
I just re-imaged my Macbook Pro laptop this week, to completely remove some super invasive exam-taking software that I had to install for a licensing exam.
The whole thing was very painless. I keep all of my data in one folder. I copied that folder, and copied some preferences for apps that don't sync to a folder (e.g., VS Code) to an external SSD.
I booted into recovery mode, wiped the disk, and re-installed Mac OS. Then I copied my folder back and re-did my settings.
The whole thing took a couple of hours, although a lot of that was babysitting the installs etc. while doing other things. I definitely wouldn't put it into the "extremely expensive" bucket in terms of time spent.
I also think a lot about sane defaults when working on/deploying software to customers myself. I choose what systems to use in part based on how good the defaults are.
The closer you are to accepting defaults the easier your life is. Obviously there are exceptions, but things like mouse scroll direction? Just learn to love the new one.
There's a lot of wisdom in this advice: the more time you spend messing with settings to customize the UX; the less repeatable this configuration is, and the harder it is to get a new system back up and running.
Also: what's "hacker" is working on many many different systems, and being able to at least minimally adapt to each different system's set of defaults, so you can remain productive. (and for me, this means absolutely forgetting all about one platform's take on hot-keys, shortcuts, and setting up aliases).
Mouse-scroll direction? I can't abide the "reverse" (scroll down to go up), and that's one thing I'm not ever going to let slide on a new system.
On mouse-scroll direction, the 'reverse' is actually the way the content moves (if you imagine your hand on the screen). I came around to thinking this makes more sense than the direction the scroll bar moves, but it was weird at first.
Sounds hacker to me.
1) Adapting to a new system that has changes outside your control. This is the case of a major version update in MacOS.
2) Reverting to default settings and re-configuring the environment.
In the case of 1 I am disrupted because I have to learn new ways to do what I could already do before.
In the case of 2 I am disrupted because I have to repeat configuration I already performed.
The context of this thread is choosing 2 on a regular basis just for the sake of doing it. By choosing to always accept defaults you are effectively maintaining a stable system, which is the opposite of what the second situation advocates.
2 is what I'm suggesting to mostly avoid if you can.
- Things might be less likely to break. Certainly the default settings are the most likely to have a test case associated with them. How likely is it that there's a test case around the unique combination of the 35 parameters you've configured that are relevant to the particular operation you're attempting?
- It may be better. A number of times I've heard of some odd default and thought "that's obviously wrong" but given it a chance and learned to like it. Definitely change things that really are important to you, but vendors often put a lot of effort into making good defaults.
- If you're a developer, a less configured system is more likely to be similar to what an average user uses, giving you a more similar experience to them.
I used to think like that, then I got a new mirrorless camera, which has a ton of settings with a menu which it feels like an open world. Then, I stopped worrying about setting things the way exactly I want. Instead, I started to change things I dislike.
This brings two advantages from my point of view. First, it doesn't feel overwhelming; two, it's really a smooth way of learning new things or relearning things in the new way.
I also run a micro server on a SBC. I fed up with the Ubuntu installation running on it and decided to migrate to Debian. I got two-three essential files (basically fstab, dnsmasq config files), and nuked the card. It was running in less than 15 minutes. I made a lot of small changes after that, but it was much smoother and nicer. Since I was not in a rush, I made the changes calmly and enthusiastically. Now, that thing works 10x better than Ubuntu.
No need to rush, just solve a single thing in one go, and you won't believe how far you can go in very short time.
Of course, this is my two cents and YMMV.
I’m not trying to say you’re wrong. On the contrary, since I don’t use macOS that deeply (I’m a Linux guy mainly), not feeling the change for worse is intriguing for me.
1) They changed keyboard shortcut and navigation behavior, I now have to use twice as many keystrokes to navigate Mail than I did before. Some keyboard navigation options are now impossible.
2) Messages was rewritten for Catalyst and is far more unstable. Keyboard navigation is impossible.
3) Notification buttons and behavior. This now requires hovers and the gestures do different things than they did before.
4) Application icon shape and location. Mail has buttons moved around and the icons are different. Functionality is basically the same but muscle memory is reset.
5) Window title bars are bigger and application minimum sizes are larger but fewer options are available, requiring more clicks to get to nested functionality, if it is even available. My 16” screen on Big Sur now shows as much information as my 13” screen on Catalina.
They are small changes but they are still changes. Small enough that the functionality is basically the same but big enough I have to re-learn it, and for no benefit to myself.
OMG - I hate the new notifications. Dismissing them is a very expensive task. Almost makes me want to disable notifications altogether.
This had huge benefits in terms of maintaining a very performant Windows desktop.
Then, I also baked-in my security configurations with another set of scripts. So it was always in a consistent configuration, (even if I had to "temporarily" disable something that was blocking me or broke something, I could always return to my "known-good-configuration").
I've also done the same with my linux systems.
Mac OS X has always been curiously resistant to full automation, however. I know some people have done it; but there's something about this ecosystem that makes it very difficult; and I kind of think that's by-design, (to thwart the hackintosh people).
I think it would be extremely valuable to be able to do this on Mac OS X; because customizing the OS is central to being able to get a good productive user-experience (especially for power-users), and I'm often stymied trying to accomplish this in a repeatable manner, on Mac OS X.
I had a checklist from last time in my notes and remembered that it only took a few hours and then the system was set.
This time it took much longer. Maybe because I went from Mojave to Big Sur in one go.
So now I've started a small project where I automate as much as possible, using defaults and/or Plistbuddy to edit macOS configuration settings, install dotfiles using GNU stow, profiles for network settings, and just copying files around.
I periodically clean my mac, though. Remove stale configuration files, cleanup apps, etc. I also have a bunch of stuff written down, as well as scripts, to help with installing new macs (to help my friends reinstall theirs).
I'm very nitpicky about configurations and apps. I've got dozens of apps and micro-apps I use. which are very modified. These include the typical BetterTouchTool, Alfred, Amphetamine, but also smaller apps like Audio Balance. My terminal is heavily customized, both in terms of iTerm 2 settings, but also in terms of my zsh config, custom commands, etc.
I'm sure I'd be able re-create my environment within days, but these would be very rough days....and time machine just works! I don't need anything else.
I'm not talking about apps that you got from the app store or similar, but, rather, things you installed via homebrew!
When I temporarily had to move back from a more recent (~2014) mac to an older one (~2012), I got bitten by that becuse some apps installed via homebrew had been built from source with optimizations that the older machine didn't support. It was easy to fix, since I could just reinstall them as I saw them breaking, but it was an annoyance nonetheless.
MacOS does not use dotflies to manage OS settings.
Dotfiles require a separate mechanism to replicate.
Settings do not change fundamental OS behavior. I can't set my notifications in Big Sur to "Catalina".